Work Conferences and Student Engagement

WORK CONFERENCES AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT 2 Abstract The purpose of this research was to determine the impact of individual, weekly work conferences on students\u27 levels of intrinsic motivation, work engagement, and enthusiasm for learning. The study was conducted with 28 fourth through sixth graders in a mixedage, public Montessori classroom. Data was collected as notes during teacher observations, conversations with students, and during the work conferences themselves. Accountability and relational support increased through student-teacher dialogue about work. These two factors improved the overall student productivity, enthusiasm, and organization, as well as the work culture of the classroom. The conferences helped the students become more conscious of the nature of their learning, and they helped the teacher obtain a deeper understanding of students. This benefitted lesson planning and teacher engagement in classroom processes. Further research could be conducted to investigate, with more depth, the impact of work conferences on student self-efficacy beliefs, the use of written self-evaluation tools, and the use of portfolios to catalogue and present work

Pd-catalyzed enantioselective aerobic oxidation of secondary alcohols: Applications to the total synthesis of alkaloids

Enantioselective syntheses of the alkaloids (-)-aurantioclavine, (+)-amurensinine, (-)-lobeline, and (-)- and (+)-sedamine are described. The syntheses demonstrate the effectiveness of the Pd-catalyzed asymmetric oxidation of secondary alcohols in diverse contexts and the ability of this methodology to set the absolute configuration of multiple stereocenters in a single operation. The utility of an aryne C-C insertion reaction in accessing complex polycyclic frameworks is also described

Developing a Web-Based Question-Driven Audience Response System Supporting BYOD

Question-driven Audience Response Systems (ARSs) are in the focus of research since the 1960s. Since then, the technology has changed and therefore systems have evolved too. This work is about conception and implementation of the web-based ARS RealFeedback which uses the principle of bring your own device (BYOD). A state-of-the-art analysis compares the features of existing web-based ARSs. The most important findings are used for the conception and the implementation of the system. Thinking-aloud tests, and the first usages during lectures confirm that the chosen requirements are very significant and valuable for lecturers

Neural Mechanisms of Reading Facial Emotions in Young and Older Adults

The ability to read and appropriately respond to emotions in others is central for successful social interaction. Young and older adults are better at identifying positive than negative facial expressions and also expressions of young than older faces. Little, however, is known about the neural processes associated with reading different emotions, particularly in faces of different ages, in samples of young and older adults. During fMRI, young and older participants identified expressions in happy, neutral, and angry young and older faces. The results suggest a functional dissociation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in reading facial emotions that is largely comparable in young and older adults: Both age groups showed greater vmPFC activity to happy compared to angry or neutral faces, which was positively correlated with expression identification for happy compared to angry faces. In contrast, both age groups showed greater activity in dmPFC to neutral or angry than happy faces which was negatively correlated with expression identification for neutral compared to happy faces. A similar region of dmPFC showed greater activity for older than young faces, but no brain-behavior correlations. Greater vmPFC activity in the present study may reflect greater affective processing involved in reading happy compared to neutral or angry faces. Greater dmPFC activity may reflect more cognitive control involved in decoding and/or regulating negative emotions associated with neutral or angry than happy, and older than young, faces

Anisotropy in the helicity modulus of a 3D XY-model: application to YBCO

We present a Monte Carlo study of the helicity moduli of an anisotropic classical three-dimensional (3D) XY-model of YBCO in superconducting state. It is found that both the ab-plane and the c-axis helicity moduli, which are proportional to the inverse square of the corresponding magnetic field penetration depth, vary linearly with temperature at low temperatures. The result for the c-axis helicity modulus is in disagreement with the experiments on high quality samples of YBCO. Thus we conclude that purely classical phase fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter cannot account for the observed c-axis electrodynamics of YBCO.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

A Convergent and Enantioselective Synthesis of (+)-Amurensinine via Selective C−H and C−C Bond Insertion Reactions

A convergent and enantioselective synthesis of the natural product amurensinine is described. The synthetic strategy takes advantage of mild and selective C−H and C−C bond insertion reactions, in addition to the palladium-catalyzed aerobic oxidative kinetic resolution recently developed in these laboratories