Дисертації з теми "Indigenous training and learning"

L’éducation est un droit universellement proclamé dans la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’Homme (1948) et dans le Pacte international relatif aux droits économiques, sociaux et culturels (1966). Mais, même si ces textes juridiques et normatifs et ces engagements réitérés de la communauté internationale impulsent une nouvelle perception sociale, politique et philosophique de la démarche éducative, la question demeure entière. Comment atteindre au plus tôt l’objectif de l’inclusion cognitive et offrir, partout et à toutes les communautés, les mêmes chances d’accès au savoir ? Comment envisager l’éducation pour que les sociétés apprenantes soient ouvertes à tous, et pas seulement aux pays, aux familles et aux individus qui ont les moyens de s’offrir les savoirs pertinents et valorisés ? Autrement dit, comment éviter que l’éducation ne vienne accentuer les clivages entre des populations de plus en plus éduquées et des populations qui n’auraient qu’un accès limité à une éducation de qualité, et ne creuse ainsi cette fracture cognitive qui constitue le principal écueil d’une économie globale de la connaissance ? Notre problème est de repérer et d’analyser les facteurs d’exclusion et les potentialités des systèmes éducatifs formels à se renouveler afin de répondre à la question de l’exclusion en formation des communautés autochtones sans éducation scolaire. L’étude a été menée dans l’espace géographique du BSB Yamoussa au Cameroun et au Tchad. Elle a porté sur une série de trente-huit (38) entretiens ethnographie auprès de communautés autochtones et huit (8) entretiens menés avec les responsables du système éducatif formel (soit six au Cameroun et deux au Tchad). Notre travail de recherche s’appuie principalement sur l’analyse des politiques et stratégies éducatives, le discours des agents de l’éducation instituée, le discours engagé des acteurs issus des communautés autochtones et sur l’observation des pratiques locales. La thèse que nous défendons est que l’approche socioconstructiviste de l’éducation peut contribuer à l’émergence des « éducations À... » et constitue une opportunité d’inclusion cognitive, que l’éducation au développement durable nous permet de décrire et de comprendre. Travail en immersion à travers l’approche phénoménologique par l’expérience, la multiréférentialité sont les principes d’action qui vont interroger l’exclusion en formation des communautés autochtones sur le territoire du Complexe BSB Yamoussa
Education is a right universally proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). But even if these legal and standard-setting texts and the international community's repeated commitments give impetus to a new social, political and philosophical perception of the educational process, the question remains unanswered. How can we achieve the goal of cognitive inclusion as soon as possible and offer all communities everywhere the same opportunities for access to knowledge? How can education be designed to ensure that learning societies are open to all, and not just to those countries, families and individuals who can afford the relevant and valued knowledge? In other words, how can we prevent education from accentuating the divide between increasingly well-educated populations and populations with limited access to quality education, thereby widening the cognitive divide that is the main pitfall of a global knowledge economy? Our problem is to identify and analyse the factors of exclusion and the potential of formal education systems to renew themselves in order to address the issue of exclusion from training of indigenous communities without school education. The study was carried out in the geographical area of the Yamoussa BSB in Cameroon and Chad. It involved a series of thirty-eight (38) ethnographic interviews with indigenous communities and eight (8) interviews with those in charge of the formal education system (six in Cameroon and two in Chad). Our research is based mainly on the analysis of educational policies and strategies, the discourse of agents, the committed discourse of actors from indigenous communities and on the observation of local practices. Our thesis is that the socioconstructivist approach to education can contribute to the emergence of ‘education for...’ and provides an opportunity for cognitive inclusion, which education for sustainable development enables us to describe and understand. Immersive work using a phenomenological approach based on experience, and multi-referentiality are the principles of action that will examine the exclusion of indigenous communities in the BSB Yamoussa Complex

Este estudo teve por finalidade relatar as impressões dos professores formadores que atuaram no curso de licenciatura para professores indígenas do alto Solimões implantado pela Universidade do Estado do Amazonas no Centro de Formação de Professores Ticunas - Torü Nguepataü na comunidade de Filadélfia/Benjamim Constant/AM. E foi baseado em análise bibliográfica e observações in loco, como sujeito participante, de forma a compreender a Universidade indígena enquanto espaço organizacional. E em aplicação de questionários a educadores que atuaram nos módulos durante o desenvolvimento do curso. Sendo os sujeitos participantes da pesquisa dez professores pertencentes ao quadro regular do Centro de Estudos Superiores de Tabatinga/UEA. Estes foram selecionados em decorrência da experiência vivenciada no ensino superior regular, visto que há cotas naquela instituição para indígenas. Dentre os resultados foi verificado que a UEA estruturou um arcabouço para o desenvolvimento das atividades realizadas em Filadélfia, visto previa alimentação, água, e uma estrutura de dormitórios em Filadélfia para dar suporte às diferentes etnias que compunham o grupo de educandos. As atividades do curso foram realizadas durante os módulos, sendo integralizado em 05 anos, compreendendo dois períodos por ano. Em seus relatos os professores formadores elencaram que as principais dificuldades que interferem no ensino e aprendizagem citamse a não aceitação imediata da implantação de um curso superior em sua comunidade, a não compreensão da língua portuguesa, postura tímida, entonação de voz baixa e vocabulário dos textos distante da realidade indígena. No entanto, cabe ao professor ressignificar os conteúdos na constituição do conhecimento facilitando a aprendizagem dos mesmos, tornando-os pesquisadores de sua própria cultura. Com essa atitude aqueles educadores puderam participar da formação de duzentos e quatro indígenas nas licenciaturas Antropologia, Artes, Biologia, Educação Física, Letras e Matemática, marcando o início de um processo de transformação no quadro da educação na região do Alto Solimões.
The goal of this study is to report on the impressions of the professors who worked in the teaching program for indigenous teachers of the Alto Solimões implanted by the University of the State of Amazonas in the Torü Nguepataü Training Center of the Ticunas Teachers in the Fildelélfia/Benjaming Constant/AM community. It was based on bibliographic analysis and in loco observations so as to comprehend the indigenous university as an organizational space. It also is based on the application of questionnaires to the educators who worked on the modules during the development of the program. The subjects who participated in the research were ten professors of the regular faculty of the Center for Higher Studies of Tabatinga/UEA. These were chosen as a result of the experience they had in regular higher learning programs as there were quotas for indigenous people in that institution. Within the results it was observed that the UEA structured a framework for the development of the activities carried out in Filadélfia which provided food, water and a structure of dormitories in Fildadélfia to give support to the different ethnic groups which made up the group of students. The activities of the program were carried out in modules, being completed in 5 years, divided into two periods per year. In their reports the teachers listed that the main difficulties which interfere with teaching and learning were the immediate non acceptance of the implantation of a higher learning program in their community, not understanding the Portuguese language, timid posture, low intonation of the voice and vocabulary of the texts distant from the indigenous reality. However, it is up to the professor to re-signify the contents in the constitution of knowledge facilitating the learning process of the students, becoming researchers of their own culture. With this attitude those educators were able to participate in the training of two hundred and four indigenous people in the teaching programs in Anthropology, Art, Biology, Physical Education, Languages and Mathematics, marking a beginning in the process of transformation of the education framework in the region of Alto Solimões.

