Motivation in a language MOOC: issues for course designers

Whilst several existing studies on foreign language learning have explored motivation in more traditional settings (Dörnyei, 2003), this paper presents one of the first studies on the motivation of participants in a MOOC. The MOOC, Travailler en français (https://sites.google.com/site/mooctravaillerenfrancais/home), was a 5-week open online course for learners of French at level B1 of the CEFR, and aimed to develop language and employability skills for working in a francophone country. It took place in early 2014 and attracted more than 1000 participants. Intrinsic motivation (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), is directly linked to one’s enjoyment of accomplishing a task. We conducted a study based on the cognitive variables of the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), and adapted the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory to the context of a MOOC in order to understand the expectancy beliefs and task values of participants engaging with the MOOC. Participants answered a 40 Likert-type questions on enjoyment/ interest (i.e. I will enjoy doing this MOOC very much), perceived competence (i.e. I think I will be able to perform successfully in the MOOC), effort (i.e. I will put a lot of effort in this MOOC), value/usefulness (i.e. I think that doing this MOOC will be useful for developing my skills), felt pressure and tension (i.e. I think I might feel pressured while doing the MOOC) and relatedness (i.e. I think I will feel like I can really trust the other participants). Results highlight significant factors that could directly influence intrinsic motivation for learning in a MOOC environment. The chapter makes recommendations for LMOOC designers based on the emerging profile of MOOC participants, on their motivation and self-determination, as well as on the pressures they might feel, including time pressures. Finally, the extent to which participants relate to each other, and are able to engage in social learning and interaction, is a real challenge for LMOOC designers

POLITENESS IN REQUESTS: SOME RESEARCH FINDINGS RELEVANT FOR INTERCULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

The major aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between indirectness and politeness in requests. The research project supporting the findings of the paper was undertaken in order to find out to what extent politeness and indirectness are viewed as overlapping or mutually excluding categories by Romanians compared to other nationalities, such as the British and the Hebrew. Another inherent goal of the paper is to provide an example of the socio linguistics instruments that can be employed in the investigation of the differences and similarities likely to emerge in intercultural encounters. Thus, we believe that only through similar research undertaken in the fields contributing to the emerging field of interculturality one can actually trespass the theoretical assumptions and move on to the identification of the right tools and means through which intercultural discourse to be approached at a pragmatic level and thus better understood and taught in educational establishments

Romania's public debts and their consequences upon the economy

In June 2009, Romania’s public debts rose by 12.6% more than late last year, that is up to 123.61 billion Lei (29.4 billion Euros), meaning 23.27% of the gross domestic product originally estimated for this year. Foreign loans are not a new phenomenon. Yet, in the current economic context, it is the consequences which might occur that bother most of us as a result of the (significant) increase of public debts. Concluding a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund is « necessary evil » because it has both advantages and disadvantages. This paper aims at analyzing aspects regarding the benefits, direct and indirect costs, and social effects of such a loan.public debts, elbows, benefits, economy

Fiscal Policy and its role in ensuring economic stability

The State, irrespective of its institutional nature and contents throughout history, has been the most important answer or, better said, the best-structured solution of society members to the issues of their world’s complexity. Processes such as globalization and integration, individuals’ increasing reliance upon technology, limited vital resources in order to ensure normal life, social polarization growth, poverty augmentation, migrating flows, occurrence of diseases that can rapidly spread at world level – all the above increase the complexity of our world and make the State’s economic involvement compulsory. In this respect, an important role is held by the fiscal system, originally created to meet strictly financial goals of the State but subsequently enriched by various economic and social objectives due to the development of human society. Fiscality can be viewed as a prerequisite to compensate gaps and for a genuine European policy of economic growth. The impact of fiscality upon society members in every economy is significant, with tax payers’ acceptance or refusal having a major effect upon the State’s intervention by typical means in the entire activity of a society. The paper suggests a analysis of fiscality in Romania. Romania suffers from the lack of ”self-image” and the factors generating it are also to be found in the present paper.Fiscality, fiscal policy, economic stability

BUSINESS INTEGRATION

Interest is growing among IT executives in the benefits offered by relatively new developments in the business integration arena such as service oriented architectures (SOA). By improving communication and integration between IT systems regardless of theBusiness integration , Service Oriented Architectures, Electronic Data Interchange, Enterprise Service Bus.

Video spatio-temporal filtering based on cameras and target objects trajectories - Videosurveillance forensic framework

International audienceThis paper presents our work about assisting video-surveillance agents in the search for particular video scenes of interest in transit network. This work has been developed based on requirements defined within different projects with the French National Police in a forensic goal. The video-surveillance agent inputs a query in the form of a hybrid trajectory (date, time, locations expressed with regards to different reference systems) and potentially some visual descriptions of the scene. The query processing starts with the interpretation of the hybrid trajectory and continues with a selection of a set of cameras likely to have filmed the spatial trajectory. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) a definition of the hybrid trajectory query concept, trajectory that is constituted of geometrical and symbolic segments represented with regards to different reference systems (e.g., Geodesic system, road network), (2) a spatio-temporal filtering framework based on a spatio-temporal modeling of the transit network and associated cameras

Enseigner par visioconférence poste à poste : cadre méthodologique pour l'analyse de pratiques tutorales

Cette publication se donne pour but de présenter le début de construction d'un protocole de recherche destiné à décrire les pratiques tutorales de deux populations d'enseignants en ligne. Il s'agit d'une part, de tuteurs débutants (étudiants en Master professionnel de l'université Lumière- Lyon 2) et d'autre part, de tuteurs expérimentés. Ces deux populations ont participé à un enseignement de Français Langue Etrangère (FLE) à destination d'un groupe d'étudiants américains de l'université de Californie Berkeley donné en 2009-2010 sur une plateforme d'apprentissage vidéographique synchrone. La communication cherche à montrer les bases d'un protocole de recherche fondé sur des données empiriques recueillies de façon écologique. Nous présentons les fondements théoriques, méthodologiques et débouchons sur les questions de recherche retenues concernant les pratiques pédagogiques des enseignants en ligne dans un environnement synchrone. Un premier corpus d'étude est proposé pour décrire les stratégies tutorales en s'appuyant sur l'analyse de discours et des interactions en dispositif synchrone multimodal et sur l'analyse de discours medié par ordinateur

Recherche d'extraits vidéos par reconstitution des trajectoires de caméras mobiles à partir d'un modèle spatio-temporel-Application à la vidéosurveillance

National audienceLe domaine d’application de ces travaux relève de l’aide aux opérateurs humains de vidéosurveillance dans l’analyse manuelle d’extraits vidéos particuliers (e.g., recherche individu, objet perdu) via la sélection automatique d’un ensemble de caméras susceptibles d’avoir filmé une scène recherchée et l’identification des séquences vidéos correspondant à chaque caméra. Cette sélection s’appuie sur un modèle de données dont la contribution consiste à rendre disponibles des données de calcul de la géométrie du champ de vue des caméras. Plutôt que de stocker cette géométrie en tant que telle et son évolution au cours du temps, celle-ci est calculée dynamiquement en fonction de caractéristiques temporelles. Nous proposons un opérateur de sélection de caméras basé sur des critères spatiotemporels de calcul des intersections entre, d’une part, un parcours donné (e.g., personne agressée), et, d’autre part, les prises de vues des caméras fixes et les trajectoires des caméras mobiles. Nous illustrons l’opérateur par des exemples