A Feedback Learning and Mental Models Perspective on Strategic Decision Making

This study aims to be a contribution to a theoretical model that explains the effectiveness of the learning and decision-making processes by means of a feedback and mental models perspective. With appropriate mental models, managers should be able to improve their capacity to deal with dynamically complex contexts, in order to achieve long-term success. We present a set of hypotheses about the influence of feedback information and systems thinking facilitation on mental models and management performance. We explore, under controlled conditions, the role of mental models in terms of structure and behaviour. A test based on a simulation experiment with a system dynamics model was performed. Three out of the four hypotheses were confirmed. Causal diagramming positively influences mental model structure similarity, mental model structure similarity positively influences mental model behaviour similarity, and mental model behaviour similarity positively influences the quality of the decision.

A Feedback Learning and Mental Models Perspective on Strategic Decision Making

This study aims to be a contribution to a theoretical model that explains the effectiveness of the learning and decision-making processes by means of a feedback and mental models perspective. With appropriate mental models, managers should be able to improve their capacity to deal with dynamically complex contexts, in order to achieve long-term success. We present a set of hypotheses about the influence of feedback information and systems thinking facilitation on mental models and management performance. We explore, under controlled conditions, the role of mental models in terms of structure and behaviour. A test based on a simulation experiment with a system dynamics model was performed. Three out of the four hypotheses were confirmed. Causal diagramming positively influences mental model structure similarity, mental model structure similarity positively influences mental model behaviour similarity, and mental model behaviour similarity positively influences the quality of the decision

Aprender com os outros : uma estrat��gia para a inclus��o de um aluno com Autismo

Este Projecto de Interven����o, ���Aprender com os outros - uma estrat��gia para a inclus��o de um aluno com autismo���, fundamentado nos pressupostos e nos procedimentos da investiga����o-ac����o, centrou-se nas ac����es em ��reas de maior e menor sucesso do aluno, de nome fict��cio ���Francisco���, no ��mbito da l��ngua portuguesa e da socializa����o, numa perspectiva inclusiva. Este aluno considerado com necessidades educativas especiais (NEE) apresentava perturba����es do espectro do autismo (PEA), o que, �� partida, se repercutia no seu d��fice de aten����o, na autonomia para a realiza����o das tarefas escolares, na ��rea da linguagem e da comunica����o e na interac����o social. Como as interac����es na turma e com a turma s��o essenciais para a aprendizagem, propusemo-nos implementar actividades espec��ficas para o desenvolvimento das compet��ncias sociais e cognitivas, com abordagem comportamentalista, numa turma do 3�� ano de escolaridade, onde estava inclu��do um aluno diagnosticado com PEA. Tamb��m procur��mos desenvolver as suas compet��ncias acad��micas, atrav��s do trabalho realizado no grupo e com o grupo-turma, criando as condi����es que favorecessem a socializa����o do aluno e a sua autonomia. Para atingirmos aqueles objectivos, inici��mos um trabalho a pares e depois em pequenos grupos, para desta forma incluir o ���Francisco��� na din��mica das aulas, para que participasse nas actividades propostas, obtendo o respeito dos colegas na valoriza����o das suas interven����es e do seu ritmo de trabalho. Os objectivos definidos, bem como as actividades realizadas e avaliadas, implicando todos os intervenientes no processo, permitiram que o ���Francisco��� fizesse aprendizagens significativas nas ��reas, acad��mica, social, da autonomia e da comunica����o. Segundo Silva (2009), a inclus��o dos alunos considerados com necessidades educativas especiais no ensino regular implica mudan��as ao n��vel das atitudes e das pr��ticas pedag��gicas de todos os intervenientes no processo ensino e aprendizagem, da organiza����o e da gest��o na sala de aula e na pr��pria escola enquanto institui����o. Acreditamos que s�� desta forma se pode proporcionar aos alunos marcados pela diferen��a, que �� um valor em si mesma (Rodrigues, 2006; Leit��o, 2006; Sanches & Teodoro, 2006; Silva, 2009), as mesmas experi��ncias, aprendizagens e viv��ncias que s��o proporcionadas aos restantes colegas.

