Certain Operative Dentistry skill sets, such as bonding procedures, do not require a refined psychomotor skill level as much as a mastery of the concepts, placement and timing requirements of the bonding procedure. Procedures such as these may lend themselves well to the interactive media style that today's students are so familiar with in a computer module "gaming" format.

This study examined differences in the effects of three active-learning teaching strategies (case-based learning, simulation, and simulation with narrative pedagogy) on the outcomes of nursing student performance of intervention activities, performance retention of intervention activities, student satisfaction, self-confidence, and educational practice preferences. Engagement theory of student learning provided the overarching theoretical framework. An experimental posttest-only design incorporating two posttests (first performance and retention performance) was used with a sample of 74 nursing students at the University of Iowa College of Nursing. Students attended a cardiac lecture and completed a cardiac test prior to the teaching strategies. Students were randomly assigned and participated in one of the three active-learning teaching strategies and completed the Demographic Questionnaire, the Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Instrument, and the Educational Practices Questionnaire. Week 3 of the study, after the teaching strategies students participated in an individual performance demonstration in which they implemented nursing intervention activities in response to a cardiovascular scenario interacting with a high-fidelity mannequin. Week 8 of the study, another individual retention performance demonstration was completed by the students using a different case scenario. Both performance demonstrations were digitally recorded and scored using the Student Performance Demonstration Rubric. Two-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a significant main effect (within-subjects effect) of time, meaning that students in all three teaching strategy groups experienced improved performance of nursing interventions over time, from first performance to retention performance. No significant interaction effect (within-subjects) for time and teaching strategy groups were found. There was also no significant main effect (between-subjects effect) of teaching strategy groups (F 2, 71 = 2.33, p = .105). An exploratory one-way ANOVA on student's first performance rubric scores revealed results approaching significance for the three groups (F 2, 71 = 2.90, p = .06). The simulation with narrative pedagogy group had the highest first performance mean (72.74), followed by the case-based learning group mean (70.68), and finally the simulation group scored the lowest mean (66.16). One-way ANOVA revealed no significant differences across the groups for students' Satisfaction Total scores, Self-Confidence Total scores, and Presence and Importance of Educational Practices Total scores.

For this qualitative analysis, I analyzed observational and interview data from two middle school librarians setting up new active learning programs. I focused my research by analyzing the preliminary data gathered in field notes from observations at the different library sites to determine what programming resources the librarians were using. A secondary consideration was drawn from preliminary evidence, which indicated the librarians turned to many on and offline information resources, including the social curating site Pinterest. After gathering initial data from observations, I gathered additional data from two interviews: the first interview focused on where the librarians find information and the second interview focused on Pinterest. The data suggests networking within the school community is an essential feature of middle school libraries and should be considered when developing programs as a way to strengthen the librarian’s relationship with the school community, enabling the librarian to leverage other teachers’ knowledge. Also, the curating resources available through Pinterest provide a platform for finding ideas suitable for adapting to a specific library.

Learning a predictive model for a large scale real-world problem presents several challenges: the choice of a good feature set and a scalable machine learning algorithm with small generalization error. A support vector machine (SVM), based on statistical learning theory, obtains good generalization by restricting the capacity of its hypothesis space. A SVM outperforms classical learning algorithms on many benchmark data sets. Its excellent performance makes it the ideal choice for pattern recognition problems. However, training a SVM involves constrained quadratic programming, which leads to poor scalability. In this dissertation, we propose several methods to improve a SVM's scalability. The evaluation is done mainly in the context of a plankton recognition problem. One approach is called active learning, which selectively asks a domain expert to label a subset of examples from a lot of unlabeled data. Active learning minimizes the number of labeled examples needed to build an accurate model and reduces the human effort in manually labeling the data. We propose a new active learning method "Breaking Ties" (BT) for multi-class SVMs. After developing a probability model for multiple class SVMs, "BT" selectively labels examples for which the difference in probabilities between the predicted most likely class and second most likely class is smallest. This simple strategy required several times less labeled plankton images to reach a given recognition accuracy when compared to random sampling in our plankton recognition system. To speed up a SVM's training and prediction, we show how to apply bit reduction to compress the examples into several bins. Weights are assigned to different bins based on the number of examples in the bin. Treating each bin as a weighted example, a SVM builds a model using the reduced-set of weighted examples.

