The effects of teachers' questioning patterns on learners' outcomes.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of middle school social studies teachers' questioning patterns on learners' outcomes. Using a strategy developed by Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy (1996), Questioning the Author, participants were trained in the implementation of this effective questioning strategy in an effort to improve classroom questioning and students' responses to text.Two volunteer social studies teachers from an inner city middle school in western Pennsylvania were the participants in the study. The investigator served as the primary observer using a case study format.The primary instrument used to gather data was observations. The investigator observed and audio taped each lesson. Once the lessons were audio taped, the observations were transcribed and categorized using an observation tool based on the work of Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy (1996).Four social studies texts were used and each was taught by the participants during a separate 45-minute class period. Together the investigator and the participants pre selected these texts based on curriculum criteria. Once the chosen texts were taught to the students, the investigator trained the subjects in the implementation of Questioning the Author (Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L., 1997; Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy, 1996) strategies. The investigator then observed the subjects teaching the same four texts. The data obtained from the audio tapes and observations were analyzed using tables and descriptive narratives. In addition, participants kept reflective teaching journals, which were also categorized and analyzed. Additional instruments used to gather data included the Survey: Teaching Questioning Survey and interviews with participants. The survey was distributed prior to the study and sought after information about the participants' general knowledge of questioning strategies. Interviews were conducted before and during the study with information obtained woven into the analysis and conclusions.The study concluded that the intervention staff development strategy, Questioning the Author (Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L., 1997; Beck, McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy, 1996) resulted in an increased ability of teachers to ask questions that prompted higher student engagement with text. Similarly, the increase in text engagement resulted in elevated levels of comprehension

Research in the Archival Multiverse

Over the past 15 years, the field of archival studies around the world has experienced unprecedented growth within the academy and within the profession, and archival studies graduate education programs today have among the highest enrolments in any information field. During the same period, there has also been unparalleled expansion and innovation in the diversity of methods and theories being applied in archival scholarship. Global in scope, Research in the Archival Multiverse compiles critical and reflective essays across a wide range of emerging research areas and interests in archival studies; it aims to provide current and future archival academics with a text addressing possible methods and theoretical frameworks that have been and might be used in archival scholarship and research

Guiding Language Students to Self-Sustained Learning

This portfolio is a compilation of written pieces which express the author’s beliefs about excellence in second language teaching. The views expressed here have been shaped by the author’s personal experience and by his time in the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program and are supported by relevant research throughout. This portfolio contains three sections: (1) teaching perspectives, (2) research perspectives, and (3) annotated bibliographies. The teaching perspective section is centered on the author’s teaching philosophy, which emphasizes communication in the target language, classroom community, and student motivation. The second section consists of three research papers written over the course of the MSLT program. The final section includes three annotated bibliographies that review research literature regarding student motivation, nonnative vs native teachers, and the teaching of vocabulary

Research in the Archival Multiverse

Over the past 15 years, the field of archival studies around the world has experienced unprecedented growth within the academy and within the profession, and archival studies graduate education programs today have among the highest enrolments in any information field. During the same period, there has also been unparalleled expansion and innovation in the diversity of methods and theories being applied in archival scholarship. Global in scope, Research in the Archival Multiverse compiles critical and reflective essays across a wide range of emerging research areas and interests in archival studies; it aims to provide current and future archival academics with a text addressing possible methods and theoretical frameworks that have been and might be used in archival scholarship and research

Assessing the Potential Involutionary Effects of New Copyright Laws: A Techno-legal Analysis Based on the Impact of Web 3.0 on Copyright Protection

As Internet technology evolves, legal professionals and academics must stay current and adapt to these inevitable technological changes. This article investigates the extensive influence of the latest version of the World Wide Web (the Web)—Web 3.0—on copyright laws based on a techno-legal analysis that considers the opportunities and challenges of this new technology. The principal version of copyright laws, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was enacted in 1998 during the Web 1.0 era, signifying an impending need for appropriate updates in the new Web 3.0 era. This article traces the historical development of U.S. copyright laws by positing it has undergone three phases: illegalization, institutionalization, and criminalization. The article then explores the possible development of new legal frameworks to address the unique challenges of Web 3.0 and the formulation of novel technical solutions in the new phase of decentralization. The article also assesses the possible involutionary effects of new copyright laws that can detrimentally impact privacy, freedom of speech, and fair competition on the Internet. Finally, this article provides recommendations for establishing new copyright laws’ parameters in the forthcoming decentralization phase

