A quantitative method to analyse an open-ended questionnaire: A case study about the Boltzmann Factor

This paper describes a quantitative method to analyse an openended questionnaire. Student responses to a specially designed written questionnaire are quantitatively analysed by not hierarchical clustering called k-means method. Through this we can characterise behaviour students with respect their expertise to formulate explanations for phenomena or processes and/or use a given model in the different context. The physics topic is about the Boltzmann Factor, which allows the students to have a unifying view of different phenomena in different contexts

K-means Clustering to Study How Student Reasoning Lines Can Be Modified by a Learning Activity Based on Feynman\u2019s Unifying Approach

Research in Science Education has shown that often students need to learn how to identify differences and similarities between descriptive and explicative models. The development and use of explicative skills in the field of thermal science has always been a difficult objective to reach. A way to develop analogical reasoning is to use in Science Education unifying conceptual frameworks. In this paper we describe a 20-hour workshop focused on Feynman\u2019s Unifying Approach and the two-level system. We measure its efficacy in helping undergraduate chemical engineering students explain phenomena by applying an explanatory model. Contexts involve systems for which a process is activated by thermally overcoming a well-defined potential barrier. A questionnaire containing six open-ended questions was administered to the students before instruction. A second one, similar but focused on different physical content was administered after instruction. Responses were analysed using k-means Cluster Analysis and students\u2019 inferred lines of reasoning about the analysed phenomena were studied. We conclude that students reasoning lines seem to have clearly evolved to explicative ones and it is reasonable to think that the Feynman Unifying Approach has favoured this change

A New Approach to Investigate Students\u2019 Behavior by Using Cluster Analysis as an Unsupervised Methodology in the Field of Education

The problem of taking a set of data and separating it into subgroups where the ele- ments of each subgroup are more similar to each other than they are to elements not in the subgroup has been extensively studied through the statistical method of cluster analysis. In this paper we want to discuss the application of this method to the field of education: particularly, we want to present the use of cluster analysis to separate students into groups that can be recognized and characterized by common traits in their answers to a questionnaire, without any prior knowledge of what form those groups would take (unsupervised classification). We start from a detailed study of the data processing needed by cluster analysis. Then two methods commonly used in cluster analysis are before described only from a theoretical point a view and after in the Section 4 through an example of application to data coming from an open-ended questionnaire administered to a sample of university students. In particular we de- scribe and criticize the variables and parameters used to show the results of the clus- ter analysis methods

Investigating the quality of mental models deployed by undergraduate engineering students in creating explanations: The case of thermally activated phenomena

This paper describes a method aimed at pointing out the quality of the mental models undergraduate engineering students deploy when asked to create explanations for phenomena or processes and/or use a given model in the same context. Student responses to a specially designed written questionnaire are quantitatively analyzed using researcher-generated categories of reasoning, based on the physics education research literature on student understanding of the relevant physics content. The use of statistical implicative analysis tools allows us to successfully identify clusters of students with respect to the similarity to the reasoning categories, defined as "practical or everyday," "descriptive," or "explicative." Through the use of similarity and implication indexes our method also enables us to study the consistency in students' deployment of mental models. A qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with students after they had completed the questionnaire is used to clarify some aspects which emerged from the quantitative analysis and validate the results obtained. Some implications of this joint use of quantitative and qualitative analysis for the design of a learning environment focused on the understanding of some aspects of the world at the level of causation and mechanisms of functioning are discussed

Nonprofit foundations spur translational research

Every year, hundreds of promising basic discoveries in the pharmacological field are lost and will never have a chance to be exploited for patients due to difficulties in clinical translation. This is especially true for most neurodegenerative disorders lacking disease-modifying therapies. Here we present the current scenario and our vision of a 'collective-impact' multistakeholder approach to expedite the development of new drugs

Exploring the Coherence of Student Reasoning when Responding to Questionnaires on Thermally Activated Phenomena

Many research results show that students often highlight \u201cmixed-type\u201d reasoning when tackling problematic situations and problems. This reasoning is based on the simultaneous use of common-sense and mere descriptions of facts, perceived as sufficient to build an \u201cexplanation\u201d of observed or proposed situations and problems. This fact can be interpreted as a lack of coherence. In this paper, we study the coherence of responses that a sample of undergraduate chemical engineering student give when they are asked to face real-life situations, to create explanations, and to use models in different contexts. We administered open-ended questionnaires before and after a twenty-hour Inquiry-Based workshop related to phenomena activated by a thermal overcoming of a potential barrier. Based on the Physics Education Research literature on student understanding of relevant physics contents, the student responses are analysed by using researcher-generated categories of reasoning and their coherence is studied. Finally, we discuss some implications of the results to improve the development of students' explicative skills. \ua9 2021 the authors; licensee Modestum. All Rights Reserved

