Toward Development Game-Based Adaptive Learning

Digital educational games have been used in schools for more than twenty years. Nowadays, digital educational games are being developed to serve goal-orient purposes.  This paper introduces ways to develop students’ HOT skills based on a structured approach to digital game-based adaptive learning (DGLA). The game approach in this study used a visual learning environment aimed at developing students’ HOT skills, which involve ordering, selecting, evaluating, contrasting, and comparing.  The Learning- based visual tools were designed to motivate primary school children and engage them in computer programming. Furthermore, we distributed a questionnaire to gauge the attitudes of students toward a learning game approach with a visual environment.  The questionnaire was focused on the categories of motivation and challenges. The results show a clear gap between pre and post- test in all categories. Keywords: HOT skills, game based learning, visual learning environmen

The Role of Visual Learning in Improving Students’ High-Order Thinking Skills

Various concepts have been introduced to improve students’ analytical thinking skills based on problem based learning (PBL). This paper introduces a new concept to increase student’s analytical thinking skills based on a visual learning strategy. Such a strategy has three fundamental components: a teacher, a student, and a learning process. The role of the teacher includes monitoring the learning process by considering the most productive way to improve higher-order thinking (HOT) skills.Many studies show that students learn from courses that provide information in a visual format. We introduce a meaningful learning strategy for the classroom that promotes the presentation of information in visual formats such as images, diagrams, flowcharts and interactive simulations.  Furthermore, we compared visual and traditional learners based on their HOT skills, which were evaluated using the SWOT model. Performance analysis shows that visual leaning tools increased the students’ HOT skills. Keywords: visual learning, PBL, HOT skills

Computer-supported Adaptive Management of Problem-based Learning

We propose an approach to a computer-supported adaptive management of problem-based learning (PBL) aimed at development of the higher-order thinking (HOT) skills in students. PBL is represented by the three-stage PBL process favoring adaptive management of intensive development of HOT skills in the students. The determined order of developing the HOT skills and solving the instructional problems is set. Adaptability of the management is provided by the dynamic assessments of the separate HOT skills, skill aggregates, one-skilled and multi-skilled instructional problems and personalized choice of instructional problems of suitable complexity for the students on the basis of the intermediate results of PBL. The learning results are evaluated by the coefficient of the HOT skill development. Adaptive management of the HOT skills development is supported by an adaptive management tool (AMT). Interactions an instructor and students with AMT are described. Keywords: Problem-Based Learning, Higher-Order thinking, Adaptive Management, Computer-suppor

Assessment of Adaptive PBL’s Impact on HOT Development of Computer Science Students

Meaningful learning based on PBL is new learning strategy. Compared to traditional learning strategy, the meaningful learning strategy put the student in center of the learning process. The roles of the student in the meaningful learning strategy will be increased. The Problem-based Learning (PBL) model is considered the most productive way to encourage development of higher order thinking. In this paper we introduce application of an innovative approach to complex, adaptive, and computer-mediated assessment of HOT skills development of individual students. The complexity of assessment is expressed by forming the combined creative and analytical assessments of HOT skills. Analytical assessments skills are focused on evaluating, selecting, contrasting, comparing, and ordering. Creative Assessment adaptation is provided for individual students as for a study group. Creative assessments skills are focused on originality, efficiency, flexibility, problem finding, and elaboration. Results showed that PBL changes the learning process in many ways.  It changes the relationship between learner and teacher, and has an impact at the leaner level. The class has been re-organized and re- evaluated according of the principles of PBL. From the teacher’s perspective, PBL demands fundamental and deep reflection on work practices. Keywords: Problem-Based Learning, Higher-Order thinking, personalized learning, analytical thinking, critical thinking

The Self-formation of Collaborative Groups in a Problem Based Learning Environment

The aim of this paper is to present the three steps method of the self-formation of collaborative groups in a problem-based learning environment. The self-formation of collaborative groups is based on sharing of accountability among students for solving instructional problems. The steps of the method are planning collaborative problem solving, self-evaluation of students, and building collaborative groups. The planning comprises determination of the nomenclature of higher order thinking (HOT) skills, defining the instructional problems and their complexity levels, creating problem groups according to the complexity levels, setting the problem-relevant HOT skills, determining the accountability measure and the assessments of accountability for solving the problems. The self-evaluation includes self-detection of personal HOT skills, measurement of the diversity between the personal HOT skills and the problem-relevant skills based on the proposed diversity measure, and self-evaluation of willingness and desire of a student to take accountability for solving the instructional problems. The personal willingness is evaluated by the diversity measure. The desire is guided by the accountability assessments for problem solving. Coordination of the self-evaluation outcomes allows building collaborative groups. A group’s composition is adjusted by the specific requirements of an instructor. Keywords: problem based learning, self-forming collaborative groups

