BEHAVIORAL INTERDEPENDENCE IN PROJECT TEAM COLLABORATION: STUDY OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ COLLABORATIVE BEHAVIORS IN HIGH LEVELS OF INTERDEPENDENT TASK SETTINGS

In teamwork learning settings, tasks are often designed at varying levels of interdependence that requires students to complete the tasks by relying only on their team members sharing resources, knowledge, and skills. However, well-structured tasks do not always guarantee task-related collaborative behaviors will occur and are simply not adequate for us to understand the collaboration process and participants’ actual collaborative behaviors. To deepen our understanding of collaboration and explore how increased collaboration may be promoted in high-level interdependent task settings, this study uses behavioral interdependence as an analytical concept to describe and examine individual students’ actual behaviors as they worked collaboratively on an interdependently-structured engineering design project. Behavioral interdependence is “the amount of task-related interaction actually engaged in by group members in completing their work” (Wageman, 2001, p. 207). The concept of behavioral interdependence helps us to understand students’ task-related collaborative behaviors. However, this concept has received scarce attention in collaboration literature. This study was set in a context of college engineering students collaborating on an authentic design project. A descriptive, instrumental two-case study methodology was employed to respond to two main research questions: (1) what individual behaviors are observed in project teams when students were working under the high task interdependence condition and (2) what patterns of team behaviors are observed in such a condition. After examining and comparing two newly-formed college student project teams’ collaborative behaviors in solving an interdependently-structured engineering design project, answers to the research questions help explore how team behavioral patterns formed out of, or were affected by, students’ individual behaviors and how behaviors affected team collaboration and performance. This study resulted in rich descriptions of individual student behaviors and behavior changes, team behaviors and behavior changes, and how individual behaviors were related to team behaviors and overall team collaboration and performance. Results suggested that (1) individual behaviors were closely associated with team behaviors, collaboration, and performance, (2) students’ early behavioral patterns largely predicted their continuous behaviors, (3) urgent deadlines were likely to change behaviors of students who had poor performance in task management and temporal planning, (4) individuals performing better in disciplinary, technical areas tended to have more contribution to and better participation in teamwork, and (5) teams with high levels of behavioral interdependence tended to have better performance in teamwork. Several recommendations are provided for designing instruction in high interdependent task settings such as careful estimation of task completion time considering students’ varying collaboration skills and time management ability levels (task / activity design recommendation), providing suitable scaffolding strategies to support students who are not adequate in technical fields or in skills in areas of self-management, effective communication, and temporal planning (activity preparation recommendation), and paying attention to students’ behaviors at the early stage of their collaboration and providing timely corrective feedback (formative evaluation recommendations)

Ionospheric VTEC anomalies before Ms7.1 Yushu earthquake

Abstract:Vertical total electron content is examined to check whether the Ms7.1 Yushu earthquake on April 14, 2010, may have caused any anomalous ionospheric changes. The result shows two TEC increases over the epicenter vicinity on April 1 and 5; these anomalies drifted from east to west, the latter across the whole China. The increase on April 5 was probably related to geomagnetic activity, whereas the one on April 1 may possibly be related to the Yushu earthquake

Location-Aware Cross-Layer Design Using Overlay Watermarks

A new orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system embedded with overlay watermarks for location-aware cross-layer design is proposed in this paper. One major advantage of the proposed system is the multiple functionalities the overlay watermark provides, which includes a cross-layer signaling interface, a transceiver identification for position-aware routing, as well as its basic role as a training sequence for channel estimation. Wireless terminals are typically battery powered and have limited wireless communication bandwidth. Therefore, efficient collaborative signal processing algorithms that consume less energy for computation and less bandwidth for communication are needed. Transceiver aware of its location can also improve the routing efficiency by selective flooding or selective forwarding data only in the desired direction, since in most cases the location of a wireless host is unknown. In the proposed OFDM system, location information of a mobile for efficient routing can be easily derived when a unique watermark is associated with each individual transceiver. In addition, cross-layer signaling and other interlayer interactive information can be exchanged with a new data pipe created by modulating the overlay watermarks. We also study the channel estimation and watermark removal techniques at the physical layer for the proposed overlay OFDM. Our channel estimator iteratively estimates the channel impulse response and the combined signal vector from the overlay OFDM signal. Cross-layer design that leads to low-power consumption and more efficient routing is investigated

