Your model is predictive— but is it useful? Theoretical and Empirical Considerations of a New Paradigm for Adaptive Tutoring Evaluation

Classification evaluation metrics are often used to evaluate adaptive tutoring systems— programs that teach and adapt to humans. Unfortunately, it is not clear how intuitive these metrics are for practitioners with little machine learning background. Moreover, our experiments suggest that existing convention for evaluating tutoring systems may lead to suboptimal decisions. We propose the Learner Effort-Outcomes Paradigm (Leopard), a new framework to evaluate adaptive tutoring. We introduce Teal and White, novel automatic metrics that apply Leopard and quantify the amount of effort required to achieve a learning outcome. Our experiments suggest that our metrics are a better alternative for evaluating adaptive tutoring

Impact of Standardized Testing Emphasis on Teaching and Learning in Kindergarten through 12th Grade in United States Schools: East Tennessee Principals\u27 Perspectives.

The pressure to perform on standardized tests in the United States has become intense. Increased accountability has caused principals to think about their perceptions of standardized testing with regard to accountability measures, test validity, use of test data, impact of testing on the curriculum, and stress related to testing. The purpose of this study was to investigate kindergarten- through 12th-grade principals\u27 perceptions of standardized testing. The study included 91 principals of Title I and nonTitle I schools located in 8 rural East Tennessee school districts. Data were gathered using a survey instrument to determine principals\u27 opinions of standardized testing. There were 4 predictor (independent) variables in this study: Title I status of the school measured by status (Title I school and nonTitle I school), gender predictor variable, predictor variable of highest degree earned by principals (master\u27s, specialist, and doctorate), and predictor variable of experience in current position (1-6 years, 7-14 years, and 15-39 years). The data analysis focused on 5 dimensions of standardized testing. The 5 (dependent) variables were: (a) general impact-accountability, (b) validity of standardized tests, (c) use of standardized tests in individualizing instruction, (d) impact on curriculum, and (e) stress related to standardized testing. The findings reflected that in general, principals had a positive view of standardized testing; however, the study showed that there was agreement among principals that standardized testing has limitations, particularly in the area of fairness to ethnic groups. The research indicated that principals use test data in many ways to improve their schools. Regardless of Title I status, gender, highest degree earned, and years of experience in current position, there were no significant differences in principals\u27 opinions of standardized testing regarding the 5 dimensions of standardized testing

Voluntary contributions to public goods:A multi-disciplinary examination of prosocial behavior and its antecedents

The four essays collected in this Ph.D. dissertation concern prosocial motivations in different social contexts, applying conceptual, experimental, and survey methodologies to investigate how the complex and diverse interaction between psychological attributes and the social environment shapes prosocial behaviors. The first essay provides a conceptual framework on how cognition links relevant stimuli with innate moralities to construct Public Service Motivation (PSM) and guild various social behaviors. The second essay builds on the first essay and provides empirical evidence for the essential role of innate moralities in shaping Public Service Motivation and affecting behavioral consequences. The third and fourth essay apply methods from experimental economics to investigate the role of contextual stimuli in affecting prosocial motivation in a lab experiment of the volunteer’s dilemma game. The third essay first extends the classic volunteer’s dilemma game and develops novel treatments to examine pro-social risk-taking and competitive behavior in a lab experiment. The fourth essay then incorporates the PSM theory in the extended volunteer’s dilemma game to explore the role of PSM in self-sacrifice behavior and its relationships with external contextual factors

Growing Together Separately: An Analysis of the Influence of Individualism in an Alternative Educational Setting

Alternative educational settings that attempt to challenge Individualism are pervaded by Individualizing influences from the larger school system. This thesis examines the influences of Individualism in a school garden program at a Southern California continuation high school. Program members included high school students, college student interns, and two co-directors. Research was conducted during the spring semester of 2014. By providing an analysis of the Individualizing and non-Individualizing influences present in the program and the ways in which these influences interacted to inform the program structure and program members’ experiences and understandings, my thesis sheds new light on the complex ways alternative educational settings incorporate some aspects of Individualism, even as they challenge it

Personality, personality disorders, and the process of change.

