20,640 research outputs found
Ungifted: Teacher Candidatesâ Understanding of Giftedness through Literature Circles
The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the reflective comments made by teacher candidates (TCs) after they participated in weekly discussions about the tween novel Ungifted by Korman (2012). The TCs attended at a regional Pacific Northwest university, majoring or minoring in various educational fields. After reading and discussing the topic of giftedness as it related to their engagement with the novel, the TCs wrote a reflective essay about their new understandings of teaching the gifted. Using the constant-comparative method, the essays from three sections of the course over a three-year period were read and reread for identifiable themes. The TCs shared their new understandings of relevant issues of related to giftedness; implications for teaching the gifted; and ideas for teaching the gifted. The development of awareness about teaching the gifted is discussed
A citizen science approach to the characterisation and modelling of urban pluvial flooding
Urban pluvial flooding (UPF), a growing challenge across cities worldwide that is expected to worsen
due to climate change and urbanisation, requires comprehensive response strategies. However, the
characterisation and simulation of UPF is more complex than traditional catchment hydrological modelling because
UPF is driven by a complex set of interconnected factors and modelling constraints. Different integrated approaches
have attempted to address UPF by coupling humans and environmental systems and reflecting on the possible
outcomes from the interactions among varied disciplines. Nonetheless, it is argued that current integrated
approaches are insufficient. To further improve the characterisation and modelling of UPF, this study advances a
citizen science approach that integrates local knowledge with the understanding and interpretation of UPF. The
proposed framework provides an avenue to couple quantitative and qualitative community-based observations
with traditional sources of hydro-information. This approach allows researchers and practitioners to fill spatial and
temporal data gaps in urban catchments and hydrologic/hydrodynamic models, thus yielding a more accurate
characterisation of local catchment response and improving rainfall-runoff modelling of UPF. The results of applying
this framework indicate how community-based practices provide a bi-directional learning context between experts
and residents, which can contribute to resilience building by providing UPF knowledge necessary for risk reduction
and response to extreme flooding events
Enhancing Emotional Safety in a Graduate School Setting
In the United States, racial disparities in education can be seen in rates of graduation from high school through doctoral programs, with People of Color reporting rates that are significantly lower than their White peers. Academic success has been significantly predicted in prior research by the support of teaching staff. Our Safety in the Classroom (SITC) program was developed to close the support gap for several different, often-marginalized groups within graduate school classes at a university in southern California. Students within racial, religious, and sexual orientation groups reported stronger perceptions of prejudice when compared to their peers. The SITC program provided all students an additional tool for resolving questions and concerns about any aspect of a particular course, including behaviors or statements of the instructor, and resulted in greater effect sizes on enhanced feelings of safety in the classroom for students of color. These results were achieved without undermining the studentsâ belief in their own ability to negotiate over or confront problems in the classroom. Expanded use and evaluation of the SITC program could contribute to the growing literature on academic success and achievement among underrepresented groups, providing one possible tool for helping to close the support gap
Reimaging take-up in challenging times: determining the predictive value of publicly available socio-demographic data for social assistance programs
Social assistance programs throughout the nation have experienced major obstacles to both funding and service provision related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examines one strategy that a local Chattanooga nonprofit organization, Chattanooga Endeavors, explored to increase the rate of participation in a 21-day online program that assists justice involved individuals to address goals related to employment, education, and public assistance. The organization has access to judgment orders from Hamilton County (TN) Criminal Court and has used this information to identify individuals who have been sentenced to serve a prison term and who are eligible for an outreach program that it operates in prison. Because many of judgment orders (81%) are for individuals who have been sentenced to a period on community supervision and not prison, the organization wanted to see if the information it had on those individuals could be used to make them aware of assistances that is available to them without going to prison. The initial interest of researchers was to determine if there was any information that was predictive of an increased probability that they will voluntarily attend a two-hour online orientation. However, because the majority of the sample selected for this project (N=150) were not able to be contacted by telephone, findings were indeterminate. Researchers speculate that the reasons for this can be helpful to Chattanooga Endeavors to develop an outreach for this segment of the correctional population with attention to factors of convenience, incentive, and stigma â all critically important to the rates of up take for any social assistance program
Causal and Semantic Relations in L2 Text Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study
This study is an extension of Nahatameâs (2018) research that demonstrated the effects of causal and semantic relations between sentences on second language (L2) text processing. Employing eye tracking, this study aimed to examine whether these effects appear during more natural, uninterrupted reading processes and to identify the time course of the effects. In the experiment, Japanese learners of English read two-sentence texts that varied in their causal and semantic relatedness, as evaluated by crowdsourced human judgments and via a computational approach (latent semantic analysis), respectively. Two eye-movement measures were collected and analyzed: first-pass reading times for the second sentence and lookbacks from the second to the first sentence. The results indicated that causal relatedness had a robust impact on both reading times and lookbacks. However, semantic relatedness impacted only reading times, and its effects were modulated by causal relatedness. Theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications of this finding were discussed
From wallet to mobile: exploring how mobile payments create customer value in the service experience
This study explores how mobile proximity payments (MPP) (e.g., Apple Pay) create customer value in the service experience compared to traditional payment methods (e.g. cash and card). The main objectives were firstly to understand how customer value manifests as an outcome in the MPP service experience, and secondly to understand how the customer activities in the process of using MPP create customer value. To achieve these objectives a conceptual framework is built upon the Grönroos-Voima Value Model (Grönroos and Voima, 2013), and uses the Theory of Consumption Value (Sheth et al., 1991) to determine the customer value constructs for MPP, which is complimented with Script theory (Abelson, 1981) to determine the value creating activities the consumer does in the process of paying with MPP.