The Euclid Space Mission: development of end-to-end simulator software tools aimed at improving the wavelength calibration of NISP instrument spectroscopic data

This PhD thesis deals with the realization of two original software tools for the Euclid Space Mission: 1. an End-to-End Mission Performance Simulator (E2ES) 2. a code to improve the wavelength calibration of the Euclid NISP spectroscopic data. Euclid is a mission selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) at the end of 2011 to understand the nature of the dark Universe. Starting from 2022, Euclid will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by means of two instruments: the Visual Imager (VIS) and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP). The NISP instrument is designed to carry out slitless spectroscopy (for galaxy clustering probe) and imaging photometry (to detect weak lensing effects) in the near-infrared (NIR) wavelength. The design of a space mission is a long and complex process. The support of dedicated software tools is necessary, especially for the performance analysis of the mission itself. The request is then for specific tools that can simulate the complete behavior of the probe, its payload (i.e. those elements of the spacecraft specifically dedicated to producing mission data), and scientific data acquisition starting from synthetic scenes. A mission performance simulator (E2ES) with reduced simulation capabilities (called "Proto E2ES") has been implemented using the Python programming language in the framework of the European Space Agency (ESA) contract IPL-PTE/GLC/al/241.2014. My research job focused on the verification and validation of the simulator. In accordance to actual ESA software standardization, I developed a verification and validation process (contained in the "Euclid E2ES Verification and Validation Plan") to check the consistency and meaningfulness of output data resulting from the entire simulation chain; to check that the simulation output products are within the identified figure of merit; to determine whether or not the simulator software complies with the scientific requirements established in the baseline requirements document, and to define the test cases for the verification. A simulation on the entire input test catalog has been performed and all test cases foreseen by the plan completed with success. Exploiting the experience matured on the validation of the Euclid proto-E2ES, a collaboration started with INAF-IASF Milano to assess if the wavelength calibration accuracy of the NISP spectroscopic data can be validated using spectra of bright stars. Using stellar spectra of the NASA InfraRed Telescope Facility (IRTF), a deformation is applied to the spectra itself in order to reproduce the non-ideal nature of the NISP instrument. Also reference stellar spectra ("templates")are deformed, and the best match between the observed deformed spectrum and template is obtained through the evaluation of a merit function, the correlation function. The correlation has then been computed for all stellar spectra of the input catalog and templates. The scatter of the cross-correlation peak position for the different magnitude bins has been plotted against the magnitude itself. Results show that NISP spectra location validation can be successfully performed using stellar spectra for stars up to J-band magnitude equal to 17.0. Furthermore, the spatially varying wavelength solution across the field-of-view is accurate to a level of 0.4 pixels for stellar spectra up to J-band magnitude = 15.5

Steps towards collective sustainability in biomedical research

The optimism surrounding multistakeholder research initiatives does not match the clear view of policies that are needed to exploit the potential of these collaborations. Here we propose some action items that stem from the integration between research advancements with the perspectives of patient-advocacy organizations, academia, and industry

Presenting evidence-based health information for people with multiple sclerosis : the IN-DEEP project protocol

Background - Increasingly, evidence-based health information, in particular evidence from systematic reviews, is being made available to lay audiences, in addition to health professionals. Research efforts have focused on different formats for the lay presentation of health information. However, there is a paucity of data on how patients integrate evidence-based health information with other factors such as their preferences for information and experiences with information-seeking. The aim of this project is to explore how people with multiple sclerosis (MS) integrate health information with their needs, experiences, preferences and values and how these factors can be incorporated into an online resource of evidence-based health information provision for people with MS and their families.Methods - This project is an Australian-Italian collaboration between researchers, MS societies and people with MS. Using a four-stage mixed methods design, a model will be developed for presenting evidence-based health information on the Internet for people with MS and their families. This evidence-based health information will draw upon systematic reviews of MS interventions from The Cochrane Library. Each stage of the project will build on the last. After conducting focus groups with people with MS and their family members (Stage 1), we will develop a model for summarising and presenting Cochrane MS reviews that is integrated with supporting information to aid understanding and decision making. This will be reviewed and finalised with people with MS, family members, health professionals and MS Society staff (Stage 2), before being uploaded to the Internet and evaluated (Stages 3 and 4).Discussion - This project aims to produce accessible and meaningful evidence-based health information about MS for use in the varied decision making and management situations people encounter in everyday life. It is expected that the findings will be relevant to broader efforts to provide evidence-based health information for patients and the general public. The international collaboration also permits exploration of cultural differences that could inform international practice.<br /