Assessing reading skills by means of paper-and-pencil lexical decision: Issues of reliability,repetition, and word-pseudoword ratio

This study focused on the feasibility of agroup-administered paper-and-pencil lexical-decisiontest as a plausible alternative or supplementary tool for the assessment of readingskills. Lexical-decision tests and oral-readingtests were administered to 130 Dutch studentsfrom primary grades 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. Correlations were moderate to high in low grades, butdeclined in the high grades. The reliability ofthe lexical-decision test assessed by means ofa test--retest procedure was generally good. Asecond presentation of the lexical-decisiontest caused repetition effects (i.e., betterperformance on the second test), but generallyremained within reasonable limits. The presenceof different numbers of pseudowords (25%vs. 75%) in both lexical decision and oralreading, indicated that a large number ofpseudowords made oral reading harder, butlexical decision easier. Educational andclinical implications are discussed.     

The effect of emphasising the realistic modelling complexity in the text or picture on pupils’ realistic solutions of P-items

We investigated the effect of emphasising the realistic modelling complexity in text or in the accompanying picture on the solution of P-items, in relation to pupils’ grade. 290 pupils from the 5th and 6th grade of various elementary schools in Flanders (Belgium) made a paper-and-pencil task with 7 word problems that are problematic from a realistic modelling perspective (so-called P-items). Pupils were divided in four conditions, involving the four combinations of the two above-mentioned task variables. Their reactions to the P-items were coded as realistic or non-realistic. We found a relatively small but significant effect of emphasising the realistic modelling complexity in the text of the P-items on the number of realistic reactions, whereas no effect was observed for the accentuation of that complexity in the picture nor for the interaction of the two manipulated task variables. Theoretical and educational implications of these results are discussed.     

Crossing the midline: limits of early eye-hand behavior.

The development of the ability to extend the hand across the body midline to contact a visually presented object was examined in 48 normal, full-term, 9--20-week infants. One of the infant's arms was restrained while the behavior of the contralateral, unrestrained arm was observed. Results indicate that infants can first contact objects placed in front of the ipsilateral shoulder, then at the body midline, and later in front of the contralateral shoulder. Between 9 and 17 weeks, success at contacting objects at the midline progressed from 33% to 93%. During this interval, the success in contacting objects presented in front of the contralateral shoulder increased from 0% to 71%. By 18--20 weeks, all infants contacted objects in all three positions. These findings indicate that visually directed hand extension and reaching skills progress from the ipsilateral to include the bilateral and later the contralateral domains. The results are considered in regard to the development of bilateral coordination and complementarity.     

Enhancing problem-solving expertise by means of an authentic, collaborative, computer supported and problem-based course

Instructional designs, embedding learning in meaningful contexts such as problem-based learning (PBL) are increasingly used for fostering expertise to prepare students for the demands of the future workplace. However, cognitive outcomes of these curricula in terms of expertise outcomes are not always conclusive. Based on the instructional implications resulted from research in the field of expertise development in general and in PBL curricula more specifically, we constructed and implemented a refined PBL design. With this redesign, we aimed for a more advanced level of (a) knowledge acquisition and use, (b) reasoning directionality, (c) diagnostic and problem solving accuracy. The aim of the present research was to compare the outcomes of a ‘traditional’ and a ‘refined’ PBL learning environment. For that purpose we measured the effects of the redesign on the students’ expertise profile. An experiment was conducted in a second year course on International Marketing. In the study 75 students participated. Using a multidimensional coding scheme, constructed on the basis of results of expertise research, we analysed students’ problem-solving performance. The results of this analysis indicate hat the experimental students outperformed the control students in various aspects of expertise when analyzing the problem: The experimental group demonstrated a more extensive use of domain-specific concepts and inferences, more inductive reasoning, and both diagnoses and solutions of higher quality.     

First-year university students’ academic success: the importance of academic adjustment

Considering the pivotal role of academic adjustment for student success, it is important to gain insight into how several motivational and behavioural factors affect academic adjustment and the extent to which academic adjustment influences student success. This empirical study investigated how intrinsic motivation, academic self-efficacy, self-regulated study behaviour and satisfaction with the chosen degree programme influenced academic adjustment in university and how these variables and adjustment affected three important indicators of student success: grade point average (GPA), attained number of credits (ECTS) and intention to persist. The sample consisted of 243 first-year university students in the Netherlands. Structural equation modelling showed that academic adjustment was influenced by intrinsic motivation, self-regulated study behaviour and degree programme satisfaction, which together explained 72% of the variance in adjustment. Motivational and behavioural variables did not influence GPA and credits directly but through academic adjustment. Furthermore, only satisfaction with the degree programme predicted intention to persist. These results point to the importance of academic adjustment in predicting university GPA and credits and the pivotal role of satisfaction with the degree programme in predicting intention to persist. Universities could integrate the development of self-regulated study skills—the biggest contributor to academic adjustment—in the first-year programme. Moreover, looking at the importance of students’ satisfaction with the programme, communication and collaboration between secondary schools and universities should be enhanced in order to help students to choose a university degree programme that matches their abilities, interests and values.     

