Design approaches in training and education:Insights from practice

The issue of educational design was central in a study conducted at the University of Twente (The Netherlands). The goal was to describe the strategies that well-known designers in various education and training practices use. Twenty-three designers from different educational sectors (textbooks, curricula, educational media, etc.) were interviewed, and relevant project documents from their projects were reviewed. Interview findings were reviewed in light of four major movements in contemporary thinking and their underlying rationales: modernism, pragmatism, critical theory, and postmodernism. Main models of educational design can be related to these movements. In the philosophy of modernism, the planning-by-objectives model of instructional design uses logical reasoning and systematic approaches in an instrumental, or end-means, approach. The prototyping model, related to pragmatism, is useful when the goals of the design process are not clear. The deliberative model of educational design, related to critical theory, emphasizes the function of communication. The final model, the artistic model of educational design, is related to postmodernism and considers those who make decisions about instructional design as artists representing views of reality. Fragments from the interviews are used to illustrate these perspectives, although none of the designers represented the artistic rational

Episodic diamond growth beneath the Kaapvaal Craton at Jwaneng Mine, Botswana

Important implications for the interior workings of the Earth can be drawn by studying diamonds and their inclusions. To better understand the timing and number of diamond forming events beneath the NW margin of the Kaapvaal Craton, a comprehensive reassessment of Jwaneng’s diamond populations has been undertaken. We report new inclusion abundance data from the visual examination of ~130,000 diamonds that validate the predominance of an eclogitic diamond suite (up to 88%) with on average 5% inclusion-bearing diamonds (with inclusions >10 μm in size). From this population, polished plates from 79 diamonds of eclogitic and peridotitic paragenesis have been studied with cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) traverses. The majority (80%) record major changes in N concentration and aggregation states, as well as sharp boundaries in the CL images of individual plates that are interpreted to demarcate discrete diamond growth events. In addition, bulk FTIR data have been acquired for 373 unpolished diamonds. Silicate inclusions sampled from distinct growth zones define 2 compositional groups of omphacites and pyrope-almandines associated with different N contents in their diamond hosts. These findings reinforce previous observations that at Jwaneng at least seven individual diamond forming events can be identified – 3 peridotitic and 4 eclogitic. The results demonstrate that detailed examination of diamond plates by CL imaging and FTIR traverses is necessary to unveil the complex history recorded in diamonds

Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce

Internet and web technology penetrates many aspects of our daily life. Its importance as a medium for business transactions will grow exponentially during the next few years. In terms of the involved market volume, the B2B area will hereby be the most interesting area. Also, it will be the place, where the new technology will lead to drastic changes in established customer relationships and business models. In an era where open and flexible electronic commerce provides new types of services to its users, simple 1-1 connections will be replaced by n-m relationships between customers and vendors. This new flexibility in electronic trading will generate serious challenges. The main problem stems from the heterogeneity of information descriptions used by vendors and customers, creating problems in both manual trading and in direct 1-1 electronic trading. In the case of B2B market places, it becomes too serious to be neglected. Product descriptions, catalog formats and business documents are often unstructured and non-standardized. Intelligent solutions that mechanize the structuring, standardizing, aligning, and personalizing process are a key requisite for successfully overcoming the current bottlenecks of B2B electronic commerce while enabling its further growth. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce discusses the main problems of information integration in this area and sketches several technological solution paths. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry and graduate level students in Computer Science