Engineering education at a new public university in Brazil: first students’ contact with engineering methods

This paper describes the experience of an introductory discipline to the engineering curricula at the Brazilian Federal University of ABC (UFABC). The university offers a common basic curriculum that must be accomplished by every student and can be followed by professionalising courses. The discipline ‘Introduction to Engineering’ presents the basis of the engineering career, methods and thinking together with professional commitments and regulations. The objective is to help students to consciously choose their careers, minimising the precocity problem in deciding a professional future. The discipline methodology includes activities proposed by the TryEngineering website and from Brazilian engineering councils. Lectures with invited professors introduce UFABC engineering specialities: Aerospace, Bioengineering, Energy, Environmental & Urban, Information, Instrumentation & Automation & Robotics, Management, Materials. This paper reports the proposed activities, results obtained by the students, a methodology critical analysis and the impacts on the following steps of students embracing an engineering career.     

Internal structure of virtual communications in communities of inquiry in higher education: Phases,evolution and participants' satisfaction

This study investigates the phases of development of synchronous and asynchronous virtual communication produced in a community of inquiry (CoI) by analyzing the internal structure of each intervention in the forum and each chat session to determine the evolution of their social, cognitive and teaching character. It also analyzes the participating higher education students' satisfaction with the activities, with the professors' actions, and with themselves. We use a mixed methodology that includes content analysis of the virtual communications by crossing two categorization systems: (1) type of communication according to the model adopted from Garrison, Anderson and Archer (social, cognitive and teaching presence) and (2) phases in the evolution of the communication (initiation, proposal, development, opinion/closing and good‐byes). The data are relevant to the students' satisfaction and grades earned. The results suggest differences in the quantity and content of the communication in each phase and an evolution from social to cognitive elements, ending with social contributions. The students are satisfied with the virtual communications related to both the activities and the professors and evaluate themselves positively.     

跳远最佳起跳角并非45°

跳远选手在助跑后能获得一个很大的水平速度,在起跳阶段需要产生一个垂直速度。在理想情况下,运动员希望在不损失任何水平速度的情况下产生一个尽可能大的垂直速度。但事实上,这是不可能实现的。要想获得垂直速度就必须消耗一定的水平速度。产生的垂直速度越大,水平速度的损耗相应地也会越大。因此,在产生垂直速度和维持水平速度之间寻找一个度是至关重要的。一般情况下,著名教练员认为能够获得的垂直速度是相当有限的,适宜的起跳角一般在20o左右。这表明,在起跳时有40%的水平速度转化成垂直速度。但是,Mackenzie最近提出,跳远选手应采用更…     

Grading Multiple Choice Exams with Low-Cost and Portable Computer-Vision Techniques

Although technology for automatic grading of multiple choice exams has existed for several decades, it is not yet as widely available or affordable as it should be. The main reasons preventing this adoption are the cost and the complexity of the setup procedures. In this paper, Eyegrade, a system for automatic grading of multiple choice exams is presented. While most current solutions are based on expensive scanners, Eyegrade offers a truly low-cost solution requiring only a regular off-the-shelf webcam. Additionally, Eyegrade performs both mark recognition as well as optical character recognition of handwritten student identification numbers, which avoids the use of bubbles in the answer sheet. When compared with similar webcam-based systems, the user interface in Eyegrade has been designed to provide a more efficient and error-free data collection procedure. The tool has been validated with a set of experiments that show the ease of use (both setup and operation), the reduction in grading time, and an increase in the reliability of the results when compared with conventional, more expensive systems.     

