eLearning lecturer workload: Working smarter or working harder?

Lecturers who move into the online learning environment often discover that the workload involved not only changes, but can be overwhelming as they cope with using digital technologies. Questions arise, given the dissatisfaction of lecturers with lowering morale and increasing workload, whether future expansion of this teaching component in tertiary institutions is sustainable. The challenge facing lecturers now, and in the future, is about learning workload management strategies which effectively manage the workload they encounter in the online learning environment. This paper describes a case study (which is a work-in-progress) examining the perceptions of online workload cf. face-to-face teaching of lecturers who are experienced in e-teaching. As well, it identifies strategies the lecturers have developed or adopted to manage this element of their workload

Quantum Zeno effect in the decay onto an unstable level

Under certain assumptions it is shown that the decay of level 2 of a three-level system onto level 1 is slowed down because of the further decay of level 1 onto level 0. It is argued that this phenomenon may be interpreted as a consequence of the quantum Zeno effect. The reason why this may be possible is that the second decay (or accompanying photon radiation) may be considered as a sign of the transition 2 -> 1 so that during the first transition the system is under continuous observation.Comment: 9 pages, LATE

Decoherence and Dissipation in Quantum Two-State Systems

The Brownian dynamics of the density operator for a quantum system interacting with a classical heat bath is described using a stochastic, non-linear Liouville equation obtained from a variational principle. The environment's degrees of freedom are simulated by classical harmonic oscillators, while the dynamical variables of the quantum system are two non-hermitian "square root operators" defined by a Gauss-like decomposition of the density operator. The rate of the noise-induced transitions is expressed as a function of the environmental spectral density, and is discussed for the case of the white noise and blackbody radiation. The result is compared with the rate determined by a quantum environment, calculated by partial tracing in the whole Hilbert space. The time-dependence of the von Neumann entropy and of the dissipated energy is obtained numerically for a system of two quantum states. These are the ground and first excited state of the center of mass vibrations for an ion confined in a harmonic trap.Comment: 17 pages, LaTex, 3 postscript figures; replaced to correct typo in Eq. (5

Information transfer using a single particle path-spin hybrid entangled state

The path-spin entangled state of a single spin-1/2 particle is considered which is generated by using a beam-spitter and a spin-flipper. Using this hybrid entanglement at the level of a single particle as a resource, we formulate a protocol for transferring of the state of an unknown qubit to a distant location. Our scheme is implemented by a sequence of unitary operations along with suitable spin-measurements, as well as by using classical communication between the two spatially separated parties. This protocol, thus, demonstrates the possibility of using intraparticle entanglement as a physical resource for performing information theoretic tasks

Van Hove's "\lambda^2 t" limit in nonrelativistic and relativistic field-theoretical models

Van Hove's "\lambda^2 t" limiting procedure is analyzed in some interesting quantum field theoretical cases, both in nonrelativistic and relativistic models. We look at the deviations from a purely exponential behavior in a decay process and discuss the subtle issues of state preparation and initial time.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure