240 research outputs found
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Examining university student satisfaction and barriers to taking online remote exams
Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of online exams at universities, due to the greater convenience and flexibility they offer both students and institutions. Driven by the dearth of empirical data on distance learning students' satisfaction levels and the difficulties they face when taking online exams, a survey with 562 students at The Open University (UK) was conducted to gain insights into their experiences with this type of exam. Satisfaction was reported with the environment and exams, while work commitments and technical difficulties presented the greatest barriers. Gender, race and disability were also associated with different levels of satisfaction and barriers. This study adds to the increasing number of studies into online exams, demonstrating how this type of exam can still have a substantial effect on students experienced in online learning systems and
technologies
Data-driven solutions to enhance planning, operation and design tools in Industry 4.0 context
This thesis proposes three different data-driven solutions to be combined to state-of-the-art solvers and tools in order to primarily enhance their computational performances. The problem of efficiently designing the open sea floating platforms on which wind turbines can be mount on will be tackled, as well as the tuning of a data-driven engine's monitoring tool for maritime transportation. Finally, the activities of SAT and ASP solvers will be thoroughly studied and a deep learning architecture will be proposed to enhance the heuristics-based solving approach adopted by such software. The covered domains are different and the same is true for their respective targets. Nonetheless, the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms are shared as well as the overall picture: promote Industrial AI and meet the constraints imposed by Industry 4.0 vision. The lesser presence of human-in-the-loop, a data-driven approach to discover causalities otherwise ignored, a special attention to the environmental impact of industries' emissions, a real and efficient exploitation of the Big Data available today are just a subset of the latter. Hence, from a broader perspective, the experiments carried out within this thesis are driven towards the aforementioned targets and the resulting outcomes are satisfactory enough to potentially convince the research community and industrialists that they are not just "visions" but they can be actually put into practice. However, it is still an introduction to the topic and the developed models are at what can be defined a "pilot" stage. Nonetheless, the results are promising and they pave the way towards further improvements and the consolidation of the dictates of Industry 4.0
Future Transportation
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with transportation activities account for approximately 20 percent of all carbon dioxide (co2) emissions globally, making the transportation sector a major contributor to the current global warming. This book focuses on the latest advances in technologies aiming at the sustainable future transportation of people and goods. A reduction in burning fossil fuel and technological transitions are the main approaches toward sustainable future transportation. Particular attention is given to automobile technological transitions, bike sharing systems, supply chain digitalization, and transport performance monitoring and optimization, among others
ECOS 2012
The 8-volume set contains the Proceedings of the 25th ECOS 2012 International Conference, Perugia, Italy, June 26th to June 29th, 2012. ECOS is an acronym for Efficiency, Cost, Optimization and Simulation (of energy conversion systems and processes), summarizing the topics covered in ECOS: Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer, Exergy and Second Law Analysis, Process Integration and Heat Exchanger Networks, Fluid Dynamics and Power Plant Components, Fuel Cells, Simulation of Energy Conversion Systems, Renewable Energies, Thermo-Economic Analysis and Optimisation, Combustion, Chemical Reactors, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Building/Urban/Complex Energy Systems, Water Desalination and Use of Water Resources, Energy Systems- Environmental and Sustainability Issues, System Operation/ Control/Diagnosis and Prognosis, Industrial Ecology
Interests and Power in Language Management
This volume expands the discussion on the language management (LM) framework through two themes: interests and power, which are driving forces of the LM process, observable and describable at every step. It consists of thirteen contributions analyzing diverse situations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Authors focus on a range of topics, including the role of language ideologies in various types of institutions, such as higher education institutions and language cultivation centers, the struggle to maintain minority languages, the positions of the actors involved in the process of making policies concerning foreign language teaching, or the processes that learning and choosing to use foreign languages entail. Emergent insights into the commonalities in the ways in which interests and power guide or underlie the management of language, communication, and sociocultural problems contribute significantly to the strength of LM as a sociolinguistic framework
Learning Outcomes of Classroom Research
Personal pronouns are a linguistic device that is used to engage students at various educational levels. Personal pronouns are multifunctional, and their functions range from inclusion to exclusion, and include establishing of rapport with students. In this chapter, we compare the use of personal pronouns at university and secondary school levels. Our previous study (Yeo & Ting, 2014) showed the frequent use of you in lecture introductions (2,170 instances in the 37,373-word corpus) to acknowledge the presence of students. The arts lecturers were more inclusive than the science lecturers, reflected in the less frequent use of exclusive-we and we for one, as well as the frequent use of you-generalised. We have also compiled and analysed a 43,511-word corpus from 15 English lessons in three Malaysian secondary schools. This corpus yielded 2,019 instances of personal pronoun use. The results showed that you was the most frequently used personal pronoun, followed by we and I. You-audience was used more than you-generalised, and the main function was to give instructions to students. The teachers appeared to be more directive than the lecturers in the previous study, who sometimes used the inclusive-we for you and I and we for I to lessen the social distance with students, indicating that the discourse functions of personal pronouns vary with the educational context. The findings suggest that educators can be alerted to the versatility of personal pronouns, for example, for engaging students in the lesson and for asserting authority in the subject matter.
Keywords: student engagement; personal pronouns; lecture; classroom; teache
Worker and Public Health and Safety
This book on "Worker and Public Health and Safety: Current Views" brings together current scholarly work and opinions in the form of original papers and reviews related to this field of study. It provides important and recent scientific reading as well as topical medical and occupational information and research in areas of immediate relevance, such as chronic and occupational diseases, worker safety and performance, job strain, workload, injuries, accident and errors, risks and management, fitness, burnout, psychological and mental disorders including stress, therapy, job satisfaction, musculoskeletal symptoms and pain, socio-economic factors, dust pollution, pesticides, noise, pathogens, and related areas
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