The tutor's role in student learning

Higher education in Portugal, in the last forty years, has undergone profound changes with the enlargement of public higher education network, the appearance of new institutions, the quantity and the heterogeneity of students. The implementation of the Bologna Process in European community countries led to the redesign of higher education Portuguese courses as well as their corresponding curricula. In recent years, the use of Project-led education was one of the most significant changes in teaching and learning, particularly in engineering in higher education in Portugal. This teaching methodology encourages students and teachers to undertake new roles, new responsibilities and a new learning perspective. This study aims at understanding whether the role of the tutor is to be suitable to the needs and expectations of Project-led education students. These changes however are not only structural. At the University of Minho, new teaching and learning methodologies were adopted, which could guide the training of professionals on to the twenty-first century. The opportunity arising from the implementation of Project-led education in Engineering methodology was used in the University of Minho’s courses. This teaching method is intended to provide students with educational support programs that benefit the academic performance, allowing the opportunity to upgrade, train and develop the ability to study and learn more effectively. Through the Project-led education it is possible to provide students with techniques and procedures and develop the ability to communicate orally and in writing. Students and teachers have assumed new roles in the teaching-learning process allowing in one hand the students to explore, discover and question themselves about some knowledge and on the other hand the teachers to change to a tutor, a companion and to a student project guide. Therefore, surveys were analyzed, comprising questions about the most significant contribution of the tutor as well as if there are some initial expectations that have not been foreseen by the tutor.

Industrial engineering and management curriculum profile: Developing a framework of competences

This paper presents a framework of competences developed for Industrial Engineering and Management that can be used as a tool for curriculum analysis and design, including the teaching and learning processes as well as the alignment of the curriculum with the professional profile. The framework was applied to the Industrial Engineering and Management program at University of Minho (UMinho), Portugal, and it provides an overview of the connection between IEM knowledge areas and the competences defined in its curriculum. The framework of competences was developed through a process of analysis using a combination of methods and sources for data collection. The framework was developed according to four main steps: 1) characterization of IEM knowledge areas; 2) definition of IEM competences; 3) survey; 4) application of the framework at the IEM curriculum. The findings showed that the framework is useful to build an integrated vision of the curriculum. The most visible aspect in the learning outcomes of IEM program is the lack of balance between technical and transversal competences. There was not almost any reference to the transversal competences and it is fundamentally concentrated on Project-Based Learning courses. The framework presented in this paper provides a contribution to the definition of IEM professional profile through a set of competences which need to be explored further. In addition, it may be a relevant tool for IEM curriculum analysis and a contribution for bridging the gap between universities and companies.

Estudo das tecnologias de interatividade no processo de compra em contexto das lojas de vestuário on-line

Dissertação de mestrado em Design de Comunicação de Moda

Potenciar a competência comunicativa e sociocultural através de documentos audiovisuais na aula de espanhol língua estrangeira

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ensino de Português no 3º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e Ensino Secundário e de Espanhol nos Ensinos Básico e Secundário

A tradução de negócios e projetos on-line na empresa Bloomidea

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Tradução e Comunicação Multilingue

Stock market volatility and learning

Introducing bounded rationality in a standard consumption-based asset pricing model with time separable preferences strongly improves empirical performance. Learning causes momentum and mean reversion of returns and thereby excess volatility, persistence of price-dividend ratios, long-horizon return predictability and a risk premium, as in the habit model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999), but for lower risk aversion. This is obtained, even though our learning scheme introduces just one free parameter and we only consider learning schemes that imply small deviations from full rationality. The findings are robust to the learning rule used and other model features. What is key is that agents forecast future stock prices using past information on prices.

Family relationships and learning experiences in anxious vs. non-anxious families: Are there differences ?

