Fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school

Computer technologies develop at a challenging fast pace. Formal education should not only teach students basic computer skills to meet current computer needs, but also foster student development of informal learning ability for a lifelong learning process. On the other hand, students growing up in the digital world are often more skilled with computer technologies than their teachers. We describe an online course design project in which a group of students designed an online health course for their middle school, and teachers played the roles of facilitators and learners. We suggest fostering an informal learning community of computer technologies at school as a supplemental method of formal computer education to address the shift in educational context and as a place offering opportunities for students to work on real-life projects and solve real-life problems.     

Probability simulation: What meaning does it have for high school students?

Abstract

This study investigated high school students’ reasoning and beliefs when confronted with contextual tasks involving the assessment and construction of two‐dimensional probability simulations.¹ Nine students enrolled in an advanced algebra course, with little formal instruction in probability, engaged in clinical interviews focusing on the simulation tasks. All students showed evidence of being able to recognize or identify an appropriate probability generator to model a contextual problem. However, their thinking in probability simulation was constrained by their inability to deal with two‐dimensional trials. In assessing the validity of a given simulation, only one student could identify a flaw that resulted from the use of one‐dimensional trials rather than two‐dimensional trials. Additionally, when asked to construct a simulation, only two students were able to define an appropriate two‐dimensional trial and develop a valid solution. The study also revealed evidence of students’ beliefs about probability simulation—some of which could be helpful in informing instruction, others problematic.     

Evaluating student response to WeBWorK, a web-based homework delivery and grading system

As the use of web-based homework delivery and checking systems expands, we have greater need to evaluate how students engage with these systems and how changes in the systems influence student behavior. Reported here is the assessment of WeBWorK, an open-source web-based homework program used largely in postsecondary math and science courses, with recent extension to high school courses. WeBWorK draws from a large library of problems to generate individual assignments and provides immediate feedback about correctness of students’ answers. WeBWorK allows entries in multiple choice, formula and numerical formats. The entries recorded by the system create an extensive database of student interactions with the system.In our two-part study, we (1) review 2387 student surveys about WeBWorK in three semesters across a range of mathematics courses and (2) test a model designed to classify student responses to system feedback, permitting a fine-grained analysis of the system’s records at the keystroke level for a cohort of 96 Calculus I students.Based on this data, our goals are, first, to understand how students use the system and respond to its feedback; second, to analyze the impact of upgrades to the system interface on student users, and third, to evaluate the efficiency of training raters to classify student records.We find that the introduction of new features to the WeBWorK interface (improvements generated by our initial assessment) were welcomed by most students and reduced the overall number of submitted errors by half by the third year of the study. Importantly, the interface improvements reduced the number of errors that were not pedagogically useful. We also find that our error classification model, called here the Student Response Model, was a good fit for our student sample, as reflected by inter-rater reliability of three raters who coded the student records. In sum, our error classification model appears to be useful for analyzing formula entries. To make this assessment model widely available, we designed a system of exercises to train raters to classify student response files for WeBWorK and similar web-based systems.     

An adaptive Student Centered Curriculum for an intelligent training system

An intelligent tutoring system customizes its presentation of knowledge to the individual needs of each student based on a model of the student. Student models are more complex than other user models because the student is likely to have misconceptions. We have addressed several difficult issues in reasoning about a student's knowledge and skills within a real-time simulation-based training system. Our conceptual framework enables important aspects of the tutor's reasoning to be based upon simple, comprehensible representations that are the basis for a Student Centered Curriculum. We have built a system for teaching cardiac resuscitation techniques in which the decisions abouthow to teach are separated from the decisions aboutwhat to teach. The training context (i.e., choice of topics) is changed based on a tight interaction between student modeling techniques and simulation management. Although complex student models are still required to support detailed reasoning about how to teach, we argue that the decision about what to teach can be adequately supported by qualitatively simpler techniques, such as overlay models. This system was evaluated in formative studies involving medical school faculty and students. Construction of the student model involves monitoring student actions during a simulation and evaluating these actions in comparison with an expert model encoded as a multi-agent plan. The plan recognition techniques used in this system are novel and allow the expert knowledge to be expressed in a form that is natural for domain experts.     