Mortality problems in Brazil and in Germany: past-present-future. Learning from each other?

This article was written by a Swiss-German historical demographer after having visited different Brazilian Universities in 1984 as a guest-professor. It aims at promoting a real dialog between developed and developing countries, commencing the discussion with the question: Can we learn from each other? An affirmative answer is given, but not in the superficial manner in which the discussion partners simply want to give each other some "good advice" or in which the one declares his country's own development to be the solely valid standard. Three points are emphasized: 1. Using infant mortality in S. Paulo from 1908 to 1983 as an example, it is shown that Brazil has at its disposal excellent, highly varied research literature that is unjustifiably unknown to us (in Europe) for the most part. Brazil by no means needs our tutoring lessons as regards the causal relationships; rather, we could learn two things from Brazil about this. For one, it becomes clear that our almost exclusively medical-biological view is inappropriate for passing a judgment on the present-day problems in Brazil and that any conclusions so derived are thus only transferable to a limited extent. For another, we need to reinterpret the history of infant mortality in our own countries up to the past few decades in a much more encompassing "Brazilian" sense. 2. A fruitful dialog can only take place if both partners frankly present their problems. For this reason, the article refers with much emprasis to our present problems in dealing with death and dying - problems arising near the end of the demographic and epidemiologic transitions: the superanuation of the population, chronic-incurable illnesses as the main causes of death, the manifold dependencies of more and more elderly and really old people at the end of a long life. Brazil seems to be catching up to us in this and will be confronted with these problems sooner or later. A far-sighted discussion already at this time seems thus to be useful. 3. The article, however, does not want to conclude with the rather depressing state of affairs of problems alternatingly superseding each other. Despite the caution which definitely has a place when prognoses are being made on the basis of extrapolations from historical findings, the foreseeable development especially of the epidemiologic transition in the direction of a rectangular survival curve does nevertheless provide good reason for being rather optimistic towards the future: first in regards to the development in our own countries, but then - assuming that the present similar tendencies of development are stuck to - also in regard to Brazil.

Learning and Knowledge in the Context of Absorptive Capacity

Develop a new model of Absorptive Capacity taking into account two variables namely Learning and knowledge to explain how companies transform information into knowledge

Learning dependent sources using mixtures of Dirichlet: applications on hyperspectral unmixing

This paper is an elaboration of the DECA algorithm [1] to blindly unmix hyperspectral data. The underlying mixing model is linear, meaning that each pixel is a linear mixture of the endmembers signatures weighted by the correspondent abundance fractions. The proposed method, as DECA, is tailored to highly mixed mixtures in which the geometric based approaches fail to identify the simplex of minimum volume enclosing the observed spectral vectors. We resort then to a statitistical framework, where the abundance fractions are modeled as mixtures of Dirichlet densities, thus enforcing the constraints on abundance fractions imposed by the acquisition process, namely non-negativity and constant sum. With respect to DECA, we introduce two improvements: 1) the number of Dirichlet modes are inferred based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle; 2) The generalized expectation maximization (GEM) algorithm we adopt to infer the model parameters is improved by using alternating minimization and augmented Lagrangian methods to compute the mixing matrix. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated with simulated and read data.

Statistical motion learning for improved transform domain Wyner-Ziv video coding

Wyner - Ziv (WZ) video coding is a particular case of distributed video coding (DVC), the recent video coding paradigm based on the Slepian - Wolf and Wyner - Ziv theorems which exploits the source temporal correlation at the decoder and not at the encoder as in predictive video coding. Although some progress has been made in the last years, WZ video coding is still far from the compression performance of predictive video coding, especially for high and complex motion contents. The WZ video codec adopted in this study is based on a transform domain WZ video coding architecture with feedback channel-driven rate control, whose modules have been improved with some recent coding tools. This study proposes a novel motion learning approach to successively improve the rate-distortion (RD) performance of the WZ video codec as the decoding proceeds, making use of the already decoded transform bands to improve the decoding process for the remaining transform bands. The results obtained reveal gains up to 2.3 dB in the RD curves against the performance for the same codec without the proposed motion learning approach for high motion sequences and long group of pictures (GOP) sizes.

