From traditional essay to 'Ready Steady Cook' presentation: Reasons for innovative changes in assignments

The prose essay, case study and laboratory report, composed by individual students in isolation from their peers, used to be the mainstay of undergraduate writing. However, in recent years an array of alternative assignment types such as blogs, letters and e-posters have widened the repertoire of texts expected. This article attempts to describe the reasoning behind changes in assignment types at undergraduate and master’s level at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Data from 58 semi-structured interviews with lecturers in three UK universities is used together with course handbooks and some clarifications with lecturers via email. Suggested reasons for new assignment types are grouped into three categories: external, lecturer-driven and student-driven. The article surmises that, because of these pressures, students are now expected to produce a wide variety of text types, and greater attention should be paid to guidance in new assignments for both native and non-native speaker students

Developing the scales on evaluation beliefs of student teachers

The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to investigate the validity and the reliability of a newly developed questionnaire named ‘Teacher Evaluation Beliefs’ (TEB). The framework for developing items was provided by the two models. The first model focuses on Student-Centered and Teacher-Centered beliefs about evaluation while the other centers on five dimensions (what/ who/ when/ why/ how). The validity and reliability of the new instrument was investigated using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis study (n=446). Overall results indicate that the two-factor structure is more reasonable than the five-factor one. Further research needs additional items about the latent dimensions “what” ”who” ”when” ”why” “how” for each existing factor based on Student-centered and Teacher-centered approaches

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

(E-book) Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA): An Annotated Bibliography

Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA), also known as Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) and Purchase on Demand (POD), has been used by libraries since the early 1990’s. PDA allows libraries to acquire items based on the immediate needs of their patrons, often without library intervention. With the arrival of e-books in the late 1990’s, libraries soon began including them in their PDA workflows. PDA is controversial for several reasons, and PDA of E-books adds further issues to the debate. This bibliography covers PDA and the issues academic libraries face when devising a PDA program. Articles outline the benefits and problems of print and E-book PDA and the debate they elicit. They also document the response of libraries to address these problems. Only peer-reviewed articles that express current thought on the subject (as of this writing) have been used

(E-book) Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA): An Annotated Bibliography

Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA), also known as Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) and Purchase on Demand (POD), has been used by libraries since the early 1990’s. PDA allows libraries to acquire items based on the immediate needs of their patrons, often without library intervention. With the arrival of e-books in the late 1990’s, libraries soon began including them in their PDA workflows. PDA is controversial for several reasons, and PDA of E-books adds further issues to the debate. This bibliography covers PDA and the issues academic libraries face when devising a PDA program. Articles outline the benefits and problems of print and E-book PDA and the debate they elicit. They also document the response of libraries to address these problems. Only peer-reviewed articles that express current thought on the subject (as of this writing) have been used

Robust Processing of Natural Language

Previous approaches to robustness in natural language processing usually treat deviant input by relaxing grammatical constraints whenever a successful analysis cannot be provided by ``normal'' means. This schema implies, that error detection always comes prior to error handling, a behaviour which hardly can compete with its human model, where many erroneous situations are treated without even noticing them. The paper analyses the necessary preconditions for achieving a higher degree of robustness in natural language processing and suggests a quite different approach based on a procedure for structural disambiguation. It not only offers the possibility to cope with robustness issues in a more natural way but eventually might be suited to accommodate quite different aspects of robust behaviour within a single framework.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, uses pstricks.sty, pstricks.tex, pstricks.pro, pst-node.sty, pst-node.tex, pst-node.pro. To appear in: Proc. KI-95, 19th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bielefeld (Germany), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 199

An Exploratory Study of Forces and Frictions affecting Large-Scale Model-Driven Development

In this paper, we investigate model-driven engineering, reporting on an exploratory case-study conducted at a large automotive company. The study consisted of interviews with 20 engineers and managers working in different roles. We found that, in the context of a large organization, contextual forces dominate the cognitive issues of using model-driven technology. The four forces we identified that are likely independent of the particular abstractions chosen as the basis of software development are the need for diffing in software product lines, the needs for problem-specific languages and types, the need for live modeling in exploratory activities, and the need for point-to-point traceability between artifacts. We also identified triggers of accidental complexity, which we refer to as points of friction introduced by languages and tools. Examples of the friction points identified are insufficient support for model diffing, point-to-point traceability, and model changes at runtime.Comment: To appear in proceedings of MODELS 2012, LNCS Springe