The Correlation between Final Grade Score,Attendance and Homework in the Performance of CED Students

The student performance of 152 College of Environmental Design students from 10 courses were analyzed for possible correlation between the final score, class attendance and the homework assignments. It is widely believed that student performance in a course is strongly related to attendance level. However, the results of this study showed a much stronger correlation between the final score and the homework performance in a given course than between the final score and the attendance level. This demonstrates that we ought to consider placing a much heavier weight on homework and assignment as a percentage of the final score, as well as load of assignments, than we currently do. We may also consider relaxing some of our stronger policies on attendance.     

Contrast effects in simultaneous discrimination learning

Pigeons were trained on a form discrimination that alternated across trials with an already-learned color discrimination, which was associated with different probabilities of reinforcement for different groups. The rate of acquisition of the form discrimination varied inversely with the rate of reinforcement for the color discrimination, thus demonstrating a “contrast effect” in simultaneous discrimination learning.     

Towards identifying dyslexia in Standard Indonesian: the development of a reading assessment battery

With its transparent orthography, Standard Indonesian is spoken by over 160 million inhabitants and is the primary language of instruction in education and the government in Indonesia. An assessment battery of reading and reading-related skills was developed as a starting point for the diagnosis of dyslexia in beginner learners. Founded on the International Dyslexia Association’s definition of dyslexia, the test battery comprises nine empirically motivated reading and reading-related tasks assessing word reading, pseudoword reading, arithmetic, rapid automatized naming, phoneme deletion, forward and backward digit span, verbal fluency, orthographic choice (spelling), and writing. The test was validated by computing the relationships between the outcomes on the reading-skills and reading-related measures by means of correlation and factor analyses. External variables, i.e., school grades and teacher ratings of the reading and learning abilities of individual students, were also utilized to provide evidence of its construct validity. Four variables were found to be significantly related with reading-skill measures: phonological awareness, rapid naming, spelling, and digit span. The current study on reading development in Standard Indonesian confirms findings from other languages with transparent orthographies and suggests a test battery including preliminary norm scores for screening and assessment of elementary school children learning to read Standard Indonesian.     

Behavioral contrast and reinforcement value

Behavioral contrast was produced in two target components of a four-component multiple schedule by having two target stimuli followed either by a higher rate of reinforcement or by extinction. Response rate was higher in the target followed by extinction. Periodic probe trials were then presented in which the two target stimuli were presented together. Choice on these probe trials was in favor of the stimulus followed by the higher rate of reinforcement during regular training. Experiment 2 replicated this finding but with probe trials presented throughout training. Here, preference for the stimulus followed by the higher rate of reinforcement was evident early in training, substantially before the contrast effects developed. The results challenge interpretations of contrast based on the concept of relative value.     

The Million Book Project at Bibliotheca Alexandrina

INTRODUCTION The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) has develop- ed a workflow for turning printed books into digital books. The process starts with selection of books to be digitized, which is done mainly by BA’s Library Service Department. Books metadata is entered into the Digital Lab database. Metadata entry is followed by three core phases: scanning phase, in which the digital copy is generated; processing phase, in which image enhancement is performed; and OCR phase, in which text i…     

Modelling success networks to improve the quality of undergraduate education

Discussions of support and intervention in undergraduate university education are dominated by discussion of attrition. This study quests more broadly in arguing that support and intervention for undergraduate students may also benefit from models of engagement and success as well as conventional risk and failure. Supporting this proposition is a study that involved multifactorial approaches based in a combination of aspects of social network theory and social ecology theory. Analysis was enacted through social network analysis of archival data sets derived from a single cohort of 4065 undergraduate students at a regional Australian university. The findings suggest that models of academic success are suited to examination of the broader issues of student agency and undergraduate university education. The success networks developed are uniquely student-centred and place-based and may serve as more nuanced models for university intervention and support structures and mechanisms.     

Raising the reading skills of secondary-age students with severe and persistent reading difficulties: evaluation of the efficacy and implementation of a phonics-based intervention programme

The importance of reading skills to academic achievement, job acquisition and future success is well documented. Most of the research on reading interventions focuses on children in primary schools but many children start secondary school with very poor reading skills and schools require evidence-based interventions to support these children. The aims of this study were (i) to explore the efficacy of a phonics-based reading intervention programme, Toe By Toe, among secondary age students with severe reading difficulties and (ii) to examine perceived barriers to implementing this intervention programme. Results showed the intervention brought about a statistically significant improvement in the students’ decoding and word reading skills. Interviews with staff and students indicated a wide range of positive responses to the intervention and some key barriers to implementation. This study adds to the evidence base for the use of reading interventions in secondary schools to support students with severe reading difficulties.     

从智能教育到未来学习:新时代教育技术创新与应用新常态--第十九届教育技术国际论坛综述

第十九届教育技术国际论坛聚焦新时代教育信息科学与技术创新研究主题,站在智能时代和民族复兴的高度,从新时代教育技术研究的新热点、聚焦点、新趋势、新建设等角度,深入探讨了人工智能教育的价值与挑战、疫情与后疫情时代在线教育、未来学习模式创新、教育技术学科与专业建设、教育的本质以及教育创新的理论与方法等主题,在跨学科的观点碰撞中廓清了人工智能教育与未来学校的价值与方向,在直面突出问题与危机转换思维中阐释了在线教育教师的角色优势,在综合人文与自然科学的方法中拓展了教育技术基本理论的创新路径,在历史与比较的视野下增强了学科与专业建设的道路自信,充分体现了教育技术学理论与实践深度融合的专业特点,彰显了教育技术学引领与促进教育创新的学科特色,展示了新时代教育技术创新与应用的新常态。     

Combining fields for query expansion and adaptive query expansion

In this paper, we aim to improve query expansion for ad-hoc retrieval, by proposing a more fine-grained term reweighting process. This fine-grained process uses statistics from the representation of documents in various fields, such as their titles, the anchor text of their incoming links, and their body content. The contribution of this paper is twofold: First, we propose a novel query expansion mechanism on fields by combining field evidence available in a corpora. Second, we propose an adaptive query expansion mechanism that selects an appropriate collection resource, either the local collection, or a high-quality external resource, for query expansion on a per-query basis. The two proposed query expansion approaches are thoroughly evaluated using two standard Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) Web collections, namely the WT10G collection and the large-scale .GOV2 collection. From the experimental results, we observe a statistically significant improvement compared with the baselines. Moreover, we conclude that the adaptive query expansion mechanism is very effective when the external collection used is much larger than the local collection.     

Does Maximizing Information at the Cut Score Always Maximize Classification Accuracy and Consistency?

A common suggestion made in the psychometric literature for fixed‐length classification tests is that one should design tests so that they have maximum information at the cut score. Designing tests in this way is believed to maximize the classification accuracy and consistency of the assessment. This article uses simulated examples to illustrate that one can obtain higher classification accuracy and consistency by designing tests that have maximum test information at locations other than at the cut score. We show that the location where one should maximize the test information is dependent on the length of the test, the mean of the ability distribution in comparison to the cut score, and, to a lesser degree, whether or not one wants to optimize classification accuracy or consistency. Analyses also suggested that the differences in classification performance between designing tests optimally versus maximizing information at the cut score tended to be greatest when tests were short and the mean of ability distribution was further away from the cut score. Larger differences were also found in the simulated examples that used the 3PL model compared to the examples that used the Rasch model.