Overview of the tuning template for radiography in Europe

HENRE II (Higher Education Network for Radiography in Europe)

Learning techniques for automatic email message tagging

A organiza����o autom��tica de mensagens de correio electr��nico �� um desafio actual na ��rea da aprendizagem autom��tica. O n��mero excessivo de mensagens afecta cada vez mais utilizadores, especialmente os que usam o correio electr��nico como ferramenta de comunica����o e trabalho. Esta tese aborda o problema da organiza����o autom��tica de mensagens de correio electr��nico propondo uma solu����o que tem como objectivo a etiquetagem autom��tica de mensagens. A etiquetagem autom��tica �� feita com recurso ��s pastas de correio electr��nico anteriormente criadas pelos utilizadores, tratando-as como etiquetas, e �� sugest��o de m��ltiplas etiquetas para cada mensagem (top-N). S��o estudadas v��rias t��cnicas de aprendizagem e os v��rios campos que comp��e uma mensagem de correio electr��nico s��o analisados de forma a determinar a sua adequa����o como elementos de classifica����o. O foco deste trabalho recai sobre os campos textuais (o assunto e o corpo das mensagens), estudando-se diferentes formas de representa����o, selec����o de caracter��sticas e algoritmos de classifica����o. �� ainda efectuada a avalia����o dos campos de participantes atrav��s de algoritmos de classifica����o que os representam usando o modelo vectorial ou como um grafo. Os v��rios campos s��o combinados para classifica����o utilizando a t��cnica de combina����o de classificadores Vota����o por Maioria. Os testes s��o efectuados com um subconjunto de mensagens de correio electr��nico da Enron e um conjunto de dados privados disponibilizados pelo Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC). Estes conjuntos s��o analisados de forma a perceber as caracter��sticas dos dados. A avalia����o do sistema �� realizada atrav��s da percentagem de acerto dos classificadores. Os resultados obtidos apresentam melhorias significativas em compara����o com os trabalhos relacionados.

Dynamic equilibrium through reinforcement learning

Reinforcement Learning is an area of Machine Learning that deals with how an agent should take actions in an environment such as to maximize the notion of accumulated reward. This type of learning is inspired by the way humans learn and has led to the creation of various algorithms for reinforcement learning. These algorithms focus on the way in which an agent���s behaviour can be improved, assuming independence as to their surroundings. The current work studies the application of reinforcement learning methods to solve the inverted pendulum problem. The importance of the variability of the environment (factors that are external to the agent) on the execution of reinforcement learning agents is studied by using a model that seeks to obtain equilibrium (stability) through dynamism ��� a Cart-Pole system or inverted pendulum. We sought to improve the behaviour of the autonomous agents by changing the information passed to them, while maintaining the agent���s internal parameters constant (learning rate, discount factors, decay rate, etc.), instead of the classical approach of tuning the agent���s internal parameters. The influence of changes on the state set and the action set on an agent���s capability to solve the Cart-pole problem was studied. We have studied typical behaviour of reinforcement learning agents applied to the classic BOXES model and a new form of characterizing the environment was proposed using the notion of convergence towards a reference value. We demonstrate the gain in performance of this new method applied to a Q-Learning agent.

