Constructing and understanding of place value in numerical notation

The purpose of this study was to investigate how children aged five to nine gradually build up an understanding of the characteristics of place-value inherent in the written number system. The task consisted in presenting collections of chips, asking children to produce the corresponding two-digit numerals, and then questioning them in a structured clinical interview about the possible numerical meaning (in terms of correspondence to a number of chips) of each of the digits in the numeral. Results show that the idea that parts of the notation must correspond to mutually exclusive parts of the collection is but slowly built up, and that subsequently it is fleshed out by the use of knowledge concerning oral numeration_— written numeration correspondences. Intuitions concerning «groups of ten» arise later. A fair proportion of eight-year-olds and all nine-years-olds saw the two-digits as corresponding to, on the one hand, a number of units, and on the other, a number of groups of units.     

Investigating the enactment of social presence in blended adult education

ABSTRACT

Background

While open-cohort blended education programmes allow for accessible and flexible study trajectories, they may present social challenges to learners. Social presence is a possible a way of enhancing adult learners’ success. It can lead to an increased perception of community, which may result in lower rates of dropping out.     

Communication skills training exploiting multimodal emotion recognition

The teaching of communication skills is a labour-intensive task because of the detailed feedback that should be given to learners during their prolonged practice. This study investigates to what extent our FILTWAM facial and vocal emotion recognition software can be used for improving a serious game (the Communication Advisor) that delivers a web-based training of communication skills. A test group of 25 participants played the game wherein they were requested to mimic specific facial and vocal emotions. Half of the assignments included direct feedback and the other half included no feedback. It was investigated whether feedback on the mimicked emotions would lead to better learning. The results suggest the facial performance growth was found to be positive, particularly significant in the feedback condition. The vocal performance growth was significant in both conditions. The results are a significant indication that the automated feedback from the software improves learners’ communication performances.     

Sustainable development as a driver for educational innovation in engineering school: the case of UniLaSalle

ABSTRACT

The potential relationships between innovation and sustainability processes, in engineering education, is neither obvious nor simple, especially when innovation, generally speaking, is promoted regardless of sustainability. We used UniLaSalle (In January 2016, the ‘Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais’, a French engineering school, merged with another higher education engineering school (ESITPA, Rouen). Both campuses (Beauvais and Rouen) have a common name: UniLaSalle (www.unilasalle.fr). As the interview began during 2015, this article only describes the situation of the Beauvais campus.) as a ‘living Lab’ to identify and analyse the reasons for the integration of innovation and Sustainable Development (SD) in training programmes. The aim is to explore, in a perception and reflective approach, how SD can be understood as a driver for specific innovation attitudes in higher education engineering school. This paper adopts an empirical approach based on a qualitative study, using NVivo 9 software to analyse non-numerical data. Our research suggests that SD can be a structural driver for innovation if it is integrated in a transdisciplinarity approach and not just as a discipline per se.     

An interactive learning and course development environment: Context,theoretical and empirical considerations

In this contribution, a theoretical and empirical framework based on work carried out at the Open universiteit (Ou) for a new approach towards the design, production and delivery of flexible, interactive learning materials for distance education is presented.

In the Research and Development centre of the Ou, a project has concentrated on the innovation of current approaches. This framework can also be considered as an advance organizer to reading the remaining articles from the Open universiteit in this issue of Distance Education.

A key feature of the innovation is that during the design phase, course developers have to define ‘models’ of the materials to be developed: a content model, a support model, a student model and the learning path. From a flexibility point of view especially, the ‘student model’ is of importance since it defines the student variables that will be taken into account when developing/ presenting alternative materials (basic content and/or embedded support). A computer‐based system, the ‘Interactive Learning and Course Development Environment (ILCE)’, was developed to support the work of course development teams and tutors on the one hand, and students on the other hand. The development system supports the work of the developers; the delivery system supports the study process of students. The delivery is realised as an on‐line course, on the World Wide Web.

Students start working with the ILCE‐system by following an intake procedure. They can make choices in relation to student variables that have been defined in the student model (profession, study intentions, context, etc.). Next, they can ‘on the fly’ generate a course. Rom the large repository of learning materials only those materials are selected and compiled that are in line with the student model of this specific student Furthermore, they can choose to study the materials on screen and/or make prints of the materials. Of course, in printing the materials they lose the interactive and dynamic possibilities of the computer learning environment