L'objectif principal de ce travail était d'explorer les relations parent-enfant et les processus d'apprentissage familiaux associés aux troubles anxieux. A cet effet, des familles ayant un membre anxieux (la mère ou l'enfant) ont été comparées avec des familles n'ayant aucun membre anxieux. Dans une première étude, l'observation de l'interaction mère-enfant, pendant une situation standardisée de jeu, a révélé que les mères présentant un trouble panique étaient plus susceptibles de se montrer verbalement contrôlantes, critiques et moins sensibles aux besoins de l'enfant, que les mères qui ne présentaient pas de trouble panique. Une deuxième étude a examiné les perceptions des différents membres de la famille quant aux relations au sein de la famille et a indiqué que, par comparaison aux adolescents non-anxieux, les adolescents anxieux étaient plus enclins à éprouver un sentiment d'autonomie individuelle diminué par rapport à leurs parents. Finalement, une troisième étude s'est intéressée à déterminer l'impact d'expériences d'apprentissage moins directes dans l'étiologie de l'anxiété. Les résultats ont indiqué que les mères présentant un trouble panique étaient plus enclines à s'engager dans des comportements qui maintiennent la panique et à impliquer leurs enfants dans ces comportements, que les mères ne présentant pas de trouble panique. En se basant sur des recherches antérieures qui ont établi une relation entre le contrôle parental, la perception de contrôle chez l'enfant et les troubles anxieux, le présent travail non seulement confirme ce lien mais propose également un modèle pour résumer l'état actuel des connaissances concernant les processus familiaux et le développement des troubles anxieux. Deux routes ont été suggérées par lesquelles l'anxiété pourrait être transmise de manière intergénérationnelle. Chacune de ces routes attribue un rôle important à la perception de contrôle chez l'enfant. L'idée est que lorsque les enfants présentent une prédisposition à interpréter le comportement de leurs parents comme hors de leur contrôle, ils seraient plus enclins à développer de l'anxiété. A ce titre, la perception du contrôle représenterait un tampon entre le comportement de contrôle/surprotection des parents et le trouble anxieux chez l'enfant. - The principal objective of the present work was to explore parent-child relationships and family learning processes associated with anxiety disorders. To this purpose, families with and without an anxious family member (mother or child) were compared. In a first study, observation of mother-child interaction, during a standard play situation, revealed that mothers with panic disorder were more likely to display verbal control and criticism, and less likely to display sensitivity toward their children than mothers without panic disorder. A second study examined family members' perceptions of family relationships and indicated that compared to non-anxious adolescents, anxious adolescents were more prone to experience a diminished sense of individual autonomy in relation to their parents. Finally a third study was interested in determining the effect of less direct learning experiences in the aetiology of anxiety. Results indicated that mothers with panic disorder were more likely to engage in panic-maintaining behaviour and to involve their children in this behaviour than mothers without panic disorder. Based on previous research showing a relationship between parental control, children's perception of control, and anxiety disorders, the present work not only further adds evidence to support this link but also proposes a model summarizing the current knowledge concerning family processes and the development of anxiety disorders. Two pathways have been suggested through which anxiety may be intergenerationally transmitted. Both pathways assign an important role to children's perception of control. The idea is that whenever children have a predisposition towards interpreting their parents' behaviour as beyond of their control, they may be more prone to develop anxiety. As such, perceived control may represent a buffer between parental overcontrolling/overprotective behaviours and childhood anxiety disorder.

Disease-causing mutations improving the branch site and polypyrimidine tract: pseudoexon activation of LINE-2 and antisense Alu lacking the poly(T)-tail.

Cryptic exons or pseudoexons are typically activated by point mutations that create GT or AG dinucleotides of new 5' or 3' splice sites in introns, often in repetitive elements. Here we describe two cases of tetrahydrobiopterin deficiency caused by mutations improving the branch point sequence and polypyrimidine tracts of repeat-containing pseudoexons in the PTS gene. In the first case, we demonstrate a novel pathway of antisense Alu exonization, resulting from an intronic deletion that removed the poly(T)-tail of antisense AluSq. The deletion brought a favorable branch point sequence within proximity of the pseudoexon 3' splice site and removed an upstream AG dinucleotide required for the 3' splice site repression on normal alleles. New Alu exons can thus arise in the absence of poly(T)-tails that facilitated inclusion of most transposed elements in mRNAs by serving as polypyrimidine tracts, highlighting extraordinary flexibility of Alu repeats in shaping intron-exon structure. In the other case, a PTS pseudoexon was activated by an A>T substitution 9 nt upstream of its 3' splice site in a LINE-2 sequence, providing the first example of a disease-causing exonization of the most ancient interspersed repeat. These observations expand the spectrum of mutational mechanisms that introduce repetitive sequences in mature transcripts and illustrate the importance of intronic mutations in alternative splicing and phenotypic variability of hereditary disorders.

