The Interpersonal Dynamics of Collaborative Reasoning in Peer Interactive Dyads

The authors investigated the microlevel processes of collaborative reasoning in heterogeneous peer dyads working on an open-design task in elementary geometry. Special attention was paid to the nature of student social interaction, problem-solving strategies, and mathematical language and how they shape collaborative problem-solving processes. Qualitative case-based analyses of 3 focal dyads reveal that collaborative reasoning was supported by equal participation in social interaction, consisting of joint negotiation of problem-solving strategies and active conceptualization and visualization of the situation. Challenges to collaboration were manifested in the existence of divergent strategies and verbal conceptualizations where negotiation did not lead to the construction of a shared understanding. In summary, the study demonstrates the power of microlevel process analyses in revealing the interpersonal dynamics of collaborative reasoning and shows how those dynamics mediate the learning opportunities in peer interactive dyads.     

The Use of Textbooks as a Tool During Collaborative Physics Learning

The study examined how features of student interaction, and the way an individual student contributes to that interaction (his or her participation), relates to the improvement of conceptual understanding within the domain of physics. The study also investigated how textbooks are used during collaborative work and how that use affects the quality of student interaction and outcomes. The participants were 56 students aged 15 or 16. The students worked in dyads on a concept-mapping task that functioned as an introduction for a new course about electricity. A condition in which the students were provided with 2 textbooks was compared with a condition without the availability of textbooks. The use of textbooks had a negative influence on the amount of elaboration and coconstruction in the student interaction. Individual learning outcomes were positively related to the amount of collaborative elaboration in the student interaction.     

Intercultural communication and international public relations: Exploring parallels

This paper highlights the parallels within the fields of international public relations and intercultural communication as sister fields sharing a common link of communication and culture. The paper discusses the two fields’ struggle for definition and their development of a rich flora of research as well as the debates that ensued. This essay also explores emerging trends within intercultural communication that may well impact international public relations in the future. The paper concludes with an analysis of the parallels within the two fields and the potential for shared knowledge between them.     

‘Becoming and being writers’: the experiences of doctoral students in writing groups

The use of writing groups to support students undertaking post-graduate research within universities has begun to receive attention from academic supervisors and doctoral researchers. Very little has been written by doctoral students themselves on the benefits of working within such writing groups. In this article, the experiences of working within a doctoral writing group at an Australian University are presented, primarily from the perspective of students. The authors identify two main benefits they have experienced through participating in a writing group using a ‘multi-voiced’ approach. First, they discuss the kind of learning that they achieved through working in a writing group. They do this with reference to key principles of peer learning and of peer review. Second, they focus on the ways the group worked as a community of discursive social practice. An overarching message for them in participating in the group and now writing this article is the shift in their thinking and experience of writing from seeing writing as an essentially private and implicit process to writing becoming a matter of public and shared work. These two notions are bound by the concept of identity building, drawing from the literature on communities of practice.     

Assessment of the effects of a cooperative play programme for children aged 10–11 years on social adaptation and on the perception that parents,teachers and peers have of children's prosocial behaviours

Abstract

The objective of this research was to design a cooperative play programme in order to assess its effects on social adaptation and on the perception that parents, teachers and peers have of children's prosocial behaviours. The study used an experimental pre-posttest design with control group. The sample included 86 participants aged 10 to 11 years, 54 in the experimental group and 32 controls. Before and after administering the programme, three evaluation instruments were applied. The intervention consisted of a weekly two-hour play session throughout the school year. The programme's activities stimulate communication and prosocial behaviour. Results of the analysis of variance suggest positive impact of the intervention, as the experimental participants significantly increased their behaviours of self-control and leadership, as well as their prosocial behaviour; moreover, an increase was observed in the number of classmates considered prosocial. Highest levels of improvement were found in the experimental participants who, at pretest, had few behaviours of consideration for others, self-control and leadership and low prosocial behaviour, but many withdrawal behaviours. Some effects of the programme were found to be influenced by gender, as the girls showed more decrease in their withdrawal behaviours and a greater increase in the number of classmates perceived as prosocial.     

Peer production and collective intelligence as the basis for the public digital university*

This paper reviews two main historical approaches to creativity: the Romanticist approach, based on the culture of the irrational, and the Enlightenment approach, based on the culture of the objective. It defends a paradigm of creativity as a sum of rich semiotic systems that form the basis of distributed knowledge and learning, reviews historical ideas of the university, and identifies two conflicting mainstream models in regards to understanding of the university as a public good: the ‘Public’ University circa 1960–1980, and the ‘post-historical’ university. Based on practical experiences, and on previous works by Peters and Jandri?, it develops the new model of ‘the creative university as digital public university’, and argues that it provides a useful philosophical goal for directing present and future practices of the contemporary university.     

Role of peers in student academic achievement in exogenously formed university groups

We estimate the influence of classmates’ ability characteristics on student achievement in exogenously formed university student groups. The study uses administrative data on undergraduate students at a large selective university in Russia. The presence of high-ability classmates has a significant positive effect on individual grades in key economics and mathematics courses as well as on overall academic performance. While a simple linear-in-means model reveals moderate peer effects, non-linear specifications give strong evidence that students at the top of the ability distribution derive the greatest benefit from high-ability classmates. Less able students are not affected by peers and have no significant influence on peers’ outcomes.     

HyperStudio for Grade-One Students

Summary

With current advancements in hypermedia, innovative software is being developed with educators in mind. A prime example is HyperStudio, where the user has the ability to manipulate and control the union of sounds, graphics, and automation. In this article, we describe the interactions of a grade-one HyperStudio expert teaching a novice HyperStudio classmate how to use the program as a means to publish her story.

Data were collected through videotaping, QuickTime movies, and observations. The data were analyzed to discover emerging patterns between the two students, the researcher, and the computer. The two students evolved from an unequal power structure of peer tutoring to a more collaborative structure, where the once novice became an equal partner in the publishing process.     

流式细胞术在体育科研中的应用

流式细胞术是一种综合应用光学、流体力学、电子计算机、细胞生物学、分子免疫学等学科技术,对高速流动的细胞或亚细胞进行快速定量测定和分析的方法。用它不仅可以来对细胞进行计数,还可以对细胞的混合物进行细胞类型的分析研究,并同时测定细胞的多个参数,如测定细胞的特征(形态、膜电位等)和细胞内pH,细胞DNA、蛋白质含量、表面受体、Ca2 等。流式细胞术分析细胞的灵敏度、精密度大大超越了传统的技术,因此广泛应用于医学生物学等许多领域。主要综述流式细胞术在体育科研中的应用并讨论它在应用中的局限性和面临的挑战。