The use of public learning diaries in blended learning

Learning diaries—as we employ them—are students’ written reflections of their learning experiences and outcomes over the course of university seminars. The writing of such diaries is ‘tutored’ by a computer program: eHELp supports the writing of sophisticated learning diaries through a modelling and scaffolding of the phases of planning, production and revision. In addition, the learning diaries get published—by uploading them in a cooperation platform—so that the learners can read and discuss their peers’ diaries. The main function of such public learning diaries is to enrich traditional university courses (Blended Learning) with additional elaborative, organisational, critical reasoning, and metacognitive activities in order to foster a deeper processing and better retention of the contents to be learnt. We would like to present the educational rationale of our approach and report the findings of corresponding empirical studies.     

Border crossings: Research training, knowledge dissemination and the transformation of academic work

At the crossroads of current innovation policies towards a European Research Area (ERA) and a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) lies an important province of higher learning and research: doctoral training and the further careers of PhD graduates. A considerable number of higher education systems across Europe shift their paradigms for doctoral training away from the traditional so-called Humboldtian model towards the so-called professional model. On this background, the paper discusses (1) the German pattern of a strong link of the PhD to the labor market outside academe that is based on a traditional academic-disciplinary mode of apprenticeship training, and (2) approaches that argue for a new mode of knowledge production replacing an academic-disciplinary model of research training by a hybrid model that crosses disciplinary and organizational borders. The paper argues that a diversity of organisational and structural forms as well as different validation criteria and procedures will probably determine the future face of research training.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Editorial

     

Der Mathematikunterricht der PISA-Schülerinnen und -Schüler

Der Beitrag besch?ftigt sich mit dem Mathematikunterricht der PISA-Schülerinnen und -Schüler in Deutschland und berichtet über Ergebnisse aus einer Zusatzstudie zu PISA 2003. Aufbauend auf der mathematik-didaktischen Rahmenkonzeption von PISA, die Unterricht als Gelegenheitsstruktur für verst?ndnisvolle Lernprozesse versteht, wurden Schülerinnen und Schüler und ihre Mathematiklehrkr?fte zu Merkmalen der Unterrichtsqualit?t befragt. Es zeigen sich schulformspezifische Unterrichtskulturen: Ein kognitiv aktivierender Umgang mit mathematischen Inhalten ist eher in Gymnasien zu beobachten, w?hrend vor allem in Hauptschulen die Unterrichtsform mit geringem kognitiven Gehalt und ausgepr?gter Unterstützung überwiegt. Dennoch wird die Angebotsstruktur des Mathematikunterrichts von Jugendlichen an Hauptschulen positiv beurteilt, w?hrend Gymnasiasten ihren Unterricht eher kritisch bewerten. Diese Differenzen sind vor allem durch Unterschiede in der individuellen Lernunterstützung durch die Lehrkr?fte zu erkl?ren, welche von Schülerinnen und Schülern an Hauptschulen als besonders ausgepr?gt, an Gymnasien eher als gering beschrieben wird.     

港口平仓散粮堆存工艺改进方案的研究

根据港口的平房仓库结构及港口机械的特性,分析了港口平房仓库散粮的堆存能力,提出了平房仓库散粮堆高工艺改进方案。     

How to sustainably increase students’ willingness to protect pollinators

The current loss of biodiversity requires efforts to increase awareness of pollinator conservation. An important tool is education which often uses the honeybee (Apis mellifera) as an exemplary organism to reach this goal. Any successful module needs to focus on reducing the perceived danger associated with fear, in order to support the willingness to protect them. Using a quasi-experimental design, we investigated the effectiveness of two educational approaches: one by authentically encountering living animals at a beehive, the other by using a remote online beehive. We monitored secondary school students’ (N = 354) perception of bees with respect to interest, danger and conservation as well as situational emotions (interest, well-being, boredom) during both interventions. In both cases positive effects on perception levels were observed, even when already a high willingness to protect bees existed. Using living animals in educational settings is crucial, especially when students’ situational emotions need targeting. However, we achieved similar intervention results in perception levels using a remote beehive, which therefore constitutes an excellent alternative to raise awareness of the conservation of bees as pollinators when working with living organisms is not possible.