The study uses a sequential exploratory mixed methods design, wherein the first qualitative stage uses two methods, self-observations (n=200) and semi-structured interviews (n=18). The subsequent second quantitative stage uses an online survey (n=441) and Structural Equation Modelling analysis to further examine the relationships and effect between the value creating activities and customer value constructs identified in stage one. The academic contributions include the development of a model of mobile payment services value creation in the service experience, introducing the concept of in-use barriers which occur after adoption and constrains the consumers existing use of MPP, and revealing the importance of the mobile in-hand momentary condition as an antecedent state. Additionally, the customer value perspective of this thesis demonstrates an alternative to the dominant Information Technology approaches to researching mobile payments and broadens the view of technology from purely an object a user interacts with to an object that is immersed in consumersâ daily life
Static and dynamic forces accuracy of a Lightweight Collaborative Robot through impedance control
Industry 4.0 has become established, arousing the great interest of curiosities and fears for the impact not yet recognized. Human-robot collaboration is also being given more emphasis since collaborative robots improve safety and flexibility. However, not for all possible applications, the great initial economic effort of these machines may pay off expectations.
This dissertation aims to give useful measurements performed on a KUKA LBR iiwa, an advanced collaborative robot.
By executing particular tasks, like polishing, it has been noticed that Cartesian forces reconstructed by the robot are not always such accurate as assured by the manufacturer.
The goal of this thesis is to compare the measured force by the robot torque sensors with the force measured by an external load cell. The focus is on the Z-axis force, considered the most relevant for the applications considered. For this reason, a commercial mono-axial load cell has been used.
In these experiments, both static and dynamic forces were treat
Conceptualising âmeta-workâ in the context of continuous, global mobility: The case of digital nomadism
Meta-work â the work that makes work possible â is an important aspect of professional lives. Yet, it is also one that remains understudied, in particular in the context of work activities characterised by continuous and global mobility. Building on a qualitative approach to online content analysis, this article sets out to explore the meta-work underlying digital nomadism, a leisure-driven lifestyle premised on a âwork from anywhereâ logic. This article explores the four main dimensions of meta-work (resource mobilisation, articulation, transition and migration work) of digital nomads. In doing so, it shows the distinctiveness of the meta-work activities of digital nomads, thus conceptualising meta-work in the context of continuous, global mobility. Importantly, this article also challenges mainstream depictions of digital nomadism as a glamorous lifestyle accessible to anyone with the âright mindâ and the willingness to work less, be happier and live in some far-away paradisiac setting
Playing and Making History: How Game Design and Gameplay Afford Opportunities for a Critical Engagement with the Past
For decades there has been a call for educators to explore new possibilities for meeting educational goals defined broadly under a number of 'twenty-first century competencies' curricula (Dede, 2014; Voogt et al., 2013). These stress the need for students to combine critical skills development with an understanding of the processes and reach of technologies in daily life, in order to prepare them for a shifting cultural and economic landscape. In response, an extensive literature has grown up about game-based learning (Brown, 2008; de Castell, 2011; Gee, 2003; Gee and Hayes, 2011; Jenson, Taylor, de Castell, 2011; Jenson et al., 2016; Kafai, 1995; 2012; 2016; Prensky, 2001; Squire, 2004; 2011; Steinkuehler, 2006) that seeks to explore whether/how games can be used productively in education. History as a discipline lends itself particularly well to game-based learning. It is bound up in questions of interpretation, agency, and choice, considerations that gameplay and game design as processes highlight well. My research explores the uses of digital historical games in history education, and most especially in the acquisition of critical historical skills. These skills are defined as the capacity to view and engage with the constitutive parts of historical scholarship and objects: interpretation, argument, evidence, ideology, subject position, class, race, sex, etc. This thesis will present findings from two participant-based research studies that I organized and ran between 2018 and 2019. In the first, participants were tasked with playing a counterfactual historical game, Fallout 4, and talking about their experiences, as well as answering questions about history and historical understandings. The second study took the form of an interactive digital history course. In it, students, working in small groups, were tasked with creating their own historical games. Exploring both gameplay and game production answers the call issued by Kafai and Burke (2016) that researchers should view the potential for games in education holistically, rather than in either/or terms. Taken together, this thesis argues that playing and especially making historical games offers opportunities for learners to engage with epistemological concepts in history in meaningful ways that can advance their critical understanding of history as a subject
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