While many Marshallese learners thrive in school environments, far more have struggled to find academic success, both at home and abroad. While this has been documented by educational researchers for decades, there is a dearth of research about how Marshallese students learn most effectively. Examining culturally-sustaining educational models that have resulted in successful student outcomes in other indigenous groups can inform strategies to improve educational experiences for Marshallese students. Understanding how recognized Marshallese experts in a range of fields have successfully learned and passed on knowledge and skills is important to understanding how formal school environments can be shaped to most effectively support Marshallese student learning.

This study examines the learning and teaching experiences of recognized Marshallese holders of traditional and contemporary knowledge and skills, in order to document a Marshallese indigenous learning framework. This research used bwebwenato (talk story) as a research method, to learn from the experiences of ten Marshallese experts in knowledge and skills ranging from sewing to linguistics and from canoe-making to business.

Key findings include the four key components of a Marshallese indigenous learning framework: • Relationships • Motivation for Learning • Teaching Strategies • Extending Networks Teaching strategies are comprised of the commonalities among the way Marshallese have learned and mastered both traditional and contemporary skills. Chief among these are: introducing the topic at a young age, scaffolding, demonstrating and observing, learning through relevant practice, and correcting learners constructively. To a lesser extent, and in a context in which the learner and teacher are not related in a familial way, learning and teaching occurs through visual aids and asking instructor for assistance.

A lo largo de las últimas décadas se ha venido planteando la necesidad de problematizar la manera como se construye el conocimiento y de poner en evidencia las relaciones entre conocimiento y poder. Una valiosa innovación, que busca abrir la educación superior a la inclusión de nuevos actores y nuevas voces, ha sido la redefinición del equipo formador de algunos institutos superiores pedagógicos y universidades convencionales para incluir conocedores y conocedoras de los pueblos originarios. No obstante, en este artículo argumento que su participación en los procesos de formación docente no necesariamente garantiza el desarrollo de prácticas que hagan evidente la existencia de formas de pensar alternativas al conocimiento hegemónico ni las múltiples formas como se producen. Para que esto ocurra, es necesario tomar conciencia de la compleja relación entre conocimiento y poder, y analizar la forma como esta se expresa en la formación superior y, de manera concreta, en la institución formadora. Sustento este argumento en la experiencia del Programa de Formación de Maestros Bilingües de la Amazonía Peruana (Formabiap), al cual he acompañado a lo largo de los últimos veintinueve años, en mi experiencia directa y en sistematizaciones y evaluaciones internas y externas del programa.
During the last decades the need to question the way in which knowledge is constructed as well as its relation with power issues has come forward. An important innovation in some teacher training colleges and conventional universities is the redefinition of the teaching staff. They have included indigenous elders as an attempt to open higher education to the inclusion of new actors and new voices. However, in this article I argue that the participation of indigenous elders in teacher training processes, does not necessarily guarantee the development of practises that will highlight the existence of ways of thinking alternative to hegemonic knowledge nor the multiple ways in which knowledge is produced. For this to happen consciousness must be gained regarding the complex relations between knowledge and power, and the way in which it is expressed in higher education in general and in specific academic spaces. Drawing from the experience of the Teacher Training Programme of the Peruvian Amazon (Formabiap), which I have accompanied during the last 29 years, I sustain my argument with information gained through my direct experience with the Programme and from documents, studies and internal and external evaluations of its process.

This study focuses on the theme of technology-based Indigenous language revitalization and maintenance efforts by looking at new developments in mobile technology and how they are used within Indigenous communities for language learning and teaching. I assessed four mobile apps through the use of an evaluation rubric, online user reviews, and developer consultations. The findings from the assessments were then used to determine what essential themes are important when developing an effective and successful language application model (Appendix C), with the intention of developing a user-friendly template for use by other Indigenous communities. Three essential elements were found to be common among the four language applications assessed: (1) successful integration of interactive and digital media that provides a purposeful learning environment for the user; (2) accuracy and testing of both media and the user-interface, and; (3) successful usability and functionality of the mobile platform.