Leadership for team learning: the case of university teacher teams

Teacher team involvement is considered a key factor in achieving sustainable innovation in higher education. This requires engaging in team learning behaviors that should result in new knowledge and solutions. However, university teachers are not used to discussing their work practices with one another and tend to neglect any innovation in their tasks. Team leadership behavior is often considered essential for stimulating team learning behavior, but it is unclear how this transpires. Therefore, the present study explores university teacher team members’ perceptions of team learning behavior, their assigned task, and leadership behaviors in their team. Interviews were conducted with 16 members of different teacher teams at a university of applied sciences. Findings included that the vast majority of the team learning behaviors only involved sharing ideas; engaging in constructive conflicts and co-constructions was not observed. Only a few teams combined all three team learning behaviors. In these teams, members observed that existing methods and solutions were no longer adequate, with leaders appearing to combine transformational and transactional behaviors, but operating from a distance without actively interfering in the process. Furthermore, these team members shared leadership behaviors while focusing on the team as a whole, instead of solving problems at individual level. This strongly indicates that task perception and specific vertical and shared team leadership behaviors play a role in stimulating teachers in seeking controversy and co-constructing new knowledge.     

Scaling up from the Pioneers: The TeleTOP Method at the University of Twente

At the Faculty of Educational Science and Technology, University of Twente, in The Netherlands, pioneer faculty members have been making innovative use of WWW-based course support sites since 1994. By 1996, seven instructors were active; by the first part of 1999 more than half the faculty were involved, and the rest will be joining soon (in a systematic plan, all the first-year courses in 1998, the second-year courses and many of the senior electives in 1999, etc). In addition we are working with other faculties, to support the same progression. How are we doing this? In this article, the TeleTOP method (http://teletop.edte.utwente.nl) will be described, showing clearly how it has developed based on an implementation model and the experience we had already acquired with innovative use of the WWW for our courses. The eight aspects of the TeleTOP method, including the pedagogical principles, the change strategies, the instructor-engagement strategies, and the technology, wi ll be described, and illustrated with examples from the courses that have now been redesigned. In particular, results after the first year in terms of usage, of instructional choices made by the instructors, of the diversity of instructional approaches that are supported, of the on-going formative evaluation, and of the adaptation of the TeleTOP method for another faculty with a different pedagogical culture will be given. The applicability of the TeleTOP method to other faculties and settings is discussed.     

Cross-language information retrieval models based on latent topic models trained with document-aligned comparable corpora

In this paper, we study different applications of cross-language latent topic models trained on comparable corpora. The first focus lies on the task of cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). The Bilingual Latent Dirichlet allocation model (BiLDA) allows us to create an interlingual, language-independent representation of both queries and documents. We construct several BiLDA-based document models for CLIR, where no additional translation resources are used. The second focus lies on the methods for extracting translation candidates and semantically related words using only per-topic word distributions of the cross-language latent topic model. As the main contribution, we combine the two former steps, blending the evidences from the per-document topic distributions and the per-topic word distributions of the topic model with the knowledge from the extracted lexicon. We design and evaluate the novel evidence-rich statistical model for CLIR, and prove that such a model, which combines various (only internal) evidences, obtains the best scores for experiments performed on the standard test collections of the CLEF 2001–2003 campaigns. We confirm these findings in an alternative evaluation, where we automatically generate queries and perform the known-item search on a test subset of Wikipedia articles. The main importance of this work lies in the fact that we train translation resources from comparable document-aligned corpora and provide novel CLIR statistical models that exhaustively exploit as many cross-lingual clues as possible in the quest for better CLIR results, without use of any additional external resources such as parallel corpora or machine-readable dictionaries.     

Telepresence and the Exemplification Effects of Disaster News

Exemplification theory (Zillmann, 1999 Zillmann , D. (1999). Exemplification theory: Judging the whole by the sum of its parts. Media Psychology , 1, 69–94.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], 2002 Zillmann , D. ( 2002 ). Exemplification theory of media influence . In J. Bryant &; D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research ( , 2nd ed. , pp. 213 – 245 ). Mahwah , NJ : LEA . [Google Scholar]; Zillmann &; Brosius, 2000 Zillmann , D. , &; Brosius , H.-B. ( 2000 ). Exemplification in communication: The influence of case reports on the perception of issues . Mahwah , NJ : LEA . [Google Scholar]) suggests exemplar representations in media content may cause people to make overestimated judgments about phenomena included in this content. The current study sought to examine the role telepresence plays in increasing this exemplification effect. Two-hundred and seventeen participants viewed a news story about Hurricane Katrina using one of three channels: HDTV, NTSC, or on an iPod. Data were consistent with predictions as participants who experienced greater spatial presence and perceptual realism while watching this news story reported increased judgments of the severity of hurricanes and also reported a greater likelihood to engage in behaviors associated with hurricanes. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The development of students’ use of additive and proportional methods along primary and secondary school

This study investigates the development of proportional and additive methods along primary and secondary school. In particular, it simultaneously investigates the use of additive methods in proportional word problems and the use of proportional methods in additive word problems. We have also studied the role played by integer and non-integer relationships between the given numbers and the nature of quantities (discrete or continuous) in the development of these phenomena. A test consisting of additive and proportional missing-value word problems was solved by 755 primary and secondary school students (from fourth to tenth grade). The findings indicate that the use of additive methods in proportional situations increased during primary school and decreased during secondary school, whereas the use of proportional methods in additive situations increased along primary and secondary school. Moreover, the presence or absence of integer ratios strongly affects this behavior, but the nature of quantities only has a small influence on the use of proportional methods.