Developing an on-line undergraduate course in introductory psychology

In this article, we describe the process of developing a first and second edition of a professional, commercial,on-line course in introductory psychology. We review some of the advantages and disadvantages of on-line pedagogy and outline some of the contiguities and disparities between the original conception of the course and its actual development and execution. The article also outlines some potentially useful recommendations for other authors who are interested in using the Internet as a tool for developing and presenting similar pedagogical material

East-West Paths to Unconventional Computing

Unconventional computing is about breaking boundaries in thinking, acting and computing. Typical topics of this non-typical field include, but are not limited to physics of computation, non-classical logics, new complexity measures, novel hardware, mechanical, chemical and quantum computing. Unconventional computing encourages a new style of thinking while practical applications are obtained from uncovering and exploiting principles and mechanisms of information processing in and functional properties of, physical, chemical and living systems; in particular, efficient algorithms are developed, (almost) optimal architectures are designed and working prototypes of future computing devices are manufactured. This article includes idiosyncratic accounts of ‘unconventional computing’ scientists reflecting on their personal experiences, what attracted them to the field, their inspirations and discoveries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Prioritizing Program Elements: A Pre-testing Effort To Improve Software Quality

Test effort prioritization is a powerful technique that enables the tester to effectively utilize the test resources by streamlining the test effort. The distribution of test effort is important to test organization. We address prioritization-based testing strategies in order to do the best possible job with limited test resources. Our proposed techniques give benefit to the tester, when applied in the case of looming deadlines and limited resources. Some parts of a system are more critical and sensitive to bugs than others, and thus should be tested thoroughly. The rationale behind this thesis is to estimate the criticality of various parts within a system and prioritize the parts for testing according to their estimated criticality. We propose several prioritization techniques at different phases of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Different chapters of the thesis aim at setting test priority based on various factors of the system. The purpose is to identify and focus on the critical and strategic areas and detect the important defects as early as possible, before the product release. Focusing on the critical and strategic areas helps to improve the reliability of the system within the available resources. We present code-based and architecture-based techniques to prioritize the testing tasks. In these techniques, we analyze the criticality of a component within a system using a combination of its internal and external factors. We have conducted a set of experiments on the case studies and observed that the proposed techniques are efficient and address the challenge of prioritization. We propose a novel idea of calculating the influence of a component, where in-fluence refers to the contribution or usage of the component at every execution step. This influence value serves as a metric in test effort prioritization. We first calculate the influence through static analysis of the source code and then, refine our work by calculating it through dynamic analysis. We have experimentally proved that decreasing the reliability of an element with high influence value drastically increases the failure rate of the system, which is not true in case of an element with low influence value. We estimate the criticality of a component within a system by considering its both internal and external factors such as influence value, average execution time, structural complexity, severity and business value. We prioritize the components for testing according to their estimated criticality. We have compared our approach with a related approach, in which the components were prioritized on the basis of their structural complexity only. From the experimental results, we observed that our approach helps to reduce the failure rate at the operational environment. The consequence of the observed failures were also low compared to the related approach. Priority should be established by order of importance or urgency. As the importance of a component may vary at different points of the testing phase, we propose a multi cycle-based test effort prioritization approach, in which we assign different priorities to the same component at different test cycles. Test effort prioritization at the initial phase of SDLC has a greater impact than that made at a later phase. As the analysis and design stage is critical compared to other stages, detecting and correcting errors at this stage is less costly compared to later stages of SDLC. Designing metrics at this stage help the test manager in decision making for allocating resources. We propose a technique to estimate the criticality of a use case at the design level. The criticality is computed on the basis of complexity and business value. We evaluated the complexity of a use case analytically through a set of data collected at the design level. We experimentally observed that assigning test effort to various use cases according to their estimated criticality improves the reliability of a system under test. Test effort prioritization based on risk is a powerful technique for streamlining the test effort. The tester can exploit the relationship between risk and testing effort. We proposed a technique to estimate the risk associated with various states at the component level and risk associated with use case scenarios at the system level. The estimated risks are used for enhancing the resource allocation decision. An intermediate graph called Inter-Component State-Dependence graph (ISDG) is introduced for getting the complexity for a state of a component, which is used for risk estimation. We empirically evaluated the estimated risks. We assigned test priority to the components / scenarios within a system according to their estimated risks. We performed an experimental comparative analysis and observed that the testing team guided by our technique achieved high test efficiency compared to a related approach

