Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Learning Strategy'

I have committed a significant period of time (in my case five years) to the purpose development of learning environments, with the belief that it would improve the self-actualisation and self-motivation of students and teachers alike. I consider it important to record and measure performance as we progressed toward such an outcome. Education researchers and practitioners alike, in the higher (university/tertiary) education systems, are seeking among new challenges to engage students and teachers in learning (James, 2001). However, studies to date show a confusing landscape littered with a multiplicity of interpretations and terms, successes and failures. As the discipline leader of the Information Technology, Systems and Multimedia (ITSM) Discipline, Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale, I found myself struggling with this paradigm. I also found myself being torn between what presents as pragmatic student learning behaviour and the learner-centred teaching ideal reflected in the Swinburne Lilydale mission statement. The research reported in this folio reflects my theory and practice as discipline leader of the ITSM Discipline and the resulting learning environment evolution during the period 1997/8 to 2003. The study adds to the material evidence of extant research through firstly, a meta analysis of the learning environment implemented by the ITSM Discipline as recorded in peer reviewed and published papers; and secondly, a content analysis of student learning approaches, conducted on data reported from a survey of ‘learning skills inventory’ originally conducted by the ITSM Discipline staff in 2002. In 1997 information and communication technologies (ICT) were beginning to provide plausible means for electronic distribution of learning materials on a flexible and repeatable basis, and to provide answers to the imperative of learning materials distribution relating to an ITSM Discipline new course to begin in 1998. A very short time frame of three months was available prior to teaching the course. The ITSM Discipline learning environment development was an evolutionary process I began in 1997/8 initially from the requirement to publish print-based learning guide materials for the new ITSM Discipline subjects. Learning materials and student-to-teacher reciprocal communication would then be delivered and distributed online as virtual learning guides and virtual lectures, over distance as well as maintaining classroom-based instruction design. Virtual here is used to describe the use of ICT and Internet-based approaches. No longer would it be necessary for students to attend classes simply to access lecture content, or fear missing out on vital information. Assumptions I made as discipline leader for the ITSM Discipline included, firstly, that learning should be an active enterprise for the students, teachers and society; secondly, that each student comes to a learning environment with different learning expectations, learning skills and learning styles; and thirdly, that the provision of a holistic learning environment would encourage students to be self-actualising and self-motivated. Considerable reading of research and publications, as outlined in this folio, supported the update of these assumptions relative to teaching and learning. ITSM Discipline staff were required to quickly and naturally change their teaching styles and communication of values to engage with the emergent ITSM Discipline learning environment and pedagogy, and each new teaching situation. From a student perspective such assumptions meant students needed to move from reliance upon teaching and prescriptive transmission of information to a self-motivated and more self-actualising and reflective set of strategies for learning. In constructing this folio, after the introductory chaperts, there are two distinct component parts; • firstly, a Descriptive Meta analysis (Chapter Three) that draws together several of my peer reviewed professional writings and observations that document the progression of the ITSM Discipline learning environment evolution during the period 1997/8 to 2003. As the learning environment designer and discipline leader, my observations and published papers provide insight into the considerations that are required when providing an active, flexible and multi-modal learning environment for students and teachers; and • secondly, a Dissertation (Chapter Four), as a content analysis of a learning skills inventory data collection, collected by the ITSM Discipline in the 2002 Swinburne Lilydale academic year, where students were encouraged to complete reflective journal entries via the ITSM Discipline virtual learning guide subject web-site. That data collection included all students in a majority of subjects supported by the ITSM Discipline for both semesters one and two 2002. The original purpose of the journal entries was to have students reflectively involved in assessing their learning skills and approaches to learning. Such perceptions were tested using a well-known metric, the ‘learning skills inventory’ (Knowles, 1975), augmented with a short reflective learning approach narrative. The journal entries were used by teaching staff originally and then made available to researchers as a desensitised data in 2003 for statistical and content analysis relative to student learning skills and approaches. The findings of my research support a view of the student and teacher enculturation as utilitarian, dependent and pragmatically self-motivated. This, I argue, shows little sign of abatement in the early part of the 21st Century. My observation suggests that this is also independent of the pedagogical and educational philosophy debate or practice as currently presented. As much as the self-actualising, self-motivated learning environment can be justified philosophically, the findings observed from this research, reported in this folio, cannot. Part of the reason for this originates from the debate by educational researchers as to the relative merits of liberal and vocational philosophies for education combined with the recent introduction of information and communication technologies, and commodification of higher education. Challenging students to be participative and active learners, as proposed by educationalists Meyers and Jones (1993), i.e. self-motivated and self-actualising learners, has proved to be problematic. This, I will argue, will require a change to a variable/s (not yet identified) of higher education enculturation on multiple fronts, by students, teachers and society in order to bridge the gap. This research indicates that tertiary educators and educational researchers should stop thinking simplistically of constructivist and/or technology-enabled approaches, students learning choices and teachers teaching choices. Based on my research I argue for a far more holistic set of explanations of student and staff expectations and behaviour, and therefore pedagogy that supports those expectations.

This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 72-74).
While basketball has begun to rapidly evolve in recent years with the popularization of the three-point shot, the way we understand the game has lagged behind. Players are still forced into the characterization of the traditional five positions: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, and center, and metrics such as True Shooting Percentage and Expected Shot Quality are just beginning to become well-known. In this paper, we show how to apply Principal Component Analysis to better understand traits of current player positions and create relevant player features based on in-game spatial event data. We also apply unsupervised machine learning techniques in clustering to discover new player categorizations and apply neural networks to create improved models of effective field goal percentage and effective shot quality.
by Santhosh Narayan.
M. Eng.
M.Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

This study explores the Malaysian understanding and definition of the concept and terminology of organisational learning (OL) as well as the learning strategies and practices Malaysian organisations use to implement learning. As part of Malaysia's Vision 2020, the government has made a substantial and public commitment to promoting organisational learning to assist industry move to a first world economy status. A number of authors have defined organisational learning as a process of knowledge acquisition that involves continuous change to create, acquire, and transfer knowledge (Garvin 1993; Miller 1996; Williams 2001). The objective is to explore if this conceptualisation has been accepted and implemented within Malaysia and if not, where opportunities exist to improve both the understanding and practice of Organisational Learning. The study explores the understanding of OL and the learning strategies practiced by Malaysian organisations. In-depth interviews were conducted among human resources managers, executives, professors and lecturers from the manufacturing, health, government and academic sectors in Malaysia. The information gathered was analysed using Nudist (v6) software to interrogate and explore similarities and differences in responses within and across the sectors. Trends emerging from the data were drawn together to present a picture of what happens in practice and to identify opportunities to improve and better manage the implementation of organisational learning and knowledge management strategies. The results suggest Malaysian industry representatives were, in general, able to define OL as a concept, however there was variable evidence that it is being implemented effectively in organisations. The manufacturing respondents had a higher level of understanding of OL than other industries. In practice, learning strategies also vary; health organisations emphasize seminars and conferences, the manufacturing sector emphasizes experiential learning, government departments focus more on attachment and exposure, whereas academic respondents were more reliant on self-learning. Overall, the most popular learning strategy is structured training and development programs, which suggests more needs to be done to inculcate learning strategies within the various industries. Those industries with stronger implementation patterns favoured a specialist department to provide a hub for handling knowledge and skills acquisition, for both internal and external learning sources. In contrast, the understanding of knowledge management was much lower, and indeed, the term was unfamiliar to some respondents. These findings may be limited due to the small size of the sample and the findings being from a management perspective. Nonetheless, given the government's strong commitment to organisational learning and the current lack of empirical industry studies within Malaysia, this study serves as a benchmark. It does identify that the uptake of OL is still relatively limited and more needs to be achieved to promote a greater understanding of OL if it is to be successfully implemented in Malaysia.

