Az on-line világban hagyott virtuális lábnyomokban rejlő információk és azok veszélyei (In on-line world leaven virtual footprints information and those dangers)

A mindennapi, szinte folyamatos jelenlét a hálózaton számos melléktermékkel jár. Minden bejelentkezés, üzenet, vásárlás, akció adatok tömegét hagyja az interneten. A cikkben arra kívánnak a szerzők rámutatni, hogy ezeket az adatokat valaki vagy valakik összegyűjthetik, és esetleg olyasmire is használhatják, amihez nem járulnánk hozzá, ha ezt megkérdeznék. A szerzők nem foglalkoznak a rosszindulatú, esetleg bűntények elkövetésének céljára történő illegális adatgyűjtéssel, illetve -hasznosítással, azt kívánták bemutatni, hogy teljesen legális, ún. „white hat” eszközökkel is tartalmas felhasználói profilt lehet összeállítani. Szót ejtenek arról is, hogyan lehet megnehezíteni azok dolgát, akik rólunk szeretnének információt gyűjteni. ____ Everyday, almost continuous presence on the web results number of by-products. Each login, message, shopping, action leaves mass of data on the internet. In this article, the authors wish to point out that these data may be collected by somebody or somebodies. They wanted to introduce you that a meaningful user profile can be compiled by completely legal, so-called „White hat”tools. It also notes about how you can make more difficult their job, who would like to collect information from us.

The effects of writing process instruction on the writing and reading performance of students with learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of a writing process approach for the instruction of language arts with learning disabled elementary students. A nonequivalent control group design was used. The sample included 24 students with learning disabilities who were in second and third grade. All students were instructed in resource room settings for ninety minutes per day in language arts. The students in the treatment group received instruction using the writing process steps to create complete meaningful compositions on self-chosen topics. A literature-based reading program accompanied instruction in writing to provide examples of good writing and to provide a basis for topic selection. The students in the control group received instruction through the use of the county-adopted textbooks and accompanying worksheets. The teacher followed basic textbook and curriculum guide suggestions which consisted mainly of fill in the blank and matching type exercises. The treatment group consisted of 12 students: five second-graders and seven third-graders. The control group consisted of 12 students: four second-graders and eight third-graders. All students were pretested and posttested using the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement-Revised (WJ-R ACH) for writing samples and the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (WRMT) for reading achievement. T-tests were also done to investigate the gain from pre to post for each reading or writing variable for each group separately. The results showed a highly significant difference from pretest to posttest for all writing and reading variables for both groups. Analysis of Covariance showed that the population mean posttest achievement scores for all variables adjusted for the pretest were higher for the treatment group than those for the control group.

Cultural influence and learning to teach: Beginning teachers' perceptions of teacher preparation programs and school support systems

Beginning teachers in the field of English Language Arts and Reading are responsible for providing literacy instruction to students. Teachers need a broad background in teaching reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing, as well as critical thinking. In secondary schools in particular, beginning English Language Arts and Reading teachers are also faced with the challenge of preparing students to be proficient enough readers and writers to meet required State standards. Beginning teachers must navigate compelling challenges that exist during the first years of teaching. The school support systems available to new teachers are an integral part of their educational development. ^ This qualitative study was conceptualized as an in-depth examination of the experiences and perceptions of eight beginning teachers. They represented different racial/ethnic groups, attended different teacher preparation programs, and taught in different school cultures. The data were collected through formal and informal interviews and classroom observations. A qualitative system of data analysis was used to examine the patterns relating to the interrelationship between teacher preparation programs and school support systems. ^ The experiences of the beginning teachers in this study indicated that teacher education programs should provide preservice teachers with a critical knowledge base for teaching literature, language, and composition. A liberal arts background in English, followed by an extensive program focusing on pedagogy, seems to provide a thorough level of curriculum and instructional practices needed for teaching in 21st century classrooms. The data further suggested that a school support system should pair beginning teachers with mentor teachers and provide a caring, professional environment that seeks to nurture the teacher as she/he develops during the first years of teaching. ^

Off-line and on-line affective recognition of a computer user through a biosignal processing approach

