55,711 research outputs found
Evidence of authentic achievement: the extent of disciplined enquiry in student teachers' essay scripts
The purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which undergraduates engage in disciplined enquiry, as one means of operationalising critical thinking. Three hundred essays from second-year students were judged on the indicators of disciplinary concepts, elaborated written communication and analysis. Non parametric statistical tests revealed that disciplinary concepts were more in evidence than was analysis. This was manifest in written communications which were not, overall, elaborated into coherent essays. The results suggest that students need to appreciate that knowledge is an intentional, and perhaps, effortful construction of the human mind and that this involves the use of a knowledge-transforming strategy rather than the coping strategy of knowledge-telling. For this to happen, however, some current pedagogic practices may need to be revise
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Designing a consulting services architecture model
textDuring my years of experience in the technology industry, it has become obvious that standard processes and methodologies within the engineering discipline are at a mature state. The realization though is that software engineering specifically lags behind. Most software engineering methodologies that I have studied focus on the mission of software development. It is this realization and the need for structure that led me to review existing methodologies used within my company's software services organization. The definition of what a successful software services methodology entails is rather limited. This report will provide a history of existing software engineering methodologies that I have studied, describe an initial services method that was being developed within my organization, develop a new model that addresses previous shortcomings and identify additional components required to further define a strong software services-oriented delivery methodology.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
Enhancing the Reflective Capabilities of Professional Design Practitioners
According to Schon (1987), professional education should be centred on enhancing the practitionerâs ability to reflect before taking action. This is important to the designer for two reasons. The first of these concerns real world professional situations, which are rarely clear and lack âright answersâ, the successful professional requires the ability to learn by doing in order to handle complex and unpredictable problems with confidence. The second concerns the nature of the designerâs relationship with design problems themselves. The designerâs exploration of his/her own awareness develops in parallel with problem definition. Dorst and Cross (2001) describe this as a co-evolution of problem and solution and English (2006) argues that we cannot frame the problem without including in that design space the person who designs. Thus the process of engaging with a design problem involves a journey of self-exploration for the designer who needs to be appropriately equipped for unknown terrain. A distance learning Masters programme was validated in 1999, supporting professional designers to develop as reflective practitioners. The course has run successfully for eight years with students based in Brazil, Canada, UK and Ireland, Holland, Greece, Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China. The author draws on the experience of delivering this programme to describe two approaches that have evolved in parallel to nurture the development of the reflective practitioner. The first of these encourages students to develop an action research process by applying reflective practice models as organising tools and recording templates. The second clarifies direction and focuses action to address fully and precisely the individual studentâs aims, insights and motivation. Both these approaches encourage a synergy between practice and theory and involve visual modelling and collaborative reflection through communities of practice. The application of these approaches is shown to generate fundamental insights that positively influence the future actions of students in professional practice. The paper concludes that the consciousness of the expert designer is a critical element of design space and summarises how the disciplined process and clear focus of the approaches discussed contribute to the development of personal confidence and awareness.
Keywords:
creativity; reflective practice; design process ; design processes</p
Risks and remedies in e-learning system
One of the most effective applications of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) is the emergence of E-Learning. Considering the importance and
need of E-Learning, recent years have seen a drastic change of learning
methodologies in Higher Education. Undoubtedly, the three main entities of
E-Learning system can be considered as Student, Teacher & Controlling Authority
and there will be different level, but a good E-Learning system needs total
integrity among all entities in every level. Apart from integrity enforcement,
security enforcement in the whole system is the other crucial way to organize
the it. As internet is the backbone of the entire system which is inherently
insecure, during transaction of message in E-Learning system, hackers attack by
utilising different loopholes of technology. So different security measures are
required to be imposed on the system. In this paper, emphasis is given on
different risks called e-risks and their remedies called e-remedies to build
trust in the minds of all participants of E-Learning system
Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study
Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software
industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more
reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated
by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving
value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research
still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the
principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper,
we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views,
approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to
microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the
transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and
technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical
activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then
shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice
granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This
study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about
microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered,
guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This
study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to
reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table
Reassessing the Citizens Protection Act: A Good Thing It Passed, and a Good Thing It Failed
The Citizens Protection Act (CPA) of 1998 has always been a lightening rod for criticism, and it remains so today. This article reassesses the CPAâs perceived inadequacies in light of how it has actually affected (or, not affected) federal prosecutorsâ involvement in criminal investigations. The article takes issue with the critics and demonstrates that the CPA succeeded where it should have, failed where it should have, and left usâhowever inadvertentlyâwith a remarkably coherent and consistent approach to regulating federal prosecutorsâ involvement in criminal investigations regardless of whether a suspect retains counsel early in the proceedings.
The CPA requires federal prosecutors to follow state rules of professional conduct âto the same extent and in the same mannerâ as all other lawyers. The CPA was intended toâand didânullify a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) declaration that unilaterally exempted federal prosecutors from much of the âno-contactâ rule, which prohibits a lawyer in a matter from communicating with the client of another lawyer in the matter. The CPA was also intended toâbut did notârequire federal prosecutors to comply with various state interpretations of the no-contact rule that might have restricted their ability to participate in both covert and overt communications with represented criminal suspects. It is a good thing the CPA passed because DOJâs assertion of authority over the no-contact rule for its own lawyers would inevitably have undermined public confidence in federal prosecutorsâ commitment to fair and ethical investigatory processes. By the same token, it is a good thing that the CPA failed because broadly depriving DOJ of federal prosecutorsâ involvement in communications with represented suspects would have substantially hindered criminal investigations for no good reason
Context-driven progressive enhancement of mobile web applications: a multicriteria decision-making approach
Personal computing has become all about mobile and embedded devices. As a result, the adoption rate of smartphones is rapidly increasing and this trend has set a need for mobile applications to be available at anytime, anywhere and on any device. Despite the obvious advantages of such immersive mobile applications, software developers are increasingly facing the challenges related to device fragmentation. Current application development solutions are insufficiently prepared for handling the enormous variety of software platforms and hardware characteristics covering the mobile eco-system. As a result, maintaining a viable balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue when developing mobile applications. This article proposes a context-aware software platform for the development and delivery of self-adaptive mobile applications over the Web. An adaptive application composition approach is introduced, capable of autonomously bypassing context-related fragmentation issues. This goal is achieved by incorporating and validating the concept of fine-grained progressive application enhancements based on a multicriteria decision-making strategy
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