The present paper elaborates a process perspective of change in psychotherapy for personality disorders (PDs). Firstly, the paper reviews the literature of mechanisms of change in treatments of PD, with the main focus on emotional processing and socio-cognitive processing. Secondly, it proposes an illustrative case-series analysis of eight cases, drawn from a mediation analysis conducted within the context of a randomized controlled trial for borderline personality disorder (BPD). As such, cases with good and poor outcomes are compared, as are cases with poor and good intake features and cases with poor and good process markers across treatment. The results illustrate possible pathways to healthy change over the course of four months of treatment, and possible pathways of the absence of change. These results are discussed with regard to three main research perspectives: the combination of qualitative and quantitative methodology in psychotherapy research may be applied to case study research, a neurobehavioral perspective on change may incorporate the individualized experience in the laboratory and therapist responsiveness to patient characteristics may be a core feature of fostering change. Clinical or methodological significance of this article: The present paper illustrates individual pathways to change in personality disorders. It illustrates how coping capacities influence the process of psychotherapy and outcome in personality disorders. It demonstrates the relevance of individualizing treatments for personality disorders. It demonstrates several integrative features of psychotherapy research, in particular the use of neurobehavioral paradigms and the integration of single-case research within randomized controlled trials

Individualizing assembly processes for geometric quality improvement

Dimensional deviations are a consequence of the mass production of parts. These deviations can be controlled by tightening production tolerances. However, this solution is not always desired because it usually increases production costs. The availability of massive amounts of data about products and automatized production has opened new opportunities to improve products\u27 geometrical quality by individualizing the assembly process. This individualization can be conducted through several techniques, including selective assembly, locator adjustments, weld sequence optimization, and clamping sequence optimization in a smart assembly line for spot-welded sheet metal assemblies. This study focuses on two techniques of individualizing the assembly process, selective assembly, and individualized locator adjustments in assembly fixtures. The existing studies and applications of these methods are reviewed, and the research gaps are defined. The previous applications of selective assembly are limited to linear and rigid assemblies. This study develops the application of selective assembly for sheet metal assemblies. This research addresses another research gap regarding the selective assembly of sheet metals by reducing the calculation cost associated with this technique. This study also develops a new locator adjustment method. This method utilizes scanned geometries of mating parts to predict the required adjustments. Afterward, a method for individualized adjustments is also developed. Considering applied and residual stresses during the assembly process as constraints is another contribution of this research to locator adjustments. These methods are applied to three industrial sample cases and the results evaluated. The results illustrate that individualization in locator adjustments can increase geometrical quality improvements three to four times.Accumulation of the potential improvements from both techniques in a smart assembly line is also evaluated in this study. The results indicate that combining the techniques may not increase the geometrical quality significantly relative to using only individualized locator adjustments.A crucial factor in the achievable improvements through individualization is the utilized assembly fixture layout. This study develops a method of designing the optimal fixture layout for sheet metal assemblies. Different design and production strategies are investigated to acquire the maximum potential for geometrical improvements through individualization in self-adjusting smart assembly lines

Managerialism and the neoliberal university: Prospects for new forms of "open management" in higher education

The restructuring of state education systems in many OECD countries during the last two decades has involved a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. The "new managerialism" has drawn theoretically, on the one hand, on the model of corporate managerialism and private sector management styles, and, on public choice theory and new institutional economics (NIE), most notably, agency theory and transaction cost analysis, on the other. A specific constellation of these theories is sometimes called "New Public Management," which has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These theories and models have been used both as the legitimation for policies that redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. Most importantly, there has been a decentralization of management control away from the center to the individual institution through a "new contractualism" - often referred to as the "doctrine of self-management" - coupled with new accountability and competitive funding regimes. This shift has often been accompanied by a disaggregation of large state bureaucracies into autonomous agencies, a clarification of organizational objectives, and a separation between policy advice and policy implementation functions, together with a privatization of service and support functions through "contracting out". The "new managerialism" has also involved a shift from input controls to quantifiable output measures and performance targets, along with an emphasis on short-term performance contracts, especially for CEOs and senior managers. In the interests of so-called "productive efficiency," the provision of educational serviceshas been made contestable; and, in the interests of so-called allocative efficiency state education has been progressively marketized and privatized. In this paper I analyze the main underlying elements of this theoretical development that led to the establishment of the neoliberal university in the 1980s and 1990s before entertaining and reviewing claims that new public management is dead. At the end of the paper I focus on proposals for new forms of "the public" in higher education as a means of promoting "radical openness" consonant with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and new research infrastructures in the global knowledge economy

Towards a Digital Twin for Individualized Manufacturing of Welded Aerospace Structures

The aerospace industry is constantly striving towards lower fuel consumption while maintaining a high standard with regards to safety and reliability. These increasing demands require the development of new methods and strategies for efficient and precise manufacturing processes. One way of achieving this goal is fabrication, an approach where components are built by joining multiple small parts into an assembly. This brings many advantages such as more flexibility in product design, however it also adds geometrical variation to the manufacturing process which needs to be managed. Since the parts in the assembly are produced separate from each other before being joined together, issues can occur related to how these parts fit together. If a single part in the assembly deviates slightly from its intended shape, this deviation may propagate in the assembly. It may also stack with deviations in other parts. This can sometimes be difficult to predict and manage using existing manufacturing tools developed within the fields of geometry assurance and robust design.The traditional approach to managing geometrical variation is usually based on making statistical assumptions about the variation that is going to occur in the manufacturing chain. With rising complexity in product design and increasingly tight tolerances, the traditional geometry assurance approach may not be sufficient to guarantee the high geometrical quality required from the final product. Individualized manufacturing has previously been proposed as a way of increasing the precision and reliability of a production process by treating each product individually based on its unique properties. This can be achieved with a digital twin, an emerging technology which works by creating a virtual copy of a physical process. The work presented in this thesis is directed towards realizing a digital twin for fabricated aerospace components. The first contribution is a framework describing how a digital twin could be implemented into a typical fabrication process within the aerospace industry. Since fabrication makes heavy use of welding to join multiple parts, welding simulation is an important component in this implementation. The digital twin also needs to manage measurement data collected from the parts on the assembly line, and this data should be considered within the welding simulation. The result of this simulation is then used to adapt and adjust the manufacturing process according to the conditions that have been measured and analyzed. An analysis loop is proposed in this thesis for realizing the functionality of the digital twin. A case study is conducted to evaluate the precision of the proposed analysis loop by comparing its predictions to a real welded assembly. The results of the case study show that the predictive precision of the proposed method beats the accuracy of a traditional, nominal prediction. This is an important first step towards the completion and future implementation of a digital twin for welded assemblies

The Moral Foundations Of Attitudes Toward Mask Wearing

As COVID-19 becomes endemic it is important to understand individual differences in motivation and adherence to mask wearing policies and recommendations. Mask wearing appears to be one way to protect communities, slow the spread, and save lives when COVID-19 rates spike in communities The main study aim was to examine how Moral Foundations Theory and Theory of Planned Behavior, specifically subjective norms, may explain individual differences in mask wearing to slow the spread of COVID-19. Understanding the psychological correlates of why and how often individuals wear a mask to slow the spread of COVID-19 can help community leaders, public health professionals, and medical experts construct better messaging to encourage more people to wear masks when needed. Results suggest a need for greater consistency in messaging and norms regarding mask wearing to slow the spread of COVID-19. In the case of COVID-19, people were exposed to an injunctive norm that people should wear masks to protect themselves; however, for many people, descriptive norms were in conflict with the injunctive norm. There must be consistent messaging at every level when a public health crisis emerges—in this case, consistent messaging that brought injunctive and descriptive norms into alignment at every level of government would likely have resulted in higher rates of pro-mask wearing norms to slow the spread of COVID-19

Balanced difficulty task finder: an adaptive recommendation method for learning tasks based on the concept of state of flow

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