Anaphoric resolution of zero pronouns in Chinese in translation and reading comprehension

The primary aim of the thesis is to investigate some of the processes of reading Chinese text by means of comparing and analysing approximately 100 parallel translations of four texts from Chinese to English. The translations are answers to A Level examination questions. The focus of the investigation is interpretation of the zero pronoun, a common phenomenon in Chinese, which often requires explicitation when translated into English. The secondary aim is to show how translation gives evidence of comprehension, as shown by the variation in interpretation of zero pronouns. The thesis reviews relevant psycholinguistic research into reading, particularly reading of Chinese text. This is followed by reviews of relevant research into translation as a reading activity, and a discussion of its role in language teaching and testing.The core of the thesis is the discussion of the zero pronoun in Chinese, including discussion of anaphoric choice - the writer's decision on when to use zero in preference to an explicit anaphoric form - and of anaphoric resolution - how a reader decides what a zero pronoun refers to. Anaphoric resolution may be problematic for less experienced readers of Chinese owing to its lack of rich morphological inflection which, in other languages, provides the reader with information. Some of the key ideas on anaphoric choice and resolution are then applied to the analysis of the data in the parallel translations. It would appear that factors in Chinese texts which have an effect on comprehending zero pronouns are antecedent distance, topic persistence, abstraction, multiplicity of arguments and the meaning of the verb. Characteristics of the reader which may affect comprehension of the zero pronoun include personal schemata which may lead to elaborative inferences. On the basis of the data I suggest that mark schemes could be devised on a scalar system encompassing optimal solution, proximal solution and nonsolution, which might help to solve the problem of variability in marking translation.A by-product of the thesis, and an avenue for further research, is the apparent close relationship between idea units, clause length, punctuation breaks and antecedent distance in Chinese texts and saccade length and working memory capacity in the reader of Chinese

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders provides an extensive set of free-to-use policies for building better schools. The policies included in this book cover a broad range of popular topics for schools that are not readily accessible, and each policy is built on theory, driven by research, and created by experts. Each policy is based on substantial evidence, and this is ensured through the inclusion of contributors who are active and highly reputable in their respective field. Most schools are obliged to write and maintain policy, and not all school leaders have the required skills, time, or expertise to do this effectively. Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders is a time-saving resource for schools. It aims to address the reported research-to-practice gap in education by delivering accessible evidence-based practice in a ready-to-use adaptable format. All policies within this book are designed to be adapted and tailored to the unique diversity and needs of each school as reflected by the context and the people that make up the school community.　　 This bookis relevant to every person who works in a school – worldwide. Users of this book can rest assured that each policy has been carefully formulated from the current understandings of best practice. This is a practical innovation and an example of how schools can use research evidence in their day-to-day practices. "The Open Access version of this book is forthcoming and has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders provides an extensive set of free-to-use policies for building better schools. The policies included in this book cover a broad range of popular topics for schools that are not readily accessible, and each policy is built on theory, driven by research, and created by experts. Each policy is based on substantial evidence, and this is ensured through the inclusion of contributors who are active and highly reputable in their respective field. Most schools are obliged to write and maintain policy, and not all school leaders have the required skills, time, or expertise to do this effectively. Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy: Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders is a time-saving resource for schools. It aims to address the reported research-to-practice gap in education by delivering accessible evidence-based practice in a ready-to-use adaptable format. All policies within this book are designed to be adapted and tailored to the unique diversity and needs of each school as reflected by the context and the people that make up the school community.　　 This bookis relevant to every person who works in a school – worldwide. Users of this book can rest assured that each policy has been carefully formulated from the current understandings of best practice. This is a practical innovation and an example of how schools can use research evidence in their day-to-day practices. "The Open Access version of this book is forthcoming and has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Towards an evaluation of schema theory with reference to ESL/EFL reading comprehension.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D93524 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Unconventional Cancer Treatments

This report describes the unconventional cancer treatments that are most used by U.S. cancer patients; it describes the way in which people find out about them and how much they pay for them; reviews the claims made for them and the information base in support of the claims; suggests possible ways of generating valid information about their safety and effectiveness; and presents the legal issues surrounding unconventional treatments that have brought civil and criminal litigation to bear on the subject