Voluntary use of online study questions as a function of previous minimal use requirements and learner aptitude

This study investigates voluntary use of online study questions, the relationship of study question use to examination performance, and the relationship of aptitude to study question use following an initial phase during which students either received course points for passing mastery quizzes or for completing a designated number of study questions. The results indicate a) students who first received points for completing study questions later made greater voluntary use of study questions, b) less able readers made less voluntary use of study questions than more able readers, and c) less able readers performed better on course examinations when awarded course points for completing a required number of study questions rather than quizzes.     

Evaluating the effect of a lecturer’s language background on a student rating of teaching form

This study, using student ratings of lecturers, examines the perceived effect of the lecturer’s ability to communicate effectively. The relationship between the standard question—’The lecturer was able to communicate ideas and information clearly’—and the global rating question—’Overall, the lecturer is an effective teacher’—was investigated in 7072 undergraduate standard teaching surveys from one university, using the lecturer’s language background as a factor. The results show that overall student ratings of English as a second language (ESL) lecturers are, on average, 0.4 points lower on a five‐point scale than student ratings of native English speaking lecturers. There is a strong interaction between this average difference and the lecturer’s faculty, with little difference in arts (humanities and social sciences) through to 0.6 points difference in science. The study also found that, of the four categorical questions used in the university’s standard teaching survey, the ‘communication’ question had the highest correlation with the ‘overall’ question. The correlation (R?=?0.96) suggests that the standard teaching survey is overly influenced by the students’ perception of this one aspect of teaching—reflecting a transmission model. The rating difference between ESL and native English speaking lecturers is briefly explored. In addition, the paper briefly considers the implications of the above findings for teacher development and for student expectations against a background of a growing ESL student population.     

试析句法变化对英语专业学生听力理解的影响

以英语专业大二学生为研究对象,采用实验方法研究句法的变化(句法简化和句法冗余)对听力理解的影响。通过对实验数据进行相关的统计分析,发现无论是句法简化还是句法冗余都有助于受试的听力理解,而且在推测含义、归纳信息方面,后者更甚于前者。最后,从认知的角度解释了实验结果,并认为句法变化对促进英语专业听力教学具有较大的现实意义。     

促进“问题图式”形成的教学策略

图式是根据一定的问题或主题结合成有机整体的知识结构。由于图式既表征了抽取出来的一般性命题 ,又具附属于命题的具体解决思路 ,因此 ,图式的形成特别有利于知识的迁移和解决问题能力的产生。促进问题图式形成的教学策略包括变式训练、样例学习、开放式训练等     

Adaptively selecting biology questions generated from a semantic network

The paper describes a biology tutoring system with adaptive question selection. Questions were selected for presentation to the student based on their utilities, which were estimated from the chance that the student’s competence would increase if the questions were asked. Competence was represented by the probability of mastery of a set of biology knowledge components. Tasks were represented and selected based on which knowledge components they addressed. Unlike earlier work, where the knowledge components and their relationships to the questions were defined by domain experts, this project demonstrated that the knowledge components, questions and their relationships could all be generated from a semantic network. An experiment found that students using our adaptive question selection had reliably larger learning gains than students who received questions in a mal-adaptive order.     

How Personality and Gender May Relate to Individual Attitudes Toward Caring for and About Others

Heightened global awareness and caring are reported as attributes of high intelligence. But we noted enough exceptions in our gifted clientele to question whether feelings of global concern are further related to personality type and gender. A nonrandom sample of 124 bright adults responded to author-developed Likert scale online survey questions about global issues. Results indicated a significant relationship between gender and scores on the Bothered by Catastrophe and Problem Action scales, with females scoring higher than males. Individuals with Feeling-Perceiving personality type had significantly higher scores on the Bothered by Catastrophe Scale. Extroverts were significantly higher on Concern About Global Issues than introverts. Other Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® personality results were unclear and no interactions were found.     

Combining peer discussion with instructor explanation increases student learning from in-class concept questions

Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students.     

