Multimodality,learning and decision-making: children's metacognitive reflections on their engagement with video games as interactive texts

This study examines how 31 middle-school children conducted multimodal analyses of video games. Over four consecutive days, students played video games for 30 minutes and then wrote written reflections about the multimodal symbols within the game and how these symbols influenced their interpretation and decision-making processes during gameplay. Students produced 124 reflections in total, which were analysed via template analysis to determine how children metacognitively reflected on different types of multimodal symbols and used those symbols to comprehend the games and make decisions. Results illustrate how students engaged in metacognitive semantic and syntactic processes with a variety of multimodal symbols, such as written language, dynamic visuals and abstract symbols, during gameplay that aided their understanding of the games and influenced their decisions. This study contributes to the limited empirical research on video game literacies and illustrates children's meaning-making processes while engaged with video games as multimodal interactive texts.     

Carl Linnaeus,Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward: Botanical Poetry and Female Education

This article will explore the intersection between ‘literature’ and ‘science’ in one key area, the botanical poem with scientific notes. It reveals significant aspects of the way knowledge was gendered in the Enlightenment, which is relevant to the present-day education of girls in science. It aims to illustrate how members of the Lichfield Botanical Society (headed by Erasmus Darwin) became implicated in debates around the education of women in Linnaean botany. The Society’s translations from Linnaeus inspired a new genre of women’s educational writing, the botanical poem with scientific notes, which emerged at this time. It focuses in particular on a poem by Anna Seward and argues that significant problems regarding the representation of the Linnaean sexual system of botany are found in such works and that women in the culture of botany struggled to give voice to a subject which was judged improper for female education. The story of this unique poem and the surrounding controversies can teach us much about how gender impacted upon women’s scientific writing in eighteenth century Britain, and how it shaped the language and terminology of botany in works for female education. In particular, it demonstrates how the sexuality of plants uncovered by Linnaeus is a paradigmatic illustration of how societal forces can simultaneously both constrict and stimulate women’s involvement in science. Despite the vast changes to women’s access in scientific knowledge of the present day, this ‘fair sexing’ of botany illustrates the struggle that women have undergone to give voice to their botanical knowledge.     

Understanding the concept of the entrepreneurial university from the perspective of higher education models

Over the last few decades, globalization and ever-increasing demands of the knowledge-based economy have caused higher education in most countries around the world to undergo significant transformation. Notwithstanding the dramatic changes in higher education, it is clearly noticed that the influence of the European higher education models is still present despite the fact that the American model has then become dominant on higher education in Europe or even worldwide. The changes have been seen in the evolutionary roles of universities, which share the common trend from traditional missions of teaching and research to the third mission for economic development. Despite various viewpoints about the third mission, the common one concerns the entrepreneurial role of university for socio-economic development, underlying the concept of entrepreneurial university in which the collaboration between university and external stakeholders is emphasized. This paper is aimed to present a review of the taxonomy of the three European higher education models, namely the Humboldtian, Napoleonic, and Anglo-Saxon model, which is followed by a discussion on the emergence of the Anglo-American model of higher education. The paper then presents the third mission in relation to the roles of a university in developed countries, which is followed by the elaboration on the transformation from mode 1 to mode 2 in knowledge production, and a pathway toward entrepreneurial universities.     

Generalized conditioned flavor aversions: Effects of toxicosis training with one flavor on the preference for different novel flavors

In two experiments, experimental rats were trained to have strong aversions to one of 10 novel-flavored solutions through contingent lithium injections; control rats were injected with lithium in the absence of prior consumption. Each animal was then tested with each of the 10 solutions, and the preferences of the experimental rats and the control rats were compared. A generalization gradient of the aversion to each conditioned aversive flavor was obtained for each test flavor.     

A Teacher’s Mediation of a Thinking-Aloud Discussion in a 6th Grade Mathematics Classroom

This article presents a Vygotsky-inspired analysis of how a teacher mediated a “thinking aloud” whole-group discussion in a 6th grade mathematics classroom. This discussion centered on finding patterns in a triangular array of consecutive numbers as a phase towards building recursive and direct algebraic formulas. By a “thinking aloud” discussion we mean a conversation wherein students exchange and further develop ideas-in-the-making with their peers under the teacher’s guidance. Drawing upon Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL), we treated the selected discussion as a text. We then analyzed how the teacher mediated the conjoined making of this text so that it served as an interpersonal gateway for students to practice searching for patterns and signifying these patterns in propositional form. This analysis was guided by the following questions: How did the discussion as a text-in-the-making mean what it did? What was the role of the teacher in the conjoined making of this text? Our study illustrates the power of SFL for capturing the inner grammar of instructional conversations thus illuminating the complexities and subtleties of the teacher’s role in mediating semiotic mediation in mathematics classrooms.     

Action learning guided by Tao for lifelong learning

Information Technology brings about rapid changes in working environment, quickly rendering skills and knowledge gained in formal learning institutions obsolete. Even as they prepare students for their first career, institutions also need to equip students with skills necessary for lifelong learning. The Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore has accordingly structured its curricula into Academic Studies and General Studies where the former focuses on core subjects (broad based knowledge-specific studies), and the latter on general knowledge (multi-disciplines catering to various interests for lifelong benefits). A 12-week course, ‘Introduction to Tao for Effective Action Learning’ which focuses on learning processes was developed and has been taught by the author, for undergraduates at NTU since July 2001. The course materials were derived from the author's Ph.D. thesis ‘The Tao of Action Learning’ (Sam, 2000). This paper explains the nature of the action learning programme at NTU and includes one account from participant students.     

EXPLORES教学模式探析与应用研究

培养具有创新意识,能综合运用所学科学理论和技术手段,具备分析并解决工程问题能力的未来工程师,教学与社会需求紧密集合,缩小从学校步入企业的差距感,是美国辛辛那提大学学者提出的EXPLORES教学理念的核心思想。该文探讨了堆于知识泛化、自主解决问题、工程项目驱动的教学模式。以数字化制造教学为例,打造具有代表性的企业数字化制造车间模拟环境,打破课程界限,引入具有实际工程背景的项目,通过分组合作方式,展开教学实践。以期提高学生对实际工程领域中机械制造技术的认知,使教学更贴近社会需求。为促进学生从高校到工程技术岗位上的无缝转变提供建议与参考。     

Telecommunications

Rufus P. Turner's The Illustrated Dictionary of Electronics (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1980---$19.95/14.95)

Sam Fedida and Rex Malik's The Viewdata Revolution (New York: John Wiley, 1980--- $34.95)

The latest from the Harvard Program on Information Resources Policy (200 Aiken, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138)