No description available.

No description available.

Because distance learning (DL) programs provide students educational opportunities with minimal restrictions on location and/or time, the number of institutions that provide DL courses has grown at a tremendous rate over recent years and is projected to increase in the future. Foreign language courses through DL, however, have been criticized for limited opportunities to engage in speaking activities and to develop oral proficiency. While previous research consistently reports no significant differences, the focus of those studies has been the comparison of outcomes assessments between face-to-face and DL courses. This study analyzed the types of interactions that occurred in the virtual foreign language classroom while using asynchronous audio-based CMC, known as voice boards, to learn Spanish at a rural community college located in Southwestern Virginia, Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC). An embedded multiple-case study design and computer mediated discourse analysis were applied with activity theory to analyze the interactions holistically. During a 10-year period, the amount of students enrolled in on-line only courses or in the virtual campus at PHCC increased from 97 students in the summer 2001 session to 655 students in the summer 2011 session. These results showed a 575.3% (n = 558) increase of students enrolled in DL. Only 37.7% (n = 507) of the students attending the community college during the summer 2011 session were enrolled in only FTF courses. These increases were a result of students' needs to pursue degrees of higher education while working and taking care of family and other personal obligations. Students enrolled in the SPA 101: Beginning Spanish I course explained that employment schedules, family obligations, and financial reasons motivated their decisions for taking a DL course. When completing audio-based discussion board assignments, experimentation with the language was observed and participants took advantage of opportunities to listen to recordings multiple times before submitting responses. Forty-seven percent of the utterances were categorized as containing questions to encourage continued discussion. However, lexical chains for those utterances showed that only 11.6% (n = 11) of the utterances followed a three link chain of initial post-response-response (IRR) that represented extended conversations in the voice boards. / Ph. D.

Distance learning is a fast-growing method of delivery in higher education. The literature about distance learning is rich with information about learning and course design. However, there is little information about the non-academic support services that universities can and should provide for distance students. This study addresses that gap in the literature by exploring the non-academic needs of distance learners. Students and faculty members involved with distance learning at four-year institutions in the Fall of 2000 were asked to identify what, if any, needs distance learners have outside the classroom. Specifically, an original web-based survey was designed to identify 34 possible non-academic needs. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of those needs in the success of distance learners, the accessibility of services to meet those needs, and when the needs present themselves to distance learners. Findings indicate that the non-academic needs of distance learners are very similar to those of campus-based students. The most important needs are basic: information about the institution and program, a way to purchase books, a contact person at the institution, and academic advising. More traditional developmental needs such as leadership development, experience with diversity, and career services were important to respondents pursuing Bachelors degrees. Services to meet the needs are currently not easily accessible. Most needs present themselves throughout a student's academic career. Institutions involved with distance learning should consider addressing basic needs first. If an institution targets a large number of students pursuing Bachelor degrees at a distance, they might also add services to meet more traditional developmental needs. / Ph. D.

This study investigated self-regulated learning behaviors and their relationships with academic performance in web-based courses. The participants (n = 106) were distance learners taking humanities and technical coursed offered by a community college in Virginia. Data was collected using 28 items from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and 5 demographically related items. Data analysis included factor analyses, multivariate analysis of variance, and regression analyses. The employment of self-regulated learning behaviors differed between humanities and technical courses (p = .0138). Time and study environment management (p = .0009) and intrinsic goal orientation (p = .0373) categories reported significant findings in their relationship to academic performance. The factors affiliated with time and study environment management and intrinsic goal orientation were used as predictors in the development of a mathematical formula used to predict academic success in a web-based course. These predictors explain 21 percent of the variance in the academic success rating calculated using the mathematical formula developed from this study. / Ph. D.

No description available.

No description available.

