Teacher-led design of an adaptive learning environment

This paper discusses a requirements engineering process that exemplifies teacher-led design in the case of an envisioned system for adaptive learning. Such a design poses various challenges and still remains an open research issue in the field of adaptive learning. Starting from a scenario-based elicitation method, the whole process was highly participatory, with requirements validation in iterative cycles. The contribution of the paper is twofold: (a) it exposes the design of an environment which addresses the related challenges mentioned by the participants and the literature and (b) it suggests a methodology of framing key requirements into a set of critical success factors for meeting the end-users’ expectations. The latter could be crucial in cases where the available resources are limited, but the quality of the product must not be sacrificed.     

Can collaborative concept mapping create mathematically productive discourses?

Four groups (three engineering students in each group)were videotaped while constructing concept maps in Linear Algebra. There are two aims of this study. The first is to characterize the discourse in the groups by addressing the following research questions: Do the students communicate in an effective way?Do the students' communications contain the elements typical for amathematically productive discourse? The analysis indicates that the communication among the students is effective and contains the elements that are characteristic for a mathematically productive interaction. The two types of methods used to analyze the data were focal and preoccupational analysis. The mathematical content and the coherence of the conversations were examined through focal analysis. The participants' engagement in the discourse was examined by preoccupational analysis, carried out by means of interactive flow chart. The second aim of this study is to evaluate the newly developed methodological framework used to characterize the discourses. The study shows that several aspects of the methodological framework need to be developed.     

Dynamic multimedia stream adaptation and rate control for heterogeneous networks

Dynamic adaptation of multimedia content is seen as an important feature of next generation networks and pervasive systems enabling terminals and applications to adapt to changes in e.g. context, access network, and available Quality-of-Service (QoS) due to mobility of users, devices or sessions. We present the architecture of a multimedia stream adaptation service which enables communication between terminals having heterogeneous hardware and software capabilities and served by heterogeneous networks. The service runs on special content adaptation nodes which can be placed at any location within the network. The flexible structure of our architecture allows using a variety of different adaptation engines. A generic transcoding engine is used to change the codec of streams. An MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) based transformation engine allows adjusting the data rate of scalable media streams. An intelligent decision-taking engine implements adaptive flow control which takes into account current network QoS parameters and congestion information. Measurements demonstrate the quality gains achieved through adaptive congestion control mechanisms under conditions typical for a heterogeneous network.     

ASSISTANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION LEGISLATION: THE LEGISLATIVE REFORM PROGRAMME OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Between 1989 and 1992, the Council of Europe responded to the perceived need to assist eastern and central European countries to develop a legal basis for their higher education systems that would lead to a workable and equitable balance between state control and university autonomy and academic freedom. Thus the Legislative Reform Project of the Council of Europe got underway in the spring of 1992. The results so far have been very positive. In 1996, the Council on Higher Education and Research of the Council of Europe recommended the continuation of the Project, now known as a Programme, for another four‐year period and its extension to the sectors of science and technology.     

Harmonising codification and socialisation in knowledge management

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - Decision makers process and combine manifold types of data, information and knowledge, available in various forms in the organisation. The aim of...     

Choice in honeybees as a function of the probability of reward

Honeybees foraging for sucrose at a laboratory window were trained in a series of ten 100-trial problems to choose between two targets differing in odor, one of them providing 10 µl of a 50% sucrose solution and the other 10 µl of water. In 9 of the problems, two odors were used, and the reward ratio was varied systematically over a wide range. In the 10th problem, three odors were used in an ambiguous-cue (A+/B?, B+/C?) design. The results were predicted quantitatively, and with substantial accuracy, from a simple theory of learning and choice developed in previous work on simultaneous discrimination in honeybees.     

Quality Assurance in UK Higher Education: Issues of Trust, Control, Professional Autonomy and Accountability

This article explores the issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and accountability in higher education quality assurance in the UK. The main part of this article is conceptual, but it includes results from semi-structured interviews with academic staff that were conducted at two “new university” business schools. Both institutions are broadly similar in their key characteristics and have experienced a transformation to university status in the early 1990s. The article argues that there has been a change from informal “light-touch” quality control systems based on local practices and a significant amount of trust and professional autonomy in the early 1990s to a highly prescribed process of audit-based quality control today. The article argues that accountability and transparency are important principles that academics should wholeheartedly embrace, but that the audit format adopted in the UK introduces a one-way accountability and provides “rituals of verification” (Power 1997) instead of fostering trust, has high opportunity costs and may well be detrimental to innovative teaching and learning.     

Can't Ignore—Distraction by Task-Irrelevant Sounds in Early and Middle Childhood

Attention control abilities are relevant for learning success. Little is known about the development of audio-visual attention in early childhood. Four groups of children between the ages of 4 and 10 years and adults performed an audio-visual distraction paradigm (N = 106). Multilevel analyses revealed increased reaction times in a visual categorization task when task-irrelevant novel sounds were presented, demonstrating involuntary distraction of attention. This distraction effect decreased with age and significantly differed between age groups. In addition, the two youngest age groups responded with a delay in trials following a distractor trial, indicating delayed reallocation of attention to the task at hand. Results indicate a significant maturation of audio-visual attention control within a few years during early childhood that continues throughout middle childhood.     

Adult education and the fostering of asylum seekers as “full” citizens

International Review of Education - The role of adult education in the shaping and fostering of democratic citizens is prevalent in current transnational and national policy discussions; a...