6,018 research outputs found
Faculty, Staff, and Student Perceptions of the Transgender and Gender-nonconforming (TGNC) Student Experiences at Carnegie Mellon University
A limited amount of research has been conducted examining the experiences of Transgender and Gender-nonconforming (TGNC) student populations within the context of higher education. In an attempt to learn more about the experiences of TGNC populations at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), this inquiry utilized a qualitative approach, conducting semi-structured interviews of self-identified TGNC students, faculty, and staff to explore the perceptions of TGNC students attending Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Eight TGNC participants with current affiliations with CMU as students, faculty, or staff shared their lived experiences and perceptions with regard to how TGNC students, both graduate and undergraduate, attempt to navigate the campus climate. The results of this inquiry indicate that the embedded binary gender configurations found in the physical infrastructures of campus, as well as the cultural engagement around gender identities beyond this binary, create various obstacles for the TGNC on campus that include inadequate access to bathrooms, housing, and other physical structures of support for this community. Recommendations are offered specifically for CMU, offering suggestions for necessary tools in creating and maintaining a TGNC-inclusive campus and climate, which may also be applicable across all institutions of higher education.
Keywords: Transgender, higher education, Gender-nonconforming, gender binary, genderism, education, cisgender, infrastructure, liberatio
Developing the vision: preparing teachers to deliver a digital world-class education system
In 2008 Australians were promised a \u27Digital Education Revolution\u27 by the government to dramatically change classroom education and build a \u27world-class education system\u27. Eight billion dollars have been spent providing computer equipment for upper secondary classrooms, yet there is little evidence that a revolution has occurred in Australian schools. Transformation of an education system takes more than a simplistic hardware solution. Revolutions need leaders and leaders need vision. In this paper, I argue that we must first develop educational leaders by inspiring future teachers with a vision and by designing our teacher-education courses as technology-rich learning-spaces. A multi-layered scenario is developed as the inspiration for a vision of a future-orientated teacher-education system that prepares teachers to deliver a \u27worldclass digital education\u27 for every Australian child. Although written for the Australian context this paper has broad relevance internationally for teacher education
Master's in autonomous systems: an overview of the robotics curriculum and outcomes at ISEP, Portugal
Robotics research in Portugal is increasing every
year, but few students embrace it as one of their first choices
for study. Until recently, job offers for engineers were plentiful,
and those looking for a degree in science and technology would
avoid areas considered to be demanding, like robotics. At the
undergraduate level, robotics programs are still competing for a
place in the classical engineering graduate curricula. Innovative
and dynamic Master’s programs may offer the solution to this
gap. The Master’s degree in autonomous systems at the Instituto
Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal, was
designed to provide a solid training in robotics and has been
showing interesting results, mainly due to differences in course
structure and the context in which students are welcomed to study
and wor
DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report
The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students
Integration of Public Policy into Civil Engineering Undergraduate Curricula: Review of Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge and Course Application
The field of civil and environmental engineering directly ties with serving the needs of the public through infrastructure development and improvements in sustainable environments. Integrating this reciprocal connection between public policy and civil engineering into undergraduate civil engineering education is critical for the preparation of the next generation of engineers. This project, first, reviews the guidance of public policy in civil engineering programs, such as ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge. Then, a pedagogical application is presented that focuses on the integration of public policy concepts, methods, assessment tools and techniques in a required, upper level course in civil and environmental engineering at Bucknell University. Iterations of this course integration have been taught for over a decade, and experiences on how to engage students around this timely topic is included. Specific course materials including discussion strategies are presented, as well as methods to maintain up-to-date connections with critical ever-changing topics such as climate change. Also, case studies related to ASCE Policy Statements are shared, and summative assessments that tie directly to ABET criteria are presented, in order to showcase ways that public policy can be taught at the undergraduate level at institutions throughout the United States. Within the lesson material, both a combination of regulation and market-based instruments are presented using civil and environmental engineering examples to spur interest in field and practical applications. Lastly, opportunities within the engineering and public policy arena, in terms of graduate programs and career pathways, are introduced to spark future career interests. As more undergraduate engineers are exposed to the topic of public policy, they can begin their careers with a more well-rounded and holistic understanding of how they can lead and potentially improve the field of civil engineering in serving the public, economy, and the environment
Corporate influence and the academic computer science discipline. [4: CMU]
Prosopographical work on the four major centers for computer
research in the United States has now been conducted, resulting in big
questions about the independence of, so called, computer science
Learning objects and learning designs: an integrated system for reusable, adaptive and shareable learning content
This paper proposes a system, the Smart Learning Design Framework, designed to support the development of pedagogically sound learning material within an integrated, platform-independent data structure. The system supports sharing, reuse and adaptation of learning material via a metadata-driven philosophy that enables the technicalities of the system to be imperceptible to the author and consumer. The system proposes the use of pedagogically focused metadata to support and guide the author and to adapt and deliver the content to the targeted consumer. A prototype of the proposed system, which provides proof of concept for the novel processes involved, has been developed. The paper describes the Smart Learning Design Framework and places it within the context of alternative learning object models and frameworks to highlight similarities, differences and advantages of the proposed system
Assembling thefacebook: Using heterogeneity to understand online social network assembly
Online social networks represent a popular and diverse class of social media
systems. Despite this variety, each of these systems undergoes a general
process of online social network assembly, which represents the complicated and
heterogeneous changes that transform newly born systems into mature platforms.
However, little is known about this process. For example, how much of a
network's assembly is driven by simple growth? How does a network's structure
change as it matures? How does network structure vary with adoption rates and
user heterogeneity, and do these properties play different roles at different
points in the assembly? We investigate these and other questions using a unique
dataset of online connections among the roughly one million users at the first
100 colleges admitted to Facebook, captured just 20 months after its launch. We
first show that different vintages and adoption rates across this population of
networks reveal temporal dynamics of the assembly process, and that assembly is
only loosely related to network growth. We then exploit natural experiments
embedded in this dataset and complementary data obtained via Internet
archaeology to show that different subnetworks matured at different rates
toward similar end states. These results shed light on the processes and
patterns of online social network assembly, and may facilitate more effective
design for online social systems.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, Proceedings of the 7th Annual ACM Web Science
Conference (WebSci), 201
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