浅议学生学习动机的培养

<正>确的学习动机是学生掌握知识的必要条件。学习动机决定着学生学习方向和进程。它是直接推动学生进行学习的一种内部动力,是激励和指引学生进行学习的一种需要。培养学生有个良好的学习动机是每个教育工作者一项重要任务。也是广大英语教师义不容辞的责任。     

关于新生入学动机与职业规划的调查分析与思考

采用问卷调查法了解新生在志愿填报及未来就业定位等方面信息,分析了招生工作的现状及存在问题,提出了以就业为导向提高就业含金量、丰富中外合作内涵、依托权威媒体提高宣传实效、借助学院网站发挥对外窗口作用等思路和建议。     

The influence of user cognition on consumption decision-making from the perspective of bounded rationality

Consumer decision-making is related to the success or failure of enterprises, and products that cater to the cognitive preferences of users have become a focus of current research. Based on the theory of bounded rationality, this paper explores the cognitive process of consumer decision-making. Then, how product shape affects consumption decision-making is analyzed with eye-tracking technology. Finally, the design principle of the product form is further explored. The results demonstrate the following: (1) the perceptual cognition of users has a driving effect on consumption behavior; (2) as a key factor affecting the perceptual cognition of users, product form affects consumer decision-making by influencing the degree of approach motivation; (3) by establishing the mapping relationship between product form elements and user images, the principles of product form design can be more consistent with user image preferences. This study provides useful suggestions for how to increase the purchase behavior of users from the perspective of bounded rationality.     

Instructing students on effective sequences of examples and problems: Does self-regulated learning improve from knowing what works and why?

Nowadays, students often practice problem-solving skills in online learning environments with the help of examples and problems. This requires them to self-regulate their learning. It is questionable how novices self-regulate their learning from examples and problems and whether they need support. The present study investigated the open questions (1) to what extent students' (novices) task selections align with instructional design principles and (2) whether informing them about these principles would improve their task selections, learning outcomes, and motivation. Higher education students (N = 150) learned a problem-solving procedure by fixed sequences of examples and problems (FS-condition), or by self-regulated learning (SRL). The SRL participants selected tasks from a database, varying in format, complexity, and cover story, either with (ISRL-condition) or without (SRL-condition) watching a video detailing the instructional design principles. Students' task-selection patterns in both SRL conditions largely corresponded to the principles, although tasks were built up in complexity more often in the ISRL-condition than in the SRL-condition. Moreover, there was still room for improvement in students' task selections after solving practice problems. The video instruction helped students to better apply certain principles, but did not enhance learning and motivation. Finally, there were no test performance or motivational differences among conditions. Although these findings might suggest it is relatively ‘safe’ to allow students to independently start learning new problems-solving tasks using examples and problems, caution is warranted: It is unclear whether these findings generalize to other student populations, as the students participating in this study have had some experience with similar tasks or learning with examples. Moreover, as there was still room for improvement in students' task selections, follow-up research should investigate how we can further improve self-regulated learning from examples and practice problems.     

The effect of nonhuman’s versus human’s external regulation on children’s speech use, manifested self-regulation, and satisfaction during learning tasks

Because of several analytical and methodological critiques on the findings and contexts of children’s private speech (PS), self-regulation learning (SRL), and thinking aloud (TA), the present study was conducted to shed new light on the effect of the nonhuman’s/computer’s versus human’s/teacher’s intervention (C-Condition versus T-Condition) on young children’s speech use, SRL, and satisfaction during learning tasks. Four developmental measurements with novel criteria were used to measure: (1) speech analysis, (3) SRL as a function of task level selection, (3) SRL as a function of task precision, and (4) a friendly-chat questionnaire to measure children’s satisfaction. Two types of intervention (enacted versus verbal encouragement) were applied through computer-based learning environment and investigated by forty preschool children divided by their teachers between the two conditions equivalently. It was hypothesized that children who acted alone (C-Condition) were more PS productive, manifested higher SRL, task performance, and satisfaction. The results confirmed the hypothesis with no significant differential effect of the gender on performance, showed that the injudicious use of encouragement hindered the children’s regulation behavior, and proved that PS and TA elicitation were fully different. However, the results were not confirmed Vygotsky’s view and simultaneously not fully inline with Piaget’s view of self-regulation development.     

Guarding against online threats: why entrepreneurs take protective measures

Information technology is becoming increasingly important for entrepreneurs. Protecting their technical infrastructure and stored data is, therefore, also becoming more vital. Nevertheless, research into the safety and security of entrepreneurs in general, and online threats targeted at entrepreneurs in particular, is still limited. This study investigates to what extent self-employed entrepreneurs protect themselves against online threats, and what motivates them to do so. Based on secondary analyses on data collected from 1622 Dutch entrepreneurs, we observe that the majority implement technical and personal coping measures. By adopting protection motivation theory as a theoretical basis for our study, we found that coping appraisal explains the adoption of protective measures. Entrepreneurs are likely to implement protective measures when they believe a measure is effective, when they are capable of using internet technology, when their attitude towards online protection is positive and when they believe they are responsible for their own online security. Although the secondary analysis provides some limitations, this study offers new insights into the usage of protective measures and the motivation for taking them. These insights can help to improve information security campaigns.     

The relationship between online game playing motivation and selection of online game characters – the case of Taiwan

The alarming growth rate in the online game industry calls for a need of understanding the determinants of online gamers’ behaviour. Investigating how online gamers choose different online characters assists online game vendors to design characters that match the needs of different online gamers. Recently, numerous online game designers have introduced celebrity figures as characters for certain online games. The popularity of those celebrities has resulted in greater awareness of these games, and hopefully further increases the playability of online games. While different online gamers are motivated by different desires for playing, it is insufficiently researched whether these online celebrity characters have actually altered players’ choice in giving preference to these games. Thus, this study conducts an experimental design to study the reasons behind players’ choice of characters by studying how online games perceive the interpersonal attractiveness of celebrity online characters, and how online gamers with different playing motivations display different behaviours in their choice of online game characters. Results from the survey filled out by participants after the experiments show that the attractiveness of celebrity online characters is significantly higher than that of non-celebrity characters. Further, online game players with a social playing motivation tend to choose celebrities as their online game characters.     

Putting it all in the trunk: incremental software development in the FreeBSD open source project

Abstract. Software development in the FreeBSD project is incremental in the sense that a stream of contributions, including bugfixes and minor and major new features, go into a single branch in the repository, the development branch (or 'trunk'), and are required to preserve the software in a working state. This creates a succession of development releases, akin to the practice of frequent releasing argued by Eric S. Raymond in his essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' to be the key to the success of Linux and other open source projects. The positive and negative impact of this approach is discussed based on a survey involving 72 project participants. On the positive side, the data indicate that it creates a highly motivating 'see bug, fix bug, see bug fixed in new release' life cycle, and helps integrate bugfixing with new development. On the negative side, the data indicates that the highly incremental model does not support the development of complex new features.