Physiological signals, which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), could be used to detect the affective state of computer users and therefore find applications in medicine and engineering. The Pupil Diameter (PD) seems to provide a strong indication of the affective state, as found by previous research, but it has not been investigated fully yet. ^ In this study, new approaches based on monitoring and processing the PD signal for off-line and on-line affective assessment ("relaxation" vs. "stress") are proposed. Wavelet denoising and Kalman filtering methods are first used to remove abrupt changes in the raw Pupil Diameter (PD) signal. Then three features (PDmean, PDmax and PDWalsh) are extracted from the preprocessed PD signal for the affective state classification. In order to select more relevant and reliable physiological data for further analysis, two types of data selection methods are applied, which are based on the paired t-test and subject self-evaluation, respectively. In addition, five different kinds of the classifiers are implemented on the selected data, which achieve average accuracies up to 86.43% and 87.20%, respectively. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is utilized to investigate the discriminating potential of each individual feature by evaluation of the area under the ROC curve, which reaches values above 0.90. ^ For the on-line affective assessment, a hard threshold is implemented first in order to remove the eye blinks from the PD signal and then a moving average window is utilized to obtain the representative value PDr for every one-second time interval of PD. There are three main steps for the on-line affective assessment algorithm, which are preparation, feature-based decision voting and affective determination. The final results show that the accuracies are 72.30% and 73.55% for the data subsets, which were respectively chosen using two types of data selection methods (paired t-test and subject self-evaluation). ^ In order to further analyze the efficiency of affective recognition through the PD signal, the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was also monitored and processed. The highest affective assessment classification rate obtained from GSR processing is only 63.57% (based on the off-line processing algorithm). The overall results confirm that the PD signal should be considered as one of the most powerful physiological signals to involve in future automated real-time affective recognition systems, especially for detecting the "relaxation" vs. "stress" states.^

The impact of pre -training interventions on cognitive, skill, and affective learning outcomes: A meta -analytic examination of four decades of research

Technological advancements and the ever-evolving demands of a global marketplace may have changed the way in which training is designed, implemented, and even managed, but the ultimate goal of organizational training programs remains the same: to facilitate learning of a knowledge, skill, or other outcome that will yield improvement in employee performance on the job and within the organization (Colquitt, LePine, & Noe, 2000; Tannenbaum & Yukl, 1992). Studies of organizational training have suggested medium to large effect sizes for the impact of training on employee learning (e.g., Arthur, Bennett, Edens, & Bell, 2003; Burke & Day, 1986). However, learning may be differentially affected by such factors as the (1) level and type of preparation provided prior to training, (2) targeted learning outcome, (3) training methods employed, and (4) content and goals of training (e.g., Baldwin & Ford, 1988). A variety of pre-training interventions have been identified as having the potential to enhance learning from training and practice (Cannon-Bowers, Rhodenizer, Salas, & Bowers, 1998). Numerous individual studies have been conducted examining the impact of one or more of these pre-training interventions on learning. ^ I conducted a meta-analytic examination of the effect of these pre-training interventions on cognitive, skill, and affective learning. Results compiled from 359 independent studies (total N = 37,038) reveal consistent positive effects for the role of pre-training interventions in enhancing learning. In most cases, the provision of a pre-training intervention explained approximately 5–10% of the variance in learning, and in some cases, explained up to 40–50% of variance in learning. Overall attentional advice and meta-cognitive strategies (as compared with advance organizers, goal orientation, and preparatory information) seem to result in the most consistent learning gains. Discussion focuses on the most beneficial match between an intervention and the learning outcome of interest, the most effective format of these interventions, and the most appropriate circumstances under which these interventions should be utilized. Also highlighted are the implications of these results for practice, as well as propositions for important avenues for future research. ^

Moving toward change: Institutionalizing reform through implementation of the Learning Assistant model and Open Source Tutorials

Florida International University has undergone a reform in the introductory physics classes by focusing on the laboratory component of these classes. We present results from the secondary implementation of two research-based instructional strategies: the implementation of the Learning Assistant model as developed by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Open Source Tutorial curriculum developed at the University of Maryland, College Park. We examine the results of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) for introductory students over five years (n=872) and find that the mean raw gain of students in transformed lab sections was 0.243, while the mean raw gain of the traditional labs was 0.159, with a Cohen’s d effect size of 0.59. Average raw gains on the FCI were 0.243 for Hispanic students and 0.213 for women in the transformed labs, indicating that these reforms are not widening the gaps between underrepresented student groups and majority groups. Our results illustrate how research-based instructional strategies can be successfully implemented in a physics department with minimal department engagement and in a sustainable manner.