This study's purpose was to investigate the differences in the attitudes towards science, belief in science, and the understanding of the nature of science between pre-service elementary education majors who took a two-semester interdisciplinary course called "Science That Matters" (ISC 1004 & ISC 1005) with those pre-service elementary education majors who took two undergraduate science courses other than the two-semester interdisciplinary science course. The research method employed a 30-item survey (Moore & Foy, 1997) entitled Scientific Attitude Inventory II. The survey's participants were two classes who had taken both semesters of the interdisciplinary course (n = 23) compared with six classes of elementary education majors who had taken two other undergraduate science courses other than the two-semester interdisciplinary course (n = 46). A two-tailed t-test was used to examine the differences in the means between the two groups as to their attitudes towards science, belief in science and their understanding of the nature of science. The study concluded that among the survey participants, there was no statistical difference as to the three dependent variables (attitudes towards science, belief in science, and the understanding of the nature of science) when testing for the independent variable (participants who had taken the two-semester interdisciplinary course and those who took two different science courses). The author suggests the results provide evidence that the two-semester interdisciplinary course holds its own when compared to other elective science courses, based on this evaluation of the students' attitudes toward science, belief in science and the understanding of the nature of science. Continuing research concerning this interdisciplinary course is needed to accumulate data which may show an advantage for students who take this course in learning and appreciating science for future elementary education teachers.

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

This thesis presents a learning based approach for detecting classes of objects and patterns with variable image appearance but highly predictable image boundaries. It consists of two parts. In part one, we introduce our object and pattern detection approach using a concrete human face detection example. The approach first builds a distribution-based model of the target pattern class in an appropriate feature space to describe the target's variable image appearance. It then learns from examples a similarity measure for matching new patterns against the distribution-based target model. The approach makes few assumptions about the target pattern class and should therefore be fairly general, as long as the target class has predictable image boundaries. Because our object and pattern detection approach is very much learning-based, how well a system eventually performs depends heavily on the quality of training examples it receives. The second part of this thesis looks at how one can select high quality examples for function approximation learning tasks. We propose an {em active learning} formulation for function approximation, and show for three specific approximation function classes, that the active example selection strategy learns its target with fewer data samples than random sampling. We then simplify the original active learning formulation, and show how it leads to a tractable example selection paradigm, suitable for use in many object and pattern detection problems.

For many types of learners one can compute the statistically 'optimal' way to select data. We review how these techniques have been used with feedforward neural networks. We then show how the same principles may be used to select data for two alternative, statistically-based learning architectures: mixtures of Gaussians and locally weighted regression. While the techniques for neural networks are expensive and approximate, the techniques for mixtures of Gaussians and locally weighted regression are both efficient and accurate.

Previous studies have reported high attrition rates in large-enrollment science courses where teacher-centered instruction was prevalent. The scientific literature provides strong evidence that student-centered teaching, which involves extensive active learning, leads to deepened learning as the result of effective student engagement. Consequently, professional development initiatives have continually focused on assisting academics with the implementation of active learning. Generally, higher education institutions engage faculty in professional development through in-service workshops that facilitate learning new teaching techniques in a specific context. These workshops usually do not include self-scrutiny concerning teaching or do they provide continuous support for the implementation of strategies learned in the workshop. The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of a professional development program that consisted of a workshop focused on the implementation of active learning in large science courses and extended to include post-workshop activities, on participants’ enactment of teaching practices introduced in the workshop. More specifically, through a qualitative methodology and employing transformative learning theory, this work evaluated the influence of science instructors’ engagement in dialogue and critical self-reflection on their teaching approaches and practices. Engagement in critical reflection was facilitated through watching of teaching videotapes followed by participants’ engagement in dialogue about teaching with the researcher. Findings suggest that providing continuous post-workshop support by fostering engagement in critical self-reflection and dialogue, can lead to transformative learning about teaching. More specifically, participation in the program led to the transformation of teaching practices, while teaching approaches remained unchanged. While some obstacles to the transformation of teaching approaches were identified, major outcomes indicate that meaningful professional development can go far beyond learning how to use new teaching strategies through faculty engagement in critical reflection and dialogue on teaching.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Antioch University, 2006. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Mar. 27, 2007). Advisor: Alan Guskin, Ph.D. Keywords: late life learning, cognitive strategies, mental acuity, benefits of learning, lifespan learning, importance of learning. Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-227).