This dissertation shares the story of my research exploring the transformative possibilities of Indigenous Science Education for catalyzing the emergence of more equitable and sustainable ways of living. It is an educational response to humanitarian and ecological crises, and draws on the holistic frames of complexity and Indigenous knowledges to balance the dominance of the mechanistic worldview in which these crises are rooted, and that permeates school science. Weaving participatory action research and Indigenous research methodologies into an Indigenous Métissage, my research sought to decolonize and Indigenize school science, eventually focusing on sharing my own story of change and transformation. The research was conducted through four years of participation and relationship building in the local Indigenous education community in my hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, particularly through ceremony, and employed conversation and anecdotal narrative as primary methods. These experiences led me to suggest miskasowin, a Plains Cree term meaning “to find one’s centre,” as a goal of Indigenous Science Education, which I interpret as a process of “learning to relate,” fostering more relational worldviews and identities that connect us in multiple ways with the dynamic, living, patterns of nature. I describe my process of miskasowin as shaped by complexity and Indigenous knowledges and occurring through a “slow pedagogy of relations” that involved ceremony, story, land, and language, and that fostered a deeper sense of humility and reverence for life.
Education, Faculty of
Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of
Graduate

Learning has been viewed as a continuous lifelong activity recently. Facing the changing information, academic librarians have increasing responsibilities for his/her own learning. The idea of developing learning skills has become widespread as well. This paper reviews the literature on individual learning and organizational learning in the libraries. Issues concerning librarians as learners; librariansâ work-based learning; and academic libraries and learning organization are discussed.

La sclerosi multipla (SM) è una malattia autoimmune che colpisce il sistema nervoso centrale causando varie alterazioni organiche e funzionali. In particolare, una rilevante percentuale di pazienti sviluppa deficit in differenti domini cognitivi. Per limitare la progressione di tali deficit, team specialistici hanno ideato dei protocolli per la riabilitazione cognitiva. Per effettuare le sedute di riabilitazione, i pazienti devono recarsi in cliniche specializzate, necessitando dell'assistenza di personale qualificato e svolgendo gli esercizi tramite scrittura su carta. In seguito, si è iniziato un percorso verso la digitalizzazione di questo genere di esperienze. Un team multidisciplinare composto da ricercatori del DISI - Università di Bologna e da specialisti di vari centri italiani ha progettato un software, MS-Rehab, il cui scopo è fornire alle strutture sanitarie un sistema completo e di facile utilizzo specifico per la riabilitazione della SM. Tale software permette lo svolgimento di numerosi esercizi nei tre domini cognitivi: attenzione, memoria e funzioni esecutive. Questo lavoro di tesi si è concentrato sull'integrazione di metodi di Reinforcement Learning (RL) all'interno di MS-Rehab, allo scopo di realizzare un meccanismo per l'automatizzazione adattiva della difficoltà degli esercizi. Tale soluzione è inedita nell'ambito della riabilitazione cognitiva. Allo scopo di verificare se tale soluzione permettesse un’esperienza riabilitativa pari o superiore a quella fornita attualmente, è stato realizzato un esperimento basato sulla somministrazione ad individui selezionati di un test preliminare, atto a valutare il loro livello nelle funzioni cognitive di attenzione e memoria, seguito poi da un periodo di allenamento su MS-rehab, e infine da una nuova istanza del test iniziale. I risultati ottenuti sono incoraggianti: le prestazioni del test neuro-psicologico hanno evidenziato punteggi sensibilmente più alti per il gruppo che ha utilizzato la versione con RL.

The major thrust of the study was to explore the relationships between what a group of Algerian learners claimed to have learned from lessons and the interactive work in which, together with their Algerian teacher, they have participated. This opportunity is taken to examine, in the light of our data, some variables, claimed by classroom centered and second language acquisition studies to be, in some strong sense, relevant to second language development. These variables are: the impact of frequency of language use, the effect of the use of conversational adjustments (CAs) in the discourse, and the role of participation in the classroom. The analysis of the learners' responses has led also to the examination of the importance of the participants' topicalisation. Besides the investigation of the claims, the data was used to test the limits of direct classroom observation to provide answers as to how second language learning develops in the classroom. Two types of data were necessary for the investigation of the issue: Learners' specific claims collected through questionnaires, and detailed accounts of the learning opportunities obtained through systematic observation of 11 hours of audio- recorded naturally occurring classroom data. The latter set was supplemented with field notes taken by the observer and author of this study. The numerical information obtained through the analysis of the data was used in combination with a qualitative analysis of the classroom interaction to derive the following suggestive findings. The relationship between interaction and uptake was seen, in this study, to be far more complicated and indirect than the claims made by others in the field might have led us to believe. Frequency of the ttl teacher's use of language presented a rather low correlation with the students' learning outcomes. The use of CAs did not show an overall significant correlation with the learners' claims. Most of the coding schemes used to quantify learner input generation failed to show a correlation between interaction and progress. A weak correlation appeared between interaction and achievement. The examination of the theme of topicalisation has shown the learners, as discourse initiators, to be more influential than the teacher on what gets claimed to be learned in this specific instructional setting.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the use of computer-assisted learning with people who have severe and profound learning disabilities. Theories of learning are central to our understanding of learning disability and contributions from the cognitive and behavioural schools are reviewed and related to methods of education and training for people with learning disabilities. This framework provides a rationale for understanding the premises of computer-assisted learning. A review of the literature reveals a lack of evidence for the efficacy of computer-assisted learning. Evaluation studies to date appear to be characterised by a lack of a methodologically sound framework. An evaluation survey of software designated for use with people with severe learning disabilities is presented which finds that much educational software lacks a sound grounding in established and effective principles of learning and teaching, although its use is still supported by instructors. Thus, the need for empirical research investigating the use and efficacy of computer-assisted learning in learning disability is identified. Psychological models provide an appropriate method of such an inquiry, though methodological problems inherent in evaluative research with a special population appear to act as a barrier to the development of effective knowledge in the area. Within these limitations, three experiments are presented. The first compares conventional teaching with computer-assisted teaching. The computer was as effective as the teacher, though the conventional measures of achievement used were not sensitive to any differences between the two methods. The second developed a more finegrain analysis which revealed a difference between the quality of participants' interaction with computer and teacher instruction. Specifically, attentional behaviour was increased in the computer-taught condition, yet there was no concomitant increase in learning. The reliance of educational software on sensory reinforcement was postulated as underlying the ability of computer-assisted learning to maintain attention to the task. The third experiment directly addressed the ability of three different sensory reinforcers typical of those found in educational software to support learning a simple discrimination task. It was found that sensory reinforcers were not effective in supporting learning, though they did maintain attention and performance on the task. It is suggested that the multiple modalities used by software may interfere adversely with the coding of relevant information involved in the discrimination of stimulus dimensions and that this may account for the discrepancy between measures of performance and measures of learning on computer-assisted tasks.

