Graphemes as Motor Units in the Acquisition of Writing Skills

This study examined whether the graphemic structure of words modulates the timing of handwriting production during the acquisition of writing skills. This is particularly important during the acquisition period because phonological recoding skills are determinant in the elaboration of orthographic representations. First graders wrote seven-letter bi-syllabic words on a digitiser. We measured movement duration and fluency and evaluated reading performance. In Experiment 1, the words varied in number of graphemes and grapheme structure. In Experiment 2, the words varied in graphemic structure but the number of graphemes was held constant. The results revealed that the children wrote the first syllable of the words grapheme-by-grapheme, irrespective of the number of letters that composed them. They prepared the movement to produce the first grapheme before starting to write. The following graphemes were processed on-line. They then prepared the movement to write the second syllable. The progressive decrease of duration and dysfluency values towards the end of the word indicates that the children prepared the entire syllable in advance. Movement time and dysfluency measures presented very similar patterns in the two experiments. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between reading performance and handwriting measures. The grapheme and syllable structure of the words therefore modulates the timing of motor production during handwriting acquisition. Once the children have learned the phonological recoding rules, they apply them systematically, irrespectively of the size of the graphemes they have to write.     

A card game for designing activities for technology-enhanced learning in higher education

Education and Information Technologies - The importance of providing mechanisms and tools that effectively support the transition from implicit to explicit representations of Learning Design has...     

ACHIEVEMENT IN ONLINE AND CAMPUS-BASED CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION (CTE) COURSES

ABSTRACT

Community colleges are actively involved in distance-learning programs in Career and Technical Education (CTE). Over 76% of community colleges offer some form of distance learning in CTE. Over the years, only a few isolated studies have compared the effectiveness of distance CTE courses to traditional face-to-face courses. Typically, the findings of previous studies indicate no significant differences between the two methods. This study was designed to address the lack of systematic studies of this question. It also examines how student motivation and learning strategies differ for campus-based and online students. Finally, it investigates how online and campus-based courses differ in terms of course interaction, content organization, student support, and transactional distance (i.e., feelings of closeness to the instructor and the program).     

Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS): A Study of Academic Learning

The rapid growth of online learning has led to the development of faculty inservice evaluation models that are geared towards the demands of quality improvement of degree programs. Based on the best practices of student online assessment, the Online Faculty Development and Assessment System (OFDAS) created at the Canary Islands was designed to serve the dual purpose of faculty development and classroom learning environment assessment. Results of analyses showed that OFDAS maximized the potential of online faculty development to encourage staff to reflect on Curriculum and Teaching Capacities (CTC). Implications were discussed in terms of emphasizing the process of online CTC learning and incorporating perspectives to capture a comprehensive view of faculty teaching attitudes and their association with student classroom learning perceptions.     

A domain-independent approach to finding related entities

We propose an approach to the retrieval of entities that have a specific relationship with the entity given in a query. Our research goal is to investigate whether related entity finding problem can be addressed by combining a measure of relatedness of candidate answer entities to the query, and likelihood that the candidate answer entity belongs to the target entity category specified in the query. An initial list of candidate entities, extracted from top ranked documents retrieved for the query, is refined using a number of statistical and linguistic methods. The proposed method extracts the category of the target entity from the query, identifies instances of this category as seed entities, and computes similarity between candidate and seed entities. The evaluation was conducted on the Related Entity Finding task of the Entity Track of TREC 2010, as well as the QA list questions from TREC 2005 and 2006. Evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed methods are effective in finding related entities.     

Articulating the signs of danger: lay experiences of post-Chernobyl radiation risks and effects

This essay examines lay experiences of radiation--the hazard imperceptible with unaided senses--and how these experiences are shaped. Analysis is conducted on the basis of participant observation and interviews in Belarusian rural areas affected after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. I argue that radiation risks and health effects are not always obvious or immediately observable for those experiencing them, and they should be articulated. The paper compares various opportunities for articulation, including the context of radiological testing and administrative contexts, and describes the kinds of articulations they make possible. I conclude that limited opportunities for articulation result in limited lay recognition of radioactive contamination and their own health effects. The analysis implies that affected lay populations cannot always be assumed to be the most risk-conscious and hold special knowledge about radiation effects independently of scientific and administrative definitions of it.     

‘They want more of everything’: what university middle managers’ attitudes reveal about support for off-campus doctoral students

Advances in technology and a shifting demographic of post-graduate students have resulted in a larger than ever number of off-campus PhD students. These students tend to be less satisfied than their on-campus counterparts with their candidature experience. Improving the current situation requires effort from multiple university stakeholders, including academic middle managers, who play a role in allocating resources and setting research training agenda. However, with the intensification of academic workload, academic managers might not view the support of off-campus PhD students as a high priority. This study investigates the attitudes of middle managers in a large Australian university concerning the provision of training and support to off-campus PhD students. The findings reveal that a complex interplay of discourses hinder the provision of support to off-campus PhD students. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Teacher or Examiner? The Tensions between Formative and Summative Assessment in the Case of Science Coursework

The aim of the reported study was to explore how science teachers made sense of their roles and responsibilities in teaching and assessing science coursework. The focus was on the teacher assessment, the feedback that teachers gave to students and, how they perceived their role when they taught and assessed students’ science coursework reports. The research methodology included observation of science lessons, collection of marked students’ reports and two interviews with each of the nine participant teachers. Two cases of teachers are considered as representative of the participant teachers and their perceptions and practices are compared and contrasted. Teachers either adopted the role of the examiner or combined the role of the teacher with that of examiner. They distinguished marking of science theory exercises from marking of coursework and, teaching theory from teaching investigations, on the basis that the grade they assigned to coursework contributed to the total grade for external exams. A key conclusion is that teaching and assessment of science coursework need to re-focus on learning. The study calls for changes in public policy for summative assessment to place more reliance on teachers’ assessments and secondly, for changes in school practices in formative assessment for teachers to support students to learn in the case of science coursework.