The Faculty Notebook, April 2010

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

Big Data as a Technology-to-think-with for Scientific Literacy

This research aimed to identify indications of scientific literacy resulting from a didactic and investigative interaction with Google Trends Big Data software by first-year students from a high-school in Novo Hamburgo, Southern Brazil. Both teaching strategies and research interpretations lie on four theoretical backgrounds. Firstly, Bunge's epistemology, which provides a thorough characterization of Science that was central to our study. Secondly, the conceptual framework of scientific literacy of Fives et al. that makes our teaching focus precise and concise, as well as supports one of our methodological tool: the SLA (scientific literacy assessment). Thirdly, the "crowdledge" construct from dos Santos, which gives meaning to our study when as it makes the development of scientific literacy itself versatile for paying attention on sociotechnological and epistemological contemporary phenomena. Finally, the learning principles from Papert's Constructionism inspired our educational activities. Our educational actions consisted of students, divided into two classes, investigating phenomena chose by them. A triangulation process to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods on the assessments results was done. The experimental design consisted in post-tests only and the experimental variable was the way of access to the world. The experimental group interacted with the world using analyses of temporal and regional plots of interest of terms or topics searched on Google. The control class did 'placebo' interactions with the world through on-site observations of bryophytes, fungus or whatever in the schoolyard. As general results of our research, a constructionist environment based on Big Data analysis showed itself as a richer strategy to develop scientific literacy, compared to a free schoolyard exploration.Comment: 23 pages, 2 figures, 8 table

STUDENTS´ PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THEIR LEARNING PROCESS WITH THE USE OF LEARNING OBJECTS

Although many teachers and students are used learning objects (LO), however, we unknown the students´ perceptions of LO used, we need to know if they identify that this materials facilitates their learning. The general objective study was analyze students´ perceptions about their learning process with the use of LO in a group of master class by surveying. This research has been base on qualitative and quantitative research methods, for the data collection instrument used was a survey to evaluate and analyze the perceptions of students, each of the rating questions used a 4-point Likert-type scale, respondents were students from a master´s group, individual student responses the survey. At this moment, the data were used for evaluation of students´ perceptions. To accomplish this, the individual ratings were summed and averaged. Further statistical analysis to examine the student´s perceptions of significant perceptions about statement of research problem was also conduced. The results of the survey explored show that students who were part of the study group perceived a significant increase in their learning with the use of learning objects, and the student research skills too. It is observed that the students´ perception on the LO use, it was found that 40% of the participants indicated that they are agree that LO facilitated their learning, 30% affirmed that they are totally agree, 20% declared to disagree and 10% strongly disagree. The results of the survey revealed that most of the participants (70%) have a positive perception about the LO used

Evaluating the Usefulness and Properties of a Subjective Assessment of Brazilian Portuguese

This is the published version. Copyright 2002 Johns Hopkins University Press.This is an evaluation of a Brazilian self-assessment test. All questions on the test guide the students to evaluate themselves on their linguistic and socio-cultural skills in Brazilian Portuguese. The main points discussed in this article are (1) an item analysis, (2) the reliability of the test to determine the consistency of the results obtained by the instrument, (3) the construct validity, and (4) the creation of cutscores. Our analysis of the BP self-assessment was supported by the use of descriptive statistics, by a factorial analysis and by a reliability test to determine the psychometrics characteristics of the test. The major claim in this study is that this test is useful, valid and reliable, if used appropriately, especially with an audience of motivated students such as students going abroad, instead of students who take language classes only as a requirement in their school program

The Faculty Notebook, March & May 2006

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

CAPES/FIPSE year one experience report: why begin with math learning objects?

This experience report describes one student’s perspective about being a part of the first CAPES/FIPSE exchange session that brought her to study at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil from Utah State University (USU) in the United States. In June and July 2010, this student joined two other university students to present the CAPES/FIPSE project and the related math learning objects at four schools in Campinas. This article provides an overview of the project and offers this student’s thoughts about possible reasons for the instructors’ immediate responses and future plans with the digital learning objects.Este relato de experiência descreve a perspectiva de uma estudante sobre ser parte da primeira sessão de intercâmbio CAPES/FIPSE, que a trouxe para estudar na Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) no Brasil, da Utah State University (USU) nos Estados Unidos. Em Junho e Julho de 2010, essa estudante juntou-se a outros dois estudantes universitários para apresentar o projeto CAPES/FIPSE e os objetos de aprendizagem de matemática para quatro escolas em Campinas. Esse artigo fornece uma visão geral do projeto e oferece pensamentos dessa aluna sobre as possíveis razões para as respostas imediatas dos professores e planos futuros com os objetos de aprendizagem digitais

The Anthropological Theory of the Didactic in Brazilian researches

In the present article, we undertook a systematic study of bibliographic review based on the discussions, in the academic scope, about the contribution of the Anthropological Theory of Didactic – ATD (Chevallard, 1992) linked to Mathematics teaching and learning processes. The purpose was to investigate the current appropriation of ATD in Stricto sensu researches in Brazil. It is worth mentioning that the present study refers to a part of a PhD thesis. Thus, we aim to present an overview of thesis and dissertations answering the following question: What are the main programs, institutions and researchers in Brazil that have been working on ATD? In addition, we developed a study on the investigation axes of the researches, classified as: I) Teaching: focusing on the teacher, II) Learning: the object being the student\u27s learning and III) Analysis of documents: books, lesson plans, course projects. For this purpose, we selected as a corpus 69 dissertations and 37 thesis defended in the period from 2005 to 2017

Between culture and the market: what do physics teachers take into account when choosing their textbooks?

Here we present some results of an ongoing study into the processes by which secondary school teachers choose physics textbooks, in this case, teachers from Brazil and Portugal. The objective is to understand what teachers take into account when selecting a physics textbook. To contextualise the study, the development and presence of physics textbooks in Brazil in the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the present day is discussed. These reflections highlight how cultural, economic, political and social factors are carried through to educational expressions. We show that the production of physics textbooks went through three periods, according to the pedagogical conception prevailing at each time. This research is based on the assumption that these books should be understood as elements of the school culture, being identified as cultural products as well as commodities. These dimensions have been little explored in research on textbooks, so this work presents a unique discussion that reflects on the relationship between culture and the market in order to understand physics textbooks from a structural perspective