Video game learning dynamics: Actionable measures of multidimensional learning trajectories

Valid, accessible, reusable methods for instructional video game design and embedded assessment can provide actionable information enhancing individual and collective achievement. Cyberlearning through game‐based, metaphor‐enhanced learning objects (CyGaMEs) design and embedded assessment quantify player behavior to study knowledge discovery and application. CyGaMEs is grounded by analogical reasoning theory, cognitive task analysis and knowledge representation. A construct representation argument for validity using evidence‐centered design warrants CyGaMEs, its web‐based learning environment, Selene: A Lunar Construction GaME, its embedded assessment, and a learning dynamics approach to student, measurement and statistical models. Two studies (US volunteers, Study 1: n = 267, mean (M)_age = 15; Study 2: n = 90, M_age = 12) cross‐validate learning dynamics (learner progress, rate of progress and changes in that rate) for Selene's multidimensional goals while players learn and apply standard‐based science about fundamental geology and space science concepts. Gameplay data analyzed using regression, calculus and hierarchical linear modeling exhibit overall relatively high standardized rates of progress toward each goal statistically higher than zero. For example, adjusting for nesting within individual players, average rate of progress toward the goal of accreting lunar mass is a z‐score of 1.4 (99% confidence interval = 1.40_lower, 1.48_upper) or 1.4 standard deviations above zero.     

Longitudinal retention of anatomical knowledge in second‐year medical students

The Radboud University Medical Center has a problem‐based, learner‐oriented, horizontally, and vertically integrated medical curriculum. Anatomists and clinicians have noticed students’ decreasing anatomical knowledge and the disability to apply knowledge in diagnostic reasoning and problem solving. In a longitudinal cohort, the retention of anatomical knowledge gained during the first year of medical school among second‐year medical students was assessed. In May 2011, 346 medical students applied for the second‐year gastro‐intestinal (GI) tract course. The students were asked to participate in a reexamination of a selection of anatomical questions of an examination from October 2009. The examination consisted of a clinical anatomy case scenario and two computed tomography (CT) images of thorax and abdomen in an extended matching format. A total of 165 students were included for analysis. In 2011, students scored significantly lower for the anatomy examination compared to 2009 with a decline in overall examination score of 14.7% (±11.7%). Decrease in knowledge was higher in the radiological questions, compared to the clinical anatomy cases 17.5% (±13.6%) vs. 7.9% (±10.0%), respectively, d = 5.17. In both years, male students scored slightly better compared to female students, and decline of knowledge seems somewhat lower in male students (13.1% (±11.1%) vs. 15.5% (±12.0%), respectively), d = ?0.21. Anatomical knowledge in the problem‐oriented horizontal and vertical integrated medical curriculum, declined by approximately 15% 1.5 year after the initial anatomy course. The loss of knowledge in the present study is relative small compared to previous studies. Anat Sci Educ 10: 242–248. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Preventive Conservation Applied to Wallpaintings in a Desert Environment in Mexico

ABSTRACT

The church of San Diego de Alcalá, located in Pitiquito, Sonora , in Mexico, lies on a missionary road founded by the Jesuit Eusebio F. Kino, which, with the expulsion of the Jesuit order in 1767, passed into the care of the Franciscans. It contains wallpaintings which presented deterioration problems whose cause was not easy to determine, since the damage appeared to be inconsistent with the techniques used and the environmental conditions. With an interdisciplinary team, a methodology was designed for a combined study of the environment of the church and its wallpaintings. Thermal imaging of the exterior and interior walls indicated that the building was made up of different materials, and the junctions between them explained the different deterioration pathologies between one zone and another. Hydrological maps for groundwater in the locality were studied, to elucidate the presence of water in a desert zone; abundant sources of water in the subsoil were identified, which, because of overexploitation of the land, have been diminishing over time. This allowed the elaboration of a plan for site management, through the identification of those deterioration factors that can be mitigated by simple maintenance actions that are inherent to the environment and the materials, which enabled a scheduled maintenance scheme to be implemented. This improved the condition of the building and its wallpaintings, while reducing the resource invested to achieve this goal.     

Sex Differences in the Perceived Appropriateness of Receiving Verbal Aggression

This study predicted that (a) male recipients evaluate aggressive messages as more appropriate than female recipients, and (b) the magnitude of this difference varies as a function of contextual parameters. A total of 249 college-aged students responded to hypothetical scenarios to evaluate the influence of sex of the message recipient, sex of the message source, relationship type, and privacy level of the communication setting on recipients’ evaluations of appropriateness of aggressive communication. Results indicated that male recipients evaluate aggressive messages as more appropriate than female recipients, and this main effect was moderated by sex of the message source, relationship type, and privacy level. The discussion highlights the subjective experience of aggression for male and female recipients.     

