This dissertation aimed to investigate the use of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) as supportive materials in students&rsquo / learning process. In this respect, a MUVE named Quest Atlantis had been used by students in formal and informal learning settings. The students participated in a project that was developed based on an ecological problem resulted in fish decline in a river. As being a multiple case study research, data were collected from four separate cases, selected from three different places. Specifically, students&rsquo / and teachers&rsquo / perceptions were gathered, and challenges and barriers of implementations were investigated. The research results indicated that most of the students liked learning in environments using MUVEs. Besides being intrinsically motivated towards learning science topics, the students stated that it was a good way of reinforcing what they learn in school settings. Students found MUVEs effective learning environments as it allowed them to learn with active participation / rather than being taught as it usually happens in school context. The teachers had positive opinions about the use of MUVEs. They claimed that MUVEs have the potential to support students&rsquo / learning visually and let students learn through an inquiry-based learning approach with situated information to virtual settings. According to the teachers, MUVEs allowed various skill developments of the students and it created a dynamic learning environment in which students interacted and collaborated with each other. Even though students and teachers have positive perception about the use of MUVEs in learning setting, it is quite challenging to place these applications to learning settings, especially to formal ones. There are numerous challenges and barriers that can be faced with during the implementation process. In this research, the challenges and barriers are grouped under four main categories: 1) teacher related, 2) student related, 3) system related, and 4) technology related. When the implementation results of formal and informal learning setting were compared, it was possible to see how the very dimensions of formal learning settings made the innovative technology-based implementations difficult. On the other hand, informal learning settings were more flexible learning environments allowing a better learning experience for the students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the views of upper elementary mathematics teachers and students about the use of manipulatives in teaching and learning mathematics. This study is a qualitative case study. The participants of this study were four elementary mathematics teachers in a private school and their 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. The data were collected through one-to-one interviews, observations and analyzing documents consisting of annual plan, daily plan, notebooks of students, and the field note that the researcher kept throughout the study. This study revealed that although all the teachers advocate the use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics, they use traditional teaching techniques in their classes. They mentioned different factors affecting their use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics such as not knowing how to use them, grade level, availability of materials, time constraints, students&rsquo / reactions (seeing them as a toy or not being accustomed to them), school administration, classroom management, not finding materials appropriate for the subject being taught and classroom size. In fact, these are the factors that are seen on the surface level. This study indicated that even when teachers are provided with training about the use of manipulatives, supported by the school administration, and provided with manipulatives, the use of manipulatives is largely determined by their views / beliefs about the nature of mathematics, how students can learn mathematics, the effect of manipulatives and their knowledge in using them. Students seemed to like learning by using manipulatives. When conditions were arranged for learning, they were willing to learn through manipulatives.

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of context based instruction over traditionally designed chemistry instruction on 9th grade students&rsquo / understanding of cleaning materials topic and their attitudes toward environment. Moreover students&rsquo / science process skills were measured for using as a covariate. Participants were 222 ninth grade students from eight classes in two different types of high schools in Ankara. Experimental group students were instructed with context based instruction and control group students were instructed with traditionally designed instruction through five weeks. Cleaning Materials Achievement Test and Attitudes toward Environment Scale were used as pre and post tests. Science Process Skills test was used only as a pretest. MANCOVA technique was used as a statistical analysis procedure. According to statistical analyses, there was a significant mean difference with respect to context based instruction and traditionally designed instruction on cleaning materials topic in favor of experimental group and no significant difference with respect to attitude toward environment. There was no significant mean difference with respect to school type in both Cleaning Materials Achievement Test scores and Attitude toward Environment Scale scores. Beside, science process skills were a strong predictor for understanding the cleaning materials topic. Four focus groups were conducted separately regarding the students&rsquo / career choices after the treatment to have an idea over the quality of the instruction in experimental group. Focus group results revealed that students were appreciated and more motivated with context based instructional design.

For over four hundred years historians and theologians have been unable to come to a consensus as to where Johann Arndt (1555-1621) fits on the spectrum of orthodoxy in the Lutheran church, what age he best represented, and how he should be understood. Arndt has been credited with reviving medieval mysticism, as being a subversive innovator within the Lutheran church, and as being the father of Pietism. All of this confusion seems to come from the variegated nature of his work. Arndt was willing and able to borrow from a variety of traditions as he sought to revive the church of the Reformation on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. This work is an investigation into the private world of Arndt through his correspondence as he wrote to individuals with varying theological temperaments. In a sense this thesis follows the pioneering work of Friedrich Arndt, who attempted in 1838 to investigate Arndt’s self-understanding on the basis of his correspondence; his work, however, was severely limited by the fact that only ten letters were known at the time. The Verzeichnis der gedruckten Briefe deutscher Autoren des 17. Jahrhunderts published in 2002 listed twenty-three known letters of Arndt. For my research and using the footnotes and appendices of secondary literature on Arndt and with help from the Forschungsbibliothek in Gotha, I have collected fifty-two letters written by Arndt. This work is the first to treat the letters exhaustively and proposes to present a fuller biographical picture of Arndt and to explore his self-understanding as a prophet of spiritual renewal in the Lutheran church.

