The effects of incorporating a virtual agent in a computer-aided test designed for stress management education: The mediating role of enjoyment

Drawing upon the Entertainment–Education paradigm, this study evaluated the effectiveness of a computer-aided interactive test designed for stress management education targeting college students. The presence (vs. absence) of a virtual agent incorporated into the interactive test was proposed as the key factor that induces enjoyment and educational outcomes. The interactive test consisted of scenarios describing stressful situations that could occur in college students’ everyday lives. Furthermore, college students could relate the concerns raised by these hypothetical situations to the ways they manage their stress and mental health. After the student’s choice behavior in each scenario, a virtual agent conveyed health-related educational messages via a text-modal dialogue box. Participants who took the interactive test in which there was a virtual agent perceived the test as more educational and entertaining than those who took the test without a virtual agent. Results of a path analysis also revealed a significant mediating role of enjoyment on educational outcomes (i.e., students’ enjoyment of the interactive test mediated the effects of the presence of a virtual agent on their perceived educational value of health information), thus confirming the Entertainment–Education link. In addition, engaging in the interactive test resulted in stress management self-efficacy improvement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

音体美专业学生计算机教学策略研究

音体美专业学生的计算机课程教学,是困扰教师教学的难题。本文通过对该类专业学生教学过程和实验设计的探讨,从多个角度介绍解决这些困扰的方法和策略,试图运用这些手段,克服教学中的困难和阻碍,以达到较理想的教学目标。     

Online formative assessment in higher education: A review of the literature

As online and blended learning has become common place educational strategy in higher education, educators need to reconceptualise fundamental issues of teaching, learning and assessment in non traditional spaces. These issues include concepts such as validity and reliability of assessment in online environments in relation to serving the intended purposes, as well as understanding how formative assessment functions within online and blended learning. This article provides a systematic qualitative review of the research literature on online formative assessment in higher education. As an integrative narrative review, the method applied in this review entailed systematic searching, reviewing, and writing this review of the literature to bring together key themes and findings of research in this field. The authors applied qualitative thematic criteria in selecting and reviewing the available literature from which they focused on identifying and analyzing the core themes that are central to the concept of formative assessment with a key focus on application of formative assessment within blended and online contexts. Various techniques were identified for formative assessment by the individual, peers and the teacher, many of which were linked with online tools such as self-test quiz tools, discussion forums and e-portfolios. The benefits identified include improvement of learner engagement and centrality in the process as key actors, including the development of a learning community. The key findings are that effective online formative assessment can foster a learner and assessment centered focus through formative feedback and enhanced learner engagement with valuable learning experiences. Ongoing authentic assessment activities and interactive formative feedback were identified as important characteristics that can address threats to validity and reliability within the context of online formative assessment.     

On the number of higher order Delaunay triangulations

Higher order Delaunay triangulations are a generalization of the Delaunay triangulation that provides a class of well-shaped triangulations, over which extra criteria can be optimized. A triangulation is order-k Delaunay if the circumcircle of each triangle of the triangulation contains at most k points. In this paper we study lower and upper bounds on the number of higher order Delaunay triangulations, as well as their expected number for randomly distributed points. We show that arbitrarily large point sets can have a single higher order Delaunay triangulation, even for large orders, whereas for first order Delaunay triangulations, the maximum number is 2ⁿ⁻³. Next we show that uniformly distributed points have an expected number of at least 2^{ρ₁n(1+o(1))} first order Delaunay triangulations, where ρ₁ is an analytically defined constant (ρ₁≈0.525785), and for k>1, the expected number of order-k Delaunay triangulations (which are not order-i for any i<k) is at least 2^{ρ_kn(1+o(1))}, where ρ_k can be calculated numerically.     

A constraint programming-based solution approach for medical resident scheduling problems

Persistent calls come from within the graduate medical education community and from external sources for regulating the resident duty hours in order to meet the obligations about the quality of resident education, the well-being of residents themselves, and the quality of patient care services. The report of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) proposes common program requirements for resident hours. In this paper, we first develop a mixed-integer programming model for scheduling residents’ duty hours considering the on-call night, day-off, rest period, and total work-hour ACGME regulations as well as the demand coverage requirements of the residency program. Subsequently, we propose a column generation model that consists of a master problem and an auxiliary problem. The master problem finds a configuration of individual schedules that minimizes the sum of deviations from the desired service levels for the day and night periods. The formulation of this problem is possible by representing the feasible schedules using column variables, whereas the auxiliary problem finds the whole set of feasible schedules using constraint programming. The proposed approach has been tested on a series of problems using real data obtained from a hospital. The results indicate that high-quality schedules can be obtained within a few seconds.     

Exploring the relationship between Internet ethics in university students and the big five model of personality

The widespread use of the Internet and the convenient mechanism it provides, such as easy access, easy downloads, and easy copy and paste functions have made many types of unethical behaviors easier, particularly those involving students in academic settings. Among the issues in ethics within the academic environment that can be triggered by the Internet are fraudulence, plagiarism, falsification, delinquency, unauthorized help, and facility misuse. Given these issues, the study seeks to investigate the extent to which students at a public university in Malaysia engage in such unethical behavior and their relationship with the big five personality model. This study was conducted using a survey method of 252 students in three different academic faculties. The results of factor analyses confirm and refine the reliability of the scales for both big five personality variables and unethical Internet behaviors as conceptualized through Internet triggered academic dishonesty (ITADS). The findings indicate that personality traits such as (1) agreeableness, (2) conscientiousness and (3) emotional stability are significantly and negatively correlated with unethical Internet behavior in university students. Significant differences in facility misuse are also observed between the three academic faculties investigated. This research should provide significant contributions to educators in designing the computer ethics curriculum and in allowing for educational institutions as well as other organizations in developing relevant policies and guidelines on matters pertaining to academic conduct, utilization of computers and Internet, and recruitment exercises.     

信息管理与信息系统专业教学改革试探

信息管理与信息系统专业因为不同学校的办学力量和学科起源不同,在培养方向上有着显著的差别。因此,培养的学生质量与社会需求上也有不同的契合,本文通过专业的起源和定位来剖析,探讨从通识教学与专业教学、专业实践两个方面的教学改革,来提高本专业学生的培养质量。     

浅谈现代教育技术在《高等数学》教学中的应用

介绍现代教育技术在《高等数学》教学中的重要性,现代教育技术被越来越多的学校所利用,也给《高等数学》的教学带来巨大的生机,成为高等数学教师必不可少的工具。分析现代教育技术应用在高等数学教学中存在的一些问题,针对这些问题,结合笔者的教学经验,提出一些改进的方法。     

A compact split step Padé scheme for higher-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation (HNLS) with power law nonlinearity and fourth order dispersion

In this paper we propose a compact split step Padé scheme (CSSPS) to solve the scalar higher-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation (HNLS) with higher-order linear and nonlinear effects such as the third and fourth order dispersion effects, Kerr dispersion, stimulated Raman scattering and power law nonlinearity. The stability of this method has been proved. It has been shown as well that the CSSPS method gives the same results as classical numerical methods like the split step Fourier method and Crank–Nicholson (CN) method but it presents many advantages over theme. It is more efficient. This proposed scheme is well suited to higher-order dispersion effects and readily generalized for nonlinear and dispersion managed fibers. We tested this scheme for the case of the quintic nonlinearity and confirmed that this effect has no significant role on the propagation of single solitons.     

计算机基础教育研究与实践

本文依据“三个层次”的构思,阐述了新形势下对计算机基础教育的基本要求,总结了在层次教育、实践性教育和素质教育等方面的做法。