VIDEO PROMPTS FOR SELF-REGULATED LEARNING: METACOGNITION AND REFLECTION ACTIVITY

This study explored video metacognitive prompts as a method of engaging students in self-regulated learning. The study was completed in the naturalistic setting of fully online learning. Such learning environments imply a distance between faculty and students that makes student self-direction vital to success. However students are only infrequently practicing self-regulated learning skills

Pacing strategies in competitive middle distance events

Pacing patterns vary between sports, between athletes and between competitions. There is much literature investigating pacing patterns in laboratory and staged competitive situations which have suggested that fast start, parabolic and even pacing patterns could be optimal for short, middle and long distance events, respectively, in elite athletes. However, there is little information about optimal pacing patterns to win medals in competitive situations in middle distance events and even less information specifically for female and developing athletes. This thesis describes and explains the variation in pacing needed to win a medal in swimming and running middle distance events for male and female elite athletes using data from international competitions. Pacing patterns seen in competitive middle distance events by developing swimmers were also investigated. Following a literature review, two methodological chapters developed a suitable video data capture method and then identified a suitable sample size for the collection of retrospective data. The first experimental chapter identified that a variable pacing pattern that included a conservation period of reduced relative pace and an end-spurt of increased relative pace was optimal in order to win a medal in elite men’s 400 m freestyle swimming and 1500 m running. The second experimental chapter identified the same need for conservation of relative pace earlier in the race and an increase in relative pace for an end-spurt at the end of a race in order to win a medal in female elite 400 m freestyle swimming. The third experimental chapter identified that the same pacing patterns were optimal for age group swimmers at regional competitions but that the youngest swimmers needed to develop a more optimal performance template. The fourth and final experimental chapter of this thesis used three case studies to show that a higher training load and lower positive affect led to improved pacing patterns in developing athletes. This thesis contributes to the literature on pacing by identifying the optimal changes in relative speed needed to win a medal in competitive middle distance events

Determination of the main parameters affecting the performance of bridge falsework systems

Bridge falsework systems are one of the most common temporary structures used in the construction industry, namely to support the formwork during the construction, rehabilitation or retrofit works of concrete bridges and viaducts. This Thesis presents new results and research that improve the available knowledge about the structural behaviour, reliability, robustness and risk of these structures. The main, internal and external, hazards are identified and detailed, including the procedural, enabling and triggering hazards. The use of reduction factors to determine the values of the applied loads to design bridge falsework, and other temporary structures, is critically analysed and it is recommended not to use them, unless supported by specific site data. The importance of implementing effective quality control, inspection and communication measures to manage human errors during planning, designing and operation is highlighted. From the 192 tests carried out during the experimental campaign, consisting of five different tests using three different joint types, new results are obtained concerning bridge falsework components, namely the bending behaviour and resistance of spigot joints and forkhead joints (falsework to formwork interface) from which no published research was found. Existing joint models are evaluated and improved alternative models are developed. The results of numerical studies of a selected structural system are presented using a novel joint finite element and information gathered from the experimental tests. This new finite element has features that the available elements in ABAQUS® program do not have, specifically the capability of simulating an analytical modelling of the cyclic behaviour of joints with allowance for stiffness and resistance degradation and joint failure. The accuracy and precision of the developed numerical models improves the existing numerical results of full-scale tests of bridge falsework systems, in respect to structural behaviour and resistance. It is recommended that formwork should be explicitly modelled and modelling of spigot joints should follow the model presented in this Thesis. From a sensitivity analysis of the bridge falsework systems to modelling hypothesis, it is found that the most important joints are the beam-to-column joint, followed by the forkhead joint and the spigot joint, with variations of up to 70% between the resistance of the system when the joints are modelled as continuous or as pinned. A key contribution of the Thesis is to introduce a novel risk management methodology based on newly developed robustness and fragility indices. This new methodology is applicable, in principle, to all structural analyses not only those concerning bridge falsework systems. Based on advanced deterministic studies, the main parameters affecting the performance of bridge falsework are identified, analysed and discussed. These studies involved a comprehensive set of external and internal hazards: (i) applied external actions of different nature and (ii) structural configurations to design bridge falsework. It is found that differential ground settlements are a critical action and that stiffer systems are more sensitive. Also, it is highlighted by use of plenty examples that bracing is an essential design requirement. Advanced stochastic investigations are also carried out, in which the key random variables that control the stochastic behaviour of bridge falsework systems are identified, namely joint looseness and initial stiffness after looseness. Possible strategies to increase robustness and decrease fragility are discussed and based on an application example the cost-benefit of alternative solutions is investigated. It is concluded that implementing quality control and quality assurance procedures to bridge falsework elements is an extremely effective and efficient way of reducing existing risks. The information gathered in this Thesis can be used to develop more rational and reliable bridge falsework structures thus safer and more design efficient

Engaging Students with Constructivist Participatory Examinations in Asynchronous Learning Networks

