The Impacts of System and Human Factors on Online Learning Systems Use and Learner Satisfaction

Success in an online learning environment is tied to both human and system factors. This study illuminates the unique contributions of human factors (comfort with online learning, self‐management of learning, and perceived Web self‐efficacy) to online learning system success, which is measured in terms of usage and satisfaction. The research model was tested employing SEM on a sample of 674 college students enrolled in at least one online course. The factors of comfort with online learning and perceived Web self‐efficacy were significant predictors of satisfaction. Comfort with online learning was significant in predicting usage. The impact of demographic variables was examined.     

Sense of place among New England commercial fishermen and organic farmers: implications for socially constructed environmental education

Given the prominence of sense of place in environmental education curricula, this paper aims to empirically examine and strengthen the conceptual understanding of sense of place. The results and implications are derived from research where five commercial fishermen and five organic farmers from the New England Seacoast region participated in a series of in‐depth phenomenological interviews and observations. This study supports the literature‐based conceptual framework that sense of place is comprised of: (1) ecological knowledge, which leads to ecological identity, (2) social knowledge, which facilitates the development of a social identity, and (3) attachment to the human and non‐human community in a place. Two broad themes that emerged from the data demonstrate how the social context of the human and non‐human community contributes to the development of one’s sense of place.     

Drawing and the Aestheticisation of the Human Figure by Four‐ to Ten‐Year‐Old Botswana Children: Implications for Pedagogy

Drawing is one of children's modes of communication which has recently excited academic inquiry in non‐Western cultures. It is the means through which children express their fears, desires, anxieties and conception of phenomena. This study investigated drawings by four‐ to ten‐year‐old Botswana children in response to the human figure as an aesthetic object. The methodology involved observing a sample of forty purposively selected children engaged in the drawing process and analysing their visual productions in addition to conversational talk about their art. The study found that the human figure was the dominant aesthetic subject across ages represented in both conventionalised form and personalised imagery. Older children showed interest in culture specific imagery and demonstrated mastery of occlusion and depth cues, while four‐year‐old children had limited spatial awareness. The study also found that children demonstrated gradual improvement of drawing skills with age. There was no significant difference in drawing competence between sexes. Pedagogical implications are suggested to scaffold children through the stages of art development.     

Discrimination of Biomechanically Possible and Impossible Hand Movements at Birth

The development of human body perception has long been investigated, but little is known about its early origins. This study focused on how a body part highly relevant to the human species, namely the hand, is perceived a few days after birth. Using a preferential‐looking paradigm, 24‐ to 48‐hr‐old newborns watched biomechanically possible and impossible dynamic hand gestures (Experiment 1, N = 15) and static hand postures (Experiment 2, N = 15). In Experiment 1, newborns looked longer at the impossible, compared to the possible, hand movement, whereas in Experiment 2 no visual preference emerged. These findings suggest that early in life the representation of the human body may be shaped by sensory‐motor experience.     

Emotion recognition and communication for reducing second‐language speaking anxiety in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment

e‐Learning is becoming an increasingly popular educational paradigm because of the rapid growth of the Internet. Recent studies have argued that affective modelling (ie, considering a learner's emotional or motivational state) should also be considered while designing learning activities. Many studies indicated that various learning emotions markedly impact learning outcomes. In the language education field, many studies have investigated anxiety associated with learning a second language, noting that anxiety has an adverse effect on the performance of those speaking English as a second language. Therefore, how to reduce anxiety associated with learning a second language to increase learning performance is an important research issue in the language education field. Accordingly, this study employed a sensor, signal processing, wireless communication, system‐on‐chip and machine‐learning techniques in developing an embedded human emotion recognition system based on human pulse signals for detecting three human emotions—nervousness, peace and joy—to help teachers reduce language‐learning anxiety of individual learners in a web‐based one‐to‐one synchronous learning environment. The accuracy rate of the proposed emotion recognition model evaluated by cross‐validation is as high as 79.7136% when filtering out human pulse signals that have bias. Moreover, this study applied the embedded emotion recognition system to assist instructor's teaching in a synchronous English conversation environment by immediately reporting variations in individual learner emotions to the teacher during learning. In this instructional experiment, the teacher can give appropriate learning assistance or guidance based on the emotion states of individual learners. Experimental results indicate that the proposed embedded human emotion recognition system is helpful in reducing language‐based anxiety, thus promoting instruction effectiveness in English conversation classes.     

Automated Scoring of Constructed‐Response Science Items: Prospects and Obstacles

Content‐based automated scoring has been applied in a variety of science domains. However, many prior applications involved simplified scoring rubrics without considering rubrics representing multiple levels of understanding. This study tested a concept‐based scoring tool for content‐based scoring, c‐rater?, for four science items with rubrics aiming to differentiate among multiple levels of understanding. The items showed moderate to good agreement with human scores. The findings suggest that automated scoring has the potential to score constructed‐response items with complex scoring rubrics, but in its current design cannot replace human raters. This article discusses sources of disagreement and factors that could potentially improve the accuracy of concept‐based automated scoring.     

