An Example Implementation of Schank’s Goal-Based Scenarios

The Goal-based Scenario method is a design model for applying simulations to instruction. This portfolio item describes an implementation of Goal-based Scenarios for the teaching of statistics. The application demonstrates how simulations can be contextualized and how they can allow learners to engage in legitimate inquiry in the pursuit of their instructional goals.     

Understanding creative cultural divergence: a Bakhtinian reflection from a culture-crossing scholar

I respond to Baron and Chen’s article on creative cultural divergence, which they describe as the novel pedagogy of diverging from culturally generated educational expectations. Their article provides an analysis on how an experienced Taiwanese teacher drew on different forms of creative cultural divergence to facilitate students’ critical thinking and science inquiry. To better understand the phenomenon of creative cultural divergence, I draw on Bakhtin’s concepts of outsideness, novelization, and internally persuasive discourse to analyze how these divergences are produced. These concepts not only help us to understand the phenomenon of creative cultural divergence, they also help me to reflect on my own culture-crossing experience. The implications of these concepts for culture and education are further discussed.     

Fostering High School Students’ Conceptual Understandings About Seasons: The Design of a Technology-enhanced Learning Environment

The purpose of this study is to understand in what ways a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment supports learning about the causes of the seasons. The environment was designed to engage students in five cognitive phases: Contextualisation, Sense making, Exploration, Modeling, and Application. Seventy-five high school students participated in this study and multiple sources of data were collected to investigate students’ conceptual understandings and the interactions between the design of the environment and students’ alternative conceptions. The findings show that the number of alternative conceptions held by students were reduced except for the incorrect concepts of “the length of sunshine” and “the distance between the sun and the earth.” The percentage of partial explanations held by students was also reduced from 60.5 to 55.3% and the percentage of students holding complete scientific explanations after using Lesson Seasons rose from 2.6 to 15.8%. While some students succeeded in modeling their science concepts closely to the expert’s concepts, some failed to do so after the invention. The unsuccessful students could not remediate their alternative conceptions without explicit guidance and scaffolding. Future research can then be focused on understanding how to provide proper scaffoldings for removing some alternative concepts which are highly resistant to change.

Output-feedback binary adaptive control of MIMO systems using monitoring function

The problem of adaptive control design for multivariable linear time-invariant plants with unknown control direction is considered. A solution is proposed based on the SDU factorization of the high frequency gain matrix (HFG) and the monitoring function approach. The adaptation scheme is the binary model reference adaptive control (BMRAC) which utilizes parameter projection and sufficiently high adaptation gains. The signs of the leading principal minors of the HFG define the control directions, and the lack of knowledge of which is a major challenge in the multivariable framework. The role of the monitoring function is to monitor the output error transient and then provide the necessary changes of the adaptation gain signs to guarantee a stable adaptive control. In addition to proving the signal boundedness of the resulting closed-loop system, the output tracking error is shown to be asymptotically as well as exponentially practically stable, i.e., exponentially stable with respect to a small residual compact set of size inversely proportional to the BMRAC adaptation gain. The latter implies good transient properties of the output tracking error in contrast to conventional adaptive laws which only guarantee asymptotic stability but can lead to extremely slow error convergence. The extension of the proposed approach to matched disturbances is also briefly discussed following the classical paradigm of disturbance estimators. Numerical results with a visual servoing application illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.     

吉祥草染色体核型的研究

Karyotype analysis for the species Reineckia carnea (Andr.) Kunth of the mo- notypic genus Reineckia Kunth is given for the first time. The number of chromosomes in root-tip cell was found to be 38, which is in accord with those reported by most of the pre- vious authors[5,7,8,9,11,12,]. The somatic complement shows a slight variation in size, i.e., the 2, 3, 5, 6, 7th pairs of the chromosomes have submedian constrictions, while the other pairs have median centromeres. The karyotype is therefore a rather symmetrical one, and accor- ding to the chromosomal terminology defined by Levan et al[4], the karyotype formula of the species is 2n=38=28 m+10 sm. In spite of the presence of two nucleoli in the te- lophase as observed by the authors and Noguchi[8] as well, the two corresponding Sat-chro- mosomes have not been found.  Photomicrograph of the chromosome complement and idiog- ram are given in Fig. 1 and 2 respectively.     

A simple and inexpensive enteric-coated capsule for delivery of acid-labile macromolecules to the small intestine

Understanding the ecology of the gastrointestinal tract and the impact of the contents on the host mucosa is emerging as an important area for defining both wellness and susceptibility to disease. Targeted delivery of drugs to treat specific small intestinal disorders such as small bowel bacterial overgrowth and targeting molecules to interrogate or to deliver vaccines to the remote regions of the small intestine has proven difficult. There is an unmet need for methodologies to release probes/drugs to remote regions of the gastrointestinal tract in furthering our understanding of gut health and pathogenesis. In order to address this concern, we need to know how the regional delivery of a surrogate labeled test compound is handled and in turn, if delivered locally as a liquid or powder, the dynamics of its subsequent handling and metabolism. In the studies we report on in this paper, we chose ¹³C sodium acetate (¹³C-acetate), which is a stable isotope probe that once absorbed in the small intestine can be readily measured non-invasively by collection and analysis of ¹³CO₂ in the breath. This would provide information of gastric emptying rates and an indication of the site of release and absorptive capacity. In a series of in vitro and in vivo pig experiments, we assessed the enteric-protective properties of a commercially available polymer EUDRAGIT®L100-55 on gelatin capsules and also on DRcaps®. Test results demonstrated that DRcaps®coated with EUDRAGIT®L100-55 possessed enhanced enteric-protective properties, particularly in vivo. These studies add to the body of knowledge regarding gastric emptying in pigs and also begin the process of gathering specifications for the design of a simple and cost-effective enteric-coated capsule for delivery of acid-labile macromolecules to the small intestine.     

An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers

The purpose of the study is to investigate the popular assumption that the “digital natives” generation surpasses the previous “digital immigrants” generation in terms of their technology experiences, because they grow up with information and communication technology. The assumption presumes that teachers, the digital immigrants, are less technology savvy than the digital natives, resulting in a disconnect between students’ technology experiences inside and outside of the formal school setting. To examine the intersection of these generations and their technology experiences, this study used a mixed-methods approach to survey and compare middle school science teachers’ (n = 24) and their students’ (n = 1,060) inside–outside school technology experiences, and conducted focus group interviews to investigate any barriers that prevented them from using technology in school. The findings imply that the concept of digital natives may be misleading and that the disconnect between students’ inside–outside school technology experiences may be the result of the lack of sufficient teacher training concerning technology integration strategies.     

Impact of participation in extra-curricular activities during college on graduate employability: an empirical study of graduates of Taiwanese business schools

This study examined college graduates’ evaluations of their employability skills associated with graduate participation in various extra-curricular activities including being a core member of: (a) student government (such as student councils), (b) service (such as scouts clubs), (c) sports, (d) music and (e) arts clubs. The final sample comprised 28,768 business school graduates who hoped to enter the workforce immediately upon graduating in the 2008 school year. Results from propensity score matching analyses demonstrated that students who had been core members of extra-curricular activities were more likely to positively evaluate their communication, leadership, creativity and self-promotion skills. Furthermore, results suggested that different types of extra-curricular activities could unequally influence the employability of graduating college students. Leadership skills benefited most from involvement in sports clubs, while creativity skills benefited most from involvement in music clubs. Communication and self-promotion skills benefited moderately from all extra-curricular activities. Unlike other employability skills, the time management skills of students hardly benefited from extra-curricular activities.