The Role of model uncertainty and learning in the U.S. postwar policy response to oil prices

This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a framework that explicitly accounts for policymakers' uncertainty about the channels of transmission of oil prices into the economy. More specfically, I examine the robust response to the real price of oil that US monetary authorities would have been recommended to implement in the period 1970 2009; had they used the approach proposed by Cogley and Sargent (2005b) to incorporate model uncertainty and learning into policy decisions. In this context, I investigate the extent to which regulator' changing beliefs over different models of the economy play a role in the policy selection process. The main conclusion of this work is that, in the specific environment under analysis, one of the underlying models dominates the optimal interest rate response to oil prices. This result persists even when alternative assumptions on the model's priors change the pattern of the relative posterior probabilities, and can thus be attributed to the presence of model uncertainty itself.

The effects of teacher talk on students’ oral productions

The present study is a brief personal enquiry into the teaching and learning of EFL in the classroom with an orientation to action and personal professional development. It focuses on teacher talk, making special emphasis on questions, as well as on students’ resulting oral productions. The research contains samples of empirical data, which include their interpretations in the light of relevant research literature, and a more personal overall reflection of the teaching practice. Both the analysis and the reflections derive to a large extent from the self-observation paper 1 (SO1) and the Practicum portfolio (PP) developed within the TED Masters Degree practicum stages

Evolution of decision-making and learning under fluctuating social environments

The capacity to learn to associate sensory perceptions with appropriate motor actions underlies the success of many animal species, from insects to humans. The evolutionary significance of learning has long been a subject of interest for evolutionary biologists who emphasize the bene¬fit yielded by learning under changing environmental conditions, where it is required to flexibly switch from one behavior to another. However, two unsolved questions are particularly impor¬tant for improving our knowledge of the evolutionary advantages provided by learning, and are addressed in the present work. First, because it is possible to learn the wrong behavior when a task is too complex, the learning rules and their underlying psychological characteristics that generate truly adaptive behavior must be identified with greater precision, and must be linked to the specific ecological problems faced by each species. A framework for predicting behavior from the definition of a learning rule is developed here. Learning rules capture cognitive features such as the tendency to explore, or the ability to infer rewards associated to unchosen actions. It is shown that these features interact in a non-intuitive way to generate adaptive behavior in social interactions where individuals affect each other's fitness. Such behavioral predictions are used in an evolutionary model to demonstrate that, surprisingly, simple trial-and-error learn¬ing is not always outcompeted by more computationally demanding inference-based learning, when population members interact in pairwise social interactions. A second question in the evolution of learning is its link with and relative advantage compared to other simpler forms of phenotypic plasticity. After providing a conceptual clarification on the distinction between genetically determined vs. learned responses to environmental stimuli, a new factor in the evo¬lution of learning is proposed: environmental complexity. A simple mathematical model shows that a measure of environmental complexity, the number of possible stimuli in one's environ¬ment, is critical for the evolution of learning. In conclusion, this work opens roads for modeling interactions between evolving species and their environment in order to predict how natural se¬lection shapes animals' cognitive abilities. - La capacité d'apprendre à associer des sensations perceptives à des actions motrices appropriées est sous-jacente au succès évolutif de nombreuses espèces, depuis les insectes jusqu'aux êtres hu¬mains. L'importance évolutive de l'apprentissage est depuis longtemps un sujet d'intérêt pour les biologistes de l'évolution, et ces derniers mettent l'accent sur le bénéfice de l'apprentissage lorsque les conditions environnementales sont changeantes, car dans ce cas il est nécessaire de passer de manière flexible d'un comportement à l'autre. Cependant, deux questions non résolues sont importantes afin d'améliorer notre savoir quant aux avantages évolutifs procurés par l'apprentissage. Premièrement, puisqu'il est possible d'apprendre un comportement incorrect quand une tâche est trop complexe, les règles d'apprentissage qui permettent d'atteindre un com¬portement réellement adaptatif doivent être identifiées avec une plus grande précision, et doivent être mises en relation avec les problèmes écologiques spécifiques rencontrés par chaque espèce. Un cadre théorique ayant pour but de prédire le comportement à partir de la définition d'une règle d'apprentissage est développé ici. Il est démontré que les caractéristiques cognitives, telles que la tendance à explorer ou la capacité d'inférer les récompenses liées à des actions non ex¬périmentées, interagissent de manière non-intuitive dans les interactions sociales pour produire des comportements adaptatifs. Ces prédictions comportementales sont utilisées dans un modèle évolutif afin de démontrer que, de manière surprenante, l'apprentissage simple par essai-et-erreur n'est pas toujours battu par l'apprentissage basé sur l'inférence qui est pourtant plus exigeant en puissance de calcul, lorsque les membres d'une population interagissent socialement par pair. Une deuxième question quant à l'évolution de l'apprentissage concerne son lien et son avantage relatif vis-à-vis d'autres formes plus simples de plasticité phénotypique. Après avoir clarifié la distinction entre réponses aux stimuli génétiquement déterminées ou apprises, un nouveau fac¬teur favorisant l'évolution de l'apprentissage est proposé : la complexité environnementale. Un modèle mathématique permet de montrer qu'une mesure de la complexité environnementale - le nombre de stimuli rencontrés dans l'environnement - a un rôle fondamental pour l'évolution de l'apprentissage. En conclusion, ce travail ouvre de nombreuses perspectives quant à la mo¬délisation des interactions entre les espèces en évolution et leur environnement, dans le but de comprendre comment la sélection naturelle façonne les capacités cognitives des animaux.