Higher-Order Thinking Development through Adaptive Problem-based Learning

In this paper we propose an approach to organizing Adaptive Problem-Based Learning (PBL) leading to the development of Higher-Order Thinking (HOT) skills and collaborative skills in students. Adaptability of PBL is expressed by changes in fixed instructor assessments caused by the dynamics of developing HOT skills needed for problem solving, flexible choice of control tests and problems for students, and adaptive formation of HOT skills within heterogeneous collaborative groups. It induces the students to develop HOT skills and collaborative skills through a combination of personalized and collaborative PBL. Adaptability of PBL is realized by taking into account values of the proposed coefficient of HOT skills development. The two-stage process of adaptive PBL allows guided development of HOT skills in students during study of a subject. Attention in the first stage is devoted to development of analytical HOT skills in students through personalized PBL. The main attention on the second stage is devoted to the development of creative HOT skills and collaborative skills in students through collaborative PBL. The proposed approach provides effective development of HOT skills and collaborative skills in students owing to: availability of a two-stage adaptive PBL process, complex and adaptive assessment of HOT skills, dynamic choice of control tests and problems for students, adaptive formation of HOT skills heterogeneous collaborative groups, and management of HOT skills development of students

Development of resource allocation strategies based on cognitive radio

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Introduction to Big Data Management Based on Agent Oriented Cyber Security, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2017, nr 1

This paper deals with information security and safety issues in public open spaces. Public open spaces include high streets, street markets, shopping centers, community gardens, parks, and playgrounds, each of which plays a vital role in the social, cultural and economic life of a community. Those outdoor public places are mashed up with various ICT tools, such as video surveillance, smartphone apps, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and biometric big data (called Cyber Parks). Security and safety in public places may include video surveillance of movement and the securing of personalized information and location-based services. The article introduces technologies used in Cyber Parks to achieve information security in big data era

Students

Abstract In this paper, we propose a dynamic model for building a framework for the adaptive, complex assessment of developing the higher-order thinking (HOT) skills in students. Adaptability is provided by the dynamics of instructor assessment taking into account the development of HOT skills and providing a flexible choice of instructional problems for students. The complexity of the assessment is provided by initial, formative, adaptive and summative assessments of HOT skills. The proposed coefficients for HOT skill development serve as a constructive means of evaluating developing HOT skills in students. The creation of the model includes the elaboration and integration of interconnected model components. The dynamics of the model are provided by changes in its parameters, which express the dynamic process of assessment. The model involves the following assessment components: initial, formative, adaptive, and summative (SIFA). It fosters the development of HOT skills by adapting the assessment of HOT skills to the dynamics of the problem solving process

Nature is the best source of anti-inflammatory drugs: indexing natural products for their anti-inflammatory bioactivity

Objectives The aim was to index natural products for less expensive preventive or curative anti-inflammatory therapeutic drugs. Materials A set of 441 anti-inflammatory drugs representing the active domain and 2892 natural products representing the inactive domain was used to construct a predictive model for bioactivity-indexing purposes. Method The model for indexing the natural products for potential anti-inflammatory activity was constructed using the iterative stochastic elimination algorithm (ISE). ISE is capable of differentiating between active and inactive antiinflammatory molecules. Results By applying the prediction model to a mix set of (active/inactive) substances, we managed to capture 38% of the anti-inflammatory drugs in the top 1% of the screened set of chemicals, yielding enrichment factor of 38. Ten natural products that scored highly as potential antiinflammatory drug candidates are disclosed. Searching the PubMed revealed that only three molecules (Moupinamide, Capsaicin, and Hypaphorine) out of the ten were tested and reported as anti-inflammatory. The other seven phytochemicals await evaluation for their anti-inflammatory activity in wet lab. Conclusion The proposed anti-inflammatory model can be utilized for the virtual screening of large chemical databases and for indexing natural products for potential antiinflammatory activity.This work was partially supported by the Al- Qasemi Research Foundation (Grant no. 954000) and the Ministry of Science, Space and Technology, Israel. We declare that the funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript