Knowledge Cartography: Software tools and mapping techniques

Knowledge Cartography is the discipline of mapping intellectual landscapes.The focus of this book is on the process by which manually crafting interactive, hypertextual maps clarifies one’s own understanding, as well as communicating it.The authors see mapping software as a set of visual tools for reading and writing in a networked age. In an information ocean, the primary challenge is to find meaningful patterns around which we can weave plausible narratives. Maps of concepts, discussions and arguments make the connections between ideas tangible and disputable. With 17 chapters from the leading researchers and practitioners, the reader will find the current state–of-the-art in the field. Part 1 focuses on educational applications in schools and universities, before Part 2 turns to applications in professional communitie

Modelling the cognitive quality of student contributions to online discussion forums

Understanding how students can develop their critical thinking skills and engage in social knowledge construction through discussion with their peers is important for both educators and researchers. As asynchronous online discussion forums become increasingly common across educational settings of all kinds, there is a growing need to identify the characteristics of effective discussions that are associated with learning gains. Such findings can inform the way discussion-based assignments are framed and assessed and can provide evidence about the efficacy of instructional interventions. While many messages are purely social in nature, others demonstrate intellectual engagement with the subject matter of the course, to a greater or lesser extent -- the cognitive quality of the message. However, it is not straightforward to measure cognitive quality. Previous research has defined cognitive engagement based on the visible learning behaviours of students; and identified distinct phases of cognitive presence commonly seen in collaborative online discussions among groups of participants. Little prior work has brought together insights from both individual learning behaviours and group discussion dynamics, a gap this thesis aims to fill. This thesis introduces a two-dimensional measure of cognitive quality, making use of constructs from two well-supported educational frameworks: the Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive framework and the Community of Inquiry framework. Using a pseudonymised set of messages that were labelled using both frameworks, the thesis explores how attributes of the dialogue were correlated with cognitive quality. Message quality was found to depend more on the nested discussion structure than on chronological order. As previously seen with other frameworks, the same messages tended to be identified as high-quality by both frameworks, while there was more variation among mid- and lower-quality messages. The thesis goes on to investigate the potential moderating effects of two instructional interventions: assigning roles to students within the asynchronous online discussions; and an external facilitation intervention, introducing guidelines that aimed to enhance the quality of students' self-regulation. Using a novel network analytic approach, the external facilitation was observed to moderate the associations between the frameworks, while no such change was seen with the role assignment. Finally, the thesis finds that the order in which students took on the assigned roles had minimal impact on the cognitive quality of their contributions to the discussion. This thesis contributes new, actionable findings about the factors that influence the cognitive quality of student contributions to asynchronous online discussions and concludes with a discussion of future research directions

Key competencies for technological work: Employers and employees opinion

The purpose of this research is to identify which competencies are more valuable for workers who handle technology or robots in their workplaces. This aspect is explored both by the perspective of employees and employers. Results are gathered through a Delphi study within a group of experts (employers) and a questionnaire within a group of Portuguese workers (employees). It is finding that employees and employers perception of the most valuable competencies are not aligned. Identifying this failure, this research intends to contribute to its overcome.O objetivo desta investigação é identificar as competências que são mais úteis para trabalhadores que lidam com tecnologia ou robots nos seus locais de trabalho. Este aspeto é explorado por ambas as perspetivas: empregados e empregadores. Os resultados são recolhidos através do método Delphi, aplicado a um grupo de peritos (empregadores), e através da utilização de um questionário, aplicado a um grupo de trabalhadores portugueses (empregados). Constata-se que a perceção dos empregados e empregadores não está alinhada. Através da identificação desta falha, esta investigação pretende contribuir para potenciar a sua superação

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

How to design for persistence and retention in MOOCs?

Design of educational interventions is typically carried out following a design cycle involving phases of investigation, conceptualization, prototyping, implementation, execution and evaluation. This cycle can be applied at different levels of granularity e.g. learning activity, module, course or programme. In this paper we consider an aspect of learner behavior that can be critical to the success of many MOOCs i.e. their persistence to study, and the related theme of learner retention. We reflect on the impact that consideration of these can have on design decisions at different stages in the design cycle with the aim of en-hancing MOOC design in relation to learner persistence and retention, with particular attention to the European context