This study explores the Malaysian understanding and definition of the concept and terminology of organisational learning (OL) as well as the learning strategies and practices Malaysian organisations use to implement learning. As part of Malaysia's Vision 2020, the government has made a substantial and public commitment to promoting organisational learning to assist industry move to a first world economy status. A number of authors have defined organisational learning as a process of knowledge acquisition that involves continuous change to create, acquire, and transfer knowledge (Garvin 1993; Miller 1996; Williams 2001). The objective is to explore if this conceptualisation has been accepted and implemented within Malaysia and if not, where opportunities exist to improve both the understanding and practice of Organisational Learning. The study explores the understanding of OL and the learning strategies practiced by Malaysian organisations. In-depth interviews were conducted among human resources managers, executives, professors and lecturers from the manufacturing, health, government and academic sectors in Malaysia. The information gathered was analysed using Nudist (v6) software to interrogate and explore similarities and differences in responses within and across the sectors. Trends emerging from the data were drawn together to present a picture of what happens in practice and to identify opportunities to improve and better manage the implementation of organisational learning and knowledge management strategies. The results suggest Malaysian industry representatives were, in general, able to define OL as a concept, however there was variable evidence that it is being implemented effectively in organisations. The manufacturing respondents had a higher level of understanding of OL than other industries. In practice, learning strategies also vary; health organisations emphasize seminars and conferences, the manufacturing sector emphasizes experiential learning, government departments focus more on attachment and exposure, whereas academic respondents were more reliant on self-learning. Overall, the most popular learning strategy is structured training and development programs, which suggests more needs to be done to inculcate learning strategies within the various industries. Those industries with stronger implementation patterns favoured a specialist department to provide a hub for handling knowledge and skills acquisition, for both internal and external learning sources. In contrast, the understanding of knowledge management was much lower, and indeed, the term was unfamiliar to some respondents. These findings may be limited due to the small size of the sample and the findings being from a management perspective. Nonetheless, given the government's strong commitment to organisational learning and the current lack of empirical industry studies within Malaysia, this study serves as a benchmark. It does identify that the uptake of OL is still relatively limited and more needs to be achieved to promote a greater understanding of OL if it is to be successfully implemented in Malaysia.

This study explores the Malaysian understanding and definition of the concept and terminology of organisational learning (OL) as well as the learning strategies and practices Malaysian organisations use to implement learning. As part of Malaysia's Vision 2020, the government has made a substantial and public commitment to promoting organisational learning to assist industry move to a first world economy status. A number of authors have defined organisational learning as a process of knowledge acquisition that involves continuous change to create, acquire, and transfer knowledge (Garvin 1993; Miller 1996; Williams 2001). The objective is to explore if this conceptualisation has been accepted and implemented within Malaysia and if not, where opportunities exist to improve both the understanding and practice of Organisational Learning. The study explores the understanding of OL and the learning strategies practiced by Malaysian organisations. In-depth interviews were conducted among human resources managers, executives, professors and lecturers from the manufacturing, health, government and academic sectors in Malaysia. The information gathered was analysed using Nudist (v6) software to interrogate and explore similarities and differences in responses within and across the sectors. Trends emerging from the data were drawn together to present a picture of what happens in practice and to identify opportunities to improve and better manage the implementation of organisational learning and knowledge management strategies. The results suggest Malaysian industry representatives were, in general, able to define OL as a concept, however there was variable evidence that it is being implemented effectively in organisations. The manufacturing respondents had a higher level of understanding of OL than other industries. In practice, learning strategies also vary; health organisations emphasize seminars and conferences, the manufacturing sector emphasizes experiential learning, government departments focus more on attachment and exposure, whereas academic respondents were more reliant on self-learning. Overall, the most popular learning strategy is structured training and development programs, which suggests more needs to be done to inculcate learning strategies within the various industries. Those industries with stronger implementation patterns favoured a specialist department to provide a hub for handling knowledge and skills acquisition, for both internal and external learning sources. In contrast, the understanding of knowledge management was much lower, and indeed, the term was unfamiliar to some respondents. These findings may be limited due to the small size of the sample and the findings being from a management perspective. Nonetheless, given the government's strong commitment to organisational learning and the current lack of empirical industry studies within Malaysia, this study serves as a benchmark. It does identify that the uptake of OL is still relatively limited and more needs to be achieved to promote a greater understanding of OL if it is to be successfully implemented in Malaysia.

SUMARYThe main aim of this doctorate research is to design an instructional model- a macro-grammar strategy- which combines grammar and strategy researchers' contributions to help foreign language learners learn an L2 more autonomously. However, this research is specially motivated by our concern about the poor results which Spanish secondary school students achieve in Spanish schools in their written exams, since passing a written exam to get into university is these students' main objective. The reasons for this failure may be due to an excessively communicative approach and too wide a variety of students sharing the same classroom. Therefore, though the purpose of this research is to help all students to learn grammar more autonomously thanks to their acquisition of metacognitive (selective attention, self-monitoring and self-evaluation) and cognitive strategies (elaboration, induction, translation, deduction, repetition and transfer), this study is specially concerned about unsuccessful learners who lack or do not apply the metacognitive and cognitive strategies necessary to learn grammar and transfer their acquired knowledge to the acquisition of new grammatical structures, since this model may enable students to learn on their own and improve their attitude towards foreign language learning. Our research is based on cognitive theory of learning. The theoretical background which supports our research attempts to demonnstrate how cognitive theory of learning manages to explain how learning, an L2, grammar and strategies, are learnt; and how the automatization of grammar and strategies helps students learn an L2. According to this approach the learner becomes an active organizer of incoming information and an L2 acquisition is seen as the acquisition of a complex, cognitive skill in which the learning of grammar plays an important role and LS facilitate its learning (McLaughlin, Rossman, and McLeod, 1983). This cognitive approach also states that grammar and learning strategies (LS) are complex skills; and explains how a skill is learnt so that the learning of an L2, grammar and LS can be understood. Thus, Anderson's (1980) theory of knowledge acquisition, McLaughlin's (1987), Schmidt's (1990), Sharwood-Smith's (1993), Long's (1998), Dekeyser's (1998), and Skehan's (1999) position on grammar learning and Wenden's (1987) and O'Malley et al.'s approach to LS manage to complement each other and offer an appropriate theoretical framework for designing an instructional model in which strategy training enables students to learn a grammatical structure and transfer this knowledge to the learning of other structures. The automatization of grammatical items is believed to take place when formally learned grammatical items have been explicitly noticed, have been structured into working hypotheses and have been proceduralized/automatized through practice in context (e.g. McLaughlin, 1987; Schmidt, 1990; Johnson, 1994; Batstone, 1994). And by using metacognitive strategies- planning, monitoring and evaluating strategies- students can come to understand that they have power over their own learning (Chamot and O'Malley, 1996: 266); and the combination of these metacognitive strategies with cognitive strategies- mental steps which involve interacting with the material- will also facilitate learners to learn grammar on their own. The two main hypothesis of this research are that students, specially fair and poor learners, following the grammar strategy instruction will acquire the 2nd conditional structure better than the students who do not follow this instruction: that is to say, their results in the 1st post-test, 2nd post-test, and final post-test will be better. And that the experimental group students, specially poor and fair learners, will transfer their way of acquiring 2nd conditionals to another grammatical structure, in this case the 3rd conditionals, better than the students who do not follow this instruction. Next, the method to be followed in our empirical work is explained. This research in which 60 subjects- 30 experimental subjects and 30 control subjects- participated has been conducted in "Luis Vives" secondary school in Valencia during the school year 2000-2001. Their textbook, their teacher and the conditions under which they study English are the same and their standard is low-intermadiate. Due to the great range of results which students get in the pre-test and their last year's results participants are ranked into three subgroups- good, fair and poor (Izumi and Bigelow, 2000: 248). Students also fill in three metacognitive questionnaires, which analyse students' characteristics, objectives, difficulties, and strategies used to learn grammar, before instruction takes place so that the homogeneity of both groups can be established. Our instructional model combines the explicit training of metacognitive and cognitive strategies when practising comprehension, consciousness-raising, controlled and spontaneous written grammar activities- filling in the blanks with the right tenses, correcting mistakes, rewriting, translating from Spanish into English and writing- on the learning of 2nd conditional sentences in the foreign language classroom. Since it is acknowledged that neither a forms-based instruction nor meaning-based instruction alone can lead to SLA (Doughty and Williams, 1998: 11), our approach is eclectic and combined. Our strategy training is provided in four sessions in three weeks running in January. The declarative knowledge about the 2nd conditional, their induction, practice in controlled and spontaneous written activities, and immediate feedback is provided in each session, while metacognitive and cognitive strategies are practised. Students' answers in the metacognitive questionnaires and their results in the pre-test and four post-tests are analysed following statistical procedures so that we can be more certain of the reliability of the results. A previous pilot study (Viñes, 2000) was also carried out so that possible deficiencies could be avoided, and results could be compared. The results obtained in the two short-term and long-term post-tests confirm our first hypotheses; our instructional model helped learners, specially unsuccessful learners, to learn the 2nd conditional. And the results of the "Discovering the 3rd conditional" test confirms our 2nd hypothesis; our instructional model helped experimental, specially unsuccessful learners, to transfer the knowledge acquired in learning the 2nd conditional to the learning of the 3rd conditionals. However, the results which students get are not 100% correct in all the different activities, that it is why, it is considered that they are still in the associative stage of learning in relation to their learning of 2nd and 3rd conditional sentences, and metacognitive and cognitive strategies. More spontaneous written activities and more strategy training sessions should have been provided in order to help them get to the autonomous stage of learning. Thus, the results of the four post-tests offer relevant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of our instructional model to help learners, specially unsuccessful learners to improve their inductive ability, acquire declarative knowledge, and transfer the declarative knowledge acquired in learning the 2nd conditional to the learning of the 3rd conditional. Finally, some pedagogical implications, which can be specially useful to help secondary school students learn an L2, are suggested. First of all, encouraging students to work on their own in silence may aid poor learners in performing activities. Secondly, providing strategy training which combines metacognitive and cognitive strategies is essential. Thirdly, adapting the material to student's level, and allowing the L1 to be used in the classroom when needed may encourage students to learn. Fourthly, providing smaller amounts of new information in meaningful contexts, but allowing students to discover it, make it explicit, practise it immediately and get feedback, may allow students to perceive learning grammar as a rewarding game because they can be aware of their success. Moreover, repeating this material applied in different contexts within long intervals of time may help all learners to acquire the new structures since different opportunities for their learning are provided. This doctorate research presents the findings of an empirical study carried out in a Spanish secondary school to test the effectiveness of an instructional model designed to help these secondary school students, specially the unsuccessful ones, learn grammar more autonomously and improve their attitude towards foreign language learning. First, the theoretical background which supports our empirical work is described. Anderson (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983), Anderson and Fincham (1994) and Anderson et al.'s (1997) theory of knowledge acquisition, McLaughlin (1987), Schmidt (1990), Sharwood-Smith (1993), Long (1998), Dekeyser (1998), and Skehan's (1999) position on grammar learning and Wenden (1987) and O'Malley and Chamot's (1990) approach to learning strategies complement each other, and offer an adequate framework for designing an instructional model which combines the explicit training of metacognitive and cognitive strategies when practising controlled and spontaneous written grammar activities on the learning of 2nd conditional sentences in the foreign language classroom. Second, the description of our empirical work follows. The experimental and control subjects' characteristics, the description of our instructional model, its instruction, the short-term and long term post-tests taken, and the statistical tests applied on the students' answers make up this description. Third, relevant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of our instructional model to help learners, specially unsuccessful learners to improve their inductive ability, acquire declarative knowledge, and transfer the declarative knowledge acquired in learning the 2nd conditional to the learning of the 3rd conditional are presented and discussed. Finally, some pedagogical implications, which can be specially useful for secondary school teachers when helping secondary school students learn an L2, are suggested.

