Global dimension in engineering education : promoting global learning in Spanish universities

La iniciativa ‘Dimensión Global en los Estudios Tecnológicos’ (GDEE) es una red que pretende mejorar el conocimiento, la comprensión crítica y los valores actitudinales de los estudiantes y de los postgraduados de las universidades científicotecnológicas en relación al Desarrollo Humano Sostenible (DHS). El objetivo es promover la integración del DHS como tema transversal en el currículo, mediante la mejora de las competencias de los profesores y a través de su participación y la de los estudiantes en iniciativas relacionadas con el DHS. La iniciativa empezó como un proyecto de colaboración entre un consorcio de universidades europeas y ONGs financiado por EuropeAid. Esta contribución presenta y discute la experiencia europea GDEE, profundizando las barreras y oportunidades encontradas, centrándose especialmente en la replicabilidad potencial de esta iniciativa. Estos resultados se complementan con la caracterización y el análisis comparativo del perfil académico de una comunidad de profesores implicados en actividades promovidas por GDEE.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Suicide Attempts among Emotionally and Behaviorally Disturbed Adolescents Removed from the Home

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between adolescent suicide behavior and the age of removal from home amongst children with emotional and behavioral disturbance. The study aims to determine whether a child�s removal from home can be counted as a viable basis for the development of suicide prevention programs and an expansion for evidence based practices. The study was conducted using archived de-identified data collected and provided by a private not-for-profit behavioral health treatment facility located in rural Kansas. The participants included male and female adolescents between the ages of thirteen to eighteen years old that were admitted into the facility between January 1st, 2011 and May 31st, 2011. The results did not indicate a significant relationship between adolescent suicide behavior and the age of the child�s first removal from the home. However correlations revealed a significant relationship between multiple types of trauma experienced and the age of the child�s first removal from the home. Further analyses revealed a positive correlation between multiple types of trauma experienced and suicide attempts. T-tests indicated little difference between genders in regards to suicide attempts or the child�s first removal from the home. These results may have been influenced by an inadequate amount of participants and a limited pool of data. Adolescent suicide is a critical issue facing society today. Further research is needed to determine the effects of out-of-home placements as a possible predictor to adolescent suicide behavior in hopes of shedding more light to the issue of adolescent suicide

Accounting for semantic integration: notional and grammatical effects in number agreement

Notional and grammatical number affect agreement in language production. To explore their workings, we investigated how semantic integration, a type of conceptual relatedness, produces changes in agreement (Solomon & Pearlmutter, 2004). Notional and lexical-grammatical number offer alternative accounts of these effects. The notional hypothesis is that changes in number agreement reflect differences in referential coherence: More coherence yields more singularity. The lexical-grammatical hypothesis is that changes in agreement arise from competition between nouns differing in grammatical number: More competition yields more plurality. These hypotheses make opposing predictions about semantic integration. On the notional hypothesis, semantic integration promotes singular agreement. On the lexical-grammatical hypothesis, semantic integration promotes plural agreement. We tested these hypotheses with agreement elicitation tasks in three experiments. All three experiments supported the notional hypothesis, with semantic integration or notional plurality creating faster and more frequent singular agreement. This implies that referential coherence mediates the effect of semantic integration on number agreement

It-Clefts and their Processing

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Elisabeth S. Johnson on July 21, 2015

The significance of ‘I' in educational research and the responsibility of intellectuals

In this paper I call for an unequivocal legitimisation of the living ‘I' in educational research. The paper itself becomes a context that explains this call. It is a report of my action research into my professional learning through working in South Africa, within the context of new policy frameworks for continuing teacher development. The call embeds issues about the need for higher education practitioners to produce their explanatory accounts of practice as they support teachers' enquiries for improving practice and knowledge creation, and to legitimise a free academic press for the dissemination of those accounts. The accounts need to demonstrate epistemological, methodological and scholarly validity, to strengthen practitioners' attempts to influence policy debates about continuing professional development. By clarifying the processes of establishing quality, it becomes possible to show the links between continuing professional education and the active contributions of practitioners to economic and social wellbeing. Keywords: academic freedom; epistemological accountability; living educational theories; practitioner enquiry; professional learning in higher education South African Journal of Education Vol. 28 (3) 2008: pp. 351-36

Time delays and system response times in human-computer interaction

This study sought to determine a type of graphical representation of system response time that would be most beneficial to the user in terms of task performance. Specifically, I examined which type of progress bar would allow the user to return to working with the system most efficiently while performing other concurrent tasks, and how well the user performed these tasks. The different types of progress bars studied included segmented and continuous progress presentations, and linear, accelerating, and decelerating progress behaviors. The results indicate that different representations of system response time affected performance on the two tasks, with the continuous progress bar resulting in the best performance out of the two progress bar types and the linear behavior resulting in the best performance out of the behaviors. The results also show that different progress bar speeds and types should be used depending on the desired effect of the progress bar on users

