Experiences in education innovation: developing tools in support of active learning     

Carlos Vera  Jesús Félez  José Antonio Cobos  María Jesús Sánchez-Naranjo 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2006,31(2):227-236

The paper focuses on educational projects developed in the ETSII (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid during the past few years. These projects were developed as new tools for enhancing the active role of students, for improving practical teaching, especially by means of virtual laboratories and different sets of problems and exercises, and for promoting self-learning. The paper analyses the use of ICT in teaching, with the case of a developed e-learning platform as a tracking system for subjects. The paper concludes by discussing the new educational trends in the Centre, devoted to develop an active role of students by activities such as peer mentoring and laboratory monitors programs, and competitions for achieving multidisciplinary engineering challenges.  相似文献   

Exploring students’ engineering designs through open-ended assignments     

S. M. Gómez Puente  J. W. Jansen 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2017,42(1):109-125

ABSTRACT

This paper aims at presenting the experience of the Power Conversion project in teaching students to design a proof-of-principle contactless energy transfer system for the charging of electrical vehicles. The Power Conversion is a second-year electrical engineering (EE) project in which students are to gather and apply EE knowledge to design and test a system. This system is to work with power level and operates independent from an electricity grid. The instructional method used in this project is design-based learning (DBL). As an educational approach, DBL is to support students to gather and apply knowledge in open-ended assignments. The set-up of the project has gone through different modifications and iterations in three consecutive years regarding the organisation and supervision of the students. We have analysed the students’ design products in the past three academic years in order to evaluate whether the project set-up and supervision have influenced students’ designs. Results indicate that the open-ended character of the project has a positive influence on the designs especially regarding the criteria on efficiency, Maximum Power Point Tracking algorithm and power tracking.  相似文献   

PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCULTURATION: DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW MEASURE FOR PUERTO RICANS ON THE U.S. MAINLAND     

Tropp LR  Erkut S  Coll CG  Alarcón O  Vázquez García HA 《Educational and psychological measurement》1999,59(2):351-367

Most instruments designed to measure acculturation have relied on specific cultural behaviors and preferences as primary indicators of acculturation. In contrast, feelings of belonging and emotional attachment to cultural communities have not been widely used. The Psychological Acculturation Scale (PAS) was developed to assess acculturation from a phenomenological perspective, with items pertaining to the individual's sense of psychological attachment to and belonging within the Anglo-American and Latino/Hispanic cultures. Responses from samples of bilingual individuals and Puerto Rican adolescents and adults are used to establish a high degree of measurement equivalence across the Spanish and English versions of the scale along with high levels of internal consistency and construct validity. The usefulness of the PAS and the importance of studying acculturation from a phenomenological perspective are discussed.  相似文献   

CS preexposure: Latent inhibition and Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and eyeblink responses as a function of sex and CS intensity in rabbits     

Linda L. Hernández  Shirley L. Buchanan  D. A. Powell 《Learning & behavior》1981,9(4):513-518

Male and female rabbits received Pavlovian conditioning in which a 1, 216-Hz tone served as the CS and a 3-mA paraorbital electric shock train served as the US. Eyeblink (EB) and heart rate (HR) CRs were assessed. Half of the animals received prior exposure to the CS, while half were restrained in the chamber for a similar length of time but did not receive prior CS exposure. Different groups of each sex received three different CS intensities including 60, 75, and 90 dB (SPL) during both preexposure and conditioning. The results revealed that latent inhibition of the EB CR occurred only at the intermediate CS intensity, as indicated by a significant impairment of EB conditioning in this group. However, the magnitude of the decelerative HR CR was attenuated by prior CS exposure at all three CS intensities. Females showed faster EB conditioning than males, but latent inhibition occurred in both sexes. These results suggest that somatomotor and autonomic systems are affected differently by prior CS exposure.  相似文献   

Students’ Emotions in the High School Mathematical Class: Appraisals in Terms of a Structure of Goals     

Gustavo Martínez-Sierra  María del Socorro García-González 《International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education》2017,15(2):349-369

Little research in the field of Mathematics Education is directed towards emotions of students beyond their emotions in problem-solving. In particular, the daily emotions of students in a mathematics class have been sparsely studied in the field of mathematics education. In order to fill this gap, this qualitative research aims to identify high school students’ emotional experiences in the mathematics classroom and identify the appraisal structures that support such emotional experiences. Focus group interviews were carried out until theoretical saturation of the data was achieved (N = 53 in nine focus groups interviews). Data analysis is based on the theory of cognitive structure of emotions, which specifies eliciting situations for each emotion and the variables that affect intensity. The emotional experiences in this structure are as follows: satisfaction, disappointment, hope, fear, joy, distress, boredom, interest, pride, reproach, self-reproach, like and dislike. These results show that the emotional experiences of students are based on their appraisals of events, objects and agents in terms of a structure of goals.  相似文献   