Entorn web per a consultes on-line sobre bases de dades d'imatges

Creació d'un entorn web que consisteix en un sistema per fer consultes en línia a bases de dades d'imatges. Aquestes consultes es fan per contingut, a partir de mètodes creats pel grup de recerca CAT (Color and Texture) del CVC (Centre de Visió per Computador). L'aplicació web permet afegir nous mètodes que els membres del grup han programat amb Matlab.

Synergistic effect of GDNF and NGF on axonal branching and elongation in vitro.

There is a clinical need to enhance functional recovery of injured peripheral nerves. Local administration of neurotrophic factors (NTFs) after surgical repair has been proposed for this purpose. Little is known, however, on the optimal local dose and dosing frequency of NTFs in a peripheral nerve defect. For increasing our knowledge on biologically relevant local NTFs concentrations and for making available an in vitro assay for assessing the bioactivity of NTFs in connection with implantable localized delivery systems, we developed in this study a bioassay for NTFs, which is based on dorsal root ganglion (DRG) explants from E9 (9 days old) chicken embryos. Axonal elongation and extent of axonal branching was analyzed microscopically after addition of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and nerve growth factor (NGF), each alone and in combination. GDNF significantly promoted axonal elongation, but only little axonal branching, whereas NGF induced extensive axonal branching with modest axonal elongation. The combination of GDNF and NGF exerted a synergistic effect on the axonal elongation, axonal branching and growth kinetics. GDNF and NGF also enhanced the expression of their respective functional receptors Ret and TrkA on the DRG neurons. This information should be relevant for the development of implants containing NTFs and on drug therapy of damaged peripheral nerves.

Social Interaction Effects on Fertility: Intentions and Behaviors

The existing literature shows that social interactions in individuals' networks affect their reproductive attitudes and behaviors through three mechanisms: social influence, social learning, and social support. In this paper, we discuss to what extent the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), an individual based theorization of intentions and behavior used to model fertility, takes these social mechanisms into account. We argue that the TPB already integrates social influence and that it could easily accommodate the two other social network mechanisms. By doing so, the theory would be enriched in two respects. First, it will explain more completely how macro level changes eventually ends in micro level changes in behavioral intentions. Indeed, mechanisms of social influence may explain why changes in representations of parenthood and ideal family size can be slower than changes in socio-economic conditions and institutions. Social learning mechanisms should also be considered, since they are crucial to distinguish who adopts new behavioral beliefs and practices, when change at the macro level finally sinks in. Secondly, relationships are a capital of services that can complement institutional offering (informal child care) as well as a capital of knowledge which help individuals navigate in a complex institutional reality, providing a crucial element to explain heterogeneity in the successful realization of fertility intentions across individuals. We develop specific hypotheses concerning the effect of social interactions on fertility intentions and their realization to conclude with a critical review of the existing surveys suitable to test them and their limits.

Developing a Workplace Policy on Domestic Violence and Abuse (PDF 219KB)

This guide for employers has been produced by the Regional Steering Group on Domestic Violence in line with the strategy and action plan “Tackling Violence at Home” published in October 2005. The Regional Steering Group is a group of about 30 members representing the statutory and voluntary agencies involved in dealing with domestic violence. The guidance provides advice on how employers can develop increased awareness and more effective responses to domestic violence in the workplace for the benefit of all staff. The Regional Steering Group acknowledges that some employers already have good workplace policies in place and it encourages all employers across the public, private, voluntary and community sectors to use the guidance to develop a workplace policy on domestic violence. åÊ