Promoting learner autonomy through multiliteracy skills development in cross-institutional exchanges

This contribution presents findings from two empirical case studies, which followed a task-based telecollaborative learning format. Participants included student teacher trainees, tutors, and language learners from colleges/universities in Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The projects aimed at promoting learner autonomy through awareness raising of modes and meaning-making online and multiliteracy skills development based on hands-on analysis of web resources and social networking tools. It was hoped that this awareness would foster the teachers' own autonomy in virtual learning environments and enable them to design tasks which—in turn—would promote learner autonomy as understood by Palfreyman (2006): the informed use of a range of interacting resources in context. We argue that this awareness is reflected in enhanced multimodal communicative competence, i.e., “the ability to understand the combined potential of various modes for making meaning” (Royce, 2002, p. 92), and multiliteracy, with the latter allowing teachers and learners to realize the potential of blended and online only settings for language acquisition purposes. Ideally then, while becoming gradually more versed in multimodality and multiliteracy, learners can also take over more control and self-direct their own learning when working online (Benson, 2001) which are also characteristics of autonomy

Approaches to researching digital-pedagogical competence development in VE-based teacher education

For the past two decades, Virtual Exchange (VE) has enjoyed increasing popularity in university education, including initial (language) teacher education programmes (O’Dowd, 2018). Collaborating online with colleagues and students from different cultural backgrounds and educational systems has allowed trainees to experience and reflect on issues related to technology and pedagogy in authentic linguistic and intercultural contexts. In 2017/2018, the Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) project – an Erasmus+ funded European Policy Experimentation (EPE) – collected and analysed data from VEs across the curriculum involving over 1,000 participants at Initial Teacher Education (ITE) institutions in Europe and beyond. Here, we specifically focus on the impact of VE on their digital-pedagogical competence development. Following a mixed method design we used the Technological PedagogicalContent Knowledge (TPACK) work of Mishra and Koehler (2006) and Schmidt et al. (2009) in a pre-post-test manner. These were complemented by qualitative content analysis of prompted diary entries at key stages during the exchanges to collect further evidence of existing and emerging digital-pedagogical skills among the trainees. Based on one case study of a German-Polish EVALUATE exchange we will exemplify the aforementioned research methods and associated challenges. We will illustrate the urgent need for initial and in-service teacher education that combines technology and pedagogy and argue for VE as an ideal context to this effect. Finally, we will demonstrate how the chosen research approach has contributed to providing the kind of evidence required by education administrators and policy makers for a systematic integration of VE into teacher education programmes

Benchmarking a semiclassical impurity solver for dynamical-mean-field theory: self-energies and magnetic transitions of the single-orbital Hubbard model

An investigation is presented of the utility of semiclassical approximations for solving the quantum-impurity problems arising in the dynamical-mean-field approach to the correlated-electron models. The method is based on performing a exact numerical integral over the zero-Matsubara-frequency component of the spin part of a continuous Hubbard-Stratonovich field, along with a spin-field-dependent steepest descents treatment of the charge part. We test this method by applying it to one or two site approximations to the single band Hubbard model with different band structures, and comparing the results to quantum Monte-Carlo and simplified exact diagonalization calculations. The resulting electron self-energies, densities of states and magnetic transition temperatures show reasonable agreement with the quantum Monte-Carlo simulation over wide parameter ranges, suggesting that the semiclassical method is useful for obtaining a reasonable picture of the physics in situations where other techniques are too expensive.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

Phosphonate as a Stable Zinc-Binding Group for "Pathoblocker" Inhibitors of Clostridial Collagenase H (ColH)

Microbial infections are a significant threat to public health, and resistance is on the rise, so new antibiotics with novel modes of action are urgently needed. The extracellular zinc metalloprotease collagenase H (ColH) from Clostridium histolyticum is a virulence factor that catalyses tissue damage, leading to improved host invasion and colonisation. Besides the major role of ColH in pathogenicity, its extracellular localisation makes it a highly attractive target for the development of new antivirulence agents. Previously, we had found that a highly selective and potent thiol prodrug (with a hydrolytically cleavable thiocarbamate unit) provided efficient ColH inhibition. We now report the synthesis and biological evaluation of a range of zinc‐binding group (ZBG) variants of this thiol‐derived inhibitor, with the mercapto unit being replaced by other zinc ligands. Among these, an analogue with a phosphonate motif as ZBG showed promising activity against ColH, an improved selectivity profile, and significantly higher stability than the thiol reference compound, thus making it an attractive candidate for future drug development

Pattern representation and recognition with accelerated analog neuromorphic systems

Despite being originally inspired by the central nervous system, artificial neural networks have diverged from their biological archetypes as they have been remodeled to fit particular tasks. In this paper, we review several possibilites to reverse map these architectures to biologically more realistic spiking networks with the aim of emulating them on fast, low-power neuromorphic hardware. Since many of these devices employ analog components, which cannot be perfectly controlled, finding ways to compensate for the resulting effects represents a key challenge. Here, we discuss three different strategies to address this problem: the addition of auxiliary network components for stabilizing activity, the utilization of inherently robust architectures and a training method for hardware-emulated networks that functions without perfect knowledge of the system's dynamics and parameters. For all three scenarios, we corroborate our theoretical considerations with experimental results on accelerated analog neuromorphic platforms.Comment: accepted at ISCAS 201

Quantum spin chains of Temperley-Lieb type: periodic boundary conditions, spectral multiplicities and finite temperature

We determine the spectra of a class of quantum spin chains of Temperley-Lieb type by utilizing the concept of Temperley-Lieb equivalence with the S=1/2 XXZ chain as a reference system. We consider open boundary conditions and in particular periodic boundary conditions. For both types of boundaries the identification with XXZ spectra is performed within isomorphic representations of the underlying Temperley-Lieb algebra. For open boundaries the spectra of these models differ from the spectrum of the associated XXZ chain only in the multiplicities of the eigenvalues. The periodic case is rather different. Here we show how the spectrum is obtained sector-wise from the spectra of globally twisted XXZ chains. As a spin-off, we obtain a compact formula for the degeneracy of the momentum operator eigenvalues. Our representation theoretical results allow for the study of the thermodynamics by establishing a TL-equivalence at finite temperature and finite field.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, two references added, redundant figures remove

Single-crystalline YIG nanoflakes with uniaxial in-plane anisotropy and diverse crystallographic orientations

We study Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) nanoflakes that we produce via mechanical cleaving and exfoliation of YIG single crystals. By characterizing their structural and magnetic properties, we find that these YIG nanoflakes have surfaces oriented along unusual crystallographic axes and uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy due to their shape, both of which are not commonly available in YIG thin films. These physical properties, combined with the possibility of picking up the YIG nanoflakes and stacking them onto nanoflakes of other van der Waals materials or pre-patterned electrodes or waveguides, open unexplored possibilities for magnonics and for the realization of novel YIG-based heterostructures and devices.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure