Constraint-Driven Software Design: An Escape From the Waterfall Model

This paper presents the principles of a development methodology for software design. The methodology is based on a nonlinear, product-driven approach that integrates quality aspects. The principles are made more concrete in two examples: one for developing educational simulations and one for developing expert systems. It is shown that the flexibility needed for building high quality systems leads to integrated development environments in which methodology, product and tools are closely attuned to each other. This “development process reengineering” can lead to significant improvements in the quality of the product in terms of both maintainability and performance enhancement of the people involved in the development process.     

Differences in influence: different types of university employees compared

Tertiary Education and Management - Changes, improvements and innovations in university organisations regularly end up in sluggish processes and get stuck ‘somewhere’ in the...     

Polysemy in the Domain-Specific Pedagogical Use of Graphs in Science Textbooks: The Case of an Electrocardiogram

Polysemy in graph-related practices is the phenomenon that a single graph can sustain different meanings assigned to it. Considerable research has been done on polysemy in graph-related practices in school science in which graphs are rather used as scientific tools. However, graphs in science textbooks are also used rather pedagogically to illustrate domain-specific textbook content and less empirical work has been done in this respect. The aim of this study is therefore to better understand polysemy in the domain-specific pedagogical use of graphs in science textbooks. From socio-cultural and cultural-historical perspectives, we perceive polysemy as irreducible to either the meaning-making (semiotic) resources provided by the graph or its readers who assign meaning to it. Departing from this framework, we simultaneously investigated: (a) the meanings 44 pre-university biology students assigned to the Cartesian plane of a graph that is commonly used as a pedagogical tool in Dutch high school biology textbooks (an electrocardiogram); (b) the semiotic resources provided by this graph; and (c) the educational practices of which it is supposedly a part according to the actions constituted by the textbooks that were to be conducted by students. Drawing on this case, we show polysemy in the pedagogical use of graphs in science textbooks. In turn, we show how this polysemy can be explained dialectically as the result of both the meaning-making resources provided by the textbooks and the graph-related practices in which students supposedly engaged by using their textbooks. The educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Publish and Yet Perish: Dutch Universities During the Last 30 Years

Dutch universities have gone through a terrible turmoil during the last 30 years. In retrospect it seems that the financial aspect has led the way of the changes. As far as administration goes, there was a change from a professorial dictatorship to a wholesale democracy and back again to a dictatorship, but now run by non-academic professionals. For the students, there was an increasing restriction of freedom, and for the researchers there were new regulations and requirements to be met every three or four years. During these years there has been a shameless and systematic attack on the quality of the university by the government to justify its financial treatment of the universities.     

Multilevel Boundary Crossing in a Professional Development School Partnership

This study aims to understand the recurrent challenges of professional development school (PDS) partnerships experienced by many countries. It does so by conceptualizing PDS partnerships as endeavors to cross institutionally and epistemologically developed boundaries between teacher education, schooling, and academic research. After introducing what we call a multilevel boundary crossing approach, we look at the startup years of one academic PDS partnership, scrutinizing the successive learning mechanisms that were evoked at the institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels. The case study narrative illustrates the multilevel nature of boundary crossing and reveals different learning mechanisms in different phases and at different levels. For example, whereas coordination initially occurred at all levels, transformation occurred in later years mainly at the intrapersonal level. The study sheds specific light on the intrapersonal level by showing the significant and challenging role of various brokers in establishing both horizontal and vertical connections across and within the organizations involved. Despite being important leaders of the partnerships’ activities, we observed how brokers prevented others from becoming more involved. We propose that partnerships should carefully consider the sort of learning processes they aspire to and can realistically expect at different levels and moments in time and accordingly consider how they want to position the various actors.     

Strategic Innovation in HE: The Roles of Academic Middle Managers

Tertiary Education and Management - This article explains the development of, and presents a theoretical framework for, harnessing the roles of the academic middle manager in strategic innovation...     

Exploratory learning with a computer simulation for control theory: Learning processes and instructional support

Computer simulations create a context that is well fitted for exploratory or discovery learning. The aim of the present two studies was to gain deeper insight into what constitutes exploratory learning and to assess the effects of a number of instructional support measures. The domain involved was control theory at the university level. In the first study we made an inventory of exploratory learning processes by observing 17 students working with a computer simulation and analyzing students' thinking-aloud protocols. Subjects received a structured assignment with hints as an instructional support measure. In the second study, 91 students received an open-ended assignment with instructional support that consisted of an information sheet and a set of fill-in forms. On both sheets and forms, six cells were presented. A cell was given for each of the following six learning processes: identifying variables and parameters, generating hypotheses, designing an experiment, predicting, interpreting data, and drawing of conclusions. Information sheets were either of a domain specific or of a general nature. The set of fill-in forms were either free or had the cell HYPOTHESIS already filled in. The statements of the students on the fill-in forms were analyzed in a stepwise order. Twenty-two detailed learning processes were identified and classified. Two of the main classes of processes are transformative and regulative. Both studies showed that students were reluctant to apply learning processes that are considered characteristic for exploratory learning. Furthermore, students had problems with the exploratory learning processes, especially with the processes of generating hypotheses, interpreting data, and drawing conclusions. Effects of the instructional support measures were not conclusive. Hints did not result in significant improvements of the study process. Supporting learning processes with information sheets appeared to help students in performing learning processes, but no different effects of domain specific and general information could be found. Students who were provided with hypotheses showed a higher global activity level and higher scores in domain correctness of their learning processes.     

Lexical processes in the recognition of Japanese horizontal and vertical compounds

This lexical decision eye-tracking study investigated whether horizontal and vertical readings elicit comparable behavioral patterns and whether reading directions modulate lexical processes. Response times and eye movements were recorded during a lexical decision task with Japanese bimorphemic compound words presented vertically. The data were then analyzed together with those obtained in a horizontal lexical decision experiment of Miwa, Libben, Dijkstra, and Baayen (2014). Linear mixed-effects analyses of response times and eye movements revealed that, although response times and first fixation durations were notably shorter in horizontal reading than vertical reading, the vertical reading elicited fewer fixations. Furthermore, while compounds were recognized largely in comparable ways regardless of reading direction, several lexical processes were found to be reading-direction-dependent. Particularly, processing of the first morpheme was modulated by reading direction in a late time frame, such that a horizontal reading advantage was observed for words with a high frequency first morpheme. All in all, the two reading directions do not only differ quantitatively in processing speed, but also qualitatively in terms of underlying processing mechanisms.     

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry–based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). These ILSs are built around STEM–related online laboratories. Within the Go-Lab ecosystem, teachers can combine these online laboratories with multimedia material and learning apps, which are small applications that support learners in their inquiry learning process. The Go-Lab ecosystem offers teachers ready–made structures, such as a standard inquiry cycle, alternative scenarios or complete ILSs that can be used as they are, but it also allows teachers to configure these structures to create personalized ILSs. For this article, we analyzed data on the design process and structure of 2414 ILSs that were (co)created by teachers and that our usage data suggest have been used in classrooms. Our data show that teachers prefer to start their design from empty templates instead of more domain–related elements, that the makeup of the design team (a single teacher, a group of collaborating teachers, or a mix of teachers and project members) influences key design process characteristics such as time spent designing the ILS and number of actions involved, that the characteristics of the resulting ILSs also depend on the type of design team and that ILSs that are openly shared (i.e., published in a public repository) have different characteristics than those that are kept private.