Clay modeling as a method to learn human muscles: A community college study

The efficacy of clay modeling compared with cat dissection for human muscle identification was examined over two semesters at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, NY. The 181 students in 10 sections in this study were randomly distributed into control (cat dissection) and experimental (clay modeling) groups, and the results of the muscle practical examination were analyzed. The clay‐modeling group was significantly better at identifying human muscles on human models than the cat‐dissection group, and was as good at identifying muscles on their self‐made clay mannequins as the cat‐dissection group was at identifying cat muscle on their specimens. This study demonstrated that clay modeling is more effective than cat dissection for learning human muscles at the community college level. Anat Sci Ed 2:19–23, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

Information and Feedback Seeking in U.S. and British Human Resources Development and Training Settings

This survey‐based study investigated information and feedback‐seeking behavior in U.S. and British human resource development and training settings. It involved some 400 participants at two U.S. and three British universities and government agencies. Using self‐and other‐rating forms, the results indicated differences in perception of teaching styles and source, frequency, and usefulness of information regarding performance feedback and learning objectives. The study suggests that adult learners self‐regulate in learning situations to a greater degree than instructors anticipate. The study has implications for the education and training of HRD instructors and trainers and adds to the knowledge base of instructional theory.     

Creating a ‘world class’ programme: reciprocity and constraint in networked global collaboration

The article reflects on the construction of a common Master’s programme across four universities located on four continents, in order to explore the role of networks in international educational collaboration. The study draws on the documented processes of the principal members of the programme team. It is presented as a case study of the development of the programme that uses ideas drawn from actor‐network theory to draw attention to the conjunction of human and non‐human actors that shaped the resulting web‐based courses. Constraints arising from major institutional and systemic obstacles were addressed through the effects of the actor‐network. The reciprocity of action and de‐centring of individual activity made possible through the collaboration enabled the human actors to sustain a level of innovation within their own institutions that would not have been possible through them acting alone.     

Attitudes of academic staff towards their job and organisation: An empirical assessment

Abstract

The relationships and differences in how academic staff perceive their work and organisation are of great importance for human resource strategies in the higher education sector. The present study examines work‐related attitudes of academic staff, namely job satisfaction, self‐efficacy and organisational commitment. The purpose is to analyse how these attitudes differ among groups of individuals. Results show that there is an alternative way of classifying academic staff into distinct groups based on work‐related attitudes apart from the conventional classification based on position alone. Findings suggest that university managers should be careful in balancing between different systems of control or incentive.     

The effect of image quality,repeated study,and assessment method on anatomy learning

The use of two‐dimensional (2D) images is consistently used to prepare anatomy students for handling real specimen. This study examined whether the quality of 2D images is a critical component in anatomy learning. The visual clarity and consistency of 2D anatomical images was systematically manipulated to produce low‐quality and high‐quality images of the human hand and human eye. On day 0, participants learned about each anatomical specimen from paper booklets using either low‐quality or high‐quality images, and then completed a comprehension test using either 2D images or three‐dimensional (3D) cadaveric specimens. On day 1, participants relearned each booklet, and on day 2 participants completed a final comprehension test using either 2D images or 3D cadaveric specimens. The effect of image quality on learning varied according to anatomical content, with high‐quality images having a greater effect on improving learning of hand anatomy than eye anatomy (high‐quality vs. low‐quality for hand anatomy P = 0.018; high‐quality vs. low‐quality for eye anatomy P = 0.247). Also, the benefit of high‐quality images on hand anatomy learning was restricted to performance on short‐answer (SA) questions immediately after learning (high‐quality vs. low‐quality on SA questions P = 0.018), but did not apply to performance on multiple‐choice (MC) questions (high‐quality vs. low‐quality on MC questions P = 0.109) or after participants had an additional learning opportunity (24 hours later) with anatomy content (high vs. low on SA questions P = 0.643). This study underscores the limited impact of image quality on anatomy learning, and questions whether investment in enhancing image quality of learning aids significantly promotes knowledge development. Anat Sci Educ 10: 249–261. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Theory development and convergence of human resource fields: Implications for human performance technology

This study examines major theory developments in human resource (HR) fields and discusses implications for human performance technology (HPT). Differentiated HR fields are converging to improve organizational performance through knowledge‐based innovations. Ruona and Gibson (2004) made a similar observation and analyzed the historical evolution and convergence of three HR‐related fields: human resource management (HRM), human resource development (HRD), and organization development (OD). A field left out in their analysis is HPT. Many learning professionals recognize HPT as a more comprehensive approach to improving organizational performance issues (Molenda & Pershing, 2008; Pershing, 2006). However, little research has been done to advance the theory development of HPT and discuss its relationships within HR fields. This study adds a new perspective to that of Ruona and Gibson's historical analysis of HR fields by examining convergence issues from a theory development perspective.     