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, System Design and Management Program, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 48-50).
As interest for adopting machine learning as a core component of a business strategy increases, business owners face the challenge of integrating an uncertain and rapidly evolving technology into their organization, and depending on this for the success of their strategy. The field of Machine learning has a rich set of literature for modeling of technical systems that implement machine learning. This thesis attempts to connect the literature for business and technology and for evolution and adoption of technology to the emergent properties of machine learning systems. This thesis provides high-level levers and frameworks to better prepare business owners to adopt machine learning to satisfy their strategic goals.
by Ritesh Shukla.
S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-90).
I review and describe 4 popular techniques that computers use to play strategy games: minimax, alpha-beta pruning, Monte Carlo tree search, and neural networks. I then explain why I do not believe that people use any of these techniques to play strategy games. I support this claim by creating a new strategy game, which I call Tarble, that people are able to play at a far higher level than any of the algorithms that I have described. I study how humans with various strategy game backgrounds think about and play Tarble. I then implement 3 players that each emulate how a different level of human players think about and play Tarble.
by Benjamin S. Greenberg.
M. Eng.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2014.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
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Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-71).
Traditionally, robot grasping has been approached in two separate phases: first, finding contact positions that yield optimal grasps and, then, moving the robot hand to these positions. This approach works well when the object's location is known exactly and the robot's control is perfect. However, in the presence of uncertainty, this approach often leads to failure, usually because the robot's gripper contacts the object and causes the object to move away from the grasp. To obtain reliable grasping in the presence of uncertainty, the robot needs to anticipate the possible motions of the object during grasping. Our approach is to compute a policy that specifies the robot's motions over a range of joint states of the object and gripper, taking into account the expected motion of the object when pushed by the gripper. We use methods from continuous-state reinforcement-learning to solve for these policies. We test our approach on the problem of whole-arm grasping for a PR2, where one or both arms, as well as the torso can all serve to create contacts.
by Ariel Anders.
S.M.

The final goal of the thesis should be a real-world application in the production test data environment. This includes the pre-processing of the data, building models and visualizing the results. To do this, different machine learning models, outlier prediction oriented, should be investigated using a real dataset. Finally, the different outlier prediction algorithms should be compared, and their performance discussed.

With a pronounced move toward student-centered learning and academic self-regulation, the responsibility of learning is shifting from teacher to student. As a result, students are now being asked to take more responsibility for their learning. Research has made clear that strategic behavior and the use of learning strategies enhances teaming. Effective learners are able to self-regulate in order to evaluate when and how to use the appropriate strategies as well as evaluate their success relative to their actions. Students often enter postsecondary education without the knowledge and skills to self-regulate; therefore, learning strategy instruction becomes a key instrument in students' pursuit of academic success. Quantitative examination of the students' outcomes associated with this type of instruction is limited at best. This study examines student outcomes associated with the attendance of learning strategies workshops at the postsecondary level. Findings indicated that participants reported using some, if not all, of the strategies discussed. Additionally the largest percentage of strategies reported were strategies that were supported instructionally by modeling, practice, and feedback. This study did not uncover particular student traits that would lead to students' use of strategies. Strengths and weaknesses of this study are discussed, as are directions for future research.

A year long learning strategy course was designed and embedded in a Year 8 science curriculum. The Science Learning Strategy (SLS) program aimed to improve student ability to apply learning strategies to science, increase student achievement in science and to augment students' feelings of control over their science learning, so that their perceived competence was maximised. Achievement of these aims was monitored by collecting perceptions from students, parents and the teacher/researcher via a range of devices including questionnaires, work samples and interviews. The program overall was regarded as successfully achieving all three aims by 22 of the 24 students. The other two students found that only some aspects of the course were helpful, and felt they had learned little from the program. Thirty three percent of parents attributed positive changes in their daughter's study and learning strategies to participation in the SLS program (the remainder were unsure, or did not know of any changes). In relation to perception of academic performance, 38% of the parents interviewed believed that the SLS had a positive effect on their daughter's achievement in science. Several of these parents reported very positive effects on performance. The remainder were not sure or did not know if there had been any positive effects. No parents mentioned that the SLS program had caused a drop in science performance. The proportion of parents believing their daughters blamed disappointing results on factors they couldn't control dropped from 45% at the start of the year, to 22% by the end of the SLS program. After the intervention, 33% of parents reported that their daughters had come to believe that their science performance was affected by many factors, most of which they could control.The teacher/researcher observed strong improvement in student ability to apply learning strategies to science as a result of participation in the program. Students were also observed by the teacher/researcher, to have been assisted by the intervention to realise that their science performance was governed not only by their natural ability, but also by factors such as studying behaviour and affective influences. In particular, the program appeared to the teacher/researcher to have helped students realise that they had control over their use of learning strategies, and that this control could influence their science performance. However, the teacher/researcher found that no statistically significant changes in science achievement resulted from student participation in the SLS course. The other objective of the research was to investigate the extent to which learning strategy education was valued and implemented by Western Australian science teachers. The 218 returned surveys revealed that most respondents recognised the need to teach these skills during science lessons. Seventy six percent of respondents considered the delivery of learning strategy instruction in the lower school science classroom to be as important, or more important, than teaching subject processes and content. Sixty seven percent recognised that improving study strategies can improve confidence and/or motivation.Many teachers, however, had not been able to convert these views into consistent classroom practice. A moderate proportion of teachers reported teaching a variety of learning strategies; 74% of the respondents agreed that learning strategy instruction could improve performance in science. Only one teacher specifically mentioned incorporating the teaching of learning strategies with instruction in science process and content. As a future outcome of this project, the teacher/researcher will encourage other teachers to embed learning strategy instruction within the science curriculum, so that their students come to feel more in control of their learning and can learn more effectively.

Abstract Technological advancement in the field of information-and-communication technologies (ICT) was rapid during the first decade of the new millennium. Universities started to use the new information-and-communication technologies more in their core processes, which speeded up their transformation from the traditional campus mode toward virtual universities. Research done in this thesis first investigates the traditional campus university’s change process toward the virtual university model. During the implementation process a geographically distributed e-learning concept was also developed for university use. This concept was transferred and researched in the small and medium enterprise (SME) context in the last part of this research. In large and complex organizations such as universities, it is difficult to find out how the change really was implemented. The literature on change management is voluminous but is dominated by descriptions of single projects. To overcome the limitations of such case studies, this research applies a longer and wider perspective to the change process and, by the introduction of an overarching method that categorizes the investments, shows more clearly the trends, stages of, and the barriers to the development. This long-term study is based on 116 development projects during a ten-year period in a decentralized and networked development environment. In the company setting, conventional training is being replaced more and more by e-learning. To scaffold SMEs in their e-learning adaptation, the concept of e-learning was transferred to the SME environment. The company cases’ part of the thesis presents how the transferability of geographically distributed e-learning concept was developed and tested in the SME environment. As a result, the principles that guided ICT strategy implementation and how the strategies were implemented during a ten-year period are presented. The concept for geographically distributed e-learning environments and its development are also introduced. Finally, the process and results from the concept implementation to the SME environment are presented. This thesis presents university management with an understanding of how larger long-term trends give us the possibility to better understand today’s fast-paced changes. It also gives company managers an example of how models developed in the university environment can be transferred to the company environment
Tiivistelmä Tietotekniikan kehitys on ollut nopeaa vuosituhannen vaihteen jälkeen monilla aloilla. Yliopistoissa sitä on alettu käyttää yhä enemmän osana perustoimintoja, mikä on edistänyt niiden kehitystä traditionaalisista kampusyliopistoista kohti virtuaaliyliopistoja. Tämän tutkimuksen ensimmäisessä osassa on tarkasteltu perinteisen kampusyliopiston muutosprosessia kohti aktiivisesti uutta teknologiaa hyödyntävää yliopistoa ja toisessa osassa muutosten yhtenä tuloksena syntynyt konsepti siirrettiin yritysympäristöön. Yliopistossa muutos toteutettiin määrittelemällä ensin tavoitteet strategioiksi ja sen jälkeen niiden toimeenpanoprosessin avulla. Suurissa organisaatioissa, kuten yliopistoissa, on vaikea hahmottaa kuinka muutokset todellisuudessa toteutetaan. Kirjallisuutta ja tutkimusta organisaatiomuutoksen toteuttamisesta on paljon, mutta suuri osa siitä keskittyy tarkastelemaan yhden projektin aikana tapahtunutta muutosta. Tässä tutkimuksessa on pyritty esittämään laajempi ja pitkäkestoisempi kuva muutosprosessista. Tutkimus pohjautuu 116 kehitysprojektin saamaan rahoitukseen kymmenen vuoden ajalta. Sen avulla on tarkasteltu yliopiston kehitystrendejä ja keskeisiä kehityskohteita. Rahoitus on jaettu projekteille strategioissa määriteltyjen tavoitteiden mukaisesti strategioiden toimeenpanemiseksi. Osana toimeenpanoprosessia syntyi yliopistokäyttöön maantieteellisesti hajautetun oppimisympäristön konsepti. Yritysympäristössä perinteinen koulutus on korvattu yhä useammin teknologiaa hyödyntävillä koulutuksen muodoilla. Pienillä ja keskisuurilla yrityksillä on kuitenkin varsin rajoitetut resurssit koulutuksessa käytettävien teknologioiden käyttöönottoon ja tehokkaaseen käyttöön. Tämän tutkimuksen toisessa osassa yrityksen maantieteellisesti hajautetun oppimisympäristön käyttöönottoa pyrittiin tukemaan tarjoamalla sen käyttöön valmis yliopistoympäristössä kehitetty konsepti. Tämän konseptin siirrettävyyttä ja käyttöönottoa tutkittiin tutkimuksen toisessa osassa. Tämän tutkimuksen tuloksena esitetään periaatteet, jotka ohjasivat yliopiston tieto- ja viestintätekniikan opetuskäytön strategian laadintaa ja toimeenpanoa vuosina 2000–2009. Lisäksi esitellään maantieteellisesti hajautetun oppimisympäristön konsepti. Lopuksi esitellään konseptin käyttöönottoa yritysympäristössä. Tämä väitöskirja esittelee yliopiston johdolle ja toimijoille, kuinka pitkäkestoisten trendien tunteminen auttaa ymmärtämään nykyhetkeä ja sen nopeita muutoksia. Yritysjohdolle väitöskirja tarjoaa esimerkin, kuinka yliopistoympäristöön kehitetty konsepti voidaan siirtää yritysympäristöön

The use of the flipped classroom as an alternative to the traditional learning environments has been increasingly attracting the attention of researchers and educators. The advancement in technological tools such as interactive videos, interactive in-class activities, and video conference systems paves the way for the widespread use of flipped classrooms. It is even asserted that the flipped classroom, which is used to create effective teaching environments at schools, is the best model for using technology in education. Studies about the flipped classroom appear in different disciplines including information systems, engineering, sociology, and humanities, mathematics education, and English composition. The purpose of this paper is to fulfil the needs regarding the review of recent literature on the use of the flipped classroom approach in education.

This thesis consists of three studies investigating the strategy selection problem and the role of function learning in human decision making. Chapter 1 examines how people learn which decision strategy to use when facing multiple environments. It provides evidence that people associate different decision strategies to different types of environments through a trial-anderror type of process and learn to flexibly switch between the strategies as needed. Chapter 2 aims to identify the source of inter-individual differences in strategy adoption. It suggests that such differences can be traced back to how fast people learn the relationships between cues and the criterion they are trying to infer. Finally, Chapter 3 focuses on how people simultaneously learn functional relationships between cues and alternative rewards and make decisions. It provides evidence for interactions between function learning and decision processes and proposes a Bayesian optimization framework for understanding these interactions.
Aquesta tesi consisteix en tres estudis que investiguen el problema de selecció de l’estratègia i el paper de la funció de l’aprenentatge en la presa de decisions humana. El capítol 1 examina com les persones aprenen quina estratègia de decisió utilitzar quan s’enfronten a múltiples entorns. Es proporciona evidència de que les persones associen diferents estratègies de decisió a diferents tipus d’ambients a través d’un tipus de procés d’assaig i error i aprenenen a canviar de forma flexible entre les estratègies segons sigui necessari. El capítol 2 té com a objectiu identificar l’origen de les diferències interindividuals en l’adopció d’estratègia. Es suggereix que aquestes diferències es poden remuntar-se a quant ràpidament les persones aprenen les relacions entre els senyals i el criteri que estan tractant d’inferir. Finalment, el capítol 3 es centra en com les persones aprenen al mateix temps les relacions funcionals entre senyals i recompenses alternatives i prenen decisions. Es proporciona evidència de les interaccions entre l’aprenentatge funcional i els processos de decisió i proposa un marc d’optimització bayesiana per a la comprensió d’aquestes interaccions.