On the possible implementation of nondirective teaching for English class in post secondary public schools in China

The paper explores how Chinese English teachers assume appropriate roles in applying nondirective teaching model to classrooms. After reviewing the current situation of English teaching and learning in China, it introduces the nondirective teaching model and its characteristics. Then, it focuses on the implementation of nondirective teaching model at the public schools in China. Finally it discusses the essential role that nondirective teaching model plays in helping students become powerful learners on English learning.

Investigating the Effects of Cognitive Apprenticeship-Based Instructional Coaching on Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs

The overall purpose of this collected papers dissertation was to examine the utility of a cognitive apprenticeship-based instructional coaching (CAIC) model for improving the science teaching efficacy beliefs (STEB) of preservice and inservice elementary teachers. Many of these teachers perceive science as a difficult subject and feel inadequately prepared to teach it. However, teacher efficacy beliefs have been noted as the strongest indicator of teacher quality, the variable most highly correlated with student achievement outcomes. The literature is scarce on strong, evidence-based theoretical models for improving STEB. This dissertation is comprised of two studies. STUDY #1 was a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study investigating the impact of a reformed CAIC elementary science methods course on the STEB of 26 preservice teachers. Data were collected using the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI-B) and from six post-course interviews. A statistically significant increase in STEB was observed in the quantitative strand. The qualitative data suggested that the preservice teachers perceived all of the CAIC methods as influential, but the significance of each method depended on their unique needs and abilities. STUDY #2 was a participatory action research case study exploring the utility of a CAIC professional development program for improving the STEB of five Bahamian inservice teachers and their competency in implementing an inquiry-based curriculum. Data were collected from pre- and post-interviews and two focus group interviews. Overall, the inservice teachers perceived the intervention as highly effective. The scaffolding and coaching were the CAIC methods portrayed as most influential in developing their STEB, highlighting the importance of interpersonal relationship aspects in successful instructional coaching programs. The teachers also described the CAIC approach as integral in supporting their learning to implement the new inquiry-based curriculum. The overall findings hold important implications for science education reform, including its potential to influence how preservice teacher training and inservice teacher professional development in science are perceived and implemented. Additionally, given the noteworthy results obtained over the relatively short durations, CAIC interventions may also provide an effective means of achieving improvements in preservice and inservice teachers’ STEB more expeditiously than traditional approaches.

O PLANEJAMENTO DA COMUNICAÇÃO ON-LINE: Como a velocidade no fluxo da informação altera a forma de planejar

O advento da internet causou uma revolução na forma como a sociedade se relaciona. A consolidação das mídias sociais na ambiência digital acentuou o poder das mudanças e forçou a comunicação a rever paradigmas. O imediatismo e a velocidade com que a informação se propaga num processo simétrico de mão dupla – emissor e receptor – mudou a forma de trabalhar, pensar e planejar. O presente trabalho traz uma pesquisa com profissionais de comunicação e analisa como o fator prazo tem impactado no processo do planejamento de longo prazo – tradicionalmente anual – das ações voltadas para o ambiente digital. A pesquisa baseou-se em amplo referencial teórico das áreas de comunicação, marketing, redes e mídias sociais, tecnologia, administração, além de institutos de pesquisas e empresas. A fim de descrever as experiências vividas pelos profissionais, empreendemos ainda uma pesquisa qualitativa com entrevistas em profundidade, com amostra não probabilística, com foco nas disciplinas de marketing e propaganda e relações públicas. Os resultados apontam para um aprendizado ainda sendo conquistado, dia após dia, a partir de tentativas e erros, onde a preocupação dos profissionais fica dividida entre o prazo de antecedência com que é feito um planejamento e a obrigatoriedade de sua revisão contínua.

National, inter-institutional, graduate modules – blended learning approaches for PhD education in Ireland

This paper is a case study that describes the design and delivery of national PhD lectures with 40 PhD candidates in Digital Arts and Humanities in Ireland simultaneously to four remote locations, in Trinity College Dublin, in University College Cork, in NUI Maynooth and NUI Galway. Blended learning approaches were utilized to augment traditional teaching practices combining: face-to-face engagement, video-conferencing to multiple sites, social media lecture delivery support – a live blog and micro blogging, shared, open student web presence online. Techniques for creating an effective, active learning environment were discerned via a range of learning options offered to students through student surveys after semester one. Students rejected the traditional lecture format, even through the novel delivery method via video link to a number of national academic institutions was employed. Students also rejected the use of a moderated forum as a means of creating engagement across the various institutions involved. Students preferred a mix of approaches for this online national engagement. The paper discusses successful methods used to promote interactive teaching and learning. These included Peer to peer learning, Workshop style delivery, Social media. The lecture became a national, synchronous workshop. The paper describes how allowing students to have a voice in the virtual classroom they become animated and engaged in an open culture of shared experience and scholarship, create networks beyond their institutions, and across disciplinary boundaries. We offer an analysis of our experiences to assist other educators in their course design, with a particular emphasis on social media engagement.