Text Mining 101: What You Should Know

ABSTRACT

Scholars increasingly use text and data mining (TDM) methods to discover trends and relationships within complex digital data sets. In order to support this development in scholarly communication, librarians and publishers need to be knowledgeable about TDM methods, build partnerships with TDM researchers, and address challenges related to licensing and access to large document sets. The presenters of this NASIG session shared their experiences of supporting TDM as a library subject liaison, acquisitions librarian, and publisher representatives. Audience members discussed issues involving TDM of data from multiple publishers, local hosting of data sets and TDM activity by undergraduate students.     

Building bridges between global concepts and local contexts: implications for inclusive education in Nepal,Sri Lanka,and Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the implications of participation in an Australian Award Short Course Awards programme for inclusive educators from South Asia. Seventeen educators from Nepal, three from Bangladesh, and one from Sri Lanka participated in the short course in Brisbane, Australia with a follow up component in Kathmandu, Nepal. The aim of the short course was to provide a platform for sharing knowledge of inclusive education as a global concept, and how such knowledge could then be implemented in the local context. While in Brisbane, participants completed a Return to Work Plan (RWP) indicating how they anticipated applying their new knowledge in their respective workplaces. Data were collected both pre- and post-programme with follow-up individual interviews and focus groups once they returned to their home countries. Findings revealed that participants gained a broader understanding of inclusive education and ‘diversity’ that counter the perception of inclusion as restricted to only a specific area of ‘special education’. For many participants, work habits changed as they applied their learning to include a greater range of diversity in their home countries. While the initial impact appeared localised, there were positive indications for longer-term sustainability. This research may assist other educators from developing countries to maximise the benefit of participation in similar short course programmes.     

What should we do with our gut?

ABSTRACT

This article explores how breakthrough neuroscientific research regarding the Microbiome-Gut-Brain-Axis (MGBA) resonates with Catherine Malabou’s discussions of a delocalised, decentralised, plastic brain. Inspired by Malabou’s materialist methodology, as well as her confrontation of neuroscientific and psychoanalytic paradigms, the article unpacks the imbrication of symbolic and neuro-microbiological treatments of the gut and its excreta. Interlacing the thought of Julia Kristeva, Melanie Klein and Malabou alongside current MGBA research and critical studies of science and technology, I reveal how symbolic and microbial transmissions in early childhood development reflect a multimodal and multitemporal formation that challenges the established imaginary associated with functional gut and subject development. Secondly, I consider how MGBA research bears upon questions of difference, examining its further materialisation of Malabou’s otherness in a world without exteriority. Through this discussion I question the significance of this biological paradigm shift, as it disturbs notions of agency and the subject/environment distinction, opening to pressing ethical questions at this moment in human history. Through these varied interrogations and provocations, I provide a preliminary window into the potential of MGBA research to enable new departures for thinking the fragmentary movement of form and time underpinning Malabou’s motor schema of plasticity.     

Students’ Approaches to Summarisation

This paper considers the role that students’ approaches to learning play in summarising text, and in learning from summarisation. Students’ approaches to learning are characterised in terms of their relative reliance upon deep and surface processing. Two forms of summarisation are studied: the familiar text present summarisation, in which students have access to the text while summarising, and the less familiar text absent summarisation, in which students are warned that the text will be removed after they read it, but before they summarise it. It is predicted that text absent summarisation will facilitate deeper processing for students who normally adopt a deep approach and who are able to write competent summaries, and that these effects will be more apparent for the more difficult text. The results confirm the hypotheses and indicate that the two types of summarisation encourage different processes. Discussion focuses upon the relative merits of the approaches to learning and of the two forms of summarisation. It is concluded that the effects of students’ approaches to learning play a powerful role in summarisation, and need to be studied with respect to other learning activities.     

A typology of undergraduate students' conceptions of size and scale: Identifying and characterizing conceptual variation

The importance of “size and scale” in nanoscience and engineering has been recognized by both scientists and science educators. A solid understanding of this concept is key to the learning of nanoscience. Students, however, have been reported to have considerable difficulty grasping this concept; yet little is known regarding their state of understanding. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a series of studies that were aimed at exploring the different ways students conceive of “size and scale” in the context of undergraduate nanoscience and engineering courses. Informed by Variation Theory of Learning (Marton and Booth, 1997), we identified four major categories (with two sub‐categories within each) of student conception—fragmented, linear, proportional, and logarithmic. These conception categories, together with the aspects of variation that characterize and distinguish them, are summarized in a typology. In addition to serving as a diagnostic tool to describe students' understanding, this typology can also be used to guide the development of instructional interventions that facilitate students to move toward a more sophisticated understanding of “size and scale.” © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 512–533, 2011