Higher-Order Orthogonal Causal Learning for Treatment Effect

Most existing studies on the double/debiased machine learning method concentrate on the causal parameter estimation recovering from the first-order orthogonal score function. In this paper, we will construct the $k^{\mathrm{th}}$-order orthogonal score function for estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) and present an algorithm that enables us to obtain the debiased estimator recovered from the score function. Such a higher-order orthogonal estimator is more robust to the misspecification of the propensity score than the first-order one does. Besides, it has the merit of being applicable with many machine learning methodologies such as Lasso, Random Forests, Neural Nets, etc. We also undergo comprehensive experiments to test the power of the estimator we construct from the score function using both the simulated datasets and the real datasets

Ionospheric disturbances around the time of the Ms7.0 Lushan earthquake

Abstract:Variations of Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) in the ionosphere are investigated around the time of the Ms7. 0 Lushan earthquake. A time-series analysis shows an anomalous VTEC increase 15 days before as well as some anomalous VTEC decreases 5 days before and 8 hours after the earthquake. Each of these anomalies lasted more than 4 hours and drifted from east to west. The anomalous increase 15 days before the earthquake is significantly larger than the solar-terrestrial background noise, and is thus considered to be probably related to the earthquake

Ionospheric disturbances around the time of the Ms7.0 Lushan earthquake

Abstract:Variations of Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) in the ionosphere are investigated around the time of the Ms7. 0 Lushan earthquake. A time-series analysis shows an anomalous VTEC increase 15 days before as well as some anomalous VTEC decreases 5 days before and 8 hours after the earthquake. Each of these anomalies lasted more than 4 hours and drifted from east to west. The anomalous increase 15 days before the earthquake is significantly larger than the solar-terrestrial background noise, and is thus considered to be probably related to the earthquake

ATSC 3.0 Next Generation Digital TV Standard - An Overview and Preview of the Issue

"(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works."The Advanced Television Committee (ATSC) has been working on the next generation broadcast television system, known as ATSC 3.0, to replace the first-generation (ATSC 1.0) A/53 standard, the basic component technologies of which have been in use for 20 years.Chernock, R.; Gómez Barquero, D.; Whitaker, J.; Park, S.; Wu, Y. (2016). ATSC 3.0 Next Generation Digital TV Standard - An Overview and Preview of the Issue. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(1):154-158. doi:10.1109/TBC.2016.2515542S15415862

Association between Serum Uric Acid Level and Metabolic Syndrome and Its Sex Difference in a Chinese Community Elderly Population

Objective. This study aimed to evaluate the association between serum uric acid (SUA) levels within a normal to high range and the risk of metabolic syndrome (MetS) among community elderly and explore the sex difference. Design and Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted in a representative urban area of Beijing between 2009 and 2010. A two-stage stratified clustering sampling method was used and 2102 elderly participants were included. Results. The prevalence of hyperuricemia and MetS was 16.7% and 59.1%, respectively. There was a strong association between hyperuricemia and four components of MetS in women and three components in men. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed ORs of hyperuricemia for MetS were 1.67 (95% CI: 1.11–2.50) in men and 2.73 (95% CI: 1.81–4.11) in women. Even in the normal range, the ORs for MetS increased gradually according to SUA levels. MetS component number also showed an increasing trend across SUA quartile in both sexes (P for trend < 0.01). Conclusion. This study suggests that higher SUA levels, even in the normal range, are positively associated with MetS among Chinese community elderly, and the association is stronger in women than men. Physicians should recognize MetS as a frequent comorbidity of hyperuricemia and take early action to prevent subsequent disease burden