On the Regulation of Small Actors: Three Experimental Essays about Policies based on Voluntary Compliance and Decentralized Monitoring

Monitoring and enforcement are perhaps the biggest challenges in the design and implementation of environmental policies in developing countries where the actions of many small informal actors cause significant impacts on the ecosystem services and where the transaction costs for the state to regulate them could be enormous. This dissertation studies the potential of innovative institutions based on decentralized coordination and enforcement to induce better environmental outcomes. Such policies have in common that the state plays the role of providing the incentives for organization but the process of compliance happens through decentralized agreements, trust building, signaling and monitoring. I draw from the literatures in collective action, common-pool resources, game-theory and non-point source pollution to develop the instruments proposed here. To test the different conditions in which such policies could be implemented I designed two field-experiments that I conducted with small-scale gold miners in the Colombian Pacific and with users and providers of ecosystem services in the states of Veracruz, Quintana Roo and Yucatan in Mexico. This dissertation is organized in three essays.

The first essay, “Collective Incentives for Cleaner Small-Scale Gold Mining on the Frontier: Experimental Tests of Compliance with Group Incentives given Limited State Monitoring”, examines whether collective incentives, i.e. incentives provided to a group conditional on collective compliance, could “outsource” the required local monitoring, i.e. induce group interactions that extend the reach of the state that can observe only aggregate consequences in the context of small-scale gold mining. I employed a framed field-lab experiment in which the miners make decisions regarding mining intensity. The state sets a collective target for an environmental outcome, verifies compliance and provides a group reward for compliance which is split equally among members. Since the target set by the state transforms the situation into a coordination game, outcomes depend on expectations of what others will do. I conducted this experiment with 640 participants in a mining region of the Colombian Pacific and I examine different levels of policy severity and their ordering. The findings of the experiment suggest that such instruments can induce compliance but this regulation involves tradeoffs. For most severe targets – with rewards just above costs – raise gains if successful but can collapse rapidly and completely. In terms of group interactions, better outcomes are found when severity initially is lower suggesting learning.

The second essay, “Collective Compliance can be Efficient and Inequitable: Impacts of Leaders among Small-Scale Gold Miners in Colombia”, explores the channels through which communication help groups to coordinate in presence of collective incentives and whether the reached solutions are equitable or not. Also in the context of small-scale gold mining in the Colombian Pacific, I test the effect of communication in compliance with a collective environmental target. The results suggest that communication, as expected, helps to solve coordination challenges but still some groups reach agreements involving unequal outcomes. By examining the agreements that took place in each group, I observe that the main coordination mechanism was the presence of leaders that help other group members to clarify the situation. Interestingly, leaders not only helped groups to reach efficiency but also played a key role in equity by defining how the costs of compliance would be distributed among group members.

The third essay, “Creating Local PES Institutions and Increasing Impacts of PES in Mexico: A real-Time Watershed-Level Framed Field Experiment on Coordination and Conditionality”, considers the creation of a local payments for ecosystem services (PES) mechanism as an assurance game that requires the coordination between two groups of participants: upstream and downstream. Based on this assurance interaction, I explore the effect of allowing peer-sanctions on upstream behavior in the functioning of the mechanism. This field-lab experiment was implemented in three real cases of the Mexican Fondos Concurrentes (matching funds) program in the states of Veracruz, Quintana Roo and Yucatan, where 240 real users and 240 real providers of hydrological services were recruited and interacted with each other in real time. The experimental results suggest that initial trust-game behaviors align with participants’ perceptions and predicts baseline giving in assurance game. For upstream providers, i.e. those who get sanctioned, the threat and the use of sanctions increase contributions. Downstream users contribute less when offered the option to sanction – as if that option signal an uncooperative upstream – then the contributions rise in line with the complementarity in payments of the assurance game.

Cooperative or collaborative learning: Is there a difference in university students’ perceptions?

The hypothesis that the same educational objective, raised as cooperative or collaborative learning in university teaching does not affect students’ perceptions of the learning model, leads this study. It analyses the reflections of two students groups of engineering that shared the same educational goals implemented through two different methodological active learning strategies: Simulation as cooperative learning strategy and Problem-based Learning as a collaborative one. The different number of participants per group (eighty-five and sixty-five, respectively) as well as the use of two active learning strategies, either collaborative or cooperative, did not show differences in the results from a qualitative perspective.

