Engineering curricula in sustainable development. An evaluation of changes at Delft University of Technology

This paper will first sketch some basic features of the engineering profession, and the need for change. It will analyse the political process that resulted in the decision at Delft University of Technology (DUT) to emphasise Sustainable Development (SD) in its curricula. The main goal of this education is to show that SD is not a burden, but a challenge to contribute to as an engineer. It will describe the changes in the engineering curriculum that were implemented and give a preliminary evaluation of these changes. The changes encompassed: ? a 3 ECTS compulsory training module “Technology in Sustainable Development”,

? implementing SD issues in existing courses and design work, and

? the development of a special MSc graduation certificate.

     

Teacher beliefs and teacher behaviour in portfolio assessment

This study concerns the relation between teachers’ beliefs towards teaching behaviour and their actual teaching behaviour in teacher portfolio assessment. We analysed the beliefs and behaviour of 18 teachers as described in their portfolios. In addition, each portfolio was independently assessed by two trained raters on eight content standards and the teachers’ classroom behaviour was assessed by their own students in a questionnaire (n=317). Linear multilevel analysis showed that part of the raters’ assessments of the teachers’ beliefs and their behaviour as described in their portfolios was significantly related to the students’ assessments of their teachers’ behaviour. Teachers with high raters’ assessments on the content standard about ‘choosing and arguing for teaching strategies that meet students’ knowledge, abilities and experience’ had significantly higher student assessments than teachers who were judged low on this standard. Implications of the results and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Selection of journals for Index Medicus: a historical review

From the inception of the first Index Medicus, published in 1879, to the present, the National Library of Medicine has been concerned with the quality of journals in the Index. The Library has, therefore, sought advice repeatedly on how best to maintain currency of the Index without sacrificing quality and subject matter balance.Responding to suggestions, the Library decided in June 1964 to base its selection of journals on recommendations made by a panel consisting primarily of extramural consultants widely regarded as specialists in the totality of biomedical literature. Beginning with its first meeting in September 1964, this panel has been fortified in its reviews by advice from subject matter specialists. The panel, by its own wishes, which bear the endorsement of the Board of Regents of the Library, will continue to rely heavily on such expert advice in future evaluations of journals.     

Designing electronic collaborative learning environments

Electronic collaborative learning environments for learning and working are in vogue. Designers design them according to their own constructivist interpretations of what collaborative learning is and what it should achieve. Educators employ them with different educational approaches and in diverse situations to achieve different ends. Students use them, sometimes very enthusiastically, but often in a perfunctory way. Finally, researchers study them and—as is usually the case when apples and oranges are compared—find no conclusive evidence as to whether or not they work, where they do or do not work, when they do or do not work and, most importantly, why, they do or do not work. This contribution presents an affordance framework for such collaborative learning environments; an interaction design procedure for designing, developing, and implementing them; and an educational affordance approach to the use of tasks in those environments. It also presents the results of three projects dealing with these three issues.     

Two uses of anaphora resolution in summarization

We propose a new method for using anaphoric information in Latent Semantic Analysis (lsa), and discuss its application to develop an lsa-based summarizer which achieves a significantly better performance than a system not using anaphoric information, and a better performance by the rouge measure than all but one of the single-document summarizers participating in DUC-2002. Anaphoric information is automatically extracted using a new release of our own anaphora resolution system, guitar, which incorporates proper noun resolution. Our summarizer also includes a new approach for automatically identifying the dimensionality reduction of a document on the basis of the desired summarization percentage. Anaphoric information is also used to check the coherence of the summary produced by our summarizer, by a reference checker module which identifies anaphoric resolution errors caused by sentence extraction.     

Interactive Instruction to Prevent Attention Problems in Class

This article reports the development and implementation of a strategy designed to bring persistent attention problems in class (off-task behaviour) under the control of teachers and students. The strategy enables the teacher to recognise the demotivating meaning that a task situation can have for a student. By pinpointing this situation in short dialogues with the student, the teacher encourages the student to make his or her own task proposal with the intention of turning the task into a feasible challenge. The strategy was designed from a cognitive-motivational interpretation of attention problems, and it is given shape in four programs for elementary schools. The theoretical frame of reference, the characteristics of the strategy, and the implementation of the programs are set out. Furthermore, an evaluation study is reported. The results indicate that teachers using the strategy can deal more effectively with students who have task behaviour problems. The students' on-task behaviour in this study increased in units of time from 60–70%. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

From student to teacher: reducing practice shock and early dropout in the teaching profession

SUMMARY Shortage of teachers is one of the major challenges facing the teaching profession. One of its causes is the high proportion of dropout in initial teacher education and during the start of the career. Since 1995, a nation-wide project has been underway in the Netherlands, aiming at a decrease of dropout by incorporating an intensive practice period in the final year of the initial teacher training programme. An evaluation of the project shows that the practice shock and the resulting dropout rate were indeed reduced. Relevant factors seem to be the degree to which student teachers were accepted and deployed in the school, the supervision and mentoring provided, encouragement of reflection, and the gradual increase of independence.     

Social Aspects of CSCL Environments: A Research Framework

Although there are research findings supporting the positive effects of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), problems have been reported regarding the learning process itself, group formation, and group dynamics. These problems can be traced back to impeded social interaction between group members. Social interaction is necessary (a) for group members to learn from each other in a CSCL environment and (b) for socioemotional processes to help create a social space where trust, sense of community, and strong interpersonal relationships exist. This article introduces a theoretical framework consisting of three core elements: sociability, social space, and social presence, along with their relationships with group members’ mental models, social affordances and learning outcomes. It postulates that the three core elements influence the social interaction needed for both learning and the emergence of a social space. This framework serves as a basis for a research agenda for systematic social CSCL research.