Facilitating flexible learning by replacing classroom time with an online learning environment: A systematic review of blended learning in higher education

Higher education institutions are trying to provide more flexibility and individualization, which is mainly realized through the use of new technologies and implemented in online or blended learning designs. This systematic review aims to investigate the impact of replacing classroom time with an online learning environment. The meta-analysis (k = 21 effect sizes) applied strict inclusion criteria concerning research design, measurement of learning outcomes and implementation of blended learning. The estimated effect size (Hedge's g) was positive, although not significantly different from zero and the confidence interval [-0.13, 0.25], suggesting that overall differences between blended and conventional classroom learning are small, and, at best, very small negative or moderate positive effects are plausible. This means that despite a reduction in classroom time between 30 and 79 per cent, equivalent learning outcomes were found. Consequently, blended learning with reduced classroom time is not systematically more or less effective than conventional classroom learning.     

The RIX Wiki: the use of multimedia advocacy to support person-centred planning in a special needs secondary school – implications for current policy and practice

The article documents findings from a pilot study undertaken in 2012–2013 in a special needs secondary school in the England, that trialled the use of a multimedia advocacy tool, “The RIX Wiki”. The trial was part of the pathfinder programme, which aimed to reform existing Special Education Needs provision, from the system of statementing to one of developing education health care plans. The reforms became enshrined in the Children and Families Act (2014). The findings were overall positive and helped with person-centred planning processes. The discussion is framed within current and future policy directives. We argue that multimedia advocacy approaches and software tools, like the “RIX Wiki” will have a continued role to play in ensuring the needs, aspirations and choices of children and young people with learning disabilities remain central.     

高职院校学习预警平台的构建及其实证分析

开展信息化、智慧化预警工作是实现全面精准育人的重要途径,而预警应用平台无疑是预警工作的有力工具和实践载体,其设计方案应用效果的好坏直接决定着学习预警信息化愿景的达成度。文章在分析高职院校学习预警工作现状的基础上,从工作流程设计、平台框架设计和平台建设方法等3个方面提出了解决方案,并对平台的应用效果进行了实证分析,结果表明:平台的应用扩展了预警范围、提升了预警的精准度和时效性、提高了工作效率,且干预更为灵活、个性化,可为当前高职院校学习危机的实践改革提供新思路。     

Quality flaw prediction in Spanish Wikipedia: A case of study with verifiability flaws

In this work, we present the first quality flaw prediction study for articles containing the two most frequent verifiability flaws in Spanish Wikipedia: articles which do not cite any references or sources at all (denominated Unreferenced) and articles that need additional citations for verification (so-called Refimprove). Based on the underlying characteristics of each flaw, different state-of-the-art approaches were evaluated. For articles not citing any references, a well-established rule-based approach was evaluated and interesting findings show that some of them suffer from Refimprove flaw instead. Likewise, for articles that need additional citations for verification, the well-known PU learning and one-class classification approaches were evaluated. Besides, new methods were compared and a new feature was also proposed to model this latter flaw. The results showed that new methods such as under-bagged decision trees with sum or majority voting rules, biased-SVM, and centroid-based balanced SVM, perform best in comparison with the ones previously published.     

An analysis of review content and reviewer variables that contribute to review helpfulness

Review helpfulness is attracting increasing attention of practitioners and academics. It helps in reducing risks and uncertainty faced by users in online shopping. This study examines uninvestigated variables by looking at not only the review characteristics but also important indicators of reviewers. Several significant review content and two reviewer variables are proposed and an effective review helpfulness prediction model is built using stochastic gradient boosting learning method. This study derived a mechanism to extract novel review content variables from review text. Six popular machine learning models and three real-life Amazon review data sets are used for analysis. Our results are robust to several product categories and along three Amazon review data sets. The results show that review content variables deliver the best performance as compared to the reviewer and state-of-the-art baseline as a standalone model. This study finds that reviewer helpfulness per day and syllables in review text strongly relates to review helpfulness. Moreover, the number of space, aux verb, drives words in review text and productivity score of a reviewer are also effective predictors of review helpfulness. The findings will help customers to write better reviews, help retailers to manage their websites intelligently and aid customers in their product purchasing decisions.     

Professional knowledge or motivation? Investigating the role of teachers’ expertise on the quality of technology-enhanced lesson plans

In an expertise study with 94 mathematics teachers varying in their relative teacher expertise (i.e., student teachers, trainee teachers, in-service teachers), we examined effects of teachers' professional knowledge and motivational beliefs on their ability to integrate technology within a lesson plan scenario. Therefore, we assessed teachers' professional knowledge (i.e., content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, technological knowledge), and their motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy, utility-value). Furthermore, teachers were asked to develop a lesson plan for introducing the Pythagorean theorem to secondary students. Lesson plans by advanced teachers (i.e., trainee teachers, in-service teachers) comprised higher levels of instructional quality and technology exploitation than the ones of novice teachers (i.e., pre-service teachers). The effect of expertise was mediated by teachers' perceived utility-value of educational technology, but not by their professional knowledge. These findings suggest that teachers’ motivational beliefs play a crucial role for effectively applying technology in mathematics instruction.     

体育教育专业学生英语学习方式调查研究

报告了对沈阳体育学院体育教育专业学生外语学习方式倾向的调查研究,并以问卷为研究工具。运用定量研究方法,分析了个体差异如性别、外语水平等对学生学习方式倾向的影响。结果显示学生喜欢多种外语学习方式,外语成绩优、差学生6种学习方式均无显著差异,男生比女生更喜欢听觉学习,女生比男生更喜欢视觉学习。据此提出外语教师应根据学生的认知特点灵活运用各种教学方式,并指导学生调整和扩展多种学习风格以促进教与学的协调发展。     

大学英语教学应重视交互式教学模式

交互式教学模式是教学中经常使用的一种方法。这种教学模式有利于调动学生学习语言的积极性、主动性和创造性 ,提高学生的语言表达能力。国外采用自主和交互式教学模式培养学生的一些成功事例 ,为我国外语教学在培养外语人才提供了有益的启示。     

物理模型与股票投资

股票投资的方法很多，建立物理模型进行投资是一种简明有效的方法，使用金字塔模型和平衡理论对股票进行操作，能把握最佳投资机会。