Using group projects as a strategy to increase cooperation among low- and high-achieving students

This study aimed to investigate the perceptions, interactions and behaviours of different-ability college students when they worked on different types of assessments. Two classes of 145 Vietnamese college students participated in this three-month study. The students were assigned to mixed-ability groups, each of which consisted of five students. The results show that assessment designed as a group project helped close the gap in communication and interactions between different-ability students within groups. When the students engaged with assessment as a group project, all levels of performers increased productive learning behaviours and provided more relevant verbal help and assistance to each other. Importantly, this type of assessment created various opportunities for the low performers to participate in, and make a contribution to, group tasks. As a result, all group members became interested in working with others. They perceived cooperative learning groups as being enjoyable and fun.     

Improving relational similarity measurement using symmetries in proportional word analogies

Measuring the similarity between the semantic relations that exist between words is an important step in numerous tasks in natural language processing such as answering word analogy questions, classifying compound nouns, and word sense disambiguation. Given two word pairs (A, B) and (C, D), we propose a method to measure the relational similarity between the semantic relations that exist between the two words in each word pair. Typically, a high degree of relational similarity can be observed between proportional analogies (i.e. analogies that exist among the four words, A is to B such as C is to D). We describe eight different types of relational symmetries that are frequently observed in proportional analogies and use those symmetries to robustly and accurately estimate the relational similarity between two given word pairs. We use automatically extracted lexical-syntactic patterns to represent the semantic relations that exist between two words and then match those patterns in Web search engine snippets to find candidate words that form proportional analogies with the original word pair. We define eight types of relational symmetries for proportional analogies and use those as features in a supervised learning approach. We evaluate the proposed method using the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) word analogy benchmark dataset. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately measure relational similarity between word pairs by exploiting the symmetries that exist in proportional analogies. The proposed method achieves an SAT score of 49.2% on the benchmark dataset, which is comparable to the best results reported on this dataset.     

Motivation-Achievement Cycles in Learning: a Literature Review and Research Agenda

Educational Psychology Review - The question of how learners’ motivation influences their academic achievement and vice versa has been the subject of intensive research due to its theoretical...     

Using functional analysis procedures to monitor medication effects in an outpatient and school setting

Functional analysis methods were used to monitor medication used to reduce vocal and physical tics of a child with Tourettes Syndrome. An initial functional analysis suggested that the tics were maintained by automatic reinforcement. Given this result, the participant's physician prescribed Orap 1mg per day to reduce the tics. Post‐medication results demonstrated a reduced level of tics by the participant. Although preliminary, the findings suggest that functional analysis methods can be used to monitor the effects of medication in outpatient and school settings. Thus, more research using functional analyses to assess medication effects is needed. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Exhibition on Catholic Culture: Dialogues and Negotiations at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

The first exhibition in Vietnam to feature Vietnamese Catholics was held from December 10, 2008 to June 10, 2009 at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. The theme of this exhibition was “Catholic Culture as an Intrinsic Part of Vietnamese Culture.” The exhibition was organized by a State‐run museum against a background of difficult relations between the State and its Catholic communities. This article explores how the exhibition was conceived, and how the ideas of the curators were implemented by examining negotiations among different stakeholders involved in the exhibition.     

Are You A Leader? How We Learned to Stop Asking

Smith College initiated an ePortfolio pilot project to guide students in documenting key learning experiences and in linking those experiences to Smith's institutional mission of “developing leaders for society's challenges” (Smith College, 2011 Smith College. 2011. Mission of Smith College. Retrieved from http://www.smith.edu/about_mission.php. [Google Scholar]). Twenty-one college students volunteered to participate in the pilot, based on the integrative knowledge portfolio process and informed by research in the fields of narrative psychology, integrative learning theory and ePortfolio theory. This article discusses the process of guiding students in integrative learning through the development of ePortfolios and through a curriculum, which engaged them in understanding and articulating their own learning, as well as in connecting it to the college mission.     

Activism,identity and service: the influence of the Asian American Movement on the educational experiences of college students

This article emphasises two major themes that address the influence of the Asian American Movement: (1) encouraging students to broaden the discourse on race and ethnic relations by redefining categories and challenging prevalent assumptions; (2) an increased tolerance and frequency in course offerings that examine and centralise the histories, literature and political underpinnings of Asian Americans and ethnic (i.e. Japanese) specific communities, which has equipped students to engage in discourse and community action. Countering dominant narratives through unification and education is the means by which Asian American students fought for representation and fair treatment.