How Digital Strategy and Management Games Can Facilitate the Practice of Dynamic Decision-Making

This paper examines how digital strategy and management games that have been initially designed for entertainment can facilitate the practice of dynamic decision-making. Based on a comparative qualitative analysis of 17 games—organized into categories derived from a conceptual model of decision-making design—this article illustrates two ways in which these games may be useful in supporting the learning of dynamic decision-making in educational practice: (1) Players must take over the role of a decider and solve situations in which players must pursue different conflicting goals by making a continuous series of decisions on a variety of actions and measures; (2) three of the features of the games are considered to structure players’ practice of decision-making and foster processes of learning through the curation of possible decisions, the offering of lucid feedback and the modification of time. This article also highlights the games’ shortcomings, from an educational perspective, as players’ decisions are restricted by the numbers of choices they can make within the game, and certain choices are rewarded more than others. An educational application of the games must, therefore, entail a critical reflection of players’ limited choices inside a necessarily biased system

Students’ approaches when researching complex geographical conflicts using the internet

Many teachers hesitate to integrate internet research into their lessons as they face major uncertainties concerning their students’ competencies in retrieving, evaluating and processing digital information. Understanding complex geographical conflicts using the internet poses special challenges to students, as they need to obtain multi-dimensional, spatial and temporally relevant information to grasp the conflict in its entirety. In order to obtain insights into students’ digital researching strategies, a study was conducted in 2018 with 20 German secondary school students, who were asked to form their own opinion on a complex geographical conflict by searching the internet for useful information. The students were instructed to share their thoughts and actions aloud while undertaking the research. All digital activities and accompanying speech were recorded with screen and audio capture technology. The analysis of the transcripts consisted of a combination of qualitative and basic quantitative analysis, which led to the conclusion that students have very different abilities in identifying multi-dimensional information on complex geographical conflicts. The majority of the students neither used maps nor paid attention to publication dates of websites or information. Furthermore, none of the participants questioned the credibility of their retrieved digital information

Surgical anatomy of a neurenteric cyst anterior to the brainstem

Abstract The authors report on a sixteen-month old boy who presented a neurenteric cyst located in the cervicomedullary junction, anterior to the brain stem. Centred on the ventral aspect of the premedullary cistern, the cyst extended from the prepontine space to the cervicomedullary junction, causing important brain stem compression. The lesion was totally removed via a posterior approach with suboccipital craniotomy and laminectomy of C1. After surgery the patient recovered his neurological function and the postoperative MRI showed total resection of the cyst

Discussion Group Report: Governmental Conduct

Governmental conduct\u27 covers behavior by a wide range of individuals, engaging in a broad scope of activities, and is addressed by a variety of statutes, rules, and codes of conduct. This report concerns the conduct of all persons occupying a position of public trust in New Mexico: elected officials, appointed officials, and classified and exempt state employees. All of these individuals owe important ethical duties to the citizens of New Mexico. Laws and rules regulating government conduct are largely concerned with 1) restrictions on the behavior of individual actors, and 2) disclosure and reporting of government activities so that those activities are open and transparent to the public. Regulations covering behavior restrictions and disclosure may be found in the Campaign Reporting Act, the Lobbyist Regulation Act, Senate and House ethical rules, agency policy manuals, the Governmental Conduct Act, the Open Meetings Act, the Procurement Code, the Financial Disclosure Act, the Personnel Act, NMAC personnel regulations, and the Inspection of Public Records Act. This list is not comprehensive. This report focuses on government conduct in the following issue areas drawn from the Task Force matrix: gifts, reporting, nepotism, honoraria, lobbying, and conduct of public officers and employees. Each of these subcategories will be considered separately.\u2

Finite Difference Methods for the Non-Linear Black-Scholes-Barenblatt Equation

The Uncertain Volatility model is a non-linear generalisation of the Black-Scholes model in the sense that volatility and correlation can take arbitrary values in given intervals. The value of an option is then given by a non-linear partial differential equation of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman type. For this type of equation the concept of viscosity solution has to be considered since in general no smooth solutions in the classical sense exist. To assure the convergence of a discrete scheme it has to be consistent, stable and additionally monotone. Starting from a Finite Difference discretisation we first derive general and structural conditions to adequately price options in the Uncertain Volatility model. Additionally, an optimisation problem has to be solved which can either be done exactly or only approximatively where this choice depends on the discretisation. Finally, sufficient conditions are derived for the different discrete schemes to assure their convergence to the viscosity solution. The obtained theoretical results are finally tested in numerical experiments. The rates of convergence, the effort for excecuting the policy iteration, and the possible gain by using non-uniform grids are analysed

Argumentation in geography lessons

This article concentrates on the advancement of competencies in argumentation during geography lessons. Firstly, the significance of conducting arguments for comprehension intensive learning of geographical contents and individual opinion forming is discussed. Afterwards, two empirical studies are introduced, that deal with the question, to what extent argumentation takes place in geography lessons. Observation of 1414 geography lessons have shown, that only in a small fraction of this amount, arguments are conducted. For interpreting this result, teacher’s statements from qualitative interviews assessing the topic are used.Peer Reviewe