In this thesis, we investigated if reinforcement learning could be applied on elevator systems to improve performance. The performance was evaluated by the average squared waiting time for the passengers, and the buildings considered were apartment buildings. The problem of scheduling elevator cars is an NP-hard problem, and no optimal solution is known. Therefore, an approach where the system learns a strategy instead of using a heuristic, should be the easiest way to get near an optimal solution. A learning system was constructed, where the system was trained to use the best scheduling algorithm out of five in a given situation, based on the prevailing traffic. The purpose of this approach was to reduce the training time that was required in order to get good performance and to lower the complexity of the system. A simulator was then developed, in which the different algorithms were implemented and tested in four different scenarios, where the size of the building and the number of elevator cars varied. The results generated by the simulator showed that reinforcement learning is a great strategy to use in buildings with 16 floors and three or four elevator cars. However, reinforcement learning did not increase the performance in buildings with 10 floors and two to three elevator cars. A possible reason for this is that the variation in performance between the different scheduling algorithms was too small in these scenarios.
I denna rapport har vi undersökt huruvida reinforcement learning är användbart för att öka prestandan för hissystem i lägenhetshus. Prestandan bedömdes efter de genomsnittliga kvadrerade väntetiderna för resenärerna. Schemaläggningsproblemet för hissar är NP-svårt och ingen optimal lösning är känd. Att lösa problemet med hjälp av ett system som lär sig hur det ska agera, bör således vara en enklare strategi för att komma nära den optimala lösningen än att använda sig av en heuristik. Ett självlärande system konstruerades, där systemet tränades att använda den bäst lämpade schemaläggningsalgoritmen med avseende på rådande trafikförhållanden. Det fanns totalt fem olika algoritmer att välja bland. Anledningen till att detta gjordes i stället för att systemet skulle lära sig en komplett strategi, var för att sänka träningstiden som krävdes för att åstadkomma bra resultat och för att minska komplexiteten. En simulator utvecklades sedan, där de olika algoritmerna implementerades och testades på fyra olika scenarion, där storleken på byggnaden och antalet hissar varierade. Resultaten som genererades visade att reinforcement learning fungerar utmärkt på byggnader med 16 våningar och tre eller fyra hissar. På byggnader med tio våningar och två till tre hissar är det dock inte lika användbart och där bör i stället enklare algoritmer användas. En möjlig förklaring till detta är att prestandaskillnaderna mellan algoritmerna var för små under dessa scenarion.

Personal learning environments (PLEs) aim at putting the learner central stage and comprise a technological approach towards learning tools, services, and artifacts gathered from various usage contexts and to be used by learners. Due to the varying technical skills and competences of PLE users, recommendations appear to be useful for empowering learners to set up their environments so that they can connect to learner networks and collaborate on shared artifacts by using the tools available. In this paper we examine different recommender strategies on their applicability in PLE settings. After reviewing different techniques given by literature and experimenting with our prototypic PLE solution we come to the conclusion to start with an item-based strategy and extend it with model-based and iterative techniques for generating recommendations for PLEs. (author's abstract)

In recent years space missions for both scientific and commercial purposes have substantially increased. More and more spacecrafts have flexible multibody structures, are subject to liquid volume changes, fuel utilization, and other behaviours that alter the parameters of the spacecraft's model. Moreover, varying disturbances such as the gravity angle torque due to Earth's gravitational field, aerodynamic torque, and others may lead to unwanted effects on the satellite's dynamics. These uncertainties in the model and environment descriptions make it difficult to set up an exact mathematical model, which makes even more difficult the attitude control tasks. For these reasons, data-driven approaches are introduced to alleviate the shortcomings of model-based control methodologies, or even solving them completely. This thesis focuses on these issues, introducing and implementing a data-driven approach, bridging optimal control and reinforcement learning building blocks. The developments are carried out on discrete-time time-varying linear systems. The particular feature of this methodology is that no prior knowledge of the system parameters is necessary. While no a priori information is used, the results show how the algorithm converges to the optimal control of a controller with full and precise knowledge of the system. While the algorithm and learning process use quaternions representation, a custom animation of the algorithm and system results in Euler Angles is provided to better evaluate the performances of the solution.

Purpose: We explored performance across time in a word-learning task for second grade children. Method: Our participants included 107 children: 48 typically developing monolinguals, 30 typically developing bilinguals, 14 dyslexic only, four with language impairment, and 11 with comorbid dyslexia and language impairment. After meeting inclusionary criteria, children participated in six session of pirate-themed games. This study focused on one aspect of the word-learning game, the phonological-visual linking task. We compared participants' average scores across each session to explore the possibilities of distinctive patterns of learning, perseverance, or boredom shown across time. Results: Cluster analysis revealed five different clusters of performance. The largest cluster, Group 5, contained the largest percentage of children from each category, except the language impairment category. Group 5 performed the best and showed improvement over time. Group 1 was the worst group, starting with fair accuracy and gradually becoming less accurate over time. Group 1 consisted of a fairly even percentage of children from each category. Conclusion: Impaired children and typically developing children are both capable of increased learning across time in this phonological-visual linking task, and children with impairments are not at significantly greater risk than peers for boredom effects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 15, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

A year long learning strategy course was designed and embedded in a Year 8 science curriculum. The Science Learning Strategy (SLS) program aimed to improve student ability to apply learning strategies to science, increase student achievement in science and to augment students' feelings of control over their science learning, so that their perceived competence was maximised. Achievement of these aims was monitored by collecting perceptions from students, parents and the teacher/researcher via a range of devices including questionnaires, work samples and interviews. The program overall was regarded as successfully achieving all three aims by 22 of the 24 students. The other two students found that only some aspects of the course were helpful, and felt they had learned little from the program. Thirty three percent of parents attributed positive changes in their daughter's study and learning strategies to participation in the SLS program (the remainder were unsure, or did not know of any changes). In relation to perception of academic performance, 38% of the parents interviewed believed that the SLS had a positive effect on their daughter's achievement in science. Several of these parents reported very positive effects on performance. The remainder were not sure or did not know if there had been any positive effects. No parents mentioned that the SLS program had caused a drop in science performance. The proportion of parents believing their daughters blamed disappointing results on factors they couldn't control dropped from 45% at the start of the year, to 22% by the end of the SLS program. After the intervention, 33% of parents reported that their daughters had come to believe that their science performance was affected by many factors, most of which they could control.
The teacher/researcher observed strong improvement in student ability to apply learning strategies to science as a result of participation in the program. Students were also observed by the teacher/researcher, to have been assisted by the intervention to realise that their science performance was governed not only by their natural ability, but also by factors such as studying behaviour and affective influences. In particular, the program appeared to the teacher/researcher to have helped students realise that they had control over their use of learning strategies, and that this control could influence their science performance. However, the teacher/researcher found that no statistically significant changes in science achievement resulted from student participation in the SLS course. The other objective of the research was to investigate the extent to which learning strategy education was valued and implemented by Western Australian science teachers. The 218 returned surveys revealed that most respondents recognised the need to teach these skills during science lessons. Seventy six percent of respondents considered the delivery of learning strategy instruction in the lower school science classroom to be as important, or more important, than teaching subject processes and content. Sixty seven percent recognised that improving study strategies can improve confidence and/or motivation.
Many teachers, however, had not been able to convert these views into consistent classroom practice. A moderate proportion of teachers reported teaching a variety of learning strategies; 74% of the respondents agreed that learning strategy instruction could improve performance in science. Only one teacher specifically mentioned incorporating the teaching of learning strategies with instruction in science process and content. As a future outcome of this project, the teacher/researcher will encourage other teachers to embed learning strategy instruction within the science curriculum, so that their students come to feel more in control of their learning and can learn more effectively.

Mentoring is a powerful developmental tool that can be utilised in organisations to enable learnerships to learn various skills – hard and soft – that will enable them to become more equipped for the workplace. The hard skills refer to technical competencies, e.g. computer literacy, and soft skills refer to competencies such as interpersonal skills, communication skills, work etiquette, etc. Mentoring is no quick fix to filling all the gaps within a learnership, but it can add significant value to have a formal mentoring strategy within organisations to transfer much needed skills and competencies. The literature on mentoring provides many examples of possible strategies, and in this research project, the competencies of both mentor and mentee were highlighted, together with the advantages, disadvantages, myths and challenges in formal mentoring strategies. The process of developing a mentoring strategy is not complex, but requires support and involvement from various stakeholders to ensure the sustained success of a mentoring strategy. The different models of mentoring strategies in the literature review provided a framework for the researcher to develop a mentoring strategy that was tested through the completion of questionnaires sent to organisations that employ learnerships. The research study rated the responses of the respondents on the suggested model and various steps to be followed in the process. The research study concluded with a formal mentoring strategy or model that can be used within organisations that employ learnerships.

This Exegesis and the Portfolio document referred to herein report on the outcomes of my research towards a PhD in education (by Project) between mid 2001 and July 2005. The Portfolio contains a collection of ten papers written during the research and also a summary of the key tools and processes resulting from the research. This Exegesis contains the major theoretical arguments leading to the development of the research outcomes, the methodology employed and a description of the organisational context operating during the study. It also draws links between the various data sets as presented in the Portfolio. The research began with a consideration of a major change project at RMIT University: the Implementation of the Distributed Learning System (DLS). The problems associated with this project highlighted the need for holistic organisational approaches to change and the uncertain nature of radical change projects. This led into a consideration of broader questions to do with organisational change and managing uncertainty. The generalisability of the research findings was enhanced by the wide ranging literature review and data from a range of stakeholders. This ultimately led to the development of a

In this thesis I cover the theoretical framework and the practice based implications of bringing the fundamental principles of a cybernetic art educational strategy, the Groundcourse, which was developed and taught during the 1960’s in England by Roy Ascott, into the virtual, three dimensional builder’s world of the metaverse; to be implemented there as a non-institutional, voluntary, self-directed, adult oriented learning system for avatars – one which is expected to be taught by avatar instructors who will formulate the specifics of their curriculum and their methods based upon the cardinal tenets of the Groundcourse, which have been summarized by Roy Ascott as a flexible structure, “within which everything can find its place, and every individual his way,” which would give dimension and substance to the will to create and to change. In order to be able to set the groundwork for the adaptation of the Groundcourse’s principles to my model I have conducted literature reviews in experiential learning theories, with an emphasis on self-directed learning; as well as cybernetic learning. These I have combined with a survey of play theory and virtual world studies, particularly those focusing upon the avatar and metaverse creativity. From all of these I have woven together a foundation which I have combined with a visual documentation which may serve as case studies for my proposal. The new knowledge embodied through this thesis is a learning system for the creative fields that is designed specifically for the residents of online virtual worlds, and yet has its foundations in an earlier, well established and well regarded model.

Recent developments in robot technology have contributed to the advancement of autonomous behaviours in human-robot systems; for example, in following instructions received from an interacting human partner. Nevertheless, increasingly many systems are moving towards more seamless forms of interaction, where factors such as implicit trust and persuasion between humans and robots are brought to the fore. In this context, the problem of attaining, through suitable computational models and algorithms, more complex strategic behaviours that can influence human decisions and actions during an interaction, remains largely open. To address this issue, this thesis introduces the problem of decision shaping in strategic interactions between humans and robots, where a robot seeks to lead, without however forcing, an interacting human partner to a particular state. Our approach to this problem is based on a combination of statistical modeling and synthesis of demonstrated behaviours, which enables robots to efficiently adapt to novel interacting agents. We primarily focus on interactions between autonomous and teleoperated (i.e. human-controlled) NAO humanoid robots, using the adversarial soccer penalty shooting game as an illustrative example. We begin by describing the various challenges that a robot operating in such complex interactive environments is likely to face. Then, we introduce a procedure through which composable strategy templates can be learned from provided human demonstrations of interactive behaviours. We subsequently present our primary contribution to the shaping problem, a Bayesian learning framework that empirically models and predicts the responses of an interacting agent, and computes action strategies that are likely to influence that agent towards a desired goal. We then address the related issue of factors affecting human decisions in these interactive strategic environments, such as the availability of perceptual information for the human operator. Finally, we describe an information processing algorithm, based on the Orient motion capture platform, which serves to facilitate direct (as opposed to teleoperation-mediated) strategic interactions between humans and robots. Our experiments introduce and evaluate a wide range of novel autonomous behaviours, where robots are shown to (learn to) influence a variety of interacting agents, ranging from other simple autonomous agents, to robots controlled by experienced human subjects. These results demonstrate the benefits of strategic reasoning in human-robot interaction, and constitute an important step towards realistic, practical applications, where robots are expected to be not just passive agents, but active, influencing participants.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2017.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
This dissertation investigates how research organizations learn from and adapt to new knowledge. In particular, I examine how news about scandals, stigmas and failures influences the direction of research and development efforts. These negative information shocks force research organizations to pause, interpret external signals, and apply any lessons to their own project portfolios. I investigate how these negative information events impact decisions in the settings of scientific publishing and drug development. In the first essay, I study the impact of scientific retractions on citation patterns and funding in the retracted paper's intellectual field. I investigate how the retraction disclosure and affected field's characteristics influence the extent of these spillover effects. The second essay evaluates how retraction scandals damage individual scientists' reputations. This study shows that the magnitude of the retraction penalty depends on a scientist's prominence and whether or not the retraction event involved "misconduct." In the third essay, I analyze how late-stage drug development failures alter competitor's project continuation decisions. I separate technological learning effects from market competition effects, and grade decision-making across firms.
by Joshua Lev Krieger.
1. Introduction -- 2. Retractions (with Pierre Azoulay, Jeffrey Furman, and Fiona Murray) -- 3. The Career Effects of Scandal: Evidence from Scientific Retractions (with Pierre Azoulay and Alessandro Bonatti) -- 4. Trials and Terminations: Learning from Competitors' R&D Failures.
Ph. D.

This work sets out to establish principles for the design and evaluation of a computer-based vocabulary-learning strategy for foreign language learners. The strategy is intended to assist non-beginner learners who are working on their own, to acquire new words in such a way that they will be available when needed in subsequent communicative situations. The nature of vocabulary-learning is examined from linguistic, psychological and educational perspectives, and a strategy for autonomous learning is derived which emphasizes the processes of: selection of new items from text, mental lexicon- building through the association of items on the basis of their lexical-structural features, and practising productive recall of items by activating the same associations as were used to build the mental network. This strategy is considered from the point of view of the support it would need from a computer-based interaction, and the field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) for vocabulary is reviewed for examples of system design which meet the strategic and interactional requirements. Specifications are produced, based on general principles for the design of computer-assisted learning, and on current technological capability to integrate large text-databases and on-line lexical tools such as dictionaries etc., within an interface which facilitates learner control and exploration. Questions of evaluation are considered, in the light of the computer's ability to record interaction data, and a psycholinguistic model of word production is proposed as a basis for assessing the learner's performance in terms of processes as well as quantitative 'end product'. A general model of deep and surface approaches to learning is then adduced to provide a way of interpreting learner subjective data, and an independent means of evaluating the quality of the learning outcome. A system implementing the strategy is tested with learners of Spanish and English, and the quantitative and qualitative data on learning process and outcome is analyzed in depth. The system is shown to support the learning objectives for learners who adopt a deep approach, or whose approach complements the assumptions of the design in some way, and the general design principles are therefore considered as validated. Some aspects of the strategy related to lexicon-building, however, are shown to be inadequately supported, as is the capability of the system to help learners remediate surface approaches. The main conclusion of the study is that, whilst learner exploration of powerful lexical information resources is essential for autonomous vocabulary-learning, on-line tutorial help of the kind that will encourage deep rather than surface approaches, is needed to optimise the quality of the learning outcome.

碩士
聖約翰科技大學
工業工程與管理系碩士班
99
Since the popularization of the Internet and the ever-changing computer technology, online learning has become an important way of learning. Many universities have set up online education courses in the curriculum. However, it has become an important research topic to explore if students’ learning performance has been upgraded after investing so much manpower and financial resources. Previous studies asserted that learning strategies affect learning performance. This study emphasizes a key factor of successful learning is how to utilize learning strategies.Thus, an assessment which can evaluate on-line learning strategies is essential to know students’ learning performances. In this study, the researchers have developed a measurement to assess on-line learning strategies based on Pintrich’s Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), on-line questionnaire and interviews. Practically, the results of this study can help students to identify where insufficient uses of the strategies are, and thus enhance trainings on learning strategies. The results also provide schools valuable resources when designing online courses, and incorporate learning strategy training courses into online education.