The aims of this study were to investigate the effects of drama based instruction on seventh grade students&rsquo / achievement on geometry (angles and polygons / circle and cylinder), retention of achievement, van Hiele geometric thinking level, attitudes toward mathematics and attitudes toward geometry compared to the traditional teaching / to get the students&rsquo / views related to the effects of drama based instruction on their learning, friendship relations, awareness of themselves, and the role of teacher and students / and to get the view of teacher who was present in the classroom during the treatment on drama based instruction. The study was conducted on three seventh grade classes from a public school in the 2002-2003 academic year, lasting 30 lesson hours (seven and a half week). v The data were collected through angles and polygons / and circle and cylinder achievement tests, the van Hiele geometric thinking level test, mathematics and geometry attitude scale, and interviews. The quantitative analyses were carried out by using two multivariate covariance analyses. The results revealed that drama based instruction had a significant effect on students&rsquo / angles and polygons achievement, circle and cylinder achievement, retention of these achievement, van Hiele geometric thinking level, mathematics attitude, and geometry attitude compared to the traditional teaching. According to the interview responses of the experimental group students and the classroom teacher, significantly better performance of the experimental group students was attributable to the potential of the drama based instruction to make learning easy and understanding better by / supporting active involvement, creating collaborative studying environment, giving chance to improvise daily life examples, giving opportunity to communicate, providing meaningful learning, supporting long-lasting learning and providing selfawareness.

The purposes of the study were / to investigate the effect of type of high school on spatial ability, to investigate the relationships between students&rsquo / mathematics achievements, logical thinking abilities and their spatial abilities and to investigate the effect of technical drawing course on the development of students&rsquo / spatial abilities. The study was conducted in Ankara with 251 9th-grade students who enrolled to general, Anatolian, foreign language, commercial vocational and industrial vocational high schools. Two measuring instruments were utilized: Spatial Ability Tests and Group Test of Logical Thinking. Spatial Ability Tests, which were developed by Ekstrom, consist of card rotation, cube comparison tests measuring the spatial orientation ability and paper folding and surface development tests measuring the spatial visualization ability. The tests were translated in to Turkish by Delialioglu, (1996). Group Test of Logical Thinking was developed by Roadrangka, Yeany, and Padilla and a Turkish version of GALT was developed by Aksu, Beberoglu and Payko&ccedil / (1990). In order to analyze the obtained data, one way ANOVA, correlation analysis and t-test were used. The results of the study indicated that / there is no significant effect of type of high school on students&rsquo / spatial abilities / there is a significant positive relationship between spatial ability and mathematics achievement / there is a significant positive relationship between spatial ability and logical thinking ability / there is a significant positive relationship between spatial ability and technical drawing achievement / and there is a significant development in the students&rsquo / spatial abilities of the students in the technical drawing course.

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of analogy-enhanced instruction on students&rsquo / achievement in function and attitudes toward mathematics. The study was conducted with 63 ninth grade students in one of the public high schools in Konya, Turkey during Spring 2005 semester. The experimental group received instruction with analogy-enhanced model. The control group received instruction with traditional method. The matching-only pre-test- post-test control group design was used in the study. The following measuring instruments were used to collect data: The Function Achievement Test, Mathematics Attitude Scale and open ended questions. The data of the present study were analyzed by using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and paired t-test. Results of the study indicated that: (1) There was a significant mean difference between students received instruction with analogy-enhanced models and those received instruction with traditional method in terms of the function achievement, (2) there was no significant mean difference between students received instruction with analogy-enhanced models and those received instruction with traditional method in terms of attitudes toward mathematics, (3) there was a significant mean difference between gained scores of students received instruction with analogy-enhanced method and those received instruction with traditional method in terms of attitudes toward mathematics.