This manual provides detailed guidance on creating, designing and developing e-learning and m-learning courses, materials and resources for instructors, faculty, staff, trainers and instructional designers who are new to e-learning design at colleges and universities, especially in Africa and in developing nations. It provides basic concepts and information on the processes and resources involved in e-learning development, and a step by step systematic guide on how to design and develop e-learning and m-learning courses and resources in universities and colleges. The information in this manual is based on consolidated instructional design models and learning theories and incorporates the designer’s experience in delivering e-learning and m-learning courses in development contexts.
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The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of cooperative learning method and individualistic learning method on learning outcomes and training reactions of adults participating an in-service training course. The study was conducted with 42 adults in pilot study and 92 in main study conducted in a government bank. Subjects were randomly assigned to two pilot study groups and four main study groups. Two different training programs were developed, one for individualistic learning, and the other for cooperative learning in order to test the effect of each method on learning outcomes and training reactions. The content and length of the training programs taught were held constant, and duration of training was totally 15 hours (3 hours in each of the five days). Participants, in all groups, learned the same topic of &ldquo
Structured On-the-Job Training&rdquo
and were taught by the same trainer. Cooperative learning groups worked on the exercises structured with the five basic elements of cooperative learning, and the individualistic learning groups worked as individually with the instructor calling on participants at random. Learning Outcomes Tests were administered at the end of each day to measure cognitive learning outcomes, which learners attained during the Training. Training Reactions Questionnaire was administered at the end of the Training. A significant difference between the cooperative learning group and the individualistic learning group was examined concerning learning outcomes as a result of ANCOVA by using the age as covariate. Subjects in the cooperative learning group had a significantly higher level of Learning Outcomes Test score than did those in the individualistic learning group. However, there was no significant difference between the cooperative learning groups and individualistic learning groups based on their training reactions. This study indicated that cooperative learning appears to be a method of instruction that is well suited to the needs of adult learners. Subjects of the study learned more through the cooperative learning method than individualistic learning method that was used. They responded to training as much positive as their counterparts learning in individualistic learning group. Results of the study suggest that structuring positive social interdependence in the classroom through cooperative learning procedures can be used effectively within adult education and specifically training settings.

Web-based training (WBT) and classroom instruction (CI) constitute two training media that are commonly employed by organizations. Although the effectiveness of one medium relative to the other depends on a number of factors (e.g., Sitzmann, Kraiger, Stewart, & Wisher, 2006) this study aims to address several methodological issues common in the extant media research and investigate the moderating role of training content complexity on the relationship between media and important training outcomes. Utilizing a 2x2 experimental design, one hundred forty-two undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of four training courses. Each training course involved a PowerPoint 2007 training tutorial in which trainees were presented with information about certain PowerPoint functions. The CI training courses included three instructors who presented course material to trainees in a predetermined time frame while the WBT courses gave trainees substantial control over their allocation of time during the training course. Results suggest that trainees in the CI courses spent substantially more time on course-related activities than those in the WBT courses, which led to less knowledge acquisition when trainees in the WBT course were presented with relatively complex training material. These findings suggest that although learner control is generally considered a positive aspect of WBT (e.g., Kinzie & Sullivan, 1989) it can lead to less time-on-task and ultimately less learning and less effective transfer when the training content is complex in nature. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.

One of the main problems in machine learning is to train a predictive model from training data and to make predictions on test data. Most predictive models are constructed under the assumption that the training data is governed by the exact same distribution which the model will later be exposed to. In practice, control over the data collection process is often imperfect. A typical scenario is when labels are collected by questionnaires and one does not have access to the test population. For example, parts of the test population are underrepresented in the survey, out of reach, or do not return the questionnaire. In many applications training data from the test distribution are scarce because they are difficult to obtain or very expensive. Data from auxiliary sources drawn from similar distributions are often cheaply available. This thesis centers around learning under differing training and test distributions and covers several problem settings with different assumptions on the relationship between training and test distributions-including multi-task learning and learning under covariate shift and sample selection bias. Several new models are derived that directly characterize the divergence between training and test distributions, without the intermediate step of estimating training and test distributions separately. The integral part of these models are rescaling weights that match the rescaled or resampled training distribution to the test distribution. Integrated models are studied where only one optimization problem needs to be solved for learning under differing distributions. With a two-step approximation to the integrated models almost any supervised learning algorithm can be adopted to biased training data. In case studies on spam filtering, HIV therapy screening, targeted advertising, and other applications the performance of the new models is compared to state-of-the-art reference methods.
Eines der wichtigsten Probleme im Maschinellen Lernen ist das Trainieren von Vorhersagemodellen aus Trainingsdaten und das Ableiten von Vorhersagen für Testdaten. Vorhersagemodelle basieren üblicherweise auf der Annahme, dass Trainingsdaten aus der gleichen Verteilung gezogen werden wie Testdaten. In der Praxis ist diese Annahme oft nicht erfüllt, zum Beispiel, wenn Trainingsdaten durch Fragebögen gesammelt werden. Hier steht meist nur eine verzerrte Zielpopulation zur Verfügung, denn Teile der Population können unterrepräsentiert sein, nicht erreichbar sein, oder ignorieren die Aufforderung zum Ausfüllen des Fragebogens. In vielen Anwendungen stehen nur sehr wenige Trainingsdaten aus der Testverteilung zur Verfügung, weil solche Daten teuer oder aufwändig zu sammeln sind. Daten aus alternativen Quellen, die aus ähnlichen Verteilungen gezogen werden, sind oft viel einfacher und günstiger zu beschaffen. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Lernen von Vorhersagemodellen aus Trainingsdaten, deren Verteilung sich von der Testverteilung unterscheidet. Es werden verschiedene Problemstellungen behandelt, die von unterschiedlichen Annahmen über die Beziehung zwischen Trainings- und Testverteilung ausgehen. Darunter fallen auch Multi-Task-Lernen und Lernen unter Covariate Shift und Sample Selection Bias. Es werden mehrere neue Modelle hergeleitet, die direkt den Unterschied zwischen Trainings- und Testverteilung charakterisieren, ohne dass eine einzelne Schätzung der Verteilungen nötig ist. Zentrale Bestandteile der Modelle sind Gewichtungsfaktoren, mit denen die Trainingsverteilung durch Umgewichtung auf die Testverteilung abgebildet wird. Es werden kombinierte Modelle zum Lernen mit verschiedenen Trainings- und Testverteilungen untersucht, für deren Schätzung nur ein einziges Optimierungsproblem gelöst werden muss. Die kombinierten Modelle können mit zwei Optimierungsschritten approximiert werden und dadurch kann fast jedes gängige Vorhersagemodell so erweitert werden, dass verzerrte Trainingsverteilungen korrigiert werden. In Fallstudien zu Email-Spam-Filterung, HIV-Therapieempfehlung, Zielgruppenmarketing und anderen Anwendungen werden die neuen Modelle mit Referenzmethoden verglichen.