碩士
亞東技術學院
資訊與通訊工程研究所
99
Abstract In general, most of the private vocational high school students do not have good academic performances. This research attempts to familiarize the students with the circuit and to promote their design ability by developing the digital materials of Digital Logic, applying the master learning strategies, and stimulating the learning motivation; therefore, students are made to practice frequently and are able to strengthen their confidence and design ability. So, the main purposes of this research are: 1. to develop the digital materials of Digital Logic 2. to make the decisive factors with the master learning strategies 3. to arrange the digital materials to achieve the goal of master learning under the learning-motivated atmosphere. The subjects of this research are two senior computer science classes, totally 91 students in number, in a private high school. And the teaching materials are developed based on the essential teaching units, which are formed by the Vocational High School course principled by the National Education Department, and referred to by the result of the questionnaires of 16 experienced vocational high school teachers. Besides, Flash is adopted in the master learning and e-learning patterns. And the materials are presented with motion pictures according to their own characteristics. After the materials are formed, they are put into teaching practice. Following the teaching are the formative evaluation and post evaluation, which lead to the statistics of the quantity and the analysis of the quality of this research. In sum, according to the research, some conclusions are drawn: 1. If based on the evaluation of the students, the materials can promote the proficiency rate and stimulate the students’ motivation. 2. If based on the strategies of master learning, the materials can influence the self-control learning speeds, the minimizing learning units and the understanding of the learning targets, in order. 3. If stimulating the learning motivation, the materials can make the learning easier and the learners full of the sense of achievement. By the way, if similar researches are undertaken, some suggestions may be made as follows: 1. The interactions between the students and the computers should be enforced when developing the digital materials. 2. The digital materials are better presented with 3D motion pictures and are extensible to self-learning. Keywords：master learning, e-Learning, digital materials, learning motivation

碩士
國立屏東大學
應用英語學系碩士班
105
The past literature has indicated preferred English learning style is linked to learning strategy use. To date, little research has been conducted on the extent and intensity of such link, in particular, for local teenaged EFL learners. The present study aimed to explore this relationship with a specific concern for gender differences. Two standardized tests of the Reid’s (1984) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire and the Oxford’s (1990) Learning Strategy Questionnaire were administered to 333 senior high school students (M = 165, F = 168). Individual interviews were given to 40 surveyed students (M = 20, F = 20) to further detect their English learning difficulties and to validate the data obtained from the two questionnaires. Independent t-tests were conducted to examine the gender effect, and Pearson correlations, the relationship between style preference and learning strategy use. The important results were: (1) kinesthetic type was found to be the most preferred English learning style, and individual study style as the least preferred one, all of which was confirmed in the interview data; (2) Significant gender differences were found in the type of group (t (331) = 2.46, p = .00 < .05) with superiority on the male learners; (3)When individual learning style items were considered, 10 out of 30 (33%) items produced significant t-tests for the gender effect; (4) the female learners were found preferring the visual and auditory styles, and the male learners, the group style to study English; (5) high school students used learning strategies moderately; compensation strategies were employed most often, and affective strategies, least often; (6) there were no significant differences between the male and female learners in their overall and each type of strategy use; (7) generally, significant gender differences were detected more in the learning style preference than in the learning strategy use for senior high school students; (8) significant correlations between style and strategy use were detected (overall correlation: r = .52, P < .01); particularly, male learners (r = .57, p < .01) were found having higher correlation strengths than their female counterparts (r = .44, p < .01); (9) the interviewed students reported insufficient vocabulary and grammar knowledge and poor writing or listening skills as their top English learning difficulties. Based on the results, pedagogical and research implications were provided to conclude this study.

碩士
國立中正大學
成人及繼續教育所
97
WebQuest is an online inquiry-oriented activity with which learners can follow the specific learning steps and interact with Internet resources. The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of using WebQuest learning strategy on adult learning. This study also tried to explore the impacts of computer attitude, computer self-efficacy, and information seeking attitude on adult learning with the scaffolding of WebQuest. Twenty three adult students took part in the study and they were divided into two groups. After learning the course of constructing websites, ten students in the WebQuest group completed a task through a WebQuest-based website designed by the teacher, while the other thirteen students completed the same task performance without any treatment. The data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and researcher’s observation. The results show that students in the WebQuest group did not perform better than the control group. And their computer attitude, computer self-efficacy, and information seeking attitude did not predict their learning performance. However, for both groups, their information seeking attitude had been changed after the experiment. In the interviews, students thought the strategy of "Related Resources" in the WebQuest website was very helpful. They generally felt that the WebQuest learning strategy was interesting. Regarding the difficulties of using WebQuest , some students mentioned that computer proficiency would affect their performance, and might need more time to carry out the construction of the website. Finally, this research addresses the following suggestions. First, the WebQuest learning strategy can be used for adults. Second, it is suggested to teach adults how to search or seek information online before using the learning strategy of WebQuest. Future research can continue to explore more learning strategies of using WebQuest in adult learning.

碩士
國立屏東大學
應用英語學系碩士班
103
Previous literature has indicated that foreign language learning beliefs may have impact on its strategy use. This study aimed to examine such relationship. Gender differences were further probed. Two standardized questionnaires concerning the beliefs (BALLI, Horwitz, 1987) and the strategy use (SILL, Oxford, 1990) were administered to 322 college students (M = 155, F = 167) in southern Taiwan. Thirty-one students (M = 15, F = 16) were further interviewed to consolidate the data obtained from the questionnaires and to identify their English learning behaviors and difficulties. The important findings are : (a) in English beliefs, the college students reported having strong motivation in learning English, and to repeat and practice a lot was believed to be the best way of learning English; (b) the male and female learners were found having very different beliefs in the nature and aptitude of learning English; (c) they were also found to be moderate strategy users with the highest use in compensation strategies, and lowest use in social and affective strategies; (d) gender differences concerning strategy preferences were particularly found in their use of metacognitive and memory strategies with female superiority to the male learners; (e) beliefs about English learning were significantly correlated with the frequencies of strategy use (r = .63, p < .05), with much higher correlation found in the females (r = .77, p < .05) than in the male counterparts (r = .24, p < .05); (f) insufficient grammar and vocabulary knowledge presented the greatest challenge for these college students in learning English. Pedagogical and research implications of the results were provided to conclude this study.

博士
國立彰化師範大學
工業教育與技術學系
100
Faced with the impact of low birth rate, universities must raise their teaching quality in order to be competitive for recruiting students. Learning effectiveness thus becomes the focus. Learning motivation and strategy are assumed to be the major factors of influences on learning effectiveness. However, an integrated research of the causal relationship among learning motivation and strategy, learning effectiveness, and the dynamic effective condition is rarely established. This study is based on collected samples of digital design sophomores of Ling Tung University, including 60 effective fixed samples and their four time learning motivations and project grades. The methodology of Latent Growth Curve Modeling (LGM) is to analyze dynamic causal relationship of learning motivations and strategy. In addition, Motivation and Engagement Scale – University/College, MES-UC is used to measure learning motivation, teaching notes to observe and record learning strategy, and interactive multimedia products to evaluate the learning effectiveness. The results of this research are: 1. learning effectiveness is not direct linear effects but changes over time; 2. Adaptive motivation lead to adaptive engagement and maladaptive engagement and their growth trends consistent; 3. Anxiety, disengagement, and planning increase over time; 4. Learning motivation influence differently on the initiative learning and growth rate; 5 Various learning strategies contain similar growth trends only with different changing rate. The recommendations are: 1. Teachers should adopt formative assessment to realize the true learning effectiveness; 2. the teachers should motivate the learning and follow up the learning behaviors so as to supervise effectively; 3. The teachers should decrease the maladaptive motivations and reinforce adaptive engagement; 4. The teachers should make a good use of the features of learning motivations to advance students’ effective learning; 5. The evaluation should be considered specifically with cognition, emotion, and skills and also allow flexible time range, which can advance deep learning. For the future studies include: 1. expanding the sample numbers and learning subjects; 2. exploring the adaptiveness of the Motivation and Engagement Scale; 3. probing various studies of learning motivations and variables.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
應用華語文學系
105
This research aimed to understand the relationship between MOOCs users’learning situation and learning strategies. Learning situation includes background information, the obtain of certificate, the percentage of videos watched and the total number of times videos were watched. Learning strategies measures metacognitive strategy, time and environment management strategy and peer learning strategy, comparing the difference between gender, age and occupation. This research targeted “R series”, a MOOCs lesson launched by National Taiwan Normal University in 2015. Using questionnaire adapted from Duncan & McKeachie（2005）’s “Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire” （MSLQ）, translating it into Mandarin and designed in a manner that meets the actuation of the lesson. Validity is being audited before releasing to the MOOCs users. Research data is analyzed by statistic program to find the correlation between different background’s user and their learning situation and learning strategies and also the correlation of the user’s learning situation and learning strategies. Briefing the findings as below: 1. 15.4% of the learner in the R series obtained the certificate. Within, male learner noticeably exceeds female. 2. The obtained of the certificate has positive correlation with the percentage of the videos watched and the total number of times videos were watched. 3. Learner’s percentage of videos watched is slightly in correlation with metacognition strategy and time and environment management strategy. 4. Learner performed metacognition strategy significantly more than time and environment management strategy and peer learning strategy. With peer learning strategy used least. 5. In time and environment management strategy, male learners perform better than female learners. According to the result, due to the metacognition strategy is the learning strategy most used by learners. Therefore, would advise MOOCs lesson teachers and operators to add more metacognition elements into the lesson and also encourage the learners to do so to increase the percentage of the videos watched.