Photochrome Schalter (Photoschalter), wie Diarylethene (DAEs), Dihydropyrole (DHPs), Azobenzole und Spiropyrane sind für die Entwicklung von photoschaltbaren multifunktionalen Geräten interessant. Daher beschäftigt sich ein Großteil dieser Dissertation mit der Untersuchung der grundlegenden elektronischen Eigenschaften von Photoschaltern, u.a. Dipolmoment und Grenzniveaus. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt auf der dynamischen Anpassung der Energienieveaus zwischen den (in)organischen Halbleitern und den Photoschaltern mit externen Stimuli (z. B. Licht, Wärmeenergie). Zuerst werden die elektronischen Änderungen von DAE-Photoschaltern bei Lichtbeleuchtung durch direkt und inverse Photoemissionsspektroskopie und Dichtefunktionaltheorie nachgewiesen. Beispielsweise zeigt das höchste besetzte Molekülorbital (HOMO) von DAE-Dünnfilmen eine Differenz von 800 meV zwischen ihren beiden isomeren Zuständen. Mit diesen lichtgesteuerten Eigenschaften werden dann DAE-Moleküle verwendet, um die elektronische Struktur an Grenzflächen mit organischen und anorganischen Komponenten (z. B. P3HT, N2200, ZnO, ITO) zu modifizieren. Es wird gezeigt, dass DAE-Moleküle bei Lichtbeleuchtung die Energieniveauanordnung an der Grenzfläche um Hunderte von meV dynamisch und reversibel ändern können. Um Erkenntnisse über mehrere stimulationsinduzierte Schaltungen, z. B. Licht und Wärme, zu erhalten, wird hierfür ein Photoschalter Pyridyl-DHP (Py-DHP) vom T-Typ synthetisiert, da Py-DHP mit Licht in eine Richtung geschaltet und mit Wärmebehandlung zurückgeschaltet werden kann. Es hat sich herausgestellt, dass die schaltinduzierten elektronischen Änderungen durch ein Fermi-Level-Pinning aufgrund der Anwesenheit von molekularen Dipolen beeinflusst werden. Diese Studien bieten eine solide Grundlage für die Verwendung von Photoschaltern zur dynamischen Änderung der Energielevelanordnung und werden die Entwicklung verbesserter photoschaltbarer (opto-)elektronischer Geräte unterstützen. / Photochromic switches (photoswitches) such as diarylethenes (DAEs), dihydropyrenes (DHPs), azobenzenes and spiropyrans have attracted increasing interest for the development of photoswitchable multifunctional devices. The present work of this thesis is to investigate the fundamental electronic properties of photoswitches, i.e., dipole moment, and frontier levels. Particular focus is on dynamically tuning the frontier level alignment between the (in)organic semiconductors and photoswitches with external stimuli (e.g., light, heat). First, the electronic changes of DAE photoswitches upon light illumination are evidenced by direct and inverse photoemission spectroscopy together with density functional theory calculations, for example, the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of DAE thin films exhibits an 800 meV difference between their two isomeric states. With these light-controlled properties, DAE molecules are then employed to modify the electronic structure at interfaces with organic and inorganic components (e.g., P3HT, N2200, ZnO, ITO). It is proved that upon light illumination DAE molecules can indeed dynamically and reversibly switch the interface frontier level alignment by hundreds of meV. To obtain knowledge on multiple stimuli-induced switchings, e.g., light and heat, a T-type photoswitch pyridyl-DHP (Py-DHP) is synthesized for this purpose, since Py-DHP can be switched with light in one direction and switched back with heat treatment. It is found that, the switching-induced electronic changes are impacted by a Fermi level pinning due to the presence of molecular dipoles. These studies provide a solid basis for the use of photoswitches for dynamically manipulating energy level alignment, and will aid the development of improved photoswitchable (opto-)electronic devices.

La regularización ortográfica del castellano se inicia en la época del reinado de Alfonso X en el s.XIII y tiene como consecuencia lo que tradicionalmente se ha denominado como la norma alfonsí. El objeto de la presente investigación es evaluar la continuación de esta norma gráfica en la representación de las grafías sibilantes de dos textos: la primera parte del Flos Sanctorum de Alonso de Villegas, impreso en Toledo (España); y el Libro de la vida y milagros de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo (La Vita Christi), impreso en Juli (Perú) de Ludovico Bertonio. Para esto, es importante reconocer la labor normalizadora de la imprenta: la búsqueda de uniformidad en los usos gráficos de los textos. Es necesario entonces rescatar el origen toledano del texto de Villegas, que representa -según nuestra hipótesis- rezagos del centro histórico normativo y, por lo tanto, mantiene la norma impuesta siglo atrás por el rey sabio. Por otro lado, es importante considerar si esta norma se conserva en La Vita Christi de Bertonio, que es la traducción de la primera parte del Flos Sanctorum de Villegas. Se realizará un análisis de la variación interna de las grafías sibilantes de cada obra para evaluar la continuación de esta norma en la imprenta toledana y la imprenta peruana (a partir del caso de Juli). Al mismo tiempo, esto nos permitirá ver si la desviación de la norma alfonsí es hecho revelador de alguno de los dos cambios más importantes que sufrió el paradigma inicial de seis sibilantes: el ensordecimiento de los pares sonoros y la fricatización de las sibilantes africadas.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished