Transportation Life Cycle Assessment Synthesis: Life Cycle Assessment Learning Module Series

The Life Cycle Assessment Learning Module Series is a set of narrated, self-advancing slideshows on various topics related to environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). This research project produced the first 27 of such modules, which are freely available for download on the CESTiCC website http://cem.uaf.edu/cesticc/publications/lca.aspx. Each module is roughly 15- 20 minutes in length and is intended for various uses such as course components, as the main lecture material in a dedicated LCA course, or for independent learning in support of research projects. The series is organized into four overall topical areas, each of which contain a group of overview modules and a group of detailed modules. The A and α groups cover the international standards that define LCA. The B and β groups focus on environmental impact categories. The G and γ groups identify software tools for LCA and provide some tutorials for their use. The T and τ groups introduce topics of interest in the field of transportation LCA. This includes overviews of how LCA is frequently applied in that sector, literature reviews, specific considerations, and software tutorials. Future modules in this category will feature methodological developments and case studies specific to the transportation sector

Strategies for Motivating Middle School Students

The study analyzed the strategies that were effective for motivating and engaging adolescent aged students. The study was conducted in a middle school located in a suburban school district in upstate New York. I interviewed twenty general and special education teachers, three school counselors, and one school social worker. This study illustrates that there is an array of strategies that educators and other school professionals can implement to motivate and engage adolescent learners in their classrooms. This study found that goal setting, growth mindset, student belonging and creating a positive classroom environment are among some strategies considered to be effective for motivating middle school students. Therefore, the strategies discussed in this study can be applied to middle school classrooms and can be used by teachers, counselors, and other professionals who work in middle school settings to encourage and foster an environment that motivates adolescent aged learners

Online Self-testing Resources Prepared by Peer Tutors as a Formative Assessment Tool in Pharmacology Courses

Objective. To assess the effectiveness of optional online quizzes written by peer tutors in a pharmacology course for doctor of pharmacy students. Methods. Online quizzes were written by peer tutors for second-year pharmacy students. Quizzes reflected the material taught during lecture and were in a format similar to that of the examinations. Data related to performance on each quiz and each examination were collected throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, students and peer tutors were surveyed to gather information on the utility and success of the quizzes. Results. Students taking online quizzes performed significantly better on examinations than those who did not take quizzes. In addition, students received higher scores on examinations than when practicing with the quizzes. Surveys suggest that students liked the quizzes and felt they increased their confidence and performance on examinations. Conclusion. The quizzes were beneficial to student performance on examinations as well as student perception of performance and confidence going into the examinations. Quizzes were also beneficial learning experiences for peer tutors

Analyzing the behavior of students regarding learning activities, badges, and academic dishonesty in MOOC environment

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThe ‘big data’ scene has brought new improvement opportunities to most products and services, including education. Web-based learning has become very widespread over the last decade, which in conjunction with the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) phenomenon, it has enabled the collection of large and rich data samples regarding the interaction of students with these educational online environments. We have detected different areas in the literature that still need improvement and more research studies. Particularly, in the context of MOOCs and Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), where we focus our data analysis on the platforms Khan Academy, Open edX and Coursera. More specifically, we are going to work towards learning analytics visualization dashboards, carrying out an evaluation of these visual analytics tools. Additionally, we will delve into the activity and behavior of students with regular and optional activities, badges and their online academically dishonest conduct. The analysis of activity and behavior of students is divided first in exploratory analysis providing descriptive and inferential statistics, like correlations and group comparisons, as well as numerous visualizations that facilitate conveying understandable information. Second, we apply clustering analysis to find different profiles of students for different purposes e.g., to analyze potential adaptation of learning experiences and pedagogical implications. Third, we also provide three machine learning models, two of them to predict learning outcomes (learning gains and certificate accomplishment) and one to classify submissions as illicit or not. We also use these models to discuss about the importance of variables. Finally, we discuss our results in terms of the motivation of students, student profiling, instructional design, potential actuators and the evaluation of visual analytics dashboards providing different recommendations to improve future educational experiments.Las novedades en torno al ‘big data’ han traído nuevas oportunidades de mejorar la mayoría de productos y servicios, incluyendo la educación. El aprendizaje mediante tecnologías web se ha extendido mucho durante la última década, que conjuntamente con el fenómeno de los cursos abiertos masivos en línea (MOOCs), ha permitido que se recojan grandes y ricas muestras de datos sobre la interacción de los estudiantes con estos entornos virtuales de aprendizaje. Nosotros hemos detectado diferentes áreas en la literatura que aún necesitan de mejoras y del desarrollo de más estudios, específicamente en el contexto de MOOCs y cursos privados pequeños en línea (SPOCs). En la tesis nos hemos enfocado en el análisis de datos en las plataformas Khan Academy, Open edX y Coursera. Más específicamente, vamos a trabajar en interfaces de visualizaciones de analítica de aprendizaje, llevando a cabo la evaluación de estas herramientas de analítica visual. Además, profundizaremos en la actividad y el comportamiento de los estudiantes con actividades comunes y opcionales, medallas y sus conductas en torno a la deshonestidad académica. Este análisis de actividad y comportamiento comienza primero con análisis exploratorio proporcionando variables descriptivas y de inferencia estadística, como correlaciones y comparaciones entre grupos, así como numerosas visualizaciones que facilitan la transmisión de información inteligible. En segundo lugar aplicaremos técnicas de agrupamiento para encontrar distintos perfiles de estudiantes con diferentes propósitos, como por ejemplo para analizar posibles adaptaciones de experiencias educativas y sus implicaciones pedagógicas. También proporcionamos tres modelos de aprendizaje máquina, dos de ellos que predicen resultados finales de aprendizaje (ganancias de aprendizaje y la consecución de certificados de terminación) y uno para clasificar que ejercicios han sido entregados de forma deshonesta. También usaremos estos tres modelos para analizar la importancia de las variables. Finalmente, discutimos todos los resultados en términos de la motivación de los estudiantes, diferentes perfiles de estudiante, diseño instruccional, posibles sistemas actuadores, así como la evaluación de interfaces de analítica visual, proporcionando recomendaciones que pueden ayudar a mejorar futuras experiencias educacionales.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: Davinia Hernández Leo.- Secretario: Luis Sánchez Fernández.- Vocal: Adolfo Ruiz Callej

Student profiling in a dispositional learning analytics application using formative assessment

How learning disposition data can help us translating learning feedback from a learning analytics application into actionable learning interventions, is the main focus of this empirical study. It extends previous work where the focus was on deriving timely prediction models in a data rich context, encompassing trace data from learning management systems, formative assessment data, e-tutorial trace data as well as learning dispositions. In this same educational context, the current study investigates how the application of cluster analysis based on e-tutorial trace data allows student profiling into different at-risk groups, and how these at-risk groups can be characterized with the help of learning disposition data. It is our conjecture that establishing a chain of antecedent-consequence relationships starting from learning disposition, through student activity in e-tutorials and formative assessment performance, to course performance, adds a crucial dimension to current learning analytics studies: that of profiling students with descriptors that easily lend themselves to the design of educational interventions

OUTLINING PARTICIPATION IN THE FIRST MOOC OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE AEGEAN: A CASE STUDY

Twelve years after the advent of MOOCs, the University of the Aegean (Greece) implemented its first MOOC on “Violence and bullying in schools”, in which about 2,000 people showed interest in attending. Eventually, 1309 people started it and 1050 (80.21%) completed it successfully, achieving high performance. The present work, which is part of the doctoral research of the first researcher, outlines the participation of the learners in the program and the obstacles they encountered during it while identifying the reasons for its high completion rate with high performance. The results showed that mainly the quality of the instructional material, the instructional design of the program, and its organization, as well as the timely support provided to learners, contributed significantly to the successful completion of the program achieving high performance. These findings can be considered by future MOOC program designers, in order to design and implement programs that meet the requirements and facilitate the participation of those who attend. Δώδεκα χρόνια μετά την εμφάνιση των MOOCs, το Πανεπιστήμιο Αιγαίου υλοποίησε το πρώτο του MOOC με θέμα την Ενδοσχολική βία και τον εκφοβισμό, στο οποίο εκδήλωσαν ενδιαφέρον για να το παρακολουθήσουν περίπου 2000 άτομα. Τελικά, το ξεκίνησαν 1309 άτομα και το ολοκλήρωσαν επιτυχώς 1050 (80,21%), πετυχαίνοντας υψηλές επιδόσεις. Η παρούσα εργασία, που αποτελεί τμήμα της διδακτορικής έρευνας του πρώτου ερευνητή, σκιαγραφεί τη συμμετοχή των εκπαιδευομένων στο πρόγραμμα και τα εμπόδια που αντιμετώπισαν κατά τη διάρκειά του, ενώ εντοπίζει τους λόγους του υψηλού ποσοστού ολοκλήρωσης του με υψηλές επιδόσεις. Τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν ότι κυρίως η ποιότητα του εκπαιδευτικού υλικού, ο εκπαιδευτικός σχεδιασμός του προγράμματος και η οργάνωσή του, καθώς και η έγκαιρη υποστήριξη που παρεχόταν στους εκπαιδευόμενους, συνέβαλαν σημαντικά στην επίτευξη των συγκεκριμένων αποτελεσμάτων. Τα ευρήματα αυτά, μπορούν να ληφθούν υπόψη από τους σχεδιαστές μελλοντικών προγραμμάτων MOOCs, ώστε να σχεδιάζουν και να υλοποιούν προγράμματα που θα ικανοποιούν τις απαιτήσεις και θα διευκολύνουν τη συμμετοχή, όσων τα παρακολουθούν. Article visualizations

Development of psychosocial case studies by students to improve their ability to understand and analyze human behavior

This study presents an active learning methodology based on the development and analysis of case studies by college students and explores its effects on academic performance and on students' capacity of understanding and analysing human behaviour. A group of 54 students who were taking the course Social Psychology at the University of Barcelona developed written stories where psychosocial concepts were represented. Results showed that participants, after developing their own case studies, improved their ability to identify and explain theoretical concepts included in case studies created by the teaching team. The proposed teaching methodology appears to enhance their ability to understand and analyse human behaviour, helping students to integrate theory with reality

Understanding Learners' Motivation and Learning Strategies in MOOCs

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have changed the way in which OER (Open Educational Resources) are bundled by teachers and consumed by learners. MOOCs represent an evolution towards the production and offering of structured quality OER. Many institutions that were initially reluctant to providing OER have, however, joined the MOOC wave. Nevertheless, MOOCs detractors strongly criticize their high dropout rates. The dropout rate is a commonly accepted metric of success for traditional education, but it may not be as suitable when dealing with OER, in general, and with MOOCs, in particular, since learners' motivations to take a course are very diverse, and certain self -regulated learning strategies are required to tackle the lack of personalized tutoring and keep pace in the course . This paper presents an empirical study on the motivation and learning strategies of MOOC learners. Six thousand three hundred and thirty-five learners from 160 countries answered a self report 7- point Likert-type questionnaire based on the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) as part of a MOOC titled Introduction to Programming with Java. Results indicate that learners were highly motivated and confident to do well in the course. Learning strategies, however, can be improved, especially regarding time management.This work has been co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, projects MOOC-Maker (561533-EPP-1-2015-1-ES-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), SHEILA (562080-EPP-1-2015-BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD) and COMPETEN-SEA (574212-EPP-1-2016-1- NL-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP), by the Madrid Regional Government, through the eMadrid Excellence Network (S2013/ICE-2715), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project RESET (TIN2014-53199-C3-1-R) and fellowships FPDI-2013-17411 and PTQ-15-07505

Convergence and Competition in Rules Governing Lawyers and Auditors

This Article examines problems (including information asymmetries, agency problems and cognitive biases) that auditors and lawyers (collectively, "gatekeepers") confront when they evaluate and respond to risk, as well as the various ways in which gatekeeper regulation addresses these problems. Then, using the analytical framework of New Institutional Economics, this Article recognizes that "optimal" solutions to gatekeeper problems are far from certain. Better solutions are thus more likely to emerge from experimenting with different rules and observing outcomes from those rules. If auditors and lawyers are governed by different rules, a jurisdiction can simultaneously experiment with two different regulatory approaches for these two professions, and then make adjustments accordingly. Private actors also can signal which rules they prefer in a particular context by choosing whether to use, or to insist that other private actors use, auditors or lawyers for a particular task. Similarly, if rules for both professions vary among jurisdictions, jurisdictions can learn not only from their own experimentation but from the experimentation of other jurisdictions with different rules. Private actors can also signal their rule preferences by choosing the jurisdiction in which they want professional services to be performed. Improvements to gatekeeper regulation should follow from the observed results of this experimentation.These purported benefits from regulatory competition could, however, be undermined if private actors are allowed unlimited choice among regulatory regimes (a "race to the bottom"). This article thus discusses the limits of regulatory competition, and mentions various strategies for reducing the likelihood of a race to the bottom. Finally, this article observes that, within a framework of controlled regulatory competition, market and social conditions may cause some rules governing auditors and lawyers to converge, as well as some rules governing both professions in the United States and Europe to converge. Profession-specific and jurisdiction-specific differences, however, will probably remain, unless experimentation and observation demonstrate that a particular rule is clearly superior across professional and/or jurisdictional boundaries.