School furniture and the user population: an anthropometric perspective

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between reported spinal symptoms in an adolescent student population, and the match between their individual anthropometric dimensions and their school furniture. The hypothesis was that students who were too large or too small for their school furniture, i.e. with anthropometric measurements furthest from the group whose anthropometry was the ‘best fit’ with the furniture, would have a higher frequency of reported symptoms. From data collected from 1269 schoolchildren, reported spinal symptoms and anthropometric measures were examined. Stature measures were divided into quartiles. A standard government issue school chair and desk was measured and the anthropometric quartile of the population having the ‘best fit’ with the furniture was identified using standard ergonomics recommendations. Odds ratios were calculated for spinal symptoms reported within each quartile group. The first quartile group (the smallest students) was identified as having the ‘best fit’ with the school furniture. An overall higher odds of reporting low back pain was noted in students with anthropometric dimensions in the fourth quartile (the tallest students). While it is acknowledged that there is a multifactorial nature of causality of adolescent spinal symptoms, it is contended that the degree of mis-match between child anthropometry and school furniture set-up should be further examined as a strong and plausible associate of adolescent low back pain.     

An analysis of variables affecting the ICT literacy level of Korean elementary school students

With the study aim of examining individual- and school-level variables affecting the ICT literacy level of Korean elementary school students, a stratified sample of 11,767 students in 173 schools was analyzed using a two-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) and a two-level hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM). Students' ICT literacy level was classified into four levels: below basic, basic, average, and excellent. First, HLM analysis results revealed that male student, completion of computer courses, log usage time for purposes other than study and satisfaction level of students in classes using ICT have positive effects on ICT literacy score, but that log usage time for study has a negative effect at the individual level. In addition, major city, achievement level and number of PCs per student have a positive influence at the school level. At the individual level, the results from HGLM analysis showed that the ICT level of female students was higher than that of male students in average or lower levels. The completion status of computer courses had a significant effect on the probability of attaining a basic or average level. The satisfaction level of students in classes using ICT had a positive influence on attaining a higher level of ICT literacy. At the school level, the number of PCs per student had a significant effect on the probability of attaining an average level. The ICT literacy of schools located in major cities was higher than that in rural area in average level.     

Does cyberbullying overlap with school bullying when taking modality of involvement into account?

Education professionals and researchers are concerned by school bullying and cyberbullying because of its repercussions on students’ health and the school climate. However, only a few studies investigating the impact of school versus cyberbullying have systematically explored whether student victims and perpetrators are involved in school bullying only, cyberbullying only, or both. The aim of the present study was thus to examine the possible overlap, as well as the similarities and/or differences, between these two forms of bullying when taking modality of involvement into account. Individual interviews were conducted with 1422 junior high- and high-school students (girls = 43%, boys = 57%, mean age = 14.3 ± 2.7 years). Results showed that cyberbullying and school bullying overlapped very little. The majority of students involved in cyberbullying were not simultaneously involved in school bullying. Moreover, results indicated that psychosocial problems (psychological distress, social disintegration, general aggression) varied according to the form of bullying. Victims of school bullying had greater internalizing problems than cybervictims, while school bullies were more aggressive than cyberbullies. Given the sizable proportion of adolescents involved in bullying (school and cyber) and its significant relationship with mental health, the issue warrants serious attention from school and public health authorities.     

Mathematical model and simulated annealing algorithm for Chinese high school timetabling problems under the new curriculum innovation

As the first attempt,this paper proposes a model for the Chinese high school timetabling problems(CHSTPs)under the new curriculum innovation which was launched in 2011 by the Chine6e government.Aooording 10 the new our riculum innovation,students in high school can choose subjects that they are interested in instead of being forced to select one of the two study directions,namely,Science and Liberal Arts.Meanwhile,they also need to attend compulsory subjects as traditions.CHSTPs are student-oriented and involve more student constraints that make them more complex than the typi-cal"Class-Teacher model",in which the element"Teacher"is the primary constraint.In this paper,we first describe in detail the mathematical model of CHSTPs and then design a new two-part representation for the candidate solution.Based on the new representation,we adopt a two-phase simulated annealing(SA)algorithm to solve CHSTPs.A total number of 45 synthetic instances with different amounts of classes,teachers,and levels of student constraints are generated and used to ilustrate the characteristics of the CHSTP model and the effectiveness of the designed representation and algorithm.Finally,we apply the proposed model,the designed two-part representation and the two-phase SA on10 real high schools.     

