The pedagogic prosthetic: Augmented learning as content-in-motion in hybrid educational spheres

This article draws on the design and implementation of three mobile learning projects introduced by Flanagan in 2011, 2012 and 2014 engaging a total of 206 participants. The latest of these projects is highlighted in this article. Two other projects provide additional examples of innovative strategies to engage mobile and cloud systems describing how electronic and mobile technology can help facilitate teaching and learning, assessment for learning and assessment as learning, and support communities of practice. The second section explains the theoretical premise supporting the implementation of technology and promulgates a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. The third section discusses mobility, both in terms of the exploration of wearable technology in the prototypes developed as a result of the projects, and the affordances of mobility within pedagogy. Finally the quantitative and qualitative methods in place to evaluate m-learning are explained.

Context-based assessment: Creating opportunities for resonance between classroom fields and societal fields

There is on-going international interest in the relationships between assessment instruments, students’ understanding of science concepts and context-based curriculum approaches. This study extends earlier research showing that students can develop connections between contexts and concepts – called fluid transitions – when studying context-based courses. We provide an in-depth investigation of one student’s experiences with multiple contextual assessment instruments that were associated with a context-based course. We analyzed the student’s responses to context-based assessment instruments to determine the extent to which contextual tests, reports of field investigations, and extended experimental investigations afforded her opportunities to make connections between contexts and concepts. A system of categorizing student responses was developed that can inform other educators when analyzing student responses to contextual assessment. We also refine the theoretical construct of fluid transitions that informed the study initially. Implications for curriculum and assessment design are provided in light of the findings.

Designing a blended learning model for primary school language learning

In Finland, there is a desperate need for flexible, reliable and functional multi-e-learning settings for pupils aged 11-13. Southern Finland has several ongoing e-learning projects, but none that develop a multiple setting, with learning and teaching occurring between more than two schools. In 2006, internet connections were not broadband and data transfer was mainly audio data. Connections and technical problems occurred, which were an obstacle to multi-e-learning. Internet connections today enable web-based learning in major parts of
Lapland and by 2015, broadband will reach even the remotest villages up north. Therefore, it is important to research the possibilities of multi-e-learning and to build collaborative, learner-centred, versatile network models for primary school-aged pupils. The resulting model will facilitate distance learning to extend education to rural, sparsely populated areas, and it will give a model of using mobile devices in language portfolios. This will promote regional equality and prevent exclusion. Working with portfolios provides the opportunity to develop mobility from a pedagogical point of view. It is important to study the pros and cons of mobile devices in producing artefacts on portfolios in e-learning and language learning settings.
The current study represents a design-based research approach. The design research approach includes two important aspects concerning the current research: ‘a teacher as researcher’ aspect, which means there is the possibility to be strongly involved in developing processes and an obstacle-aspect, which means that problems while developing, are seen as a
promoter in evolving the designed model, as apposed to negative results.

Designing a blended learning model for primary school language learning

In Finland, there is a desperate need for flexible, reliable and functional multi-e-learning settings for pupils aged 11-13. Southern Finland has several ongoing e-learning projects, but none that develop a multiple setting, with learning and teaching occurring between more than two schools. In 2006, internet connections were not broadband and data transfer was mainly audio data. Connections and technical problems occurred, which were an obstacle to multi-e-learning. Internet connections today enable web-based learning in major parts of Lapland and by 2015, broadband will reach even the remotest villages up north. Therefore, it is important to research the possibilities of multi-e-learning and to build collaborative, learner-centred, versatile network models for primary school-aged pupils. The resulting model will facilitate distance learning to extend education to rural, sparsely populated areas, and it will give a model of using mobile devices in language portfolios. This will promote regional equality and prevent exclusion. Working with portfolios provides the opportunity to develop mobility from a pedagogical point of view. It is important to study the pros and cons of mobile devices in producing artefacts on portfolios in e-learning and language learning settings. The current study represents a design-based research approach. The design research approach includes two important aspects concerning the current research: ‘a teacher as researcher’ aspect, which means there is the possibility to be strongly involved in developing processes and an obstacle-aspect, which means that problems while developing, are seen as a promoter in evolving the designed model, as apposed to negative results.