Academic dishonesty: understanding how undergraduate students think and act

The purpose of this investigation is to explore and understand the justifications given by students to the existence of dishonest behavior and understanding the extent to which the justifications given might influence denouncing and cheating behavior. 1277 undergraduate students of two Portuguese Public Universities were surveyed about their own cheating behavior, their propensity to denounce and the ���neutralizing attitudes���. As predicted, ���neutralizing attitudes��� was negatively correlated with self cheating behavior and positively correlated with reporting. The likelihood of copying is greater when the purpose is ���helping a friend���, ���when the courses are more difficult���, ���to get higher marks/grades���, and because ���peers accept and tend to see copying practices as normal���. Results support the notion that context emerges as a very important influence in the decision to cheating. The environment-peer pressure and the normalized attitudes towards academic dishonesty are the main influences on the propensity to cheating.

Da leitura �� escrita : texto expositivo

Projeto de interv��n����o apresentado �� Escola Superior de Educa����o para a obten����o do grau de mestre em Did��tica da L��ngua Portuguesa em 1�� e 2�� Ciclos do Ensino B��sico

e-learning in the classroom?

As teachers, we are challenged everyday to solve pedagogical problems and we have to fight for our students��� attention in a media rich world. I will talk about how we use ICT in Initial Teacher Training and give you some insight on what we are doing. The most important benefit of using ICT in education is that it makes us reflect on our practice. There is no doubt that our classrooms need to be updated, but we need to be critical about every peace of hardware, software or service that we bring into them. It is not only because our budgets are short, but also because e���learning is primarily about learning, not technology. Therefore, we need to have the knowledge and skills required to act in different situations, and choose the best tool for the job. Not all subjects are suitable for e���learning, nor do all students have the skills to organize themselves their own study times. Also not all teachers want to spend time programming or learning about instructional design and metadata. The promised land of easy use of authoring tools (e.g. eXe and Reload) that will lead to all teachers become Learning Objects authors and share these LO in Repositories, all this failed, like previously HyperCard, Toolbook and others. We need to know a little bit of many different technologies so we can mobilize this knowledge when a situation requires it: integrate e���learning technologies in the classroom, not a flipped classroom, just simple tools. Lecture capture, mobile phones and smartphones, pocket size camcorders, VoIP, VLE, live video broadcast, screen sharing, free services for collaborative work, save, share and sync your files. Do not feel stressed to use everything, every time. Just because we have a whiteboard does not mean we have to make it the centre of the classroom. Start from where you are, with your preferred subject and the tools you master. Them go slowly and try some new tool in a non���formal situation and with just one or two students. And you don���t need to be alone: subscribe a mailing list and share your thoughts with other teachers in a dedicated forum, even better if both are part of a community of practice, and share resources. We did that for music teachers and it was a success, in two years arriving at 1.000 members. Just do it.

Enhancing reflexivity and technology in translation learning: case study on the use of ePortfolio as a training environment

In this paper we describe a casestudy of an experiment on how reflexivity and technology can enhance learning, by using ePorfolios as a training environment to develop translation skills. Translation is today a multiskilled job and translators need to assure their clients a good performance and quality, both in language and in technology domains. In order to accomplish it, for the translator all the tasks and processes he develops appear as crucial, being pretranslation and posttranslation processes equally important as the translation itself, namely as far as autonomy, reflexive and critical skills are concerned. Finally, the need and relevance for collaborative tasks and networks amongst virtual translation communities, led us to the decision of implementing ePortfolios as a tool to develop the requested skills and extend the use of Internet in translation, namely in terminology management phases, for the completion of each task, by helping students in the management of the projects deadlines, improving their knowledge on the construction and management of translation resources and deepening their awareness about the concepts related to the development and usability of ePorfolios.

Learning management systems usage on higher education institutions

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are used all over Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and the need to know and understand its adoption and usage arises. However, there is a lack of information about how LMSs are being used, which are the most adopted, whether there is a country adoption standard and which countries use more LMSs. A research team is developing a project that tries to fill this lack of information and provide the needed answers. With this purpose, on a first phase, it a survey was taken place. The results of this survey are presented in this paper. Another purpose of this paper is to disseminate the ongoing project.