Using learning analytics in the Amazonas: understanding students’ behaviour in introductory programming

Tools for automatic grading programming assignments, also known as Online Judges, have been widely used to support computer science (CS) courses. Nevertheless, few studies have used these tools to acquire and analyse interaction data to better understand the students’ performance and behaviours, often due to data availability or inadequate granularity. To address this problem, we propose an Online Judge called CodeBench, which allows for fine-grained data collection of student interactions, at the level of, eg, keystrokes, number of submissions, and grades. We deployed CodeBench for 3 years (2016–18) and collected data from 2058 students from 16 introductory computer science (CS1) courses, on which we have carried out fine-grained learning analytics, towards early detection of effective/ineffective behaviours regarding learning CS concepts. Results extract clear behavioural classes of CS1 students, significantly differentiated both semantically and statistically, enabling us to better explain how student behaviours during programming have influenced learning outcomes. Finally, we also identify behaviours that can guide novice students to improve their learning performance, which can be used for interventions. We believe this work is a step forward towards enhancing Online Judges and helping teachers and students improve their CS1 teaching/learning practices.     

Differences between skilled and less‐skilled young readers in the retrieval of semantic,phonological, and shape information

This study aimed to determine whether the reading skills of third‐grade schoolchildren are associated with their preferences for semantic, phonological, and shape competitors (images or printed words) after being exposed to a spoken critical word. Two groups of children participated: skilled readers and less‐skilled readers. Through a language‐mediated visual search, children's fixations on the three competitors and a distractor were measured. When looking at images, both groups of readers preferred to look at the semantic competitor. When reading words, both groups showed a preference for the phonological competitor, but only skilled readers were sensitive to semantic information. These results suggest that early reading skills influence access to different types of representations in response to hearing a word, and they confirm the existence of a cascaded activation of information retrieval in childhood.     

Gender differences in Brazilian street youth's family circumstances and experiences on the street

OBJECTIVES: It has been proposed that homeless street girls are more likely to be from dysfunctional families and exhibit psychological distress than homeless street boys, reflecting cultural factors that result in differential norms for male and female behavior. The current analysis examined whether male and female street youth in a mid-sized Brazilian city differed in their family circumstances and day-to-day functioning on the street. METHODS: The opportunity sample consisted of 33 male (mean age 14.3, range 10-17 years) and 33 female (mean age 14.6, range 11-18 years) street youth who participated in a sentence completion task and structured interview examining family experiences and ability to meet daily needs on the street. RESULTS: Consistent with the cultural hypothesis, girls described more negative family backgrounds than boys (e.g., they were more likely to have left home because of conflict or abuse, and reported more negative relationships with their parents). However, girls' functioning on the street was similar to, and in some cases more positive than, that of boys (e.g., fewer girls reported police violence and begging to earn money). CONCLUSIONS: The few gender differences that emerged in this study offer little support for the cultural hypothesis. The findings make sense if local factors, such as services available for male and female youth and public response to street youth, are considered. It appears that street youth differ in their experiences depending on local circumstances, highlighting the need for caution in generalizing about the situation of street youth in different countries.     

Testing the scalar expectancy theory (SET) and the learning-to-time model (LeT) in a double bisection task

Two theories of timing, scalar expectancy theory (SET) and learning-to-time (LeT), make substantially different assumptions about what animals learn in temporal tasks. In a test of these assumptions, pigeons learned two temporal discriminations. On Type 1 trials, they learned to choose a red key after a 1-sec signal and a green key after a 4-sec signal; on Type 2 trials, they learned to choose a blue key after a 4-sec signal and a yellow key after either an 8-sec signal (Group 8) or a 16-sec signal (Group 16). Then, the birds were exposed to signals 1 sec, 4 sec, and 16 sec in length and given a choice between novel key combinations (red or green vs. blue or yellow). The choice between the green key and the blue key was of particular significance because both keys were associated with the same 4-sec signal. Whereas SET predicted no effect of the test signal duration on choice, LeT predicted that preference for green would increase monotonically with the length of the signal but would do so faster for Group 8 than for Group 16. The results were consistent with LeT, but not with SET.     