Kehittämistutkimus: Tieto- ja viestintätekniikkaa kemian opetukseen

The main aim of the present study was to develop information and communication technology (ICT) based chemistry education. The goals for the study were to support meaningful chemistry learning, research-based teaching and diffusion of ICT innovations. These goals were used as guidelines that form the theoretical framework for this study. This Doctoral Dissertation is based on eight-stage research project that included three design researches. These three design researches were scrutinized as separate case studies in which the different cases were formed according to different design teams: i) one researcher was in charge of the design and teachers were involved in the research process, ii) a research group was in charge of the design and students were involved in the research process, and iii) the design was done by student teams, the research was done collaboratively, and the design process was coordinated by a researcher. The research projects were conducted using mixed method approach, which enabled a comprehensive view on education design. In addition, the three central areas of design research: problem analysis, design solution and design process were included in the research, which was guided by the main research questions formed according to these central areas: 1) design solution: what kind of elements are included in ICT-based learning environments that support meaningful chemistry learning and diffusion of innovation, 2) problem analysis: what kind of new possibilities the designed learning environments offer for the support of meaningful chemistry learning, and 3) design process: what kind of opportunities and challenges does collaboration bring to the design of ICT-based learning environments? The main research questions were answered according to the analysis of the survey and observation data, six designed learning environments and ten design narratives from the three case studies. Altogether 139 chemistry teachers and teacher students were involved in the design processes. The data was mainly analysed by methods of qualitative content analysis. The first main result from the study give new information on the meaningful chemistry learning and the elements of ICT-based learning environment that support the diffusion of innovation, which can help in the development of future ICT-education design. When the designed learning environment was examined in the context of chemistry education, it was evident that an ICT-based chemistry learning environment supporting the meaningful learning of chemistry motivates the students and makes the teacher s work easier. In addition, it should enable the simultaneous fulfilment of several pedagogical goals and activate higher-level cognitive processes. The learning environment supporting the diffusion of ICT innovation is suitable for Finnish school environment, based on open source code, and easy to use with quality chemistry content. According to the second main result, new information was acquired about the possibilities of ICT-based learning environments in supporting meaningful chemistry learning. This will help in setting the goals for future ICT education. After the analysis of design solutions and their evaluations, it can be said that ICT enables the recognition of all elements that define learning environments (i.e. didactic, physical, technological and social elements). The research particularly demonstrates the significance of ICT in supporting students motivation and higher-level cognitive processes as well as versatile visualization resources for chemistry that ICT makes possible. In addition, research-based teaching method supports well the diffusion of studied innovation on individual level. The third main result brought out new information on the significance of collaboration in design research, which guides the design of ICT education development. According to the analysis of design narratives, it can be said that collaboration is important in the execution of scientifically reliable design research. It enables comprehensive requirement analysis and multifaceted development, which improves the reliability and validity of the research. At the same time, it sets reliability challenges by complicating documenting and coordination, for example. In addition, a new method for design research was developed. Its aim is to support the execution of complicated collaborative design projects. To increase the reliability and validity of the research, a model theory was used. It enables time-pound documenting and visualization of design decisions that clarify the process. This improves the reliability of the research. The validity of the research is improved by requirement definition through models. This way learning environments that meet the design goals can be constructed. The designed method can be used in education development from comprehensive to higher level. It can be used to recognize the needs of different interest groups and individuals with regard to processes, technology and substance knowledge as well as interfaces and relations between them. The developed method has also commercial potential. It is used to design learning environments for national and international market.

Efficient algorithms for learning kernels from multiple similarity matrices with general convex loss functions

In this paper we consider the problem of learning an n × n kernel matrix from m(1) similarity matrices under general convex loss. Past research have extensively studied the m = 1 case and have derived several algorithms which require sophisticated techniques like ACCP, SOCP, etc. The existing algorithms do not apply if one uses arbitrary losses and often can not handle m > 1 case. We present several provably convergent iterative algorithms, where each iteration requires either an SVM or a Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) solver for m > 1 case. One of the major contributions of the paper is to extend the well knownMirror Descent(MD) framework to handle Cartesian product of psd matrices. This novel extension leads to an algorithm, called EMKL, which solves the problem in O(m2 log n 2) iterations; in each iteration one solves an MKL involving m kernels and m eigen-decomposition of n × n matrices. By suitably defining a restriction on the objective function, a faster version of EMKL is proposed, called REKL,which avoids the eigen-decomposition. An alternative to both EMKL and REKL is also suggested which requires only an SVMsolver. Experimental results on real world protein data set involving several similarity matrices illustrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithms.

A unification-based decision procedure for cryptographic protocol analysis

We present a sound and complete decision procedure for the bounded process cryptographic protocol insecurity problem, based on the notion of normal proofs [2] and classical unification. We also show a result about the existence of attacks with “high” normal cuts. Our proof of correctness provides an alternate proof and new insights into the fundamental result of Rusinowitch and Turuani [9] for the same setting.

Influence limitation in multi-campaign social networks: A Shapley value based approach

We investigate the problem of influence limitation in the presence of competing campaigns in a social network. Given a negative campaign which starts propagating from a specified source and a positive/counter campaign that is initiated, after a certain time delay, to limit the the influence or spread of misinformation by the negative campaign, we are interested in finding the top k influential nodes at which the positive campaign may be triggered. This problem has numerous applications in situations such as limiting the propagation of rumor, arresting the spread of virus through inoculation, initiating a counter-campaign against malicious propaganda, etc. The influence function for the generic influence limitation problem is non-submodular. Restricted versions of the influence limitation problem, reported in the literature, assume submodularity of the influence function and do not capture the problem in a realistic setting. In this paper, we propose a novel computational approach for the influence limitation problem based on Shapley value, a solution concept in cooperative game theory. Our approach works equally effectively for both submodular and non-submodular influence functions. Experiments on standard real world social network datasets reveal that the proposed approach outperforms existing heuristics in the literature. As a non-trivial extension, we also address the problem of influence limitation in the presence of multiple competing campaigns.

NESTED SPARSE BAYESIAN LEARNING FOR BLOCK-SPARSE SIGNALS WITH INTRA-BLOCK CORRELATION

In this work, we address the recovery of block sparse vectors with intra-block correlation, i.e., the recovery of vectors in which the correlated nonzero entries are constrained to lie in a few clusters, from noisy underdetermined linear measurements. Among Bayesian sparse recovery techniques, the cluster Sparse Bayesian Learning (SBL) is an efficient tool for block-sparse vector recovery, with intra-block correlation. However, this technique uses a heuristic method to estimate the intra-block correlation. In this paper, we propose the Nested SBL (NSBL) algorithm, which we derive using a novel Bayesian formulation that facilitates the use of the monotonically convergent nested Expectation Maximization (EM) and a Kalman filtering based learning framework. Unlike the cluster-SBL algorithm, this formulation leads to closed-form EMupdates for estimating the correlation coefficient. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed NSBL algorithm using Monte Carlo simulations.

A Split-and-Merge Dictionary Learning Algorithm for Sparse Representation: Application to Image Denoising

In big data image/video analytics, we encounter the problem of learning an over-complete dictionary for sparse representation from a large training dataset, which cannot be processed at once because of storage and computational constraints. To tackle the problem of dictionary learning in such scenarios, we propose an algorithm that exploits the inherent clustered structure of the training data and make use of a divide-and-conquer approach. The fundamental idea behind the algorithm is to partition the training dataset into smaller clusters, and learn local dictionaries for each cluster. Subsequently, the local dictionaries are merged to form a global dictionary. Merging is done by solving another dictionary learning problem on the atoms of the locally trained dictionaries. This algorithm is referred to as the split-and-merge algorithm. We show that the proposed algorithm is efficient in its usage of memory and computational complexity, and performs on par with the standard learning strategy, which operates on the entire data at a time. As an application, we consider the problem of image denoising. We present a comparative analysis of our algorithm with the standard learning techniques that use the entire database at a time, in terms of training and denoising performance. We observe that the split-and-merge algorithm results in a remarkable reduction of training time, without significantly affecting the denoising performance.

Plane strain problem of growing crack for a perfectly plastic solid

In this paper, fundamental equations of the plane strain problem based on the 3-dimensional plastic flow theory are presented for a perfectly-plastic solid The complete governing equations for the growing crack problem are developed. The formulae for determining the velocity field are derived.The asymptotic equation consists of the premise equation and the zero-order governing equation. It is proved that the Prandtl centered-fan sector satisfies asymptotic equation but does not meet the needs of hlgher-order governing equations.

Podrán nuestros alumnos aprender a cooperar mejorando la comunicación a través de la actividad física

Duración (en horas): Más de 50 horas. Nivel educativo: Grado

Aprendizaje basado en proyectos aplicado a la asignatura Ingeniería del software : guía del docente y guía del estudiante

Este informe recoge las guías del docente y del estudiante para la puesta en marcha, seguimiento continuo y evaluación de la asignatura Ingeniería del Software del segundo curso del Grado en Ingeniería Informática. Todo ello basado en metodologías activas, concretamente la metodología de Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos (ABP, o PBL de Project Based Learning). El trabajo publicado en este informe es el resultado obtenido por los autores dentro del programa de formación del profesorado en metodologías activas (ERAGIN), auspiciado por el Vicerrectorado de Calidad e Innovación Docente de la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU).

Case study: Developing digital learning at Prospects College for Advanced Technology

Case study on how a digital learning fellow at Prospects College for Advanced Technology has developed a digital learning strategy that focuses on vocational training and work-based learning.

Aprendizaje basado en proyectos en Diseño y Construcción de Sistemas Digitales

Duración (en horas): Más de 50 horas. Destinatario: Estudiante y Docente