A bi-level school bus routing problem with bus stops selection and possibility of demand outsourcing

This paper develops a bi-level mathematical model for the school bus routing problem aiming at designing an efficient transportation system considering the possibility of predicting the students’ response. In the real world, the demand for using private cars depends on how well public transportation systems are operating especially in metropolitan cities. An inefficient public transportation will lead to an increase in the demand for using private cars. This issue will result in problems such as increased traffics and urban pollutions. To address this issue, an efficient public transportation system is designed by developing a new bi-level mathematical model. In the proposed model, the designer of the public transportation system, as the upper-level decision-maker, will locate appropriate bus stops and identify bus navigation routes. Subsequently, the decision regarding the allocation of students to transportation systems or outsourcing them will be made at the lower level which is considered as an operational-level decision-making. To solve this problem, two hybrid metaheuristic approaches named GA-EX-TS and SA-EX-TS have been proposed based on location-allocation-routing (LAR) strategy. The performance of these proposed methods is compared with exact solutions achieved from an explicit enumeration approach followed in the small-scale instances. Finally, the proposed approaches are used to solve 50 random instance problems. Comparing the results of the two tuned hybrid algorithms and conducting the sensitivity analysis of the model provide evidence for the good performance of the proposed approach.     

基于ASP.NET的警察院校学生管理系统设计

目前,大多数警察院校由于办学所具有的特色,一般采用警务化管理制度来规范学员的日常学习生活,这使得警察院校的学生管理工作具有与其它高校不同的特点。该设计利用ASP.NET和ADO.NET技术开发了一个针对警务化管理模式的学生管理系统,可以实现学生,队长和其它管理人员的信息交流和互动,可以加强对学生的动态管理,提高管理效率。     

The reality of virtual schools: A review of the literature

Virtual schooling was first employed in the mid-1990s and has become a common method of distance education used in K-12 jurisdictions. The most accepted definition of a virtual school is an entity approved by a state or governing body that offers courses through distance delivery – most commonly using the Internet. While virtual schools can be classified in different ways, the three common methods of delivery are by independent, asynchronous or synchronous means. Presently, the vast majority of virtual school students tended to be a select group of academically capable, motivated, independent learners. The benefits associated with virtual schooling are expanding educational access, providing high-quality learning opportunities, improving student outcomes and skills, allowing for educational choice, and achieving administrative efficiency. However, the research to support these conjectures is limited at best. The challenges associated with virtual schooling include the conclusion that the only students typically successful in online learning environments are those who have independent orientations towards learning, highly motivated by intrinsic sources, and have strong time management, literacy, and technology skills. These characteristics are typically associated with adult learners. This stems from the fact that research into and practice of distance education has typically been targeted to adult learners. The problem with this focus is that adults learn differently than younger learners. Researchers are calling for more research into the factors that account for K-12 student success in distance education and virtual school environments and more design research approaches than traditional comparisons of student achievement in traditional and virtual schools.     

Augmented reality in education: a meta-review and cross-media analysis

Augmented reality (AR) is an educational medium increasingly accessible to young users such as elementary school and high school students. Although previous research has shown that AR systems have the potential to improve student learning, the educational community remains unclear regarding the educational usefulness of AR and regarding contexts in which this technology is more effective than other educational mediums. This paper addresses these topics by analyzing 26 publications that have previously compared student learning in AR versus non-AR applications. It identifies a list of positive and negative impacts of AR experiences on student learning and highlights factors that are potentially underlying these effects. This set of factors is argued to cause differences in educational effectiveness between AR and other media. Furthermore, based on the analysis, the paper presents a heuristic questionnaire generated for judging the educational potential of AR experiences.     

Assisting students with argumentation plans when solving problems in CSCL

In CSCL systems, students who are solving problems in group have to negotiate with each other by exchanging proposals and arguments in order to resolve the conflicts and generate a shared solution. In this context, argument construction assistance is necessary to facilitate reaching to a consensus. This assistance is usually provided with isolated arguments by demand, but this does not offer students a real and integral view of the conflicts. In this work, we study the utilisation of argumentation plans to assist a student during the argumentation. The actions of an argumentation plan represent the arguments that a student might use during the argumentation process. Moreover, these plans can be integrated with the tasks needed to reach a shared solution. These plans give the student an integral and intuitive view of the problem resolution and the conflict that must be resolved. We evaluated our proposal with students of an Artificial Intelligence course. This evaluation was carried out by comparing three different assistance scenarios in which students had to solve exercises: no assistance, assistance with isolated arguments, and assistance with argumentation plans. The results obtained show that reaching consensus was easier for the students when the assistance was provided using argumentations plans.     

