Using SCORM for Interactive Teaching in Higher Education

The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) has evolved in recent years as a standard for linking digital interactive Learning Objects (LO) into digital learning management systems (LMS). This standard has been used in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. We are experimenting with SCORM in teaching and have developed a number of SCORM compliant LOs. In particular we have authored SCORM LOs by application of the freely available software Courselab, and have hosted these LOs within the Learning Management System (LMS) Blackboard Vista. In one case study we have deployed a SCORM LO for the purpose of testing the numeracy capabilities of new students for business-related courses. Within this LO 20 mathematical problems were presented, based on variables that were created through random number generators. This ensured that each student received an individual problem within the specific scope of the task. The students had a number of attempts, and if these had been used up, the solution was displayed, and the student could try the problem again, with a different set of numbers. After the problems had been solved by the student, the SCORM module gave an automatic assessment of the numeracy capabilities of each student, classified into various categories as defined by the scope of each of the 20 problems. In this study the SCORM module had not been hosted by a LMS but was run as standalone, due to limitations of our LMS regarding the handling of variables (in SCORM 1.2 there is a limit of 100 Javascript variables). This meant that the students’ results were not automatically transferred into the gradebook of the LMS. However, since this was only an informal assessment of the students’ capabilities without grading, it was not a problem that this test was not embedded within the LMS. Feedback provided by students was very positive, and also the teaching staff found it very effective to use. The online evaluation has been carried out with the cohort of students who used the LO in the winter semester 2009/10 to receive feedback on their views as to ease of use, appearance of the test and several other areas to be presented in the full version of the paper. In winter semester 2010/11 there are further students accessing this mode of numerical evaluation, and it has been made available on the University repository to be used as required by others. A second case study investigated the employment of SCORM as the main electronic teaching method within a technical field. While this module used traditional lectures and tutorials as the main teaching method, the SCORM objects were hosted within the LMS and provided the backbone of the learning material. Consequently, the student’s were enabled to review the lecture slides as SCORM slides and to solve small assignments and quizzes given within the SCORM module. Because the LOs were embedded within the LMS, the progress of each individual student could be monitored and on that basis important feedback is possible Some technical problems occurred related to the embedding of the SCORM objects within the LMS, which made the overall process of teaching and grading slightly cumbersome but which did not present insurmountable difficulties. Overall the use of SCORM LO appears to be a method well suitable for interactive teaching. The interaction from the student with the virtual learning environment (VLE) does mean that it can be used for distance learning students as once the LO is made available, the tutor is mainly a facilitator for the technology rather than an assessor

Price Wars in Two-Sided Markets: The Case of the UK Quality Newspapers

This paper investigates the price war in the UK quality newspaper industry in the 1990s. We build a model of the newspaper market which encompasses demand for differentiated products on both, the readers and advertisers side of the market, and profi…t maximization by four competing oligopolistic editors who recognize the existence of an indirect network effect of circulation on advertising demand. Editors choose fi…rst the political position, then simultaneously cover prices and advertising tarifs. We contribute to the literature on two-sided markets by endogenizing the political differentiation of newspapers in a model with more than two …firms. We simulate changes to market structure in order to explore which of the candidate explanations is most likely to lie behind the observed price war

The Jamming Transition in Granular Systems

Recent simulations have predicted that near jamming for collections of spherical particles, there will be a discontinuous increase in the mean contact number, Z, at a critical volume fraction, phi_c. Above phi_c, Z and the pressure, P are predicted to increase as power laws in phi-phi_c. In experiments using photoelastic disks we corroborate a rapid increase in Z at phi_c and power-law behavior above phi_c for Z and P. Specifically we find power-law increase as a function of phi-phi_c for Z-Z_c with an exponent beta around 0.5, and for P with an exponent psi around 1.1. These exponents are in good agreement with simulations. We also find reasonable agreement with a recent mean-field theory for frictionless particles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 2 pages supplement; minor changes and clarifications, 2 addtl. refs., accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Elastic Energy, Fluctuations and Temperature for Granular Materials

We probe, using a model system, elastic and kinetic energies for sheared granular materials. For large enough $P/E_y$ (pressure/Young's modulus) and $P/\rho v^2$ ($P/$kinetic energy density) elastic dominates kinetic energy, and energy fluctuations become primarily elastic in nature. This regime has likely been reached in recent experiments. We consider a generalization of the granular temperature, $T_g$, with both kinetic and elastic terms and that changes smoothly from one regime to the other. This $T_g$ is roughly consistent with a temperature adapted from equilibrium statistical mechanics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Why Do Granular Materials Stiffen with Shear Rate? : Test of Novel Stress-Based Statistics

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effect of friction in a toy model of granular compaction

We proposed a toy model of granular compaction which includes some resistance due to granular arches. In this model, the solid/solid friction of contacting grains is a key parameter and a slipping threshold Wc is defined. Realistic compaction behaviors have been obtained. Two regimes separated by a critical point Wc* of the slipping threshold have been emphasized : (i) a slow compaction with lots of paralyzed regions, and (ii) an inverse logarithmic dynamics with a power law scaling of grain mobility. Below the critical point Wc*, the physical properties of this frozen system become independent of Wc. Above the critical point Wc*, i.e. for low friction values, the packing properties behave as described by the classical Janssen theory for silos

Local and global avalanches in a 2D sheared granular medium

We present the experimental and numerical studies of a 2D sheared amorphous material constituted of bidisperse photo-elastic disks. We analyze the statistics of avalanches during shear including the local and global fluctuations in energy and changes in particle positions and orientations. We find scale free distributions for these global and local avalanches denoted by power-laws whose cut-offs vary with inter-particle friction and packing fraction. Different exponents are found for these power-laws depending on the quantity from which variations are extracted. An asymmetry in time of the avalanche shapes is evidenced along with the fact that avalanches are mainly triggered from the shear bands. A simple relation independent from the intensity, is found between the number of local avalanches and the global avalanches they form. We also compare these experimental and numerical results for both local and global fluctuations to predictions from meanfield and depinning theories