Adult Learning Open University Determinants (ALOUD) study: Psychological factors associated with study success

Neroni, J., De Groot, R. H. M., & Kirschner, P. A. (2012, 7 November). Adult Learning Open University Determinants (ALOUD) study: Psychological factors associated with study success. Poster presentation at the International ICO Fall School, Girona, Spain.As our current knowledge society is changing very rapidly, aging of knowledge and skills is going faster. To keep up with these developments, it is important being able to learn on a higher age. Factors playing a significant role in being a successful learner can have biological and psychological origins. In present research, the focus will be on psychological determinants. The association between psychological factors (e.g. e.g. test anxiety, stress, learning strategies) and academic performance is well established for children, adolescents, and college students in traditional education. However, evidence of associations between these factors and study success for adult students in distance education is lacking. In this study, we investigate the association between several psychological factors and study success for adult students in distance education. Approximately 2000 students of the Open University will participate in this large cross-sectional study, by filling out an online questionnaire an three online neuropsychological tests. Data collection will take place September 2012 till September 2013. The results of this study may provide insight into factors associated with study success in adult students. Based on these results effective learning strategies are developed in order to optimize the current curriculum

Adult Learning Open University Determinants study:Psychological determinants of study success

Neroni, J., De Groot, R. H. M., & Kirschner, P. A. (2013, 30 August). Adult Learning Open University Determinants study: psychological determinants of study success. Poster presentation at the 15th Biennial EARLI conference 2013, Munich, Germany.As our current knowledge society is changing very rapidly, aging of knowledge and skills is going faster. To keep up with these developments, it is important being able to learn on a higher age. Factors playing a significant role in being a successful learner can have psychological origins. The association between psychological factors and academic performance is well established for children, adolescents, and college students in traditional education. However, evidence of associations between these factors and study success for adult students in distance education is lacking. In the present study, the association between several psychological factors (e.g. affect, test anxiety, goal orientation, learning strategies) and study success for adult students in distance education are investigated. Approximately 2000 students of the Open University will participate in this large longitudinal study, by filling out an online questionnaire and three online neuropsychological tests at baseline. There will be a follow up after six and twelve months. Data collection of baseline takes place September 2012 till September 2013. During EARLI 2013 preliminary results will be shown. The results of this study may provide insight into factors associated with study success in adult students. Based on these results effective learning strategies can be developed in order to optimize the current curriculum

A meta-analysis of industry 4.0-related technologies that are suitable for lean manufacturing

Industry 4.0 and lean production are two key topics in manufacturing in the last decades, and they have attracted a great interest both from practitioners and researchers, as it is testified by the great number of studies and projects on those two topics. The diffusion of lean principles has revolutionized the industrial context, both from a manufacturing and from a logistics point of view. Several studies suggest that the right way to achieve the main goals of lean, i.e. reducing wastes and increasing value through the five concepts that aim at perfection, lies in the integration of physical machines and electronic devices through networks of sensors and software to forecast, plan, manufacture, and control products in a ‘digitised’ way. It is generally agreed that the digitisation of firms needs the adoption of key enabling technologies. What is not clear is which of these key enabling technologies are ‘lean enablers’, in the correctly redesigned business processes of a lean organisation. The objective of this article is to identify and analyse which key enabling technologies can be considered in a lean-oriented future state process or, alternatively, which other context of application is suitable for those technologies. The analysis is based on published literature, and it makes use of a quantitative systematic method known as meta-analysis, aimed at identifying future topics and research trends concerning Industry 4.0, its key enabling technologies and their implementations as possible enablers of lean thinking and lean manufacturing

The Adult Learning Open University Determinants (ALOUD) study: Biological and psychological factors associated with learning performance in adult distance education

Learning is crucial for everyone. The association between biological (eg, sleep, nutrition) and psychological factors (eg, test anxiety, goal orientation) and learning performance has been well established for children, adolescents and college students in traditional education. Evidence for these associations for adult distance students is lacking however. The Adult Learning Open University Determinants (ALOUD) study is the first to identify the determinants of learning performance within adult distance education. Over the course of 1 year, all new students (n = 4945) of the Open University of the Netherlands were approached. At baseline, 2040 students fully participated in this observational longitudinal study by filling out an online questionnaire and performing cognitive tests. At the 7 and 14 months follow-up, participants filled out a second and third questionnaire respectively, and data were given by the exam registration office to measure learning performance at these times. The ALOUD study might result in tailor-made educational innovations for adults participating in distance education and, finally, a more successful distance education student population

A review of RFID based solutions for indoor localization and location-based classification of tags

Wireless communication systems are very used for indoor localization of items. In particular, two main application field can be identified. The former relates to detection or localization of static items. The latter relates to real-time tracking of moving objects, whose movements can be reconstructed over identified timespans. Among the adopted technologies, Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID), especially if based on cheap passive RFID tags, stands out for its affordability and reasonable efficiency. This aspect makes RFID suitable for both the above-mentioned applications, especially when a large number of objects need to be tagged. The reason lies in a suitable trade-off between low cost for implementing the position sensing system, and its precision and accuracy. However, RFID-based solutions suffer for limited reading range and lower accuracy. Solutions have been proposed by academia and industry. However, a structured analysis of developed solutions, useful for further implementations, is missing. The purpose of this paper is to highlight and review the recently proposed solutions for indoor localization making use of RFID passive tags. The paper focuses on both precise and qualitative location of objects. The form relates to (i) the correct position of tags, namely mapping their right position in a 2D or 3D environment. The latter relates to the classification of tags, namely the identification of the area where the tag is regardless its specific position

Battery sharing: a feasibility analysis through simulation

Nowadays, several alternatives to internal combustion engines are being proposed in order to reduce CO2 emissions in freight transportation and citizen mobility. According to many experts, the use of electric vehicles constitutes one of the most promising alternatives for achieving the desirable reductions in emissions. However, popularization of these vehicles is being slowed by long recharging times and the low availability of recharging stations. One possible solution to this issue is to employ the concept of battery sharing or battery swapping. This concept is supported by important industrial partners, such as Eni in Italy, Ample in the US, and Shell in the UK. This paper supports the introduction of battery swapping practices by analyzing their effects. A discrete-event simulation model is employed for this study. The obtained results show that battery sharing practices are not just a more environmentally and socially friendly solution, but also one that can be highly beneficial for reducing traffic congestion.Postprint (published version