Analyzing time‐critical team motor skill performance: A case study

The ability to improve team motor skill performance is predicated on the corresponding ability to accurately identify areas for improvement. Unfortunately, in many time‐critical, rapid‐paced environments, accurately identifying areas for improvement is often problematic. The technique described in this case study seeks to overcome these difficulties in a systematic manner by employing a video‐recorded, mapping‐and‐measurement‐based approach that can discern details normally missed by human observation.     

Pursuit of explanation within a computer‐supported classroom

The problem addressed in the study was whether 10‐year‐old and 11‐year‐old children, collaborating within a computer‐supported classroom, learned an explanation‐driven process of inquiry that had characteristics of the progressive nature of scientific inquiry. The technical infrastructure for the study was provided by the Computer‐Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE). The study was based on qualitative content analysis of students’ written productions in physics posted to CSILE’s database in three investigative projects. The study indicated that some young students do engage in epistemic agency and genuinely pursue explanation‐driven inquiry. students’ intuitive explanations were often functional (referring to human agency) and empirical (in terms of observables) in nature. Provided that understandable explanations were available, some of the students moved towards theoretical scientific explanations.     

Man vs. Machine: A Junior‐Level Laboratory Exercise Comparing Human and Instrumental Detection Limits

The human nose is a very sensitive detector and is able to detect potent aroma compounds down to low ng/L levels. These levels are often below detection limits of analytical instrumentation. The following laboratory exercise is designed to compare instrumental and human methods for the detection of volatile odor active compounds. Reference standards of 3‐mercapto‐1‐hexanol (3MH), a secondary thiol that is important to food quality, are analyzed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (GC‐FID), and these raw data are provided to students. Students also perform a series of 3‐alternative forced choice (3‐AFC) sensory tests to determine the human detection limits in a series of samples. For both data sets, 2 methods of data analysis (standard deviation of the response and the slope and signal‐to‐noise ratio for GC‐FID data; forced‐choice ascending concentration series method of limits and linear regression for 3‐AFC data) will be used to estimate instrumental detection limits and human thresholds. GC‐FID and 3‐AFC results are then compared by the students to demonstrate the importance of instrumental and human methods for food analysis, and to provide an experiential learning opportunity to critically think through multiple methods of analysis and compare the outcomes of those methods. In completing the laboratory exercise and discussion questions, students will gain an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of human and instrumental measurements in food analysis, and compare the outcome of common data analysis methods for instrumental and sensory data.     

Performance Improvement Precepts at the Core of a Transformational Change: A Look at Pronto International

The case study looks at how fundamentals of performance improvement were at the core of innovation. PRONTO International is a low‐tech simulation for resource‐starved environments. Precepts such as taking a systems view, starting with the end in mind, and understanding the intangibles of human behavior were leveraged to help PRONTO achieve and sustain its impact in complex environments.     

Learning‐disabled children and normally‐achieving children solve visuo‐spatial problems1

ABSTRACT

In order to compare the performance of learning‐disabled and normally‐achieving children (of between nine and 11 years of age) on visuo‐spatial tasks, the Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Children's Embedded Figures Test and three self‐designed visuo‐spatial tasks were administered. The study has been conducted within the theoretical framework of a human information‐processing approach.

     

The Young Child's Pictorial Representation of the Human Figure

This study investigated reasons for the omission of the torso typical in most young children's drawings of the human figure. Do they have an incomplete mental image of the human figure; if so will the torso be omitted from a manikin task too? As the head is normally drawn first, is the torso simply forgotten; if so will children include it if they are asked to draw the torso first? Eighty tadpole‐drawers (aged between 2 years 7 months and 5 years) were randomly allocated to a drawing or a manikin condition; they were further subdivided into a head‐first or torso‐first condition. Significantly more children produced a conventional figure when they constructed a manikin compared with those who were asked to draw; the order of body parts (head‐first vs torso‐first) had no significant effect. These results suggest that young children omit the torso from their human figures because they have yet to devise a way of drawing it, perhaps because it is a relatively unimportant item; there is little evidence that they have simply forgotten it or that their mental model for the human figure is incomplete.     

Children's knowledge of the earth's shape and its gravitational field

Abstract

One hundred and eight children aged between seven and 11 took part in a cross‐sectional study of the development of their concepts of the Earth and the direction of its gravitational field. A new form of ‘Earth drawing classification’ (EDC) was found to be drawn by 36% of the sample, together with the five classifications established in earlier work. This new EDC is conceptually contradictory and appears to be a critical development stage. It is the result of the pupils’ attempts to reconcile scientific information with their own common‐sense knowledge base. The educational implications of this are discussed. The relationship between the developmental sequence of their Earth drawings and the quality of their human figure drawing was also investigated. It was established that restricted drawing ability does not explain their non‐scientific early EDCs.