Digital Learners in Higher Education: Exploring Technology Ownership Patterns and Learning Engagement

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following paper: Amanda Jefferies, Dagmar Monett-Diaz, and Diana Kornbrot, 'Digital Learners in Higher Education: Exploring Technology Ownership Patterns and Learning Engagement', in Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on E-Learning. Prague, Czech Republic 27-28 October 2016. Jarmila Novotna and Antonin Jancarik eds., ISBN 978-1-911218-18-0, e-ISBN 978-1-911218-17-3.Recent studies into ‘digital learners’ have pointed to the high level of digital skills which many UK and US based students entering HE are now demonstrating (White & Beetham, 2013; Pew, 2013). However while students may display high levels of functional skill or competency in digital media this is often evidenced in a narrow corridor of involvement with social media and may not indicate a well-rounded digital identity. Using digital devices informally for leisure opportunities does not necessarily foster the digital literacies required to develop the critical thinking and learning skills of university graduates. This is in line with Beetham & Sharpe (2014) who suggest that: ‘digital literacy looks beyond functional IT skills to describe a richer set of digital behaviours, practices and identities.’ This perspective of wide-ranging digital competency but indeterminate levels of digital literacy amongst undergraduates is explored through the outcomes of two recent surveys, one undertaken in Australia (2012-3) previously reported at the ascilite conference (Jefferies,2013), and the other at a German university in 2013-2014 which is the focus of this paper. This paper examines the evidence for digital competency and literacy displayed by German university students in support of their studies. In a quantitative study using an online survey tool based on previously published and widely-acknowledged metrics, students were asked about digital ownership and their technology use during their HE studies. The questions asked about their use of common hardware platforms and popular software. The outcomes from the German study and the earlier Australian study are considered in the context of recent research into ‘digital learners’ in the UK. Overall, the students’ use of technology for learning, whichever country they were studying in, tended to be personally focussed, lacking evidence of active contribution to producing and critically evaluating material. In short, their contribution to digital engagement could be termed as surprisingly passive and consumerist (cf. Cochrane and Antonczak, 2015) rather than a pro-active engagement

Modellierung der praktischen Rolle in Verhandlungen mit einem erweiterten Verfahren des fallbasierten Schließens

Der vorliegende Text beruht auf einem Vortrag, der auf dem Treffen des Schwerpunktprogramms "Sozionik" (SP1077) der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft vom 20.-23. Juni 2002 in Seeon gehalten wurde. Die Autoren stellen die Bedeutung von Verhandlungen in Organisationen und deren Modellierung in einem Multiagentensystem dar, wobei exemplarisch die Organisation Krankenhaus betrachtet wird. Nach soziologischen Überlegungen zu einem Multiagentensystem in Bezug auf Verhandlungen wird die Modellierung und Berechnung von Verhandlung vorgestellt. Anschließend wird der Vorschlag, das Verfahren des fallbasierten Schließens (FBS) zu erweitern, erläutert. Dabei wird in einzelnen Unterkapiteln zuerst ein kurzer Überblick über das FBS gegeben und anschließend die konkrete Anwendung im interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekt "Integration kooperationsfähiger Agenten in komplexen Organisationen" (INKA) aufgezeigt. (ICI

Special Issue "On Defining Artificial Intelligence"—Commentaries and Author's Response

n/

A new algorithm for the index determination in DAEs by Taylor series using Algorithmic Differentiation

We present an approach for determining the tractability index using truncated polynomial arithmetic. In particular, computing the index this way generates a sequence of matrices that contains itself derivatives. We realize the time differentiations using Algorithmic Differentiation techniques, specially by using the standard ADOL-C package with which calculating the derivatives becomes a simple shift and scaling of coefficients. We present the theory supporting the procedure we propose, as well as the implementation issues behind it to provide a convenient interface to the standard ADOL-C functionality. We give also examples of academic and practical problems and report several experimental results we have obtained with them