Companies in the learning industry are in the business-to-business marketplace and the companies focus on providing services to their customers. In service businesses delivering on the brand promise is aligned with the services employees deliver to customers. The learning industry was used to research whether a commitment to internal brand training impacts business performance. Two of the initial hypotheses were supported; a learning orientation increases commitment to internal brand training and internal brand training increases employee commitment to the brand. The third hypothesis, employee brand commitment improves business performance, was not supported. A re-specified model found. * Learning orientation directly affects Brand Training and Employee Brand Commitment * Brand Training directly affects Employee Brand Commitment and Business Performance * Employee Brand Commitment directly affects Business Performance The largest direct effect on improved business performance is employee brand training, yet it is the area with the least number of hours of training in the organizations, which provides an opportunity for practitioners.

Background: Despite the importance of vaccination in disease prevention some people choose to remain unvaccinated. Nurses are influential in the choice to vaccinate. Considering the possibility of poor public understanding of vaccines and need for continued improvement in vaccination rates, it is essential for nurses to be knowledgeable and adept at addressing vaccine concerns. Vaccination education formally begins in nursing school. Objective: To identify nursing students' vaccine understanding by exploring information learned from formal online vaccine education specifically the Nursing Initiative Promoting Immunization Training Modules (NIP-IT). Design/Setting/Participants/Methods: Nursing students enrolled in a Community Health Nursing course were required to complete three online, self-study, modules entitled Vaccine Preventable Diseases, Vaccine Concerns, and Nursing Roles. The nursing students who completed these modules responded, in writing, to an open-ended prompt asking them to identify what new piece of information they learned. Responses gathered from 244 nursing students between September of 2016 and April of 2018 were categorized and grouped according to theme using a first and second cycle coding process. Responses containing more than one idea were considered separate responses and categorized accordingly totaling 273 responses. Results: Nursing student responses revealed five major themes regarding new information learned from the online modules: (1) barriers to vaccination; (2) components of vaccines; (3) the influence of nurses; (4) vaccine-preventable diseases; and (5) community immunity. Conclusion: Formal vaccine education is a critical component of a comprehensive nursing program. The nursing students in this study described information they learned when completing the NIP-IT modules, thus it was inferred the nursing students did not have a full understanding of vaccine concepts prior to viewing the modules. Formal nursing school vaccine education is essential in developing nurses capable of navigating vaccine issues and promoting health and preventing disease through vaccination advocacy.

South African School Curriculum, calls for the integration of IKS within school science (Department of Education, 2006, Department of Basic Education, 2011). Lightning is an area of high interest in the Eastern Cape and is used as the topic in this study which focuses on the integration of indigenous knowledge systems in science education. The study investigated the impact of an intervention strategy framed around the use of scientific argumentation and the integration of everyday knowledge and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) into the teaching of electrostatics at Grade Ten level. The impact focused on the teachers’ ability to implement the strategy, the electrostatics knowledge gained by learners, the learners’ argumentation ability, and the motivational and confidence levels of both teachers and learners. The sample comprised eight schools (the science teachers and their Grade Ten Physical Science learners) in the Uitenhage District of Education of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Qualitative data were generated via interviews, classroom observations, pre- and post test questionnaires with open-ended questions to evoke meaningful responses that could not be anticipated by the research, and argumentation writing frames for both teachers and learners. Limited quantitative data were generated via the argumentation writing frames and the more close-ended questionnaire questions. The findings of the teacher and learner argumentation frames and the teacher checklists which revealed that the intervention impacted positively on the teachers’ ability to integrate IKS into their teaching practice. The use indigenous knowledge as the context for argumentation appears to have been a more effective way of introducing the concept than doing so within a scientific context (which the learners found difficult). The intervention facilitated an enhanced level of understanding on lightning, and assisted with the creation of the “third space” and border crossing between IKS and western science. The individual interviews disclosed the teachers’ improved ability to integrate IKS, IKS improving the facilitation of the argumentation strategy, and their improved motivation and confidence.

Universal access to education has been an urgent concern since the establishment of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals or MDG. While aiming at ‘Education for All’, the MDG did not specify what kind of education nor how that education would be delivered. Besides the emphasis on access, apparent in the various attempts to ensure provision of education for the world’s poor, there has been also focus on material resources - especially a reliance on foreign aid. This author argues that what is needed in the long-term is a localized or Culturally Responsive approach that includes a consideration of the question of justice – particularly the issue of socio-economic inequality. The study evaluates some historical attempts towards Cultural Responsiveness (CR) in education, highlighting the efforts to filter curriculum content and teaching strategies through students’ cultural frames of reference. It eventually questions this curriculum-centred approach. Should CR not rather address the problem of elitism inherited via colonial education? The elite and the indigent, the study suggests, have become of different cultures. Hence part of the task of CR in education needs to be conceptualised as an elite-indigent dialogue. The CR dialogue is indeed of culture but must be framed in the context of justice, presented in terms of the author’s religious worldview, which includes eco-justice. To gather data on an elite-indigent interaction, the study adopts a decolonized methodology, as well as a qualitative approach employing unstructured interviews and open-ended questionnaires. Based on an interpretive case study of the relationship between an elite school in Africa and its indigenous-indigent host community, the study explores an alternative CR approach through the philosophical lens of Constructivism and the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP). The result is a three-fold learning hypothesis termed Costheanthropic Learning.

The increase in Indigenous participation in university courses in recent years has not been matched by an increase in graduation. In the mainstream university population, student success has been linked to approaches to learning, which are linked to conceptions of learning. This study investigates what conceptions of learning Indigenous students identify at the beginning of their university career. Thirty six students completed a 'Reflections on Learning Inventory' developed by Meyer (1995). Nine of these students were interviewed in depth about what they thought learning was and how they would go about it. The interview analysis for each of the nine students was compared with their individual inventory profile. It was anticipated that the use of such complementary methods would increase the validity of the findings, but this was not the case. The participants identified a range of conceptions comparable with those identified by mainstream students, but with a greater emphasis on understanding. However, the descriptions of how learning happens were undeveloped and not likely to result in the kind of learning described. The findings will be useful in making curricula decisions in an Indigenous university preparation course that encourage students to adopt successful strategies for learning. In addition, it will also be useful information for the participants themselves as they become reflective learners.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of General Linguistics and Modern Languages at the University Of Zululand, South Africa, 2015
The study explored strategies that can be used to promote the use of indigenous African languages for teaching and learning in the General Education and Training (GET) and (Further Education and Training (FET) phases of schooling in South Africa. The motivation for the study came from the constitutional recognition given to indigenous African languages as official languages in South Africa with the advent of democracy in 1994 as well as subsequent education related legislation that was passed to enact this constitutional milestone; namely the South African Schools Act of 1996 and the Language-in-Education Policy of 1997. In spite of the constitutional recognition and the accompanying legislation, the researcher observed that the provisions made in the Language-in-Education Policy were not interpreted and implemented in a uniform way in all South African schools. An exploration of existing research indicated that the issue of language in teaching and learning is not a new problem nor is it unique to South Africa. It is a problem that permeates almost the whole of the African continent. A large body of research has highlighted the value of a learner’s home language for teaching and learning, but, despite this evidence very little has been achieved in terms of promoting African languages in education across the continent. The study followed a qualitative case study approach in which isiZulu, one of the indigenous African languages was used as an example. Data for the study was collected in the province of KwaZulu-Natal which is one of the nine provinces that constitute South Africa where isiZulu is the predominant language. Schools which were used as data collection sites were purposively sampled from rural, peri-urban and urban based schools. Respondents were sampled from educators and learners in primary and secondary schools. For triangulation purposes data was also collected from specialists in institutions of higher learning within the KwaZulu-Natal province. Questionnaires, interviews and observations were used to collect data. The major findings of the study indicated that schools in all geographic dispensations do experience language related problems. In different ways responses indicated that the major cause of the language problem centered on the fact that the language of learning and teaching, namely English is not a home language for the majority of the learners. The language problem similarly affects teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning as well. In terms of strategies that can be used to promote the indigenous African languages for teaching and learning purposes, the study found that the four key areas which need to be the focus of any plan of promoting indigenous African languages are policy revision, language development, materials development and teacher training and development.

Data driven approaches to modeling time-series are important in a variety of applications from market prediction in economics to the simulation of robotic systems. However, traditional supervised machine learning techniques designed for i.i.d. data often perform poorly on these sequential problems. This thesis proposes that time series and sequential prediction, whether for forecasting, filtering, or reinforcement learning, can be effectively achieved by directly training recurrent prediction procedures rather then building generative probabilistic models. To this end, we introduce a new training algorithm for learned time-series models, Data as Demonstrator (DaD), that theoretically and empirically improves multi-step prediction performance on model classes such as recurrent neural networks, kernel regressors, and random forests. Additionally, experimental results indicate that DaD can accelerate model-based reinforcement learning. We next show that latent-state time-series models, where a sufficient state parametrization may be unknown, can be learned effectively in a supervised way using predictive representations derived from observations alone. Our approach, Predictive State Inference Machines (PSIMs), directly optimizes { through a DaD-style training procedure { the inference performance without local optima by identifying the recurrent hidden state as a predictive belief over statistics of future observations. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate that augmenting recurrent neural network architectures with Predictive-State Decoders (Psds), derived using the same objective optimized by PSIMs, improves both the performance and convergence for recurrent networks on probabilistic filtering, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning tasks. Fundamental to our learning framework is that the prediction of observable quantities is a lingua franca for building AI systems.

This thesis presents the results of an architectural study on the design of FPGA- based architectures for convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We have analyzed the memory access patterns of a Convolutional Neural Network (one of the biggest networks in the family of deep learning algorithms) by creating a trace of a well-known CNN architecture and by developing a trace-driven DRAM simulator. The simulator uses the traces to analyze the effect that different storage patterns and dissonance in speed between memory and processing element, can have on the CNN system. This insight is then used create an initial design for a layer architecture for the CNN using an FPGA platform. The FPGA is designed to have multiple parallel-executing units. We design a data layout for the on-chip memory of an FPGA such that we can increase parallelism in the design. As the number of these parallel units (and hence parallelism) depends on the memory layout of input and output, particularly if parallel read and write accesses can be scheduled or not. The on-chip memory layout minimizes access contention during the operation of parallel units. The result is an SoC (System on Chip) that acts as an accelerator and can have more number of parallel units than previous work. The improvement in design was also observed by comparing post synthesis loop latency tables between our design and one with a single unit design. This initial design can help in designing FPGAs targeted for deep learning algorithms that can compete with GPUs in terms of performance.