What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico     

Gustavo Gregorutti  Oscar Espinoza  Luis Eduardo González  Javier Loyola 《Compare》2016,46(1):136-158

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally, (3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment, and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.  相似文献   

Effect of circadian phase on context and cued fear conditioning in C57BL/6J mice     

Verónica S. Valentinuzzi  Daniel E. Kolker  Martha Hotz Vitaterna  Elenice A. M. Ferrari  Joseph S. Takahashi  Fred W. Turek 《Learning & behavior》2001,29(2):133-142

We examined context-dependent and tone-cued fear conditioning during the activity and rest periods of C57BL/6J mice. Wheel-running activity was measured continuously as a marker of circadian phase. To control the effects of light on the response, the animals were kept in a skeleton photoperiod (two 15-min light pulses per day, indicating the beginning and the end of the day). Half the animals were trained and tested for context-dependent fear conditioning 2 h after the morning light pulse; the other half were trained and tested 2 h after the evening light pulse. Animals were tested every 24 h for 5 days to analyze the conditioned response and the rate of extinction. They were then trained for tonecued fear conditioning at the same time and tested for 5 consecutive days. A significant difference between the morning and the evening groups was observed in the conditioning level and extinction rate of context-dependent fear conditioning, but not in tone-cued fear conditioning. These results suggest a modulating effect of the biological clock on the context fear-conditioning pathway.  相似文献   

ICT in Portuguese reference schools for the education of blind and partially sighted students     

Sara Isabel Moça Ramos  António Manuel Valente de Andrade 《Education and Information Technologies》2016,21(3):625-641

Technology has become an essential component in our society and considering its impact in the educational system, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) cannot be dissociated from the educational process and, in particular, from pedagogical practices adopted for students who are blind or partially sighted. This study focuses on Portuguese reference schools for the education of blind and partially sighted students, regulated by the Decree-Law No. 3/2008, in which are concentrated the human and material resources that can offer an educational response with quality for these students with special education needs. The study intends to analyse the perceptions of the teachers, who teach visually impaired students in middle school and secondary school education in these reference schools, of their knowledge, teaching and training in the area of ICT, as well as of the real ICT integration in the teaching and learning of these students. A survey, which has been applied to these teachers in the 2012/13 school year, was adopted as a method of data collection. The results reveal a sample confident in their technological capabilities, however with little resourcefulness in some tools and software specific to the area of visual impairment and a very significant number of teachers ignoring many of these. The implementation of ICT with students who have visual disabilities is lower compared with the sighted students. The lack of specific training is considered to be the main obstacle for teachers, with regard to the real integration of ICT in the teaching and learning of these students.  相似文献   

Exacerbated vulnerability in existential changes: the essence of dealing with reduced working capacity     

Sigrún Hulda Steingrímsdóttir  Sigríður Halldórsdóttir 《International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance》2016,16(2):251-274

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore people’s experience of reduced working capacity and their encounters with professionals in that life situation. We collected data through in-depth interviews with eight individuals. The main finding of the current research is how illness and accident impairing work capacity exacerbate vulnerability during the recovery process as people experienced uncertainty, depression, anxiety, social isolation, fear and stress. We conclude that counseling and support from respectful, professional, caring and human professionals is extremely valuable in such a context.  相似文献   

Distributed leadership and middle leadership practice in schools: a disconnect?     

Steinunn Helga Lárusdóttir 《Irish Educational Studies》2017,36(4):423-438

This article reports on a small-scale collaborative research study on middle leadership (ML) in Iceland and Ireland. It explores the ML role using the theoretical lens of distributed leadership (DL). The majority of DL studies to date examine leadership as an organisational resource that can be cultivated and utilised to serve school improvement. This research, however, situates the teacher at the core of DL and commences a discourse on how MLs experience their leadership practice from a DL perspective. The empirical investigation is based on semi-structured focus group interviews across the range of schools in both education contexts. The findings indicate a disconnect between DL theory as outlined in the literature and ML practice as currently experienced in Ireland and Iceland. While a form of DL exists in both contexts, this is strictly at the gift of the Principal rather than a reciprocal relationship with teachers in relation to leading school activities. The findings also signal a need for a proactive approach in School Leadership Preparation Programmes and in Initial Teacher Education to facilitate school leaders and teachers in understanding and adopting a distributed mindset.  相似文献