The online participatory exam transforms the traditional exam into a constructivist, cooperative and engaging learning experience. Students learn from designing and answering exam questions, from evaluating their peers’ performance, and from reading questions, answers and evaluations. This paper, aimed at faculty who teach online and at researchers interested in online learning, describes the procedures, advantages, and disadvantages of this new approach to the examination process. Five semesters of participatory exam research are analyzed. A majority of students preferred the participatory exam and believed that it increased their learning

Online receding horizon planning of multi-contact locomotion

Legged robots can traverse uneven terrain by using multiple contacts between their limbs and the environment. Nevertheless, to enable reliable operation in the real world, legged robots necessarily require the capability to online re-plan their motions in response to changing conditions, such as environment changes, or state deviations due to external force perturbations. To approach this goal, Receding Horizon Planning (RHP) can be a promising solution. RHP refers to the planning framework that can constantly update the motion plan for immediate execution. To achieve successful RHP, we typically need to consider an extended planning horizon, which consists of an execution horizon that plans the motion to be executed, and a prediction horizon that foresees the future. Although the prediction horizon is never executed, it is important to the success of RHP. This is because the prediction horizon serves as a value function approximation that evaluates the feasibility and the future effort required for accomplishing the given task starting from a chosen robot state. Having such value information can guide the execution horizon toward the states that are beneficial for the future. Nevertheless, computing such multi-contact motions for a legged robot to traverse uneven terrain can be time-consuming, especially when considering a long planning horizon. The computation complexity typically comes from the simultaneous resolution of the following two sub-problems: 1) selecting a gait pattern that specifies the sequence in which the limbs break and make contact with the environment; 2)synthesizing the contact and motion plan that determines the robot state trajectory along with the contact plan, i.e., contact locations and contact timings. The issue of gait pattern selection introduces combinatorial complexity into the planning problem,while the computation of the contact and motion plan brings high-dimensionality and non-convexity due to the consideration of complex non-linear dynamics constraints. To facilitate online RHP of multi-contact motions, in this thesis, we focus on exploring novel methods to address these two sub-problems efficiently. To give more detail, we firstly consider the problem of planning contact and motion plans in an online receding horizon fashion. In this case, we pre-specifying the gait pattern as a priori. Although this helps us to avoid the combinatorial complexity, the resulting planning problem is still high-dimensional and non-convex, which can hinder online computation. To improve the computation speed, we propose to simplify the modeling of the value function approximation that is required for guiding the RHP. This leads to 1) Receding Horizon Planning with Multiple Levels of Model Fidelity, where we compute the prediction horizon with a convex relaxed model; 2) Locally- Guided Receding Horizon Planning—where we propose to learn an oracle to predict local objectives (intermediate goals) for completing a given task, and then we use these local objectives to construct local value functions to guide a short-horizon RHP. We evaluate our methods for planning centroidal trajectories of a humanoid robot walking on moderate slopes as well as large slopes where static stability cannot be maintained.The result of multi-fidelity RHP demonstrates that we can accelerate the computation speed by relaxing the model accuracy in the prediction horizon. However, the relaxation cannot be arbitrary. Furthermore, owing to the shortened planning horizon, we find that locally-guided RHP demonstrates the best computation efficiency (95%-98.6%cycles converge online). This computation advantage enables us to demonstrate online RHP for our real-world humanoid robot Talos walking in dynamic environments that change on-the-fly. To handle the combinatorial complexity that arises from the gait pattern selection issue, we propose the idea of constructing a map from the task specifications to the gait pattern selections for a given environment model and performance objective(cost). We show that for a 2D half-cheetah model and a quadruped robot, a direct mapping between a given task and an optimal gait pattern can be established. We use supervised learning to capture the structure of this map in the form of gait regions.Furthermore, we also find that the trajectories in each gait region are qualitatively similar. We utilize this property to construct a warm-starting trajectory for each gait region, i.e., the mean of the trajectories discovered in each region. We empirically show that these warm-starting trajectories can improve the computation speed of our trajectory optimization problem up to 60 times when compared with random initial guesses. Moreover, we also conduct experimental trials on the ANYmal robot to validate our method

Trials and tribunals: consensus seeking in course design approval in Higher Education

