Inside Magazine, March 2013

Iowa Department of Transportation Newsletter. INSIDE Magazine is developed to help keep all Iowa DOT employees informed about critical issues affecting them, recognize DOT employees for their excellent service and share interesting aspects in the lives of our co-workers

A Fuzzy Tree Matching-Based Personalized E-Learning Recommender System

© 1993-2012 IEEE. The rapid development of e-learning systems provides learners with great opportunities to access learning activities online, and this greatly supports and enhances the learning practices. However, an issue reduces the success of application of e-learning systems; too many learning activities (such as various leaning materials, subjects, and learning resources) are emerging in an e-learning system, making it difficult for individual learners to select proper activities for their particular situations/requirements because there is no personalized service function. Recommender systems, which aim to provide personalized recommendations for products or services, can be used to solve this issue. However, e-learning systems need to be able to handle certain special requirements: 1) leaning activities and learners' profiles often present tree structures; 2) learning activities contain vague and uncertain data, such as the uncertain categories that the learning activities belong to; 3) there are pedagogical issues, such as the precedence relations between learning activities. To deal with the three requirements, this study first proposes a fuzzy tree-structured learning activity model, and a learner profile model to comprehensively describe the complex learning activities and learner profiles. In the two models, fuzzy category trees and related similarity measures are presented to infer the semantic relations between learning activities or learner requirements. Since it is impossible to have two completely same trees, in practice, a fuzzy tree matching method is carefully discussed. A fuzzy tree matching-based hybrid learning activity recommendation approach is then developed. This approach takes advantage of both the knowledge-based and collaborative filtering-based recommendation approaches, and considers both the semantic and collaborative filtering similarities between learners. Finally, an e-learning recommender system prototype is well designed and developed based on the proposed models and recommendation approach. Experiments are done to evaluate the proposed recommendation approach, and the experimental results demonstrate the good accuracy performance of the proposed approach. A comprehensive case study about learning activity recommendation further demonstrates the effectiveness of the fuzzy tree matching-based personalized e-learning recommender system in practice

Winter/Spring 2020 catalog

This catalog offers a dynamic selection of courses provided by our Continuing Education Department, the Academy for Lifelong Learning, and the McGrath Computer Learning Center. It describes programs that are presented by the USC Aiken faculty and experts from our community :p ractical training seminars and workshops; an immense variety of online programs; exciting travel opportunities; engaging presentations; and insightful field experiences. The catalog offers courses from specialized trainings to help advance your career, to classes that are just for fun

The Smithsonian Institute Smithsonian American Art Museum registration internship

This detailed report of a registration internship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum includes an organizational profile of the Smithsonian Institute, the Smithsonian Institute Affiliate Program, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a description of the activities performed during the internship, an analysis of a volunteer management challenge, a proposed resolution to the volunteer management challenge, and a discussion of the short and long term effects of the internship. The duties and expectations of volunteers, the staff preparation for volunteers, and the empowerment of volunteers are important aspects of the analysis and resolution of the volunteer management challenge

Collaborative trails in e-learning environments

This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future

What do we know on how to treat vaginismus?

Contexto: Apesar da sua prevalência e do seu impacto negativo na qualidade de vida das mulheres, não foram ainda desenvolvidas normas de intervenção terapêutica padronizadas para o tratamento do vaginismo. Objetivo: Clarificar o que pode ser feito ao nível do tratamento para ajudar as mulheres com vaginismo. Métodos: Pesquisa na base de dados da Pubmed, recorrendo à seguinte query: (("Cognitive Behavioral Therapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR ( "Vaginismus/drug therapy"[Mesh] OR "Vaginismus/rehabilitation"[Mesh] OR "Vaginismus/therapy"[Mesh] ) OR (("Botulinum Toxins, Type A"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Physical Therapy Modalities"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Psychotherapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Biofeedback, Psychology"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Surgical Procedures, Operative/therapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]). Dos 68 artigos obtidos, 27 foram incluídos de acordo com a sua relevância. Outras fontes de informação relevantes foram adicionadas posteriormente. Resultados: São vários os tratamentos eficazes descritos para o vaginismo, desde abordagens multidimensionais a terapias aplicadas numa única sessão. É possível categorizar os tratamentos encontrados em: terapia com dilatadores, fisioterapia, abordagem psicoterapêutica, e injeções com toxina botulínica. As intervenções psicoterapêuticas são as terapias mais estudadas no nosso estudo, apresentando uma abordagem mais abrangente adaptada à natureza multifatorial desta doença. Tradução clínica: A formação médica nesta área deverá ser melhorada, assim como deverão ser conduzidos mais estudos com outcomes mais apropriados, populações maiores, tempos de follow-up mais longos e grupos de controlo mais adequados. Forças e limitações: Este trabalho oferece, não só uma perspetiva do tratamento do vaginismo, mas também do seu contexto clínico, nomeadamente no que diz respeito à sua etiologia e diagnóstico. As limitações metodológicas encontradas na nossa pesquisa, desde a falta de grupos de controlo à variabilidade encontrada nas variáveis de outcome, dificultam a interpretação dos resultados. Conclusão: Os médicos podem oferecer diferentes tipos de tratamentos eficazes às suas doentes, de acordo com as suas necessidades e preferências, na qual se distingue a terapia cognitiva comportamental como sendo a abordagem mais completa.Background: Despite its prevalence and its negative impact on women's quality of life, no standardized therapeutic interventions have been developed for the treatment of vaginismus. Aim: To clarify what can be done in terms of treatment to help women with vaginismus. Methods: We conducted a research on Pubmed's electronic database, using the following query: (("Cognitive Behavioral Therapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR ( "Vaginismus/drug therapy"[Mesh] OR "Vaginismus/rehabilitation"[Mesh] OR "Vaginismus/therapy"[Mesh] ) OR (("Botulinum Toxins, Type A"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Physical Therapy Modalities"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Psychotherapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Biofeedback, Psychology"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]) OR (("Surgical Procedures, Operative/therapy"[Mesh]) AND "Vaginismus"[Mesh]). From the 68 articles obtained, 27 were included according to their relevance. Further relevant literature was added posteriorly. Results: From multidimensional approaches to therapies applied in only one session, there is several effective treatments described for vaginismus. It is possible to categorize them as: dilator therapy, physiotherapy, psychological therapy and botulinum toxin injections. Psychological interventions are the most studied therapies in our research, presenting a broader approach that targets the multifactorial nature of this disorder. Clinical Translation: Medical education programs on this field should be improved and additional trials, with more appropriate outcomes, larger samples, longer follow-up times and more adequate control groups, should be conducted. Strengths & Limitations: This work not only gives an insight on vaginismus treatment, but also on its clinal context, namely its etiology and diagnosis. The methodological limitations found in our research, from the lack of control groups to a variability in outcome variables, hinder the interpretation of the results. Conclusion: Physicians can offer different types of efficacious treatments to their patients, according to their needs and preferences, being cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) the more complete one

Lindenwood University Strategic Plan, Fiscal 2008

Lindenwood University Strategic Plan, Fiscal 200