碩士
國立中正大學
資訊管理學系
93
Recently, many studies discuss the development of the e-Learning environment from the educational perspectives. However, learners’ psychological learning process in an e-Learning environment is generally neglected. An empirical study was conducted to examine the effect of learning strategy on learning satisfaction in an e-Learning environment. The learners of the National Chung Cheng University Web Education System (CCU) and the K12 Digital School (K12) are the two sample groups in our survey. The results indicate that: (1) learning motivation and the instructor’s characteristics have significant positive effects on the learning strategy; (2) instructor’s characteristics and learning strategy have significant positive effects on the learning satisfaction; (3) the model explains 48.9%(54.4%) and 46.6%(45.7%) of the variances on learning strategy and learning satisfaction of CCU(K12) group respectively; (4) no significant differences exist between the results of CCU and K12 groups. Implications from the findings are also provided.

碩士
國立中山大學
資訊管理學系研究所
103
Cognitive ability plays an important role in human’s daily life, which is strongly related to cognitive ability. Previous studies have shown that cognitive ability can be improved through training, which can further promote learning and work efficiency. According to embodied cognition, cognition is related to body. That is, motor system can affect cognition just as mind can affect bodily behavior, which stresses the importance of body to cognition. Through the process of body interacting with environment, cognition can be formed in brain. According to Technology-Mediated Learning approach, the application of technology in learning needs to take learner''s psychological learning process into account, including cognitive and information processing activities, motivation, interest, and cognitive structures. Technology with instructional strategy would affect learner’s psychological status and further affect learning performance. Thus, this study developed an adaptive memory training system that adjusts the training content based on learner’s attention and meditation levels and involves bodily motions during the cognitive training activities. To examine the effects of the system on cognitive ability performance, three study groups were designed, KUI(keyboard-mouse-based UI learning group), GUI(gesture-based UI learning group) and AUI(adaptive gesture-based UI learning group). Eighty eight voluntary participants equally assigned to these three groups. Memory performance of these groups were measured. Results showed that memory performance between the GUI and the KUI has no significant difference, and the AUI significantly outperformed the other groups. The finding showed that integrating gesture-based learning strategy and adaptive learning strategy on memory training performance is conducive to memory training performance.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
工業科技教育學系
96
The rapid growth of information in the WWW has resulted WebQuest to become more useful than ever. While teachers are lecturing with WebQuest , they are able to present the topic in different ways which has allowed the students to integrate with the situation and research for related knowledge. Through this type of learning and interaction with WebQuest, learners are able to obtain new information from the internet resources. However, it is hard to assess the efficiency of hands on teaching strategy, and the key point to a successful lesson teaching is student's self control. In order to have a decent quality lesson using WebQuest, a well organized Self-regulated Learning system should be provided and teachers should be monitoring students' behaviors at all times and giving appropriate guidance. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to construct a WebQuest Learning system with self-regulated learning. Samples were certain of six classes’ students at 6th grade of Elementary School in Taipei County, and were divided into experimental (three classes) and control (three classes) groups. The pretest-posttest nonequivalent-groups design study method was selected. The study used Children Self-regulated Degree Assessment as pretest and posttest, and Knowledge of Eco-Soap Comprehensive Test as achievement pretest and WebQuest as achievement posttest. The data is processed by statistics methods such as two way covariance (two-way ANCOVA), Correlation Coefficient, Independent-Samples T Test and Pair-Samples T Test etc. After analyzing, the conclusions are as follows: 1.The study used self-regulatory cycle to build the Self-regulated learning doctrine in WebQuest Learning system. 2.The achievement of experimental group of high self-regulated degree student is better than the achievement of experimental group of low self-regulated degree student and that of both control group. The achievement of experimental group of low self-regulated degree student is advanced up to achievement of control group of high self-regulated degree student. 3.After teaching experiment, the self-regulated degrees of experimental group and control group are not significant different. 4.By using sequential analysis to analyze self-regulated behavior, the acts of experimental group of high self-regulated degree are most accord with self-regulated behavior and are better than other group. The acts of experimental group of high self-regulated degree sometimes match with self-regulated behavior and which cause the achievement better than control group of low self-regulated degree students.

碩士
國立臺中教育大學
數位內容科技學系碩士班
98
Nowadays there are more and more people who use computers to finish their work and exchange information. On top of that, with many software applications in painting and education, new software comes out one after another. In the past, painting is subject to restrictions such as environment, materials and time, etc. Many works have consumed lots of resources in the initial study. With preparing many tools and materials, the teaching schedule is affected. With computer applications, physical materials and images are digitizing. Through practicing and teaching on computer, the material consuming can be reduced and the learning efficiency can be promoted. The study aims to use online painting technology into cooperative learning and teaching, and we confirm that cooperative learning is better than traditional teaching. Furthermore, we discuss learners’ acceptance about online painting collaborative learning environment by TAM (Technology Acceptance Model). Our results shows that learner’s learning performance upgrades significantly after he participated in online drawing. Moreover, PEU (Perceived Ease of Use) can positively influence PE (Perceived Usefulness). Also, PEU and PE both can predict their behavior intention for online painting environment. In learner’s individual factors such as gender, information ability, and experience of using painting tools do not have significantly differences. This means that the online painting and cooperative learning system environment can be accepted by any personal characteristics of learners, and this favors the promotion and application.

碩士
國立中正大學
資訊工程研究所
91
In conventional, mathematical learning curriculum is very difficult for students to individually solve mathematical problems when teachers can not support them. In this thesis, the internet technologies are integrated and a mathematical engine is developed in the math-learning website which consists of mathematical exam system and interactive learning system. The exam system includes a series of exam and videos of solving process for students to learn the skills of solving mathematics problems. The interactive learning system can help students to converse with teachers and their peers. Students can use the systems in the learning environment to obtain knowledge of mathematics. Therefore, students can discuss with teachers and their peers anytime anywhere through the learning activity of learning environment. Students can learn the ability of independent thinking and solving the problems through the active learning and cooperative learning.

碩士
國立臺南大學
資訊教育研究所教學碩士班
94
This study is to explore the effects of integrating learning cycle strategies on digital-learning contents by using the pre-test/post-test non-equivalent control group design. The subjects were 232 5th grade students and divided 115 students into experimental group to learn the integrating learning cycle strategies on digital-learning contents and other 117 students were control group to learn the unintegrating learning strategies on digital-learning contents. The results of this study were decided by two ways, science processing skill test and attitude toward science test and as followed: The experimental group had more points than control group in science processing skill test, meant the students who learned the integrating learning cycle strategies on digital-learning contents made the better performance than students who learned the unintegrating learning strategies on digital-learning contents. There was no obvious distinction between the experimental and control group, meant the students who learned the integrating learning cycle strategies on digital-learning contents did not make the increasing value for the attitude toward science test than students who learned the unintegrating learning strategies on digital-learning contents.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
資訊工程研究所
99
This study aimed to investigate whether competitive learning strategy could efficiently improve motivation and learning effect on the lab-base learning environment. The research sample is seventy-two students in Hsin Tien senior high School. Measured by achievement test scores analysis, whether competitive learning could impact on student learning, and to survey students’ idea from the questionnaire. Following quantitative and qualitative analysis, the research results show that using of competitive learning strategy or not using of competitive learning both could improve students’ learning effect; That is, competitive learning strategy could not improve student learning more. Whether is a competitive learning strategy, the impact of information science students learning attitude is no significant difference, but there is positive impact.

碩士
東吳大學
資訊科學系
96
The major purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of self-regulated learning strategy and learning style on e-learning effectiveness. This study used the undergraduate students who had ever participated in e-learning course as survey targets. This study collected 205 samples from online survey. After analyzed the data, we found that: 1. E-learning effectiveness was significantly different among self-regulated learning strategy groups, the high-scored group better than the middle-scored, and the middle-scored group better than the low-scored. 2. E-learning effectiveness was no significantly different among learning style groups. But when students used more self-regulated learning strategy to help them learn, the CE students had better improvement than the AC students, and the RO better than the AE. 3. When students used more self-regulated learning strategy to help them learn, the female students had better improvements than the male students.