A Study on Creative Climate in Project-Organized Groups (POGs) in China and Implications for Sustainable Pedagogy

This paper aims to explore a research question: what are the drivers and barriers to fostering a creative climate in POGs in China and how to improve POGs towards a better sustainable pedagogy? Theoretically, this paper bridges studies on creativity, collaborative learning, creative climate, and sustainable pedagogy in one framework. Empirically, mixed methods of quantitative questionnaire survey (n = 126) and qualitative interviews (n = 15) were used to collect data. The findings demonstrate that the drivers to a creative climate include the challenge of the task, openness, trust between peers, experts’ help, and group diversity, etc. However, some group problems, such as poor management, lacking of supervision supports, and students’ fear of authority, etc., are barriers to a creative climate. This implies the needs of restructuring the relationships between teachers and students in POGs in order to improve it as a better sustainable pedagogy

TEACHING ENGINEERING STUDENTS CREATIVITY: A REVIEW OF APPLIED STRATEGIES

Recent studies have emphasized the necessity of educating creative engineers. This paper aims to provide a literature review by answering what strategies can be applied to develop creativity in engineering education. As the literature demonstrates, creativity has been studied by a diversity of perspectives such as psychology, social psychology and sociology. Studies on engineering creativity indicate the importance of problem-solving skills for engineers. For developing creativity, strategies such as using thinking tools, learning by solving problems and building learning environment conductive to creativity have been suggested in engineering education. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a good example of fostering creative engineers, so characteristics of PBL, learning cycle in PBL and methods for enhancing group dynamics in PBL are discussed in this paper

A Cross-Cultural Perspective to Creativity in Engineering Education in Problem-Based Learning (PBL) between Denmark and China

This paper takes a cross-cultural perspective to link a study on creativity development in engineering education in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in Denmark and its implications for fostering creative engineers in China. The analysis of empircal data, drawn from a Ph.D. study (2008-2012), aims to answer the two research questions: (1) what are the advantages and disadvantages of PBL in fostering creative engineering students in the Danish context? and (2) what are the cross-cultural implications of fostering creativity in engineering education by PBL in Denmark for China? The results suggest that in the Danish context, PBL is helpful for creativity development by stimulating motivation, developing skills such as communication, critical thinking, leadership, etc. But disadvantages exist, such as students having poor conceptualization of creativity and poor confidence in being creative. This has an implication in China: PBL requires that the relationships between teachers and students and between students needs to be reconstructed. To break the Chinese culture's barriers to creativity is the key to reconstructing these relationships

Dys-regulated Gene Expression Networks by Meta-Analysis of Microarray Data on Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background: Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the sixth most common type of carcinoma worldwide. Development of OSCC is a multi-step process involving genes related to cell cycle, growth control, apoptosis, DNA damage response and other cellular regulators. The pathogenic pathways involved in this tumor are mostly unknown and therefore a better characterization of OSCC gene expression profile would represent a considerable advance. The availability of publicly available gene expression datasets has opened up new challenges especially for the integration of data generated by different research groups and different array platforms with the purpose of obtaining new insights on the biological process investigated.

Results: In this work we performed a meta-analysis on four microarray and four datasets of gene expression data on OSCC in order to evaluate the degree of agreement of the biological results obtained by these different studies and to identify common regulatory pathways that could be responsible of tumor growth. Sixteen dys-regulated pathways implicated in OSCC were mined out from the four published datasets, and most importantly three pathways were first reported. Those regulatory pathways and biological processes which are significantly enriched have been investigated by means of literatures and meanwhile, four genes of the maximally altered pathways, ECM-receptor interaction, were validated and identified by qRT-PCR as a possible candidate of aggressiveness of OSCC.

Conclusion: we have developed a robust method for analyzing pathways altered in OSCC using three expression array data sets. This study sets a stage for the further discovery of the basic mechanisms that may underlie a diseased state and would help in identifying critical nodes in the pathway that can be targeted for diagnosis and therapeutic intervention. In addition, those who are interested in our approach can obtain the software package (MATLAB platform) by email freely

A Student Project as an ‘Extra Group Member’: A Metaphor for the Development of Creativity in Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

This article focuses on a research question: how can we understand a metaphor describing a student project as an ‘extra group member’ in creativity development in the particular context of Problem-Based Learning (PBL)? This metaphor takes its theoretical departure from social approaches to learning, creativity, and PBL. It is empirically based upon a Ph.D. study (2008-2012) which aims to explore the influence of the PBL environment on the development of university students’ creativity. The empirical data was collected using multiple methods, such as interviews and observation, with 65 students from Electronic Systems, Medialogy, Architecture and Design, and Computer Science at Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark. By focusing on the illustration and discussion of the metaphor, this article contributes to an understanding of the role of student projects in building a situated creative learning community that has practical, theoretical, and methodological significance

A Socio-technical-cultural System Perspective to Rethinking Translation Technology in Intercultural Communication

As technology has radically changed language translation in the age of globalization, the research on translation technology should not only benefit current research on translation of languages but also have a long-term positive impact on technology in the sociocultural context. The focuses of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it discusses how translation technology drives the changes in intercultural communication that bring both bright and dark sides. Secondly, it explores how translation technology’s involvement and interaction with human translator in practice of language translation from a socio-technical-cultural system perspective. Based on the discussion, this paper particularly addresses human translator’s collaboration with translation technology should be regarded as a cultural mediator helping to realize successful intercultural communication; and meanwhile, the human translator’ s subjectivity should be highlighted, and translation technology’s cultural design should be explored in order to improve usability that further brings benefits to the future cultural mediator

A Socio-technical-cultural System Perspective to Rethinking Translation Technology in Intercultural Communication

As technology has radically changed language translation in the age of globalization, the research on translation technology should not only benefit current research on translation of languages but also have a long-term positive impact on technology in the sociocultural context. The focuses of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it discusses how translation technology drives the changes in intercultural communication that bring both bright and dark sides. Secondly, it explores how translation technology’s involvement and interaction with human translator in practice of language translation from a socio-technical-cultural system perspective. Based on the discussion, this paper particularly addresses human translator’s collaboration with translation technology should be regarded as a cultural mediator helping to realize successful intercultural communication; and meanwhile, the human translator’ s subjectivity should be highlighted, and translation technology’s cultural design should be explored in order to improve usability that further brings benefits to the future cultural mediator