Combining translation into the second language and second language learning : an integrated computational approach

This thesis explores the area where translation and language learning intersects. However, this intersection is not one in the traditional sense of second language teaching: where translation is used as a means for learning a foreign language. This thesis treats translating into the foreign language as a separate entity, one that is as important as learning the foreign language itself. Thus the discussion in this thesis is especially relevant to an academic institution which contemplates training foreign language learners who can perform translation into the foreign language at a professional level. The thesis concentrates on developing a pedagogical model which can achieve the goal of fostering linguistic competence and translation competence at the same time. It argues that constructing such a model under a computerised framework is a viable approach, since the task of translation nowadays relies heavily on all kinds o

Tools for Stored Interactive Multimedia

Thesis submitted for the PhD degree

Music Learning with Massive Open Online Courses

Steels, Luc et al.-- Editors: Luc SteelsMassive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, have arisen as the logical consequence of marrying long-distance education with the web and social media. MOOCs were confidently predicted by advanced thinkers decades ago. They are undoubtedly here to stay, and provide a valuable resource for learners and teachers alike. This book focuses on music as a domain of knowledge, and has three objectives: to introduce the phenomenon of MOOCs; to present ongoing research into making MOOCs more effective and better adapted to the needs of teachers and learners; and finally to present the first steps towards 'social MOOCs’, which support the creation of learning communities in which interactions between learners go beyond correcting each other's assignments. Social MOOCs try to mimic settings for humanistic learning, such as workshops, small choirs, or groups participating in a Hackathon, in which students aided by somebody acting as a tutor learn by solving problems and helping each other. The papers in this book all discuss steps towards social MOOCs; their foundational pedagogy, platforms to create learning communities, methods for assessment and social feedback and concrete experiments. These papers are organized into five sections: background; the role of feedback; platforms for learning communities; experiences with social MOOCs; and looking backwards and looking forward. Technology is not a panacea for the enormous challenges facing today's educators and learners, but this book will be of interest to all those striving to find more effective and humane learning opportunities for a larger group of students.Funded by the European Commission's OpenAIRE2020 project.Peer reviewe

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Seventy-Eight Annual Meeting, Virginia Academy of Science, May 23-26, 2000, Radford University, Radford, VA

This document is a list of the abstracts of papers presented at the seventy-eighth meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science that took place at Radford University on May 23 through the 26th, 2000

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

Distributed adaptive e-assessment in a higher education environment

The rapid growth of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has promoted the development of paperless assessment. Most of the e-Assessment systems available nowadays, whether as an independent system or as a built-in module of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), are fixed-form e-Assessment systems based on the Classical Test Theory (CTT). In the meantime, the development of psychometrics has also proven the potential for e-Assessment systems to benefit from adaptive assessment theories. This research focuses on the applicability of adaptive e-Assessment in daily teaching and attempts to create an extensible web-based framework to accommodate different adaptive assessment strategies for future research. Real-data simulation and Monte Carlo simulation were adopted in the study to examine the performance of adaptive e-Assessment in a real environment and an ideal environment respectively. The proposed framework employs a management service as the core module which manages the connection from distributed test services to coordinate the assessment. The results of this study indicate that adaptive e-Assessment can reduce test length compared to fixed-form e-Assessment, while maintaining the consistency of the psychometric properties of the test. However, for a precise ability measurement, even a simple adaptive assessment model would demand a sizable question bank with ideally over 200 questions on a single latent trait. The requirements of the two categories of stakeholders (pedagogical researchers and educational application developers), as well as the variety and complexity of adaptive models, call for a framework with good accessibility for users, considerable extensibility and flexibility for implementing different assessment models, and the ability to deliver excessive computational power in extreme cases. The designed framework employs a distributed architecture with cross-language support based on the Apache Thrift framework to allow flexible collaboration of users with different programming language skills. The framework also allows different functional components to be deployed distributedly and to collaborate over a networ