How to quantify the transition phase during golf swing performance: Torsional load affects low back complaints during the transition phase

The transition phase of a golf swing is considered to be a decisive instant required for a powerful swing. However, at the same time, the low back torsional loads during this phase can have a considerable effect on golf-related low back pain (LBP). Previous efforts to quantify the transition phase were hampered by problems with accuracy due to methodological limitations. In this study, vector-coding technique (VCT) method was proposed as a comprehensive methodology to quantify the precise transition phase and examine low back torsional load. Towards this end, transition phases were assessed using three different methods (VCT, lead hand speed and X-factor stretch) and compared; then, low back torsional load during the transition phase was examined. As a result, the importance of accurate transition phase quantification has been documented. The largest torsional loads were observed in healthy professional golfers (10.23 ± 1.69 N · kg^?1), followed by professional golfers with a history of LBP (7.93 ± 1.79 N · kg^?1), healthy amateur golfers (1.79 ± 1.05 N · kg^?1) and amateur golfers with a history of LBP (0.99 ± 0.87 N · kg^?1), which order was equal to that of the transition phase magnitudes of each group. These results indicate the relationship between the transition phase and LBP history and the dependency of the torsional load magnitude on the transition phase.     

Historicizing Singapore cinema: questions of colonial influence and spatiality

Films produced since the 1990s revival of Singapore cinema have been interpreted through a historical backdrop consisting of the nation's rapid development, participation in the global economy and authoritarian one-party governance. Film historians have described these texts by relying on discourses associated with globalization and postmodernism. This paper finds the perspective of Singaporean films to have overlooked colonialism as a significant part of Singapore's cultural identity and argues that greater consideration of that history can not only illuminate contemporary films, but also expand film scholarship to include understudied films from Singapore's ‘golden age’ of filmmaking from the 1950s to early 1970s. The history of Singapore cinema should thus be re-periodized. By analyzing the heuristic function of colonial urbanity in films from both eras, this paper explores how spatiality provides a common thread that runs through local experience, identity, culture and cinema.     

Emotional stability pertaining to the game of Dungeons & Dragons

The game of Dungeons & Dragons, which involves extensive fantasy role-playing by the participants, has been blamed by groups of lay people for having caused a number of suicides and homicides, as well as generally promoting such behavior. The 16 PF was administered to players of the game and a Pearson correlation was performed between years of playing the game and their emotional stability as measured by Factor C of the test. No significant correlation was found.     

Book reviews

Acting as the mentor for a cohort of post-baccalaureate teacher certification students was a learning experience. Working as interns in an urban middle school over the course of a year, the students learned about the culture of a struggling school, the needs of the young adolescents they were teaching, and what it means to be a teacher in such a school. Not all of their lessons were positive ones, however, as socialization into the culture often prevailed over critique. As a result of reflecting on the year, I saw how I also was socialized by the culture, and guilty of some of the same attitudes myself and my students criticized in the school. My reflections point to some necessary components of the kind of partnerships sought by public schools and universities.     

Evaluation of the stability,appearance and performance of resins for the adhesion of flaking paint on ethnographic objects

ABSTRACT

The Natural History Museum (NHM), London was one of the first national museums to introduce a museum-wide integrated pest management (IPM) strategy that includes the concept of risk zones (Doyle, Pinniger, and Ryder 2007). This system is based on the principle of pest prevention within a museum building, which will always have a resident population of pest insects. The loss of Dichlorvos [DDVP] resulted in an urgent need to implement a museum-wide IPM programme to protect vulnerable collections both in storage areas and on display. With such a large, diverse collection in a complex series of interconnecting buildings, it became necessary to break the programme down into sections. Thus the development and implementation of the concept of risk zones: classifying areas of the museum from high risk to low risk has proved a useful and effective method to promote staff awareness and best practice as part of a comprehensive IPM programme.     

Demand for Live Theater with Market Segmentation and Seasonality

Using performance level box-office receipts from the PacificConservatory of the Performing Arts over eight years, we analyzeperformance-level demand for live theater. The disaggregated data allowsus to estimate demand at a particular venue and to characterize theseasonality of demand for live theater. We examine whether the supply ofshows matches the differentiated tastes of theater-goers at each of thethree locations and the sensitivity of demand to critical reviews andprior attendance.