Social impact retrieval: measuring author influence on information retrieval

The increased presence of technologies collectively referred to as Web 2.0 mean the entire process of new media production and dissemination has moved away from an authorcentric approach. Casual web users and browsers are increasingly able to play a more active role in the information creation process. This means that the traditional ways in which information sources may be validated and scored must adapt accordingly. In this thesis we propose a new way in which to look at a user's contributions to the network in which they are present, using these interactions to provide a measure of authority and centrality to the user. This measure is then used to attribute an query-independent interest score to each of the contributions the author makes, enabling us to provide other users with relevant information which has been of greatest interest to a community of like-minded users. This is done through the development of two algorithms; AuthorRank and MessageRank. We present two real-world user experiments which focussed around multimedia annotation and browsing systems that we built; these systems were novel in themselves, bringing together video and text browsing, as well as free-text annotation. Using these systems as examples of real-world applications for our approaches, we then look at a larger-scale experiment based on the author and citation networks of a ten year period of the ACM SIGIR conference on information retrieval between 1997-2007. We use the citation context of SIGIR publications as a proxy for annotations, constructing large social networks between authors. Against these networks we show the effectiveness of incorporating user generated content, or annotations, to improve information retrieval

Analogical creative thinking and its application to engineering design and enterprise

Analogical thinking is valuable to creative design as it assists generation of new knowledge by mapping analogically from source domain to target domain. This study endeavours to enhance the value of analogical thinking in creative design by the development of Analogical Creative Process (ACP), and evaluation of its application in projects of engineering design and enterprise design. ACP is a systematic step-by-step tool to enable analogical thinking in design, and is derived from the fundamental cognitive process of key theories for analogy establishment. It analyses the given design problem as a complex of sub-systems and identifies their functions, before analogically mapping over the relations among the sub-systems between different domains. With these features, ACP is capable of providing tangible guidance on analogical thinking for designers without requirement of their existing experience in use of analogy. The effectiveness of ACP in creative ideation is examined with positive outcome observed in a real-life engineering design project compared to non-analogical approaches. The interrelations between creativity, analogy and design are identified featuring ACP and analogical thinking through a prescriptive study. As a result, a novel analogy-empowered creative design process is proposed and applied in an enterprise design project as a new field of application for analogical thinking in design. Initial evaluation supports the application success of the creative design process and analogical thinking is proven valuable in assisting enterprise design practices. The outcomes of this study include development of ACP based on the cognitive model of analogy, establishment of a new connection between creativity, analogy and design by the analogy-embedded creative design process, and a new design application of analogical thinking in enterprise. The identification of the value of analogical thinking in the context of enterprise design provides the researchers and entrepreneurs with a new tool to enhance enterprise design and business progress.Open Acces

Resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments

The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice.The concept of 'resource discovery' is central to our understanding of how users explore, navigate, locate and retrieve information resources. This submission for a PhD by Published Works examines a series of 11 related works which explore topics pertaining to resource discovery, each demonstrating heterogeneity in their digital discovery context. The assembled works are prefaced by nine chapters which seek to review and critically analyse the contribution of each work, as well as provide contextualization within the wider body of research literature. A series of conceptual sub-themes is used to organize and structure the works and the accompanying critical commentary. The thesis first begins by examining issues in distributed discovery contexts by studying collection level metadata (CLM), its application in 'information landscaping' techniques, and its relationship to the efficacy of federated item-level search tools. This research narrative continues but expands in the later works and commentary to consider the application of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), particularly within Semantic Web and machine interface contexts, with investigations of semantically aware terminology services in distributed discovery. The necessary modelling of data structures to support resource discovery - and its associated functionalities within digital libraries and repositories - is then considered within the novel context of technology-supported curriculum design repositories, where questions of human-computer interaction (HCI) are also examined. The final works studied as part of the thesis are those which investigate and evaluate the efficacy of open repositories in exposing knowledge commons to resource discovery via web search agents. Through the analysis of the collected works it is possible to identify a unifying theory of resource discovery, with the proposed concept of (meta)data alignment described and presented with a visual model. This analysis assists in the identification of a number of research topics worthy of further research; but it also highlights an incremental transition by the present author, from using research to inform the development of technologies designed to support or facilitate resource discovery, particularly at a 'meta' level, to the application of specific technologies to address resource discovery issues in a local context. Despite this variation the research narrative has remained focussed on topics surrounding resource discovery in heterogeneous digital content environments and is noted as having generated a coherent body of work. Separate chapters are used to consider the methodological approaches adopted in each work and the contribution made to research knowledge and professional practice