Towards a Theory of Propositional Curriculum Content

This article addresses two questions. The first question is this: ‘when ought teachers to encourage or discourage students’ belief of a given proposition on the one hand (call this ‘directive teaching’), and when ought teachers to simply facilitate students’ understanding of that proposition, on the other (call this ‘non‐directive teaching’) (cf. the work of Michael Hand)? The second question is this: ‘which propositional content should curricula address?’ An answer to these questions would amount to what I will call a ‘theory of propositional curricula content’, by providing both a means for choosing content, and a directive for teaching that content. While the answer that I give to the second question is unlikely to prove exhaustive, I still consider that it would form an important part of the answer, hence the title a ‘towards a theory of propositional curricula content’.     

Students’ genre expectations and the effects of text cohesion on reading comprehension

This study raises the question what makes school texts comprehensible by analyzing whether students’ genre expectations about literary or expository texts moderate the impact of different forms of text cohesion on reading comprehension, even when the texts are similar regarding their genre. 754 students (Grade 9) from comprehensive schools read one of four text versions with similar content, but different degrees of local and global text cohesion. The four more or less cohesive texts were introduced as literary texts (part of a story) or as expository texts (newspaper article), although the different genres were only purported and the texts contained both literary and expository passages. Reading comprehension was assessed with multiple-choice-items, semi-open, and open-ended questions. Results demonstrate that global cohesion was profitable for reading comprehension with expository expectations, but not with literary ones. Local text cohesion and both forms of cohesion in combination did not interact with students’ genre expectations and had no main effect on comprehension. When students reading skills and prior knowledge were considered, the interaction was still apparent. Moreover, students with lower levels of reading skills tended to profit especially from texts with global cohesion, whereas the readers with higher reading skills achieved equal means in reading comprehension irrespective of the degree of global text cohesion. The findings are discussed with respect to theoretical aspects of text–reader-interactions, cognitive and emotional components of genre expectations, and the composition and instruction of comprehensible school texts.     

基于核心素养下的初中数学错题管理及其策略研究

数学课程教学中的错题管理工作一方面是为了通过错题找到学生数学课程学习中的问题和不足,另一方面通过错题的分析将其作为下一阶段数学课程教学的有效参考资料.错题管理工作的开展不仅要按照规范的方法执行,在具体的管理工作开展中,也要注意策略与方法的运用.本文结合初中阶段的数学课程教学探讨错题管理的科学对策,为提升初中数学课程教学...     

Assessing Multimedia Influences on Student Responses Using a Personal Response System

To date, research to date on personal response systems (clickers) has focused on external issues pertaining to the implementation of this technology or broadly measured student learning gains rather than investigating differences in the responses themselves. Multimedia learning makes use of both words and pictures, and research from cognitive psychology suggests that using both words and illustrations improves student learning. This study analyzed student response data from 561 students taking an introductory earth science course to determine whether including an illustration in a clicker question resulted in a higher percentage of correct responses than questions that did not include a corresponding illustration. Questions on topics pertaining to the solid earth were categorized as illustrated questions if they contained a picture, or graph and text-only if the question only contained text. For each type of question, we calculated the percentage of correct responses for each student and compared the results to student ACT-reading, math, and science scores. A within-groups, repeated measures analysis of covariance with instructor as the covariate yielded no significant differences between the percentage of correct responses to either the text-only or the illustrated questions. Similar non-significant differences were obtained when students were grouped into quartiles according to their ACT-reading, -math, and -science scores. These results suggest that the way in which a conceptest question is written does not affect student responses and supports the claim that conceptest questions are a valid formative assessment tool.     

The effect of distributed questioning with varied examples on exam performance on inference questions

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the distributed presentation of different versions of a question would produce better performance on a new version of the question than distributed presentation of the same version of the question. A total of 48 four question sets of five alternative multiple‐choice questions were presented during a college lecture course. The answers to all the four questions in each set required an inference from the same fact statement. One question in each set appeared on both a block exam and the final. Each of the other three questions was presented either on an online quiz before class, during class or on an online quiz a week after class. Answering different versions of a question before class, during class and after class resulted in better performance on a fourth version of the question on the exam and final than answering the same question before class, during class and after class. On the final exam, 44 questions were answered twice, first under a time constraint of 90 seconds and then when response time was unlimited. The two responses were virtually identical.     