The dissertation is aimed at theoretical substantiation and framing of the conceptual model of librarian-educator’s training within the university study programme designed for the training of professional librarians. Pursuing the above-stated objective the need for librarians-educators in the learning society has been analysed and the concept, role and set of competences necessary for the development of information literacy have been defined; current situation in librarian-educator’s trainings has been identified coupling it with the needs of the learning society and the conceptual model of librarian-educator’s training has been framed; the validity of the conceptual model of librarian-educator’s training in real environment has been evaluated and practical application of the said model within the framework of the university study programme aimed at the training of professional librarians has been proposed. Taking into consideration the fact that in European Union and Lithuanian strategic documents development of information literacy skills is identified as an instrument for the development of the learning society, it can be stated that the training of librarians-educators is relevant and substantiated. Through the training of information literacy skills librarian-educator ensures the development of the learning society as he/she nurtures the ability to identify the nature and scope of required information, effectively access, critically evaluate and creatively use the... [to full text]
Disertacijoje siekiama teoriškai pagrįsti ir sukurti bibliotekininko edukatoriaus ugdymo koncepcinį modelį profesionalius bibliotekininkus rengiančioje aukštosios mokyklos studijų programoje. Tikslui pasiekti išanalizuotas bibliotekininko edukatoriaus poreikis besimokančioje visuomenėje bei apibrėžta bibliotekininko edukatoriaus samprata, vaidmuo, gebėjimų visuma ugdant informacinį raštingumą; nustatyta dabartinė bibliotekininkų edukatorių rengimo būklė, susiejant ją su besimokančios visuomenės poreikiais bei sukonstruotas bibliotekininko edukatoriaus ugdymo koncepcinis modelis; įvertintas bibliotekininko edukatoriaus ugdymo koncepcinio modelio validumas realioje aplinkoje ir pasiūlytas šio modelio praktinis taikymas profesionalius bibliotekininkus rengiančioje aukštosios mokyklos studijų programoje. Atsižvelgiant į tai, kad informacinio raštingumo gebėjimų ugdymas Europos Sąjungos ir Lietuvos strateginiuose dokumentuose yra vienas iš instrumentų įgyvendinant besimokančią visuomenę, bibliotekininko edukatoriaus ugdymas yra aktualus ir pagrįstas. Bibliotekininkas edukatorius įgyvendindamas visuomenės informacinio raštingumo gebėjimų ugdymą užtikrina besimokančios visuomenės plėtrą, nes ugdo gebėjimą nustatyti reikalingos informacijos pobūdį ir mastą, efektyviai ir veiksmingai pasiekti reikalingą informaciją, kritiškai ją vertinti bei kūrybiškai pasinaudoti savo asmeniniams, individualiai ar dirbant komandoje efektyviai naudotis informacija siekiant užsibrėžto tikslo ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability in Western countries and it is estimated that up to 70% of stroke survivors have a long-lasting disability of the upper limb. The purpose of this study was to examine plasticity at the neuronal level to distinguish between recovery and compensation and how this relates to recovery of arm movement at the behavioural and functional levels in five chronic stroke patients. Brain activation patterns associated with a pointing movement involving the whole arm were identified over two baselines and one post-training intervention evaluation. At each evaluation, a clinical physical and cognitive evaluation, and a recording of the movement kinematics was performed. Analysis was performed on three regions of interest (ROI) bilaterally; primary motor cortices (M1), premotor cortices (PMC) and the primary sensorimotor cortices (S1). A measure of signal intensity, the location of peak activation, and a measure of the contribution of each hemisphere in the ROIs was examined on a case-by-case basis. We found a trend for increased contralesional involvement, changes in signal strength in each ROI and shifts in the peak activation in many directions, which paralleled increases in motor functioning. Our results seem to suggest that contralesional involvement in our ROIs may be sustaining recovery in these patients, and we can confirm that the more the activation in the stroke brain returns to the activation seen in healthy individuals, the better the recovery. Although it is possible that an absolute distinction between recovery and compensation at the neuronal level cannot be made, our results show that recovery at the behavioural and functional levels are accompanied by changes in brain activity. A relationship must be determined if we are to venture into using fMRI as a tool to influence clinical decisions during recovery from stroke.

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-74).
During visual perception of complex objects, humans fixate on salient regions of a particular object, moving their gaze from one region to another in order to gain information about that object. The Bayesian Integrate and Shift (BIAS) model is a recently proposed model for learning visual object categories that is modeled after the process of human visual perception, integrating information from within and across fixations. Previous works have described preliminary evaluations of the BIAS model and demonstrated that it can learn new object categories from only a few examples. In this thesis, we introduce and evaluate improvements to the learning algorithm, demonstrate that the model benefits from using information from fixating on multiple regions of a particular object, evaluate the limitations of the model when learning different object categories, and assess the performance of the learning algorithm when objects are partially occluded.
by Michael Kuo.
M.Eng.

Master of Science
Department of Computing and Information Sciences
Mitchell Neilsen
The Biosecurity Research Institute (BRI) facility at Kansas State University is a huge biocontainment facility to conduct research on infectious diseases that pose a threat to plant, animal and human health. The BRI Training and Education Program is currently offline; i.e., classroom sessions are taken to provide this training and education. The objective behind taking up this project was to move the entire training and education module of Biosecurity Research Institute online, instead of having a classroom session for each training course, with an subject matter expert (SME) to come and take the training session. The aim is to develop an online training system which is synchronized with the information in the BRI Research Project Database. The employees will only have to login to the website, scroll through the list of courses they are enrolled in, take the courses, write the assignments/quizzes assigned to the course and then submit the quizzes. They can also self-enroll themselves into courses, if they are given the permission to do so. The SME’s of the courses can create new courses, upload the course materials, enroll users into the courses, and assign deadlines to course completion. Once the student submits the course quiz or assignments, the SME’s can grade the quiz, assign a final grade to the students, and give feedback on their performance. They can even reassign the course in case of poor performance by the student. The administrators of the website can assign roles to different personnel, give permissions according to need and requirement, add/delete courses, and change the appearance of the website. The project is to be done using a Learning Management System called Moodle. Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is an online learning management system designed to allow interaction between teachers and students. The back-end database used is SQL Server 2008 R2 and additional tools used are Adobe Presenter (with Microsoft Power Point 2010) to create the courses in SCORM format.