The role of learning design and learning analytics in MOOCs

The last couple of years there has been a lot of attention for MOOCs. More and more universities start offering MOOCs. Although the open dimension of MOOC indicates that it is open in every aspect, in most cases it is a course with a structure and a timeline within which learning activities are positioned. There is a contradiction there. The open aspect puts MOOCs more in the non-formal professional learning domain, while the course structure takes it into the formal, traditional education domain. Accordingly, there is no consensus yet on solid pedagogical approaches for MOOCs. Something similar can be said for learning analytics, another upcoming concept that is receiving a lot of attention. Given its nature, learning analytics offers a large potential to support learners in particular in MOOCs. Learning analytics should then be applied to assist the learners and teachers in understanding the learning process and could predict learning, provide opportunities for pro-active feedback, but should also results in interventions aimed at improving progress. This paper illustrates pedagogical and learning analytics approaches based on practices developed in formal online and distance teaching university education that have been fine-tuned for MOOCs and have been piloted in the context of the EU-funded MOOC projects ECO (Elearning, Communication, Open-Data: http://ecolearning.eu) and EMMA (European Multiple MOOC Aggregator: http://platform.europeanmoocs.eu).

Education and self-regulation of learning for gifted pupils: Systemic design and development.

Gifted pupils differ from their age-mates with respect to development potential, actual competencies, self-regulatory capabilities, and learning styles in one or more domains of competence. The question is how to design and develop education that fits and further supports such characteristics and competencies of gifted pupils. Analysis of various types of educational interventions for gifted pupils reflects positive cognitive or intellectual effects and differentiated social comparison or group-related effects on these pupils. Systemic preventive combination of such interventions could make these more effective and sustainable. The systemic design is characterised by three conditional dimensions: differentiation of learning materials and procedures, integration by and use of ICT support, and strategies to improve development and learning. The relationships to diagnostic, instructional, managerial, and systemic learning aspects are expressed in guidelines to develop or transform education. The guidelines imply the facilitation of learning arrangements that provide flexible self-regulation for gifted pupils. A three-year pilot in Dutch nursery and primary school is conducted to develop and implement the design in collaboration with teachers. The results constitute prototypes of structured competence domains and supportive software. These support the screening of entry characteristics of all four-year old pupils and assignment of adequate play and learning processes and activities throughout the school career. Gifted and other pupils are supported to work at their actual achievement or competency levels since their start in nursery school, in self-regulated learning arrangements either in or out of class. Each pupil can choose other pupils to collaborate with in small groups, at self-chosen tasks or activities, while being coached by the teacher. Formative evaluation of the school development process shows that the systemic prevention guidelines seem to improve learning and social progress of gifted pupils, including their self-regulation. Further development and implementation steps are discussed.

Addressing the theory practice gap in nurse education: evaluating teaching through audit against NMC standards and final management placement

Introduction
This paper outlines an innovative approach to auditing and evaluating the content of a management and leadership module for undergraduate nursing students after their final management clinical placement. Normally evaluations of teaching in a module take place at the end of a teaching module and therefore do not properly reflect the value of the teaching in relation to practical clinical experience.
Aim
This audit and evaluation sought to explore both the practical value of the teaching and learning, and also the degree to which it the teaching reflected against the NMC Standards of Education and Learning (2010 domain 3).
Methods
Having piloted the evaluative tool with an earlier cohort of nursing students, this evaluation explored both a quantitative assessment employing a Personal Response System (n =172), together with a qualitative dimension (n=116), thus delivering paper-based comments and reflections from students on the value and practicality of the module teaching theory to their final clinical management experience. The quantitative audit data were analysed for frequencies and cross tabulation and the qualitative audit data were thematically analysed.
Results
Results suggest a significant proportion of the students, appreciated the quality of the standard of teaching, but more importantly, ‘valued or highly valued’ the teaching and learning in relation to how it helped to significantly inform their management placement experience. A smaller proportion of the students underlined limitations and areas in which further improvement can be made in teaching and learning to the module.
Conclusion
Significantly positive evaluation by the students of the practical value of teaching and learning, to the theoretical management module. This has proved a useful auditing approach in assessing the theoretical teaching to student’s Level 3 clinical experience, and facilitated significant recommendations as far as developing the teaching and learning to better reflect the practice needs of nursing students