‘The most important thing is to learn the way to learn’: evaluating the effectiveness of independent learning by perceptual changes     

Ken Lau 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2017,42(3):415-430

The mission of universities today is not only to nurture experts in various professions, but also to cultivate lifelong autonomous learners. Independent learning and pedagogies that aim to foster learner autonomy have grown in importance over the past decade. However, the extent to which independent learning is successful in fostering autonomy has not been fully addressed; nor has a robust method for evaluating independent learning been available. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an independent learning component attached to a taught course by tracking changes in learners’ perceptions. Primary data were collected from course participants’ responses to two questionnaires. In total, 221 and 157 completed questionnaires were returned at the beginning and the end of the course, respectively, among which 95 paired responses enabled comparisons that revealed a general trend. In addition, a more focused investigation was carried out with nine participants who took part in semi-structured interviews and completed independent learning logs. The study, using a short-term longitudinal approach, revealed participants’ growing understanding of independent learning and its relevance to English language enhancement, particularly for those with no prior experience of any form of independent learning.  相似文献   

Cognitive abilities and motivational processes in science achievement and engagement: A person-centered analysis     

Shun Lau  Robert W. Roeser 《Learning and individual differences》2008,18(4):497

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Educational Usage of Mobile Devices: Differences Between Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students     

Ka Po Lau  Dickson K.W. Chiu  Kevin K.W. Ho  Patrick Lo  Eric W.K. See-To 《The Journal of Academic Librarianship》2017,43(3):201-208

The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.  相似文献   

E-government implementation: A macro analysis of Singapore's e-government initiatives     

Calvin M.L. Chan  YiMeng Lau  Shan L. Pan 《Government Information Quarterly》2008

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Assessing the Personal-Social Development of Hong Kong Chinese Adolescents     

Mantak Yuen  Eadaoin K. P. Hui  Patrick S. Y. Lau  Norman C. Gysbers  Thomas K. M. Leung  Raymond M. C. Chan  Peter M. K. Shea 《International journal for the advancement of counseling》2006,28(4):317-330

A 60-item measure, the Personal-Social Development Self-Efficacy Inventory (PSD-SEI) was developed to assess personal-social development self-efficacy among adolescents in Hong Kong. The PSD-SEI was administered to 6,776 Grade 10–13 students in Hong Kong. Principal components analysis with varimax solutions yielded seven meaningful factors: 1. Self-Realization, 2. Leadership and Teamwork, 3. Emotional, Physical and Social Wellness, 4. Interests and Life Goals 5. Relationships, 6. Avoiding Drugs, Excessive Drinking and Smoking, and 7. Finance and Self-Care. Reliability analyses showed that the total scale and subscales were internally consistent. The data suggested that Hong Kong adolescents had some but not strong confidence in their personal-social development. Boys were more confident in self-realization and maintaining wellness; girls were more confident in leadership and teamwork, relationship with the opposite sex, and avoiding drugs, excessive drinking, and smoking. This study is the first attempt to develop and validate a personal-social development self-efficacy measure for Chinese adolescents. Further research and applications of the PSD-SEI for the quality enhancement of personal-social development programmes in schools are discussed.  相似文献   

A variational energy approach for electromechanical analysis of thick piezoelectric beam     

LAU C.W.H. LIM C.W. LEUNG A.Y.T. 《浙江大学学报(A卷英文版)》2005,6(9):962-966

INTRODUCTION Piezoelectricity is an electromechanical phe- nomenon which couples elasticity and electricity through the existence of pressure induced electrical field or electric induced stress field. The piezoelectric materials are usually surface bonded in patches or fully embedded in the host structure, so that the structure becomes a laminated piezoelectric beam. Tzou and Gadre (1989), Lee (1990), Crawly and Lazarus (1991) developed laminated plate models incorporating the piezoelect…  相似文献   

Home Literacy and Chinese Reading in Hong Kong Children     

Jasmine Yuet-Han Lau  Catherine McBride-Chang 《Early education and development》2005,16(1):5-22

Measures of Chinese character recognition, vocabulary, and interest in reading were administered to 92 second grade children in Hong Kong, while questionnaires on parental literacy practices were administered to their parents. In a hierarchical regression equation, maternal education, children's age and vocabulary skill predicted 18% of the variance in reading, while home literacy practices and children's literacy self-efficacy predicted an additional unique 19% of the variance in Chinese reading skill. Results underscore the importance of some early home literacy practices for reading achievement, even among children who are already receiving formal literacy instruction.  相似文献   

A relatedness analysis of government regulations using domain knowledge and structural organization     

Gloria T. Lau  Kincho H. Law  Gio Wiederhold 《Information Retrieval》2006,9(6):657-680

The complexity and diversity of government regulations make understanding and retrieval of regulations a non-trivial task. One of the issues is the existence of multiple sources of regulations and interpretive guides with differences in format, terminology and context. This paper describes a comparative analysis scheme developed to help retrieval of related provisions from different regulatory documents. Specifically, the goal is to identify the most strongly related provisions between regulations. The relatedness analysis makes use of not only traditional term match but also a combination of feature matches, and not only content comparison but also structural analysis.Regulations are first compared based on conceptual information as well as domain knowledge through feature matching. Regulations also possess specific organizational structures, such as a tree hierarchy of provisions and heavy referencing between provisions. These structures represent useful information in locating related provisions, and are therefore exploited in the comparison of regulations for completeness. System performance is evaluated by comparing a similarity ranking produced by users with the machine-predicted ranking. Ranking produced by the relatedness analysis system shows a reduction in error compared to that of Latent Semantic Indexing. Various pairs of regulations are compared and the results are analyzed along with observations based on different feature usages. An example of an e-rulemaking scenario is shown to demonstrate capabilities and limitations of the prototype relatedness analysis system.

Gio WiederholdEmail:

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Within‐year changes in Chinese secondary school students' perceived reading instruction and intrinsic reading motivation     

Kit‐ling Lau 《Journal of Research in Reading》2016,39(2):153-170

This study aimed to expand on existing research about motivational change by investigating within‐year changes of adolescents' intrinsic reading motivation and perceived reading instruction among students from different grades and achievement levels. Six hundred and ninety five students from 10 secondary schools in Hong Kong voluntarily completed a questionnaire that measured these two variables at the beginning and near the end of a school year. The study's findings indicated that students' intrinsic reading motivation was generally stable over a school year. A significant increase in the perceived degree of mastery goal structure in reading instruction was observed near the end of the school year. Students' perception of instruction remained a strong and positive predictor of intrinsic motivation after controlling their prior motivation and other background variables. Different factors affecting students' motivational change are discussed to provide insights for promoting their reading motivation and counter the prevalent trend of motivational decline.  相似文献   

Conceptualizing the Counseling Training Environment Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory     

Jared Lau  Kok-Mun Ng 《International journal for the advancement of counseling》2014,36(4):423-439

While learning environment research has been growing in popularity over the past few decades, little attention has been given towards the learning environment of graduate students, and virtually no attention has been given specifically towards graduate counseling and related programs such as professional counseling, clinical and counseling psychology, and marriage and family therapy. In this paper we propose using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1992) ecological theory as a model to conceptualize the training environment of such counselor preparation programs. Through the application of Bronfenbrenner’s theory, counselor educators and counseling trainees can better understand the systemic nature of the training environment that they create and where they train. Implications and recommendations for future research are provided to further advance the knowledge and awareness of the counseling training environment.  相似文献