Teaching for quality learning in chemistry

In Portugal, the number of students in higher education increased from 80,000 in 1975 to 381,000 in 2000 (a change from 11% to 53% in the age group 18–22), meaning a major change in the diversity of student population with consequences well known and studied in other countries. The teaching of chemistry at the University of Aveiro, for the first‐year students of science and engineering, has been subjected to continuous attention to implement quality and student‐centred approaches. The work devoted to excellence and deep learning by several authors has been carefully followed and considered. This communication reports research work on chemistry teaching, associated with those developments for first‐year students. The work included the design of strategies and the adoption of teaching and learning activities exploring ways to stimulate active learning by improving the quality of classroom interactions. In addition to regular lectures, large classes' teaching based on student‐generated questions was explored. In order to improve students' motivation and stimulate their curiosity, conference‐lectures were adopted to deal with selected topics of wide scientific, technological and social interest. Quantitative analysis and discussion of selected case studies, together with the organization of laboratory classes based on selected enquiry‐based experiments, planned and executed by students, stimulated deep learning processes. A sample of 32 students was followed in the academic year of 2000/01 and the results obtained are here discussed in comparison with those of a sample of 100 students followed in 2001/02. Particular attention was paid to the quality of classroom interactions, the use of questions by students and their views about the course design.     

The grammar school at the Cathedral of the Canary Islands (1563–1851)

From 1563 until the death of the last teacher in 1851, there was a prebendary in the Cathedral of the Canary Islands in charge of the education of children. In fact, it could be said that this prebendary was the only continuous secondary school teacher there was in the Canary Islands until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the High School of La Laguna was founded in the island of Tenerife. This member of the cathedral chapter was called ‘racionero’ in Spanish and his position ‘ración’. This article will examine this interesting Chair of Grammar from its venue to the teacher’s salary, the students, the teachers or the rights and duties of these teachers.     

Languages,cultural capital and school choice: distinction and second-language immersion programmes

This paper argues that languages, increasingly marginalised in schools in English-speaking countries, are gaining ‘elitist’ ground as part of the ‘value-added’ marketisation of schools and parents’ desire for their children to gain ‘positional goods’ through schooling. In arguing our case, the paper draws on survey and other data derived from second-language immersion programmes in two Queensland secondary schools, where key learning areas such as mathematics and science are taught through the medium of another language. As a corollary, we also argue that some schools – in our case, government schools – are using their immersion programmes as markers of distinction in a period of post-comprehensive schooling and emerging school markets, which includes both government and non-government schools. There is also a global policy context to such programmes in respect of countries such as Spain, China and Germany supporting the teaching of their respective languages in nations around the world.     

Scaring Them into Learning!? Using a Snake Screen to Enhance the Knowledge Transfer Effectiveness of a Web Interface

It seems that surprise events have the potential to turn short-term memories into long-term memories, an unusual phenomenon that may have limited but interesting applications in learning tasks. This surprise-enhanced cognition phenomenon is theoretically modeled based on the notion that many human mental traits have evolved through natural selection; a mathematical analysis building on Price's covariance theorem is employed in this modeling effort. Additionally, the phenomenon is discussed in the context of an online learning task, based on a study involving 186 student participants. A simulated threat was incorporated into a human–computer interface with the goal of increasing the interface's knowledge-transfer effectiveness. The participants were asked to review Web-based learning modules and subsequently take a test on what they had learned. Data from six learning modules in two experimental conditions were contrasted. In the treatment condition, a Web-based screen with a snake in attack position was used to surprise the participants; the snake screen was absent in the control condition. As predicted, the participants in the treatment condition did significantly better in the test for the modules immediately before and after the snake screen than the participants in the control condition. These findings are extrapolated to classroom applications in general. Ethical considerations are also discussed.     

Can Early Childhood Curriculum Enhance Social-Emotional Competence in Low-Income Children? A Meta-Analysis of the Educational Effects

Research Findings: This meta-analysis examined 29 (quasi-)experimental studies that involved low-income children ages 3 to 5 who might be subject to risks of academic failure and other negative outcomes. Compared to the controls, children who learned with social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula demonstrated significantly improved social-emotional competence, with an effect size or standardized mean difference of 0.241 (95% confidence interval [0.194, 0.287]). However, the use of other curricula that lacked an intensive focus on SEL yielded nonsignificant effects on the social-emotional competence of low-income children. Type of curriculum, fidelity of curriculum implementation, and duration of intervention were found to moderate the educational effects. Practice or Policy: The findings of this meta-analysis contribute to the growing body of empirical evidence on the positive effects of early SEL curricula and explain how curricula can produce social-emotional benefits for low-income children in their early years.