辽宁铁岭方言反问模式研究

从结构、语义、语用和修辞动因四个角度讨论铁岭方言反问句的总体概貌,铁岭方言反问句的结构类型灵活多样,有是非问、特指、正反问和选择问四种形式。根据否定语义表现的不同形式,铁岭方言的反问句从语义上分为直接否定和间接否定两类。铁岭方言的反问句还具有使用频率高、连续使用和使用范围广三个语用特征以及肯定性让步、否定性让步、推断性让步、扩展性让步和选择性让步五种主观化修辞动因。     

计算机辅助理论力学教学软件的开发

介绍一种理论力学课程辅助教学软件，该软件采用下拉式菜单结构，题型全面，有常见的概念题，还有作图题和计算题；软件还具有出错提示、一题多解、分步记分等智能化的功能。使用它，可减轻教师批改作业的负担，提高教学效果。     

Questions About Physics: The Case of a Turkish ‘Ask a Scientist’ Website

The physics questions submitted to an ‘ask a scientist’ website were classified with respect to field of interest in physics, type of requested information in the question (factual, explanatory, etc.), and motivation for asking the question (applicative or non--applicative). In addition, differences in the number of females’ and males’ questions in these classifications were determined. Analysis of 995 physics questions submitted to the website indicated that modern physics questions (30.7%) were the most frequent while vibrations and wave motion questions (3.3%) were the least frequent. More than half of the questions (57.8%) were submitted to request factual information. Motivation to ask a question was inferred from the question, and was generally not related to direct and/or personal application. There were obvious differences in the number of questions asked by females and males: 84.7% of questions were asked by males while 15.3% were asked by females. However, significant gender differences were not observed in field of interest in physics, type of information requested in the question, and motivation for asking the question.     

一类和式的极限

求n项和的数列极限问题有两种方法,其一、是通过适当缩放后用夹逼定理;其二、是利用定积分的定义。本文介绍利用定积分的定义求n项和数列极限的一些技巧。     

Pace: An Alternative Measure of Student Question Response Time

In some professions, speed and accuracy are as important as acquired requisite knowledge and skills. The availability of computer-based testing now facilitates examination of these two important aspects of student performance. We found that student response times in a conventional non-speeded multiple-choice test, at both the global and individual question levels, closely approximated lognormal distributions. We propose a new measure, pace, which is derived from the survival function of these distributions for analysis of individual person response times. These pace estimates could be used both to rank and compare students; pace also performed maximally compared to other parameterizations in generalizability and dependability studies. While pace was very weakly related to person ability, there was no detectable relationship to question parameters of shift, natural logarithmic mean, or natural logarithmic standard deviation. That is, pace was a person-dependent, question-independent measure. Pace measurements were also successfully used as covariates in models for estimation of person response time to specified questions and person accuracy in response to specified questions. Thus, the analysis of pace can contribute significantly to comprehensive evaluation of student performance in both the speed and ability domains and is a requisite to best practice in testing and assessment.     

大学课堂:思考着的教学

带着一满荷包问题走进教堂的课算好课,将问题穿插于全过程的课算好课,不断引导学生去思考、去发问的课算好课;一个便于在课堂上让自己自由畅想的教案是好教案;一个让人回头来看时多少觉得可笑的教案是好教案;常问的学生是好学生,爱问、会问的学生是更好的学生,问得很深刻、很奇特,更可能是杰出人才的未来之星。     

Questioning Our Questions: Assessing Question Asking Practices to Evaluate a yPAR Program

The purpose of this research was to examine question asking practices in a youth participatory action research (yPAR) after school program housed at an elementary school. The research question was: In which ways did the adult question asking practices in a yPAR setting challenge and/or reproduce conventional models of power in educational settings? We aligned Fink’s taxonomy (Creating significant learning experiences: an integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2003) to Freire’s (The pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum, New York, 1970/2000) banking concept and problem-posing educational models. All adult questions were categorized from twelve randomly selected yPAR sessions over 2 years. The program served 4th and 5th grade students. Of the 500+ questions adults asked, 17 % were foundational (aligned with Freire’s banking concept). All other questions were aligned with Freire’s problem-posing model. Specifically, 34 % were application, 3 % were integration, 15 % were caring, 11 % were human dimension, and 8 % were learning how to learn questions. By studying question asking patterns and practices, we gained a better understanding of how students and adults navigated this particular after school space, which, at its core, sought to disrupt conventional notions of power and status.