Neural information retrieval: at the end of the early years

A recent “third wave” of neural network (NN) approaches now delivers state-of-the-art performance in many machine learning tasks, spanning speech recognition, computer vision, and natural language processing. Because these modern NNs often comprise multiple interconnected layers, work in this area is often referred to as deep learning. Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth of research into NN-based approaches to information retrieval (IR). A significant body of work has now been created. In this paper, we survey the current landscape of Neural IR research, paying special attention to the use of learned distributed representations of textual units. We highlight the successes of neural IR thus far, catalog obstacles to its wider adoption, and suggest potentially promising directions for future research.     

Promoting the Purchase of Textbooks in the Vietnamese Higher Education Sector

Higher education textbooks sales account for a significant portion of the overall book market. This study makes an important contribution to the extant literature by examining students’ purchase of original textbooks in a developing market, Vietnam. Notably, it seeks to investigate why students do not purchase original textbooks as well as the difference in purchase behavior between different groups of students. The findings reveal that some key obstacles to students’ purchase behavior include high prices, insufficient availability, low perceived value, and the emergence of pirated textbooks. Another notable finding is that senior students who are female tend to purchase more textbooks. In light of these findings, marketing strategies are suggested for publishers, bookstores and universities who aim to promote the sales and consumption of original textbooks.     

Improving Access and “Unhiding” the Special Collections

This article broadly reviews the issue of access in special collections and introduces several solutions for improving access to special collections materials. Drawing on literature and specific case studies, the author finds that special collections units have made great progress in making their materials accessible to researchers and users. A variety of access web and digitization technologies are outlined and discussed.     

如何可获得SAT高分

Probably the most important thing to remember is that practice tests are your best friends. There's really no substitute for taking just a few hours out of a weekend to sit down and go through an entire practice test under realistic testing conditions.     

“Only When I Am Not Ashamed of Myself Can I Teach Others”: Preservice English-Language Teachers in Vietnam and Code-Switching Practices

As the younger generation in Vietnam increasingly switches between the English and the Vietnamese languages, numerous linguistic and sociocultural strictures arise. Foregrounding the preservice English-language teachers of this generation, this article locates them in a dilemma between the discourse of globalization and their code-switching practices, on the one hand, and the moral-guide duty they are expected to fulfil within the discourse of linguistic nationalism on the other hand. Drawing on a case study conducted with survey questionnaires (N = 483) and focusing on interviews and focus groups (N = 15), this article reports the confusion, the decisions, and the negotiations made by different preservice teachers as they were faced with this dilemma. Particularly underlining the theme of negotiation, the article proposes certain changes to the English-language-teacher training curriculum in Vietnam.     

Leading Organizations for Universal Design

The purpose of this article is to provide a model for helping campus leaders create and sustain efforts to fully incorporate Universal Instructional Design (UID) throughout their institutions. The article uses a multiple dimension model of organizational behavior as the basis for making recommendations to support this type of institutional transformation.     

Changing views of teachers and teaching in Vietnam

In order for Vietnam to seek better international integration into an increasingly globalised world, the Vietnamese Government has launched educational reforms requiring teachers to adopt ‘Western’ constructivist pedagogies. This paper reports on an action research study in a Vietnamese teacher training institution which found that Vietnamese student teachers were willing to accommodate and accept change and were often very enthusiastic about the ‘Western ideas’ of teaching and learning, but that their unquestioning respect for the authority of their tutors remained firmly fixed. The data also showed that the students’ tutors had a relatively limited exposure to the ‘Western theories’ and their implications and therefore did not model or demonstrate the theories effectively. The paper draws on these findings to argue that the focus for transforming Vietnamese teachers’ practice should be on promoting the responsibility of teacher educators to introduce student teachers to new ideas about the processes of teaching and learning. This strategy is likely to be more supportive of student teachers’ development as it allows them to separate the processes of teaching from culturally dominant beliefs about roles which are part of their established identities.     

Ageing,loss, and learning: Hong Kong and Australian seniors

In this article, the discussion of loss and its relationship to learning is based on the analysis of interview data from 39 older adults in Hong Kong and 40 in Australia. The focus of the research was on ageing and learning. The phenomenon of life changes, specifically losses, and their relationship to learning was frequently mentioned, and this theme is described here. Three different kinds of loss were identified in the data as motivators for organized or nonorganized learning or for negatively affecting learning. These included loss of aspects of health, of job, or of partner. The results are potentially useful to policy makers and learning providers in encouraging older adults to engage in learning as one way of coping with loss.     

An Empirical Study of Geahigan's Inquiry Model in Learning Art at Senior Secondary School Level

The philosophical foundation for teaching art criticism in schools has been dominated by formalist and expressionist aesthetics, while from a practical point of view it has been influenced by art criticism models that emphasise observation and linguistic practices. Instead of asking students to observe an artwork and make verbal or written statements, George Geahigan proposed an inquiry‐based art criticism learning model that engages students in personal response, research, and aesthetic concept and perceptual skill acquisition activities. Using inquiry‐based art criticism as a foundation for curriculum development and connecting the model to authentic situations in schools, the present study investigated the effectiveness of the model on student learning. Fifteen secondary school teachers were invited to participate. Eight teachers taught the experimental group (n=85) with inquiry‐based curriculum plans and the other seven teachers taught the control group (n=82) with their own school curriculum plans. Students of both groups were asked to write an art criticism essay before and after the implementation of the curriculum plans. The results demonstrated that the overall improvement of the experimental group after one academic year was significantly greater than that of the control group. This article reports on the theoretical framework, methodology and results of the study. It was found that the inquiry‐based approach was a successful strategy in improving students’ skills in analysing, judging and using aesthetic and contextual knowledge in art criticism writing. The discussion focuses on the improvements that were made in the art criticism essays of the experimental group.