English language teaching has gone through a radical shift of emphasis in the last forty years, beginning with the communicative revolution in the mid-1970-s. The English language teachers are no longer all alone in their role as trainers as they are able to bring parts of the outside world to the classroom. Beyond the trainer’s “chalk and talk” and the trainees’ language and communication practice there is a range of materials in different media, which help the trainer to turn the Business English classroom into a varied learning/teaching environment. While printed text remains the most common training medium, both the ELT world and the non-ELT world give us access to a wide range of video and audio material, and increasingly multimedia.

A new trend in e-learning development is to have subject matter experts use rapid development tools to create training simulations. This type of training is called rapid e-learning simulation training. Though companies are using rapid development tools to create training quickly and cost effectively, there is little empirical research to indicate whether training created in this manner meets the needs of learners. The purpose of this study was to compare user responses to rapid e-learning simulation training to user responses receiving instructor-led training. The target population for this study was employees of a medium size private company in North America. Employees were divided into two groups and either received instructor-led training (comparison group) or received rapid e-learning simulation training (experimental group). The instrument used to measure user response was an adaptation of the technology acceptance model. Three variables were measured: training satisfaction, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness. Though no statistical significance was found between the two groups for training satisfaction and perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use was found to be statistically significant. Overall results fail to demonstrate the superiority of rapid e-learning simulation training over instructor-led training; however, this study indicates that rapid e-learning simulation training may be a viable substitute for classroom instruction based on user response.

A computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system can automatically analyze, quantify, and categorize medical images. Therefore, CAD systems are widely used in patient care. However, current CAD systems are expert-designed with limited capabilities. Recently, deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have achieved great success in automating many medical image interpretation such as lesion segmentation and medical disease classification. These successes are attributed to DCNN’s abilities to automatically learn useful image feature from a large number of annotated images. However, due to complicated data acquisition procedure and expensive manual annotation process, the availability of large and annotated medical image datasets is limited. Therefore, developing robust and accurate DCNN enabled CAD systems is challenging. The solution to this challenge lies in optimizing DCNN to learn the most relevant image features using a small dataset. In recent years, researchers used ‘transfer learning’ and ‘fine-tuning’ to alleviate the data availability problem in the medical domain. The underlying concept is to reuse image features learnt from large natural image datasets for medical image interpretation. These two strategies have successfully solved the insufficient data problem in various imaging modalities and disease-specific studies. Unfortunately, features transferred from the natural image are often too generic and less relevant for a specific medical image interpretation. As such, this thesis attempt to develop optimization methods for DCNN to sift relevant medical image features from irrelevant features. This thesis addresses the challenge in the domain of optimizing DCNN for medical image analysis. It enables DCNN to learn more relevant image features during transfer learning. The medical image segmentation and classification was focused on using different medical datasets. It was demonstrated that similarity-based criteria and feature filtering algorithm are important in finding the most relevant image features. The following contributions were introduced. Firstly, a novel algorithm optimization method named similarity-based sparse fine-tuning (SSF) was proposed. SSF can evaluate the correlation between features from convolutional layers and target dataset based on features. To evaluate SSF’s usefulness, the SSF was to optimize DCNN that can classify and segment three types of medical images. It showed that SSF can remove less relevant features learnt from natural images based on their similarities to the target medical dataset. Secondly, the assistant module (AM) was proposed. AM uses filtered layer-wise outputs extracted from a teacher DCNN. These outputs are fed to the training of a student DCNN, enabling the student to learn inter-class similarity information from the teacher. Thirdly, a TA-Net training approach was proposed. TA-Net can transfer the more relevant generic image features learnt from natural images to be used in interpreting medical images. In TA-Net, a student DCNN is trained with the most relevant class scores in soft labels generated by a teacher DCNN. These algorithms were evaluated based on public datasets and then compared to other common state-of-the-art methods. The results demonstrate that these proposed algorithms are more accurate and robust in both segmentation and classification when compared to other state-of-the-art methods.

This ethnographic study describes the intersection between politics and education, and between discourses and practice pertaining to indigeneity among the Manobo of Tagpalico in a highland area of the Philippines. The analysis reveals the interrogation of my own personal values as I came to understand what are held to be important values by the Manobo. For example, my idealistic perceptions of indigenous leaders were challenged by what I came to appreciate about their leadership skills relative to strategic and situated participation in the context of complex relations with various outsiders. This study further explains how adults and children actively engage in social processes through which they negotiate what counts among them as significant, appropriate knowledge and learning. It discusses how global discourses of education, literacy, and indigenous peoples are spoken about in ideal terms, but enacted differently in local practice. Salient in understanding this study is an appreciation of how the role of learning in practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) plays an important part in situated participation of actors in the educational enterprise. Against a background of local understanding about what it is important to know about – principally farming and other economic activities - and international discourses of indigeneity, schooling, literacy and development, children, parents, leaders, teachers, and nuns have appropriated and negotiated their notions of being ‘educated’ and ‘indigenous’ within a social space that is the school setting. As the Manobo explore what it means to be ‘educated’ in a politically volatile environment, they also learn to use their understanding of what it means to be ‘indigenous’ in order to negotiate their positionalities relative to external groups like the nuns, teachers, anthropologists, the military, guerrillas, and other non-Manobo groups.This study argues that learning to become educated transforms understanding of what it is to be a more valued person in the community, which altogether translates into significant differences in the children’s sense of self or personhood. Children are allowed to negotiate their social position within the family and the community through education but at the same time it also creates new forms of ‘inequality’ and ‘social separation’ (Froerer, 2011:695). For example, emerging forms of social differentiation in Tagpalico are evident in the processes through which more female members are becoming educated, bringing in a greater contribution to the family’s economic resources and thereby, developing a sense of choice about their lives as ‘individuals’ in charge, to a certain extent, over their own destinies.