19,209 research outputs found
Media Usage in Post-Secondary Education and Implications for Teaching and Learning
The Web 2.0 has permeated academic life. The use of online information
services in post-secondary education has led to dramatic changes in faculty
teaching methods as well as in the learning and study behavior of students. At
the same time, traditional information media, such as textbooks and printed
handouts, still form the basic pillars of teaching and learning. This paper
reports the results of a survey about media usage in teaching and learning
conducted with Western University students and instructors, highlighting trends
in the usage of new and traditional media in higher education by instructors
and students. In addition, the survey comprises part of an international
research program in which 20 universities from 10 countries are currently
participating. Further, the study will hopefully become a part of the ongoing
discussion of practices and policies that purport to advance the effective use
of media in teaching and learning
Network Structure, Efficiency, and Performance in WikiProjects
The internet has enabled collaborations at a scale never before possible, but
the best practices for organizing such large collaborations are still not
clear. Wikipedia is a visible and successful example of such a collaboration
which might offer insight into what makes large-scale, decentralized
collaborations successful. We analyze the relationship between the structural
properties of WikiProject coeditor networks and the performance and efficiency
of those projects. We confirm the existence of an overall
performance-efficiency trade-off, while observing that some projects are higher
than others in both performance and efficiency, suggesting the existence
factors correlating positively with both. Namely, we find an association
between low-degree coeditor networks and both high performance and high
efficiency. We also confirm results seen in previous numerical and small-scale
lab studies: higher performance with less skewed node distributions, and higher
performance with shorter path lengths. We use agent-based models to explore
possible mechanisms for degree-dependent performance and efficiency. We present
a novel local-majority learning strategy designed to satisfy properties of
real-world collaborations. The local-majority strategy as well as a localized
conformity-based strategy both show degree-dependent performance and
efficiency, but in opposite directions, suggesting that these factors depend on
both network structure and learning strategy. Our results suggest possible
benefits to decentralized collaborations made of smaller, more tightly-knit
teams, and that these benefits may be modulated by the particular learning
strategies in use.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, to appear in ICWSM 201
Automatic coding of short text responses via clustering in educational assessment
Automatic coding of short text responses opens new doors in assessment. We implemented and integrated baseline methods of natural language processing and statistical modelling by means of software components that are available under open licenses. The accuracy of automatic text coding is demonstrated by using data collected in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 in Germany. Free text responses of 10 items with Formula responses in total were analyzed. We further examined the effect of different methods, parameter values, and sample sizes on performance of the implemented system. The system reached fair to good up to excellent agreement with human codings Formula Especially items that are solved by naming specific semantic concepts appeared properly coded. The system performed equally well with Formula and somewhat poorer but still acceptable down to Formula Based on our findings, we discuss potential innovations for assessment that are enabled by automatic coding of short text responses. (DIPF/Orig.
Temporal Analysis of Activity Patterns of Editors in Collaborative Mapping Project of OpenStreetMap
In the recent years Wikis have become an attractive platform for social
studies of the human behaviour. Containing millions records of edits across the
globe, collaborative systems such as Wikipedia have allowed researchers to gain
a better understanding of editors participation and their activity patterns.
However, contributions made to Geo-wikis_wiki-based collaborative mapping
projects_ differ from systems such as Wikipedia in a fundamental way due to
spatial dimension of the content that limits the contributors to a set of those
who posses local knowledge about a specific area and therefore cross-platform
studies and comparisons are required to build a comprehensive image of online
open collaboration phenomena. In this work, we study the temporal behavioural
pattern of OpenStreetMap editors, a successful example of geo-wiki, for two
European capital cities. We categorise different type of temporal patterns and
report on the historical trend within a period of 7 years of the project age.
We also draw a comparison with the previously observed editing activity
patterns of Wikipedia.Comment: Submitte
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