Ein Fuzzy-Rechercheassistent für bibliographische Datenbanken

Zusammenfassung. Dadurch, dass Literaturnachweise und Publikationen zunehmend in elektronischer und auch vernetzter Form angeboten werden, haben Anzahl und Größe der von wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken angebotenen Datenbanken erheblich zugenommen. In den verbreiteten Metasuchen über mehrere Datenbanken sind Suchen mit natürlichsprachlichen Suchbegriffen heute der kleinste gemeinsame Nenner. Sie führen aber wegen der bekannten Mängel des booleschen Retrievals häufig zu Treffermengen, die entweder zu speziell oder zu lang und zu unspezifisch sind. Die Technische Fakultät der Universität Bielefeld und die Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld haben einen auf Fuzzy- Suchlogik basierenden Rechercheassistenten entwickelt, der die Suchanfragen der Benutzer in Teilsuchfragen an die externen Datenbanken zerlegt und die erhaltenen Teilsuchergebnisse in einer nach Relevanz sortierten Liste kumuliert. Es ist möglich, Suchbegriffe zu gewichten und durch Fuzzy- Aggregationsoperatoren zu verknüpfen, die auf der Benutzeroberfläche durch natürlichsprachliche Fuzzy-Quantoren wie möglichst viele, einige u.a. repräsentiert werden. Die Suchparameter werden in der intuitiv bedienbaren einfachen Suche automatisch nach heuristischen Regeln ermittelt, können in einer erweiterten Suche aber auch explizit eingestellt werden. Die Suchmöglichkeiten werden durch Suchen nach ähnlichen Dokumenten und Vorschlagslisten für weitere Suchbegriffe ergänzt. Wir beschreiben die Ausgangssituation, den theoretischen Ansatz, die Benutzeroberfläche und berichten über eine Evalution zur Benutzung und einen Vergleichstest betreffend die Effizienz der Retrievalmethodik.CR Subject Classification: H.3.3, H.3.5Eingegangen am 3. März 2004 / Angenommen am 19. August 2004, Online publiziert am 18. Oktober 2004     

Editorial

If the founders and editors of the International Journal ofPublic Opinion Research described the ideal spectrum of thejournal’s content, we would all very likely enumeratethe following five dimensions, usually in a comparative and/orinternational context: theories about the dynamics of publicopinion, methodological problems and developments, the roleof the news media in public communication, public opinion researchas a social and political problem, and public opinion data on     

Long‐Term Effects of Gestures on Memory for Foreign Language Words Trained in the Classroom

Language and gesture are viewed as highly interdependent systems. Besides supporting communication, gestures also have an impact on memory for verbal information compared to pure verbal encoding in native but also in foreign language learning. This article presents a within‐subject longitudinal study lasting 14 months that tested the use of gestures in the classroom, with the experimenter presenting the items to be acquired. Participants learned 36 words distributed across two training conditions: In the audio‐visual condition subjects read, heard, and spoke the words; in the gestural condition subjects additionally accompanied the words with symbolic gestures. Memory performance was assessed through cued native‐to‐foreign translation tests at five time points. The results show that gestures significantly enhance vocabulary learning in quantity and over time. The findings are discussed in terms of Klimesch's connectivity model (CM) of information processing. Thereafter, a code, a word, is better integrated into long‐term memory if it is deep, that is, if it is comprised of many interconnected components.     

The Multicultural Babe y -Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca

Both the ethnic history of Transylvania and the history of higher education in the region are traced, particularly the history of Babe y -Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, which dates back to 1541. Today, this institution is a trilingual university offering lines of studies in Romanian, Hungarian, and German, as enshrined in the university charter of 8 July 2000. The trilingual instructional system, which is described in some detail, works well even if Romanians constitute the dominant ethno-linguistic group in Transylvania. The author proposes the model of Babe y Bolyai University as a very suitable way to accommodate ethno-linguistic diversity in a united Europe.     

Teaching at a Distance — Reflections on the relationship between discipline‐based and general teaching theories

German readers would immediately associate the term ‘discipline-based’ with Didaktik, which in the German-speaking world is an established branch of education science. The first section therefore deals with the development of Didaktik, understood as a theory of teaching and learning which seeks to investigate the relationships between discipline-based and general teaching theories. Didaktik was originally a strictly theory-oriented discipline in German-speaking countries, but changes in its terms of reference have led to an acceptance of the more pragmatically oriented curriculum theory of the English-speaking world. The term ‘discipline-based’ seems to indicate that here, too, education science has turned its back on positivistic, ‘purely scientific’ standards, so a knowledge of the German discussion of teaching-learning theory may be of interest.

The second section shows that in distance education, too, general teaching models need concretization in terms of discipline-based teaching theory, and that on the other hand, any discipline-based theory needs to have its foundations in general teaching theory, i.e. in pedagogic principles.

The third section therefore postulates the necessity of a theory of distance education which is based on practical experience.