When faced with market risk for investments and portfolios, people often calculate the risk measure, which is a real number mapping to each random payoff. There are many ways to quantify the potential risk, among which the most important input is the features from future performance. Future distributions are unknown and thus always estimated from historical Profit and Loss (P&L) distributions. However, past data may not be appropriate for estimating the future; risk measures generated from single historical distributions can be subject to error. To overcome these shortcomings, one natural way implemented is to identify and categorize similar assets whose Profit and Loss distributions can be used as alternative scenarios. In practice, one of the most common and intuitive categorizations is sector, based on industry. It is widely agreed that companies in the same sector share the same, or related, business types and operating characteristics. But in the field of risk management, sector-based categorization does not necessarily mean assets are grouped in terms of their risk profiles, and we show that risk measures in the same sector tend to have large variation. Although improved risk measures related to the distribution ambiguity has been discussed at length, we seek to develop a more risk-oriented categorization by providing a new clustering approach. Furthermore, our method can better inform us of the potential risk and the extreme worst-case scenario within the same category.

The role of practical work is crucial to the learning and teaching of science (Woolnough and Allsop, 1985). Depending on the design of the activity it can become a powerful tool for making concrete a subject which is abstract and inherently difficult to understand. The current practice in developing countries (including South Africa), for providing practical work experience for learners studying science through distance education, is a week long session where learners are bombarded with activities after activities the whole day long. This divorces the activity from the theory and thus one aim of practical work, the understanding of a particular theory or concept is not achieved. The microscience system, developed at RADMASTE (Research and Development in Maths, Science and Technology Education) Centre, Wits University, may be an answer to the problem mentioned above. This system uses small-scale equipment which is cost-effective, versatile, convenient and robust, and demands no special infrastructure. Working on a small scale is now the norm in many branches of science: it costs less, it is safer, there is less damage to the environment, etc. It is accompanied with worksheets (written using a guided enquiry approach) as well as chemicals that would be required for the activities. To see its effectiveness as a tool for providing practical work experience for students studying science through distance education, it was used by educators who had registered for the ACE (Advanced Certificate in Education) for FET (Further Education and Training) level program at Wits University. This is an inservice training course for educators, most of whom qualified with a 3 year educators diploma from an educators training college. The ACE program uses a mixed delivery approach. That is, 4 contact sessions (usually 5 days each, during the school holidays) are spaced throughout the year where educators come to the workshop. During the workshop, course workbook, assignments and portfolio activities for a particular course are given to the educators. For the rest of the period educators are required to work independently or with fellow students. The portfolio tasks and assignments are sent by post to the University by the educators, whereupon they are marked and resent to educators. During each year educators complete 3 specialisation courses (either in Maths or Science) and 2 education courses. The microchemistry kit (part of the microscience system) was used by educators at home for performing practical work activities for the science specialization course entitled, Chemical Reactions. The current research aims to report on the use of the RADMASTE Advanced microchemistry kit by two groups of secondary school educators at home during their independent study. A questionnaire was designed to look at how the educators managed to use the kit on their own. To gain insight into their experiences an in-depth interview was conducted by visiting four educators at home when they were performing the practical activity. Another questionnaire was designed to ascertain the attitude of these educators towards practical work. A questionnaire was also answered to gain understanding of what the educators learnt after using the kit at home. The results obtained for this study will inform the future for providing practical work experience for students studying science through distance education.

Spline smoothing is a popular technique for creating maps of a spatial phenomenon. Most smoothers use the Euclidean metric to measure the distance between data. This approach is flawed since the distances between points in the domain as experienced by the objects within the domain are rarely Euclidean. For example, the movements of animals and people are subject to both physical and political boundaries (respectively) which must be navigated. Measuring distances between the objects using the incorrect (Euclidean) metric leads to incorrect inference. The first part of this thesis develops a finite area smoother which does not su↵er from this problem when the shape of the area is complex. It begins by rejecting the use of the Schwarz-Christo↵el transform as a method for morphing complex domains due to its squashing of space. From there a method based on preserving within-area distances using multidimensional scaling is developed. High dimensional projections of the data are necessary to avoid a loss of ordering in the points. To smooth reliably in high dimensions Duchon splines are used. The model developed rivals the current best finite area method in prediction error terms and fits easily into larger models. Finally, the utility of projection methods to smooth general distances is explored. The second part of the thesis concerns distance sampling, a widely used set of methods for estimating the abundance of biological populations. The work presented here introduces mixture formulation for the detection function used to model the probability of detection. The use of mixture models leads to flexible but monotonic detection functions, avoiding the unrealistic shapes which conventional methods are prone to. These new models are then applied to several existing, problematic data sets.