Staff development as a condition for computer integration

Staff development is a basic and necessary component of the continuing education of teachers, administrators and other staff as they extend their professional or technical knowledge (Orlich, 1989). Codianni and Wilbur (1983) compared the findings of seventeen major studies on effective schools and found systematic staff development a

Some gender issues in educational computer use: results of an international comparative survey

In the framework of the Computers in Education international study of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), data have been collected concerning the use of computers in 21 countries. This article examines some results regarding the involvement of women in the implementation and use of computers in the educational practice of elementary, lower secondary and upper secondary education in participating countries. The results show that in many countries computer use in schools is dominated by men. Female teachers have less regard for their skills and knowledge than their male colleagues have for their own skills and knowledge. In all countries (except for the French-speaking countries) less than half of the schools had a special policy for the promotion of equal opportunities for boys and girls with regard to computer use. This school policy mostly consists of retraining a female teacher to become a computer science teacher, or a female teacher being selected as computer coordinator

Information technology and gender equality: a contradiction in terminis?

Using the data source of the Computers in Education (Comped) study, carried out under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the status of gender and computer use in education in a number of countries has been investigated. The findings in this study indicate that the concern about gender equity expressed by many educational practitioners are right. Females know less about information technology, enjoy using the computer less than male students, and perceive more problems with software. Possible causes of this are differences in parental support, access to computers, amount of female role models and activities carried out with computers in school. Gender differences are being found both outside and inside schools. This means that both teachers and parents have to be made aware of this as a starting point for proper action. Schools rarely have a policy concerning gender issues; and when it exists, it is not directed to parents as well. The U.S.A. is the most ¿gender equal¿ country of the countries examined

The role of biotransformation in the estrogenicity of xenobiotics

Vermeulen, N.P.E. [Promotor]Commandeur, J.N.M. [Copromotor

Ariadne: Analysis for Machine Learning Program

Machine learning has transformed domains like vision and translation, and is now increasingly used in science, where the correctness of such code is vital. Python is popular for machine learning, in part because of its wealth of machine learning libraries, and is felt to make development faster; however, this dynamic language has less support for error detection at code creation time than tools like Eclipse. This is especially problematic for machine learning: given its statistical nature, code with subtle errors may run and produce results that look plausible but are meaningless. This can vitiate scientific results. We report on Ariadne: applying a static framework, WALA, to machine learning code that uses TensorFlow. We have created static analysis for Python, a type system for tracking tensors---Tensorflow's core data structures---and a data flow analysis to track their usage. We report on how it was built and present some early results

Gender and computer use : another area of inequity?

Data from the Computers in Education project (Comped) are used to study the state of the art with respect to gender and computer use in a number of countries. The Comped project of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), which was conducted in about 20 countries in 1989, involved over 70,000 students in 10 countries in 1992. A Functional Information Technology Test was given to students in the Comped study. Results indicate that the gender equity concerns of many educators, who fear computer use causes or preserves differences between male and female students, are well founded. Females know less about information technology, enjoy using computers less, and perceive more software problems than males. Sex of students is a factor with substantial influence on student achievement internationally. Possible causes for the differences and what might be done about them are outlined. One table and five figures illustrate the analyses. (Contains 10 references.) (SLD

Systematic differences between Cochrane and non-Cochrane meta-analyses on the same topic: a matched pair analysis

BACKGROUND: Meta-analyses conducted via the Cochrane Collaboration adhere to strict methodological and reporting standards aiming to minimize bias, maximize transparency/reproducibility, and improve the accuracy of summarized data. Whether this results in differences in the results reported by meta-analyses on the same topic conducted outside the Cochrane Collaboration is an open question. METHODS: We conducted a matched-pair analysis with individual meta-analyses as the unit of analysis, comparing Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews. Using meta-analyses from the cardiovascular literature, we identified pairs that matched on intervention and outcome. The pairs were contrasted in terms of how frequently results disagreed between the Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews, whether effect sizes and statistical precision differed systematically, and how these differences related to the frequency of secondary citations of those reviews. RESULTS: Our search yielded 40 matched pairs of reviews. The two sets were similar in terms of which was first to publication, how many studies were included, and average sample sizes. The paired reviews included a total of 344 individual clinical trials: 111 (32.3%) studies were included only in a Cochrane review, 104 (30.2%) only in a non-Cochrane review, and 129 (37.5%) in both. Stated another way, 62.5% of studies were only included in one or the other meta-analytic literature. Overall, 37.5% of pairs had discrepant results. The most common involved shifts in the width of 95% confidence intervals that would yield a different statistical interpretation of the significance of results (7 pairs). Additionally, 20% differed in the direction of the summary effect size (5 pairs) or reported greater than a 2-fold difference in its magnitude (3 pairs). Non-Cochrane reviews reported significantly higher effect sizes (P < 0.001) and lower precision (P < 0.001) than matched Cochrane reviews. Reviews reporting an effect size at least 2-fold greater than their matched pair were cited more frequently. CONCLUSIONS: Though results between topic-matched Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews were quite similar, discrepant results were frequent, and the overlap of included studies was surprisingly low. Non-Cochrane reviews report larger effect sizes with lower precision than Cochrane reviews, indicating systematic differences, likely reflective of methodology, between the two types of reviews that could generate different interpretations of the interventions under question