Convergent evidence for validity of a performance-based ICT skills test

The goal of this study was to investigate sources of evidence of convergent validity supporting the construct interpretation of scores on a simulation-based ICT skills test. The construct definition understands ICT skills as reliant on ICT-specific knowledge as well as comprehension and problem-solving skills. On the basis of this, a validity argument comprising three claims was formulated and tested. (1) In line with the classical nomothetic span approach, all three predictor variables explained task success positively across all ICT skills items. As ICT tasks can vary in the extent to which they require construct-related knowledge and skills and in the way related items are designed and implemented, the effects of construct-related predictor variables were expected to vary across items. (2) A task-based analysis approach revealed that the item-level effects of the three predictor variables were in line with the targeted construct interpretation for most items. (3) Finally, item characteristics could significantly explain the random effect of problem-solving skills, but not comprehension skills. Taken together, the obtained results generally support the validity of the construct interpretation

Schülerexperimente im inklusiven Physikunterricht

Auch 11 Jahre nach der Ratifizierung der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention mangelt es an Unterrichtskonzepten insbesondere für den inklusiven Physikunterricht. Experimente werden als das wichtigste Medium des Physikunterrichts angesehen. Das Projekt „Fortbildung zum inklusiven Experimentieren im Physikunterricht” (FINEX) möchte beides verbinden und hat ein theoriebasiertes Unterrichtskonzept für inklusive Schülerexperimente entwickelt. Herzstück dieses Konzeptes ist eine Stationenarbeit, welche fünf handlungsorientierte Zugänge zu einem physikalischen Kontext bietet. An den Stationen sollen Schüler*innen selbstgesteuert multimediale Experimente durchführen. Anhand eines Beispiels aus der geometrischen Optik wird dieses Unterrichtskonzept illustriert. Das begleitende Arbeitsmaterial dient als Grundlage für eine für 2021 geplante Lehrkräftefortbildung

Schülerexperimente im inklusiven Physikunterricht

Auch 11 Jahre nach der Ratifizierung der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention mangelt es an Unterrichtskonzepten insbesondere für den inklusiven Physikunterricht. Experimente werden als das wichtigste Medium des Physikunterrichts angesehen. Das Projekt „Fortbildung zum inklusiven Experimentieren im Physikunterricht” (FINEX) möchte beides verbinden und hat ein theoriebasiertes Unterrichtskonzept für inklusive Schülerexperimente entwickelt. Herzstück dieses Konzeptes ist eine Stationenarbeit, welche fünf handlungsorientierte Zugänge zu einem physikalischen Kontext bietet. An den Stationen sollen Schüler*innen selbstgesteuert multimediale Experimente durchführen. Anhand eines Beispiels aus der geometrischen Optik wird dieses Unterrichtskonzept illustriert. Das begleitende Arbeitsmaterial dient als Grundlage für eine für 2021 geplante Lehrkräftefortbildung

The Future is Big Graphs! A Community View on Graph Processing Systems

Graphs are by nature unifying abstractions that can leverage interconnectedness to represent, explore, predict, and explain real- and digital-world phenomena. Although real users and consumers of graph instances and graph workloads understand these abstractions, future problems will require new abstractions and systems. What needs to happen in the next decade for big graph processing to continue to succeed?Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, collaboration between the large-scale systems and data management communities, work started at the Dagstuhl Seminar 19491 on Big Graph Processing Systems, to be published in the Communications of the AC

The PROFOUND Database for evaluating vegetation models and simulating climate impacts on European forests

Process-based vegetation models are widely used to predict local and global ecosystem dynamics and climate change impacts. Due to their complexity, they require careful parameterization and evaluation to ensure that projections are accurate and reliable. The PROFOUND Database (PROFOUND DB) provides a wide range of empirical data on European forests to calibrate and evaluate vegetation models that simulate climate impacts at the forest stand scale. A particular advantage of this database is its wide coverage of multiple data sources at different hierarchical and temporal scales, together with environmental driving data as well as the latest climate scenarios. Specifically, the PROFOUND DB provides general site descriptions, soil, climate, CO2, nitrogen deposition, tree and forest stand level, and remote sensing data for nine contrasting forest stands distributed across Europe. Moreover, for a subset of five sites, time series of carbon fluxes, atmospheric heat conduction and soil water are also available. The climate and nitrogen deposition data contain several datasets for the historic period and a wide range of future climate change scenarios following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, RCP8.5). We also provide pre-industrial climate simulations that allow for model runs aimed at disentangling the contribution of climate change to observed forest productivity changes. The PROFOUND DB is available freely as a "SQLite" relational database or "ASCII" flat file version (at https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2020.006/; Reyer et al., 2020). The data policies of the individual contributing datasets are provided in the metadata of each data file. The PROFOUND DB can also be accessed via the ProfoundData R package (https://CRAN.R- project.org/package=ProfoundData; Silveyra Gonzalez et al., 2020), which provides basic functions to explore, plot and extract the data for model set-up, calibration and evaluation.Peer reviewe

Forschungsdatenmanagement in DFG-Anträgen. Was kann, was soll, was muss beschrieben werden? Ergebnisse des Workshops VI im Rahmen der Jahrestagung der Forschungs- und Technologiereferent/innen 2016 am 18./19. Februar in Potsdam

Wie viele andere Forschungsförderer verlangt die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in zunehmenden Maße, dass in Anträgen auf Fördermittel Angaben zum beabsichtigten Umgang mit Daten gemacht werden. Allerdings ist für viele der antragstellenden Forschenden, aber auch für die beratenden Forschungsreferentinnen und -referenten, mitunter unklar, wie genau die Erwartungshaltung der DFG ist und inwieweit der Detailgrad dieser Angaben Einfluss auf die Begutachtung der Anträge hat. In diesem Dokument wurden die im Laufe des Workshops aufgeworfenen Fragen und die dazugehörigen Antworten einer DFG-Vertreterin zusammengestellt

Convergent Evidence for the Validity of a Performance-Based ICT Skills Test

The goal of this study was to investigate sources of evidence of convergent validity supporting the construct interpretation of scores on a simulation-based information and communication technology (ICT) skills test. The construct definition understands ICT skills as reliant on ICT-specific knowledge as well as comprehension and problem-solving skills. On the basis of this, a validity argument comprising three claims was formulated and tested. (1) In line with the classical nomothetic span approach, all three predictor variables explained task success positively across all ICT skills items. As ICT tasks can vary in the extent to which they require construct-related knowledge and skills and in the way related items are designed and implemented, the effects of construct-related predictor variables were expected to vary across items. (2) A task-based analysis approach revealed that the item-level effects of the three predictor variables were in line with the targeted construct interpretation for most items. (3) Finally, item characteristics could significantly explain the random effect of problem-solving skills, but not comprehension skills. Taken together, the obtained results generally support the validity of the construct interpretation