Hasse,Cathrine (2015) An anthropology of learning. Springer (Berlin) isbn 978‐94‐017‐9605‐7 320 pp £90 (ebook £72) http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789401796057#

This book combines cultural models with practice‐based learning to develop a new theory of cultural learning. Drawing on insights from anthropology, it argues how collective and social cultures can emerge from an “engaged” learning process. The book opens a new window on human learning; however, you will probably find only parts of it of some interest or use. Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan     

A case study of a college-wide first-year undergraduate engineering course

Introductory engineering courses are either programme specific or expose students to engineering as a broad discipline by including materials from various engineering programmes. A common introductory engineering course that spans different engineering programmes raises challenges, including the high cost of resources as well as the lack of background courses of first-year students. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a first-year common engineering course that uses low-cost materials to expose students to a structured engineering design process. The course is explicitly designed to satisfy the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology criteria for engineering programmes. Our experience with the course shows that not only students are able to follow a structured design process successfully but we also believe that most of the ABET criteria are being delivered through the course.     

Adaptive output feedback neural network control of uncertain non-affine systems with unknown control direction

This paper deals with the problem of adaptive output feedback neural network controller design for a SISO non-affine nonlinear system. Since in practice all system states are not available in output measurement, an observer is designed to estimate these states. In comparison with the existing approaches, the current method does not require any information about the sign of control gain. In order to handle the unknown sign of the control direction, the Nussbaum-type function is utilized. In order to approximate the unknown nonlinear function, neural network is firstly exploited, and then to compensate the approximation error and external disturbance a robustifying term is employed. The proposed controller is designed based on strict-positive-real (SPR) Lyapunov stability theory to ensure the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. Finally, two simulation studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed scheme.     

Engendering a culture of thinking in a culture of performativity: the challenge of mediating tensions in the Singaporean educational system

Among the major policies that have been implemented to ensure its continued success, Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) has been described as the ‘big bang of educational reforms’ in Singapore. However, while the policy aims to develop critical thinkers in school leavers, the corporatisation of education in the shape of structures such as the school excellence model seems to be at odds with TSLN. This paper argues that these structures unwittingly engender a culture of performativity among schools, marginalising the central outcome of its initiative that entails developing a culture of thinking and thinkers. The tension is further exacerbated by the larger rationalities that have shaped Singapore and the pragmatic and instrumental philosophy which underpins its educational system. The tensions generated by the clash between intended (culture of thinking) and engendered culture (culture of performativity) present the challenge of mediation for the system on its path to realising TSLN.     

Examining Competition in Ontario’s Higher Education Market

Financial challenges have forced many publicly funded academic institutions in Ontario to adopt a corporate model and to use market tools to compete in the higher education market and maintain their enrolment and revenue levels. This study has analyzed how competition affects publicly funded universities in Ontario. Competition was examined by relating universities’ expenditures on price and non-price competitive variables (awards, marketing, graduates, and professors), as well as population to the total number of applicants, total number of enrollees, and capacity filling ratio over the period of 2006–2013. The study used quantitative research design and panel data regression method to draw conclusions. This study provides empirical evidence on how the effect of the adopted competitive variables varies for each university.     

H∞ dynamic observer-based fuzzy integral sliding mode control with input magnitude and rate constraints

This paper focuses on a systematic constrained fuzzy integral sliding mode controller design for a class of uncertain discrete-time nonlinear systems which can be represented as Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy models. The contributions are to consider constraints on the control input amplitude and control input amplitude rate and to extend the existing pole-placement design technique for designing gain matrices of the fuzzy sliding surface. Moreover, a dynamic-gain observer along with ${\mathit{H}}_{\infty }$ performance is proposed for attenuating disturbance, which generalizes the existing results on the Proportional Observer (PO), the Proportional Integral Observer (PIO) and the dynamic observer (DO). Finally, the dynamic-observer-based constrained fuzzy integral sliding mode controller is designed. All the proposed design conditions are represented in terms of LMIs-based ones. The methods are studied for not only single-input single-output (SISO) but also multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. In the end, the proposed approaches are evaluated on practical and numerical systems to illustrate the superiority of the proposed control scheme.     

A systematic review of research on cheating in online exams from 2010 to 2021

Education and Information Technologies - In recent years, online learning has received more attention than ever before. One of the most challenging aspects of online education is the students'...     

Examining the antecedents of e-loyalty intention in an online reservation environment

Online reservation has increased significantly in recent years. Understanding how customers behave towards this technology is considered to be important to interested parties, such as travel agencies and tourism marketing managers, in order to enable them to improve their marketing strategies, which would, in turn, allow them to retain their customers. This paper presents findings about the antecedents of e-loyalty intention towards online reservation among 288 respondents in the United Arab Emirates. The research examines the role of e-service quality, hedonic and utilitarian values, satisfaction, and subjective norms in motivating loyalty intention towards online reservation. The results show that e-service quality has a significant influence on hedonic and utilitarian values, which, in turn, affect customer satisfaction. Moreover, satisfaction and subjective norms positively affect e-loyalty intention towards online reservation.     

An interdisciplinary overview and intelligent control of human prosthetic eye movements system for the emotional support by a huggable pet-type robot from a biomechatronical viewpoint

Despite active research and significant progress in the last three decades on control of human eye movements, it remains challenging issue due to its applications in prosthetic eyes and robotics. Till now, no considerable investigation of this subject is presented in the interdisciplinary sciences. The goal of this paper is to present a distinguished survey of existing literature on the intelligent control of the human eye movements system applied in a huggable pet-type robot as a biomechatronic system.In this study, the basic knowledge of human eye movements control is explained to show how the neural networks in the brainstem control the human eye movements. The geometry and model of human eye movements system are investigated and this system is considered as a nonlinear control system. The specified model may only be an academic exercise. It can have scientific importance in understanding of the human movement system in general. Also, it can be useful for robotics.Intelligent methods such as artificial neural networks and fuzzy neural networks are proposed to control the human eye movements and numerical simulations are presented. It is discussed that the intelligent controls applied to control of human eye movements system are emulated from the neural controls in biological system.