Building communities for design education : using telecommunication technology for remote collaborative learning

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-280).The design studio, as both a learning environment and a social place, is one of the major components of architectural education. Traditionally, the studio has been considered a place for individual design work and one-on-one mentoring between an instructor and a student. With the integration of new information and telecommunication technologies, the nature of the design studio and the learning processes within it are being altered. This new landscape of the design studio offers opportunities for globally distributed collaborative work as well as new interpretations of design processes and studio practices. The technologies and the studio system are interwoven and their symbiotic relationships need to be understood if these technology-mediated long-distance collaborative design studios are to be common, valuable, and creative occurrences in architectural education. In this study, the consequences of integrating telecommunication technologies into the design studio are examined through ten cases. The new studios involve multidisciplinary design participants from separate and distant physical and social environments that are electronically connected for sharing design ideas, creating a common understanding of design practices, and co-constructing design objects. With technology use, changes occur in the studio's participants and relationships, the design content and processes, and the events and organization. I argue that the changes to the studio can create an enriched environment for design learning. The successive case studies represent a dynamic pedagogic strategy in which both students and teachers are active participants in constructing their new technology-mediated learning environment through creative experimentation. The findings of these cases provide a comprehensive description of the technical and social characteristics, conditions, and practices of remote collaborative design studios. In these new virtual design studios, there are rich opportunities for building innovative and effective communities for design education in which the traditional boundaries of time, culture, language, discipline, and institution are blurred and new configurations for design learning become possible.by Susan Yee.Ph.D

Reaching women for mammography screening: successful strategies of National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) grantees

Introduction. -- Inreach. -- Public education. -- Outreach. -- Policies and procedures. -- Coalition and partnership development. -- Appendix: List of NBCCEDP grant programs."This document was prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by Macro International Inc., under contract no. 200-93-0696"--P. [2] of Cover.Includes bibliographical references

Effects of ePALS on Latino/Hispanic mother-child interactions and shared book reading

The study examined Latino/Hispanic mother-child interactions and shared book reading behaviors before and after participation in a random-assignment Spanish web-based responsive parenting intervention called Play and Learning Strategies (ePALS), as compared with a Spanish web-based developmental assessment intervention (DAS). The efficacy of PALS was previously demonstrated for improving mother and child behaviors within play contexts, everyday activities, and standardized measures of child language. We did not observe statistical changes in mother-child interactions as measured by the Bilingual Child-Mother Coder Impression; but changes were observed in shared reading interactions as measured by the Adult-Child Interactive Reading Inventory. Mothers enrolled in ePALS slightly increased some reading interactive behaviors, while mothers enrolled in DAS decreased on the use of interactive reading skills. Children enrolled in ePALS significantly increased in their use of interactive reading behaviors, while children’s interactive reading skills in the DAS conditions decreased. These results add to the dual language learners’ literature base, but also add to the supporting importance of targeting responsive behaviors in everyday activities such as shared-reading to facilitate children’s development. Limitations and future directions are discussed

Self-Directed Learning Development in PBL

Lifelong learning is an emphasized graduate outcome for engineering professionals at the international level by the Washington Accord and at the United States national level by ABET. When a new engineer enters the profession, she will be expected to acquire new technical knowledge in order to solve a problem or create a design. Unlike her experience in college, there will not be a professor to guide this learning. The planning, execution, monitoring, and control of this learning will now fall to the new engineer. The level of the ability to succeed in this self-directed learning modality will be a function of the extent to which the lifelong learning outcome has been met. This paper studies the importance of this graduate outcome and the development of self-directed learning as the way in which the outcome is achieved. Quantitative measures are taken using the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale. Quantitative results show a statistically significant difference between the developments of self-regulated abilities by students in a two-year PBL curriculum as compared to students who did not undergo the PBL treatment