Analysis of a social webquest fors statistics in engineering

A webquest for students of an introductory course in Statistics in Industrial Design Engineering is presented and analyzed. In order to make students work on the most basic concepts (sampling and description of data) and thinking skills, I have designed a webquest [1] where they are critical citizens. The webquest starts with a video from the outstanding series “Against All Odds: Inside Statistics” [2], Program 3, Describing Distributions, which shows how a local government used statistical methods to correct inequality between men’s and women’s salaries in the USA in the 1980's. Students should investigate the current wage gap, carrying out and analyzing a small survey, and using the official data of the INE (Spanish National Statistics Institute), where one of the variables they should collect and examine is the number of hours devoted to work at home. This webquest is designed to educate students for equality. Students also research a brilliant woman who used statistics to save many lives: Florence Nightingale. The other activities in the webquest also tackle current issues, such as climate change, through ecological footprints, and statistics in daily life, for example in clinical analysis, incorrect use of statistics in the media, or writing a letter to the city council to correct a high water bill based on incorrect water consumption estimates (this activity is based on a true story in which the citizen received a refund). The webquest also has research activities to show the importance of statistics in industrial design, and specifically, in ergonomics. These activities involve the description of relationships: regression line and principal component analysis for the accommodation of pilots in aircraft design. I analyze the data collected from my students about their experience and opinion of the webques

Lanthorn, vol. 40, no. 15, October 13, 2005

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State\u27s student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present

Where Did My Time Go? Time Management in Libraries

“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so” said Ford Prefect, in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (2005). Lunch (and time) flies! However, thinking about time can be heavy. It flies, slips away, passes, heals, and is lost, found, made, wasted, spent, used, counted and killed. Still it continues, and each one of us must figure out what to do with it—an entire dimension. Few would argue that it is important to use time well, but we often take for granted our largely untrained, yet skillful, accomplishment of that goal. Time is important, critical in fact, yet we seldom spend it honing our management talents. If we do decide to take the time, there exists no lack of literature to help. What does that literature tell us? This study will review book literature on time management in libraries and present a time study that is the result of the author’s research on the topic, providing recommendations for future studies

Toward 2^W beyond Web 2.0

From its inception as a global hypertext system, the Web has evolved into a universal platform for deploying loosely coupled distributed applications. 2^W is a result of the exponentially growing Web building on itself to move from a Web of content to a Web of applications

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: A Metaphorical Look at Life, the Universe, and Everything

A look at the integral use of metaphor as a heuristic in the process of human learning

Self-Imposed Violations of Privacy in Virtual Communities

Virtual communities have grown in recent years due to the accessibility and ease of setting up web pages on communal Internet sites. Organizations, including companies that seek to hire new employees, often scan these web sites as part of their background checking process. One of the most prominent sites is MySpace.com. This research investigates issues of privacy and self-violation of privacy in virtual communities. The results indicate that individuals willingly provide personal information that may actually violate their privacy.Virtual communities; privacy; violations of privacy; MySpace; Information Systems; online social networks.

Student Teachers’ Experiences of Open Distance e-Learning Support in a Posthuman Era: A Learner Engagement Perspective

Online learning uses information and communication technologies which rely on reliable connectivity. While this is a giant step to widen access in South African education as shown by a number of studies conducted already regarding online learning, less focus has been paid on rural students which are under-resourced. They are presumed to have access and support to online learning and assistive ICTs that make online learning possible. Therefore, the focus for this study was on KwaZulu-Natal rural student teachers’ experiences of open distance e-learning in a posthuman era. The study focused on students’ experiences regarding online support tools like discussion forum and others as tools for student engagement and support on myUnisa platform. The problem was investigated using a descriptive qualitative case study, which used individual interviews. The study involved fifteen UNISA student teachers from KZN and the findings revealed that, notwithstanding the countless  challenges,  students were very passionate about the use of online learning in open distance e-learning and they showed a desire to engage more using different types of devices and platforms as they learn through social media and also showed that learning  resides in technological appliances they use(posthumanism), hence the study’s conclusion and implications stress that the distance between the student and the institution, student and lecturer and student and other students can be mediated and reduced through proper student support services such as provision of gadgets for internet connection, proper telecommunications infrastructure, ICT workshops and training for all students and in posthumanism terms, formal integration of social networks in learning in light of the finding that learning is non-linear and resides in technological devices used to connect students. &nbsp