The focus of this study is an investigation into the characteristics of the processes and practices of course approval in higher education that shape, and are shaped by, the educational beliefs and values that university teachers bring to the design of their courses. It identifies the basis of how the curriculum is developed and approved, and the means by which new practices and ideas are made possible. The original contributions to knowledge are to the development of the theoretical concept of autonomy from which a model of curriculum development knowledge can be derived; and to the empirical understanding of the conditions for curriculum development. Drawing on social realism this study applies Bourdieu’s field theory to identify the field of HE as the object of study and curriculum development, as a form of academic development, as a subfield. Bernstein’s code theory and the pedagogic device are applied to develop an external language of description for curriculum development knowledge. This analysis is differentiated using Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), and its dimensions of autonomy, semantics and specialisation of curriculum knowledge practices, to develop a language of description for positional and relational autonomy in course design and approval. Course planning and approval is examined by means of two case studies in order to illuminate the nature of teachers’ experiences; the basis of practice and its emergence; and the process by which curriculum reproduction and change takes place. The first case study examines cross-institution curriculum sharing involving 12 academics across 10 higher education institutions, comprising interviews, group discussions and documentary analysis. The second case study took place in one additional institution in two parts: the first part involved 17 academics involved in preparing 12 courses for approval, involving interviews and documentary analysis; the second part took place in the same institution with a further 10 staff responsible for approving these courses and involved interviews, documentary analysis and observations of approval events. Three field positions are analytically distinguished (collegial; bureaucratic; and consensus-seeking) and re-evaluated in the context of course approval as it currently operates in these case study sites. The autonomy dimension of LCT is further elaborated with regard to concepts derived in the study: expertise, authority, purpose and consensus. The study finds that course designs are detached from their contexts of enactment (teaching and learning) and semantically condensed in that they are abstracted and tacit and difficult for teachers to articulate and for others to interpret. Strategies that enable teachers to devise and enact course plans and designs are seen to be subject to disciplinary perspectives, dispositions to knowledge and pedagogic practices, and the underlying principles of knowledge and knower structures. External influences on the curriculum, such as ‘employability’, can result in a ‘genericised’ curriculum that is difficult to pedagogise (i.e. to teach, to acquire cumulatively, and to assess). These conditions, in turn, restrict curricula and their associated pedagogies and limit the possibility of new curricula being realised. The study concludes by formulating a dynamic coherence model of curriculum development that foregrounds the pedagogic and legitimation codes that organise and are the basis for curriculum practices that are currently prevalent in these contexts. An alternative consensual principle is proposed as the means of enacting coherent curriculum design that is better able to realise new forms

Analysis of the shots in positions 1 and 2 in even situational framework during the World Championship of Barcelona 2013

The purpose of this study was, on one hand, to know if the left handed players were more effective in the goal categories and getting positive actions in 1 and 2 position than the right handed in the same offense position in Even Situational Framework (FJa). On the other hand, to know if the shots in 1 and 2 position were less effective than the rest of the positions in the goal categories. The methodology was observational, multidimensional, nomothetic and punctual. The sample was all the throws of 24 games (12 male and 12 female) in the 2013 World Championship in Barcelona using an ad hoc instrument for observation through the SportCode software, which was also used to record the data. Descriptives and Chi-square test were obtained and the conclusions are that the left-handed players are more effective if we relate them to the goal categories and positive actions from positions 1 and 2. However, the righties are more effective if we only see the categories related with the goal

'The talent is out there' Talent development in Irish football: an examination of organizational structure and practice

Football is one of the most complex and competitive sports in which to reach elite levels (Haugaasen, Toering, & Jordet, 2014). Differences in sport systems, societal norms, cultural traditions, sociological and organisational issues may influence an athlete’s complex career development journey (Stambulova, 2009; Henriksen et al., 2010; Richardson, Relvas, & Littlewood, 2013). An ecological approach to development views child development within the context of a system of relationships that form his or her environment; therefore, to foster future positive behaviours and change developmental trajectories one must identify and understand direct and indirect influences on development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Gabbard & Krebs, 2012). The aim of this thesis was to examine the football governance landscape in the Republic of Ireland in relation to its ability to develop youth footballers, whilst exploring the contextual and lived experiences of these youth players as they developed within their respective talent development environments. This study employed a mixed method approach which involved quantitative and qualitative research data in a collection of studies. Study One, analysed and presented the demographics of those involved in the Football Association of Ireland’s primary talent development mechanism (n=1936), the Emerging Talent Programme (ETP). This study found a significant Relative Age Effect (RAE) and inequity of access to the ETP in relation to place of birth within the cohort. It also identified clear patterns of internal migration, with footballers moving towards the ‘core’ footballing development centre of Ireland (Dublin District Schoolboy League, DDSL). Study Two assessed the talent development practices of all authoritative bodies within Irish youth football with respect to organisational, governance, athletic, psycho-social, cultural and environmental issues. This study identified tensions and incongruence between strategic apex organisations resulting from Governing Body leadership, board composition, political dominance and perceptions of a lack of organisational justice. Structural and resource inequalities were identified in relation to finance, scouting networks, quality of coaching, facilities and player volume. Such incongruence combined with inequalities, led to concerns regarding youth development. Study Three provided a lived experience insight into the talent development pathway encountered by Irish footballers. This study followed five footballers who were on the Republic of Ireland under 15 international team, for a period of four years. This journey provided an insight into the impact that macro factors (identified in Study One and Study Two) had on the experiences of a developing footballer. Overall the thesis has provided an original contribution to the study of talent development in Irish football, providing a holistic analysis of the development pathway, its governance structures and the resulting lived experience of the pathway, utilising a bio-ecological approach