The Effect of Pre-transfer Grade Point Average on Post-Transfer Grade Point Average as an Indicator of Persistence from Two-year Colleges to State Colleges and Universities within the University System of Georgia

ABSTRACT THE EFFECT OF PRE-TRANSFER GRADE POINT AVERAGE ON POST-TRANSFER GRADE POINT AVERAGE AS AN INDICATOR OF PERSISTENCE FROM TWO-YEAR COLLEGES TO STATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA by Marci M. Middleton Community colleges provide an important access point for students who want to continue their educational studies and obtain a baccalaureate or advanced degree. Students have the opportunity to complete core curricula or the general education component of their education at a two-year college and then transfer to a four-year college or university in many higher education systems around the country including the University System of Georgia. Using linear regression initially and later multiple regression, this quantitative research study tested grade point average to project student academic performance at a state or research university upon transfer to such institutions. Data obtained for state systems institutions from fall 2001 through fall 2005 was used for the administration of this study. Research questions concerning the relationship between grade point averages before and after transfer were examined at various matriculation points with specific attention paid to pre-transfer grade point average and post-transfer grade assessment at three points across a student’s academic career. In addition, the strength of the relationship was tested for the aggregate student cohort of matriculants from fall 2001 through fall 2005 as well as sub-groups within the cohort

Onsets Contribute to Syllable Weight: Statistical Evidence from Stress and Meter

While some accounts of syllable weight deny a role for onsets, onset-sensitive weight criteria have received renewed attention in recent years (e.g. Gordon 2005, Topintzi 2010). This article presents new evidence supporting onsets as factors in weight. First, in complex stress systems such as those of English and Russian, onset length is a significant attractor of stress both in the lexicon and in nonce probes. This effect is highly systematic and unlikely, it is argued, to be driven by analogy alone. Second, in flexible quantitative meters (e.g. in Sanskrit), poets preferentially align longer onsets with heavier metrical positions, all else being equal. A theory of syllable weight is proposed in which the domain of weight begins not with the rime but with the p-center (perceptual center) of the syllable, which is perturbed by properties of the onset. While onset effects are apparently universal in gradient weight systems, they are weak enough to be usually eclipsed by the structure of the rime under categorization. This proposal therefore motivates both the existence of onset weight effects and the subordination of the onset to the rime with respect to weight.Linguistic

Primary and secondary processes in normal and dyslexic word identification

Skilled visual word identification is an effortless component of fluent reading, subserved by a relatively fast, automatic, primary lexical access process. Experimental tasks and neuropsychological conditions that restrict information flow to primary process invoke task specific or secondary process mediated identification. These secondary processes may be alternative routes to identification, used infrequently by skilled readers, but more frequently while acquiring literacy, or when primary process fails. They are sometimes referred to as guessing and meta-linguistic functions. The focus of mainstream research on primary lexical access has meant that they remain relatively unexplored components of normal word recognition. The thesis proposes a limited set of secondary 'completion' processes, to avoid using the term 'guess'. Completion processes 'complete' degraded input to deliver candidate identifications. Lexical completions are mediated by the orthographic input lexicon, and involve the amplification of sub-threshold representations, either by serial deployment of attention to enhance letter level representations, or by parallel attentional modulation of word level activation. Sublexical completion processes explicitly identify letters, and 'retrieve' or 'assemble' words from letter identities or names. These completions are under constant 'revision' in the normal, motivated, system. In conjunction with primary process, these secondary processes form a broader view of normal word recognition formalised in a flow model call the primary secondary process model Experimental results indicate that lexical completion is associated with inhibitory effects of neighbourhood size, and that sublexical completion may result in inhibitory or facilitatory effects of neighbourhood size depending on the nature of fragments and procedures used. Neuropsychological results indicate that secondary process deficits may restrict the compensatory strategies open to peripheral dyslexics, and hence, that their performance is best described in terms of both residual primary and residual secondary processes. The explanatory role of secondary processing may extend beyond peripheral dyslexia and fragment completion, to encompass strategic and individual differences in adult performance, and developmental differences in the acquisition of literacy

Analysis of CEPH-accredited DrPH programs in the United States: A mixed-methods study

Interest has been growing in regard to increasing the public health workforce and standardizing training to ensure there are competent professionals to support rebuilding and reinforcing the public health infrastructure of the United States. The need for public health leaders was recognized as early as the hookworm control campaign during 1909–1914 when it became apparent that prevention of disease should be distinct from clinical medicine and should be conducted by professionally trained, dedicated full-time public health practitioners. In recent years, research on the public health workforce and on standardizing health workforce education has significantly expanded. A key element of such a workforce is public health leadership, and DrPH programs are the means to provide effective public health education for these future health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the general trend of DrPH programs from past to present and analyze the common themes and variations of 28 Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH)-accredited DrPH programs in the United States. This research utilized a mixed-methods approach, investigating DrPH education at each school or program to improve our understanding of the current status of DrPH programs