把计算机“请”出学生宿舍

如今计算机已经成为学生宿舍里常见的"家用电器"。计算机的出现,一方面丰富了学生的课余文化生活,另一方面却又给学生管理带来了极大不便。游戏、娱乐、交友成为了计算机的主要用途,再加上学生自身极差的自制能力,使得大多数学生沉迷于计算机和网络之中不能自拔。自私、封闭、痛恶社会等观念正在逐渐充斥着学生的大脑,已成为影响学生心理健康的主要黑手,严重妨碍了学院的日常管理与教学。要想改变这种现状,首先应将计算机"请"出学生宿舍。     

基于粒计算的免费师范生生源因素分析

免费师范生政策从实施到现在已有将近四年时间,但社会上对于免费师范生的评价褒贬不一,有人认为该政策的实施为很多贫困家庭的孩子解决了上学难的问题,但也有人认为该政策的实施使免费师范生在大学期间的学习积极性受到了影响。那么,影响师范大学免费师范生和非免费师范生做出选择的因素有哪些呢？通过对免费师范生以及非师范生进行问卷调查,获取生源因素相关数据,应用粒计算对是否选择报考免费师范生的影响因素进行了分析。分析结果显示报考免费师范生的前三个影响因素分别为：政策中规定的违约将带来不诚信记录,不能报考脱产研究生和跨省就业问题。文中结论将对免费师范生教育政策的进一步完善有一定指导作用。     

Who assigns the most ICT activities? Examining the relationship between teacher and student usage

The expansion of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in schools is expected to promote learning. To what extent teachers are utilizing the new ICT tools to engage students in learning activities remains a question. This study reports what kind of activities teachers are likely to assign students, and what type of teachers are more likely to assign such activities. Teacher ICT usage and student ICT assignments are examined using a sample of 3729 elementary and junior high school teachers in Taiwan. The results from correlation and regression analysis indicate that teachers who infrequently use basic ICT tools such as word processing rarely assign student ICT activities. At the other end of spectrum, teachers who create complicated multimedia materials are most likely to assign student multimedia activities. Regression results show that teachers’ frequency of building websites is the best predictor for assigning ICT-based sharing activities to students, though the likelihood is greater for junior high school than elementary school teachers. The results suggest that teachers assign students activities which require a variety of ICT tools, and teachers’ own ICT practices influence the type of ICT activities they assign to students.     

From data to knowledge: The interaction between data management systems in educational institutions and the delivery of quality education

No school is an island; it is a part of a continuum or a pipeline of institutions which together form an educational pipeline through which groups of students pass. To turn a body of data into useful information for knowledge-based decision-making at any level, data must be collected, organised, analysed and reflected upon. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how schools and other educational institutions can not only collect better data but learn how to transform that data so that the information held within can be effectively shared among all stakeholders. This process will help to ensure that the school and the entire education system provide a more seamless and effective educational pipeline for students, and ultimately improve the quality of education delivered in the country as a whole.     

体育教学中如何培养学生正确走姿问题初步探究

拥有正确步态的职业学校学生不仅在气质上,而且在就业率方面都有着非常突出的优势。而正确走姿训练对学生生长发育,纠正不良状态,塑造优美形体,促进生理,心理发展也具有良好的作用。所以在职业学校体育教学中增设步态训练内容非常必要。同时步态训练作为学校体育教学内容对提升学生兴趣继而促进学校体育教育的开展也有着积极的作用。本文中笔者将根据实际教学经验介绍走姿教学中的各种练习,并给出在不同体育课程中走姿教学的具体流程。     

Cultural socialization to computing in college

Today many people have their first sustained encounter with computing on college campuses. In part this experience consists of learning to use a machine. But in larger part this experience consists of encoutering an alien culture. A socialization model of that encounter and research based on that model are presented. Freshmen at two universities were surveyed and their responses about computer science courses were compared with their responses about other freshmen courses. Consistent with the model, students were more likely to report reality shock, confusion, control attempts, anger, and withdrawal in their computing courses than in other courses. This pattern was less typical of students in the teaching-oriented university than in the research-oriented one. In addition to the organizational difference, three factors were associated with fewer negative outcomes: being male, having taken a computing course in high school, and majoring in science or engineering in college. However, even male, experienced, engineering, and science students encountered computing as an alien culture.     

高校贫困学生辅助评价的研究

高校对贫困学生的认定存在认定成本高、可信度不强以及标准不一致等问题.本文通过分析高校一卡通的消费行为,刻画贫困学生的消费特征,应用马尔科夫模型对贫困学生消费行为进行建模,并提出了相似指标的概念和计算方法.通过对学生消费行为与贫困学生消费行为模型进行相似指标计算,对贫困学生进行认定.该方法具有计算效率高,速度快,计算成本低廉以及数据获取容易,在同一所学校中评价标准一致,对贫困学生的平均识别率达到90%以上等特点,可以作为高校在复评贫困学生的一个有力的辅助工具.