Students’ interactions can be an influential component of students’ success in an interactive learning environment. From a participation perspective, learning is viewed in terms of how students transform their participation. However, many of the seminal papers discussing the participationist framework are vague on specific details about what student participation really looks like on a fine-grained scale. As part of a large project to understand the role of student participation in learning, this study gathered data that quantified students’ participation in three broad areas of two student-centered introductory calculus-based physics classes structured around the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) philosophy. These three broad areas of classes were in-class learning activities, class review sessions that happened at the beginning of every class, and the informal learning community that formed outside of class time. Using video data, classroom observations, and students’ self-reported social network data, this study quantified students’ participation in these three aspects of the class throughout two semesters. The relationship between behaviors of students’ engagement in various settings of an active learning environment and (a) their conceptual understanding (measured by FCI gain) and (b) academic success in the courses as measured by exam scores and scores on out-of-class assignments were investigated. The results from the analysis of the student interaction in the learning process show that three class components, viz. the Review Session, Learning Activities, and Informal Learning Community, play distinct roles in learning. Students who come in the class with better content knowledge do not necessarily participate more in the learning activities of active learning classrooms. Learning Communities serve as a “support network” for students to finish assignments and help students to pass the course. Group discussions, which are facilitated by students themselves, better help students in gaining conceptual understanding. Since patterns of students’ participation do not change significantly over time, instructors should try to ensure greater participation by incorporating different learning activities in the active learning classroom.

This research study has emerged as a result of my concern regarding the apparent low self-efficacy amongst initial teacher education students in my mathematics education classes. It also reflects a reported renewed interest in values, and the promotion of excellence in education. The effects of a values-based approach to mathematics education towards improving students’ self-efficacy and promoting excellence have been investigated, grounded within my ontology of excellence in mathematics education, which incorporates the values of respect, fairness, accountability, honesty and compassion. An inquiry-based teaching and learning approach formed the framework within which the study took place. Notions of ‘new scholarship’, premised on the view that teaching is about engagement in participatory learning, and the development of communities of creative students, provided the theoretical framework. Both quantitative and qualitative data gathering methods were used. Data-collection tools included affective-disposition statements, interviews, journal entries, as well as a video recording of a mathematics education lesson. The quantitative and qualitative data generated suggest improved levels of self-efficacy amongst the students who participated in the study. The data also suggest that a valuesbased approach to teaching can be used as an effective approach by mathematics teachers – and mathematics teacher educators – for the purpose of promoting the pursuit of excellence. As teacher education worldwide is currently characterised by a lack of vitality in teacher preparation (Grossman, 2008), the findings of this study should provide insights for teacher educators, teachers and policy makers who wish to promote mathematics self-efficacy, excellence and facilitate enhanced vitality within the teaching profession.

Experiencing Freefall is an inquiry into outdoor experiencing. It focuses on both my experiences with a group of Grade 10 students in an outdoor adventure education program and my personal experiencing of the outdoors. I explore the awareness we embody within moments of unexpected happenings while negotiating Whitewater rapids or searching for a handhold while clinging to the side of a cliff face. Also in this thesis I explore the 'phenomena of experiencing' which emerges out of our actions and interactions within outdoor activities. The challenge of this dissertation is capturing in prose, the phenomena of experiencing and 'embodied awareness' arising through such unexpected instances. Hence, the thesis, in trying to articulate the complexity of experiencing in the outdoors, uses stories, poetry and the metaphor of life, breath, and mountaineering to invite the reader on a journey of inquiry. This thesis escorts the reader, like a true pedagogue, into an outdoor environment of experiencing that opens the reader to ponder pedagogical possibilities. I explore several themes in the thesis which include 'freefall,' community, 'turning points,' and 'embodied respect' using a methodology of 'enactive inquiry.' The thesis takes a journey through each theme by weaving students' stories from the study, my own personal stories of the unexpected, and the theory of enaction. The thesis creates an opportunity for readers to embrace their own struggles, fears, and inquiry. Through the use of outdoor stories to illustrate moments of freefall into the unfamiliar or unknown, we may imagine pedagogical possibilities. As an enactive inquiry, this research thesis embodies an "education" or way of being, living, experiencing that explores unexpected happenings. In articulating an ecological perspective of experiencing, the thesis juxtaposes encounters in the outdoors with enactive theory to move beyond traditional representationalist models of cognition. Specifically, I focus on the embodied awareness that arises through phenomena of experiencing and its relation to pedagogy. The thesis contributes to the theory of the enactive approach by bringing examples of human experience which unfold, not only our interactions within the ecological web of the outdoor world, but an emergent space of pedagogical possibilities. As such, this thesis is an experiential work through which the reader may realize their own interpreting of possible pedagogies for many educational contexts. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Algoritmos de aprendizado semi-supervisionado ativo podem se configurar como ferramentas úteis em cenários práticos em que os dados são numerosamente obtidos, mas atribuir seus respectivos rótulos de classe se configura como uma tarefa custosa/difícil. A literatura em aprendizado ativo destaca diversos algoritmos, este trabalho partiu do tradicional Hierarchical Sampling estabelecido para operar sobre hierarquias de grupos. As características de tal algoritmo o coloca à frente de outros métodos ativos, entretanto o mesmo ainda apresenta algumas dificuldades. A fim de aprimorá-lo e contornar suas principais dificuldades, incluindo sua sensibilidade na escolha particular de uma hierarquia de grupos como entrada, este trabalho propôs estratégias que possibilitaram melhorar o algoritmo na sua forma original e diante de variantes propostas na literatura. Os experimentos em diferentes bases de dados reais mostraram que o algoritmo proposto neste trabalho é capaz de superar e competir em qualidade dentro do cenário de classificação ativa com outros algoritmos ativos da literatura. / Active semi-supervised learning can play an important role in classification scenarios in which labeled data are laborious and/or expensive to obtain, while unlabeled data are numerous and can be easily acquired. There are many active algorithms in the literature and this work focuses on an active semi-supervised algorithm that can be driven by clustering hierarchy, the well-known Hierarchical Sampling (HS) algorithm. This work takes as a starting point the original Hierarchical Sampling algorithm and perform changes in different aspects of the original algorithm in order to tackle its main drawbacks, including its sensitivity to the choice of a single particular hierarchy. Experimental results over many real datasets show that the proposed algorithm performs superior or competitive when compared to a number of state-of-the-art algorithms for active semi-supervised classification.

Submitted by Nadir Basilio (nadirsb@uninove.br) on 2016-06-01T14:03:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Chang Chih Kuo.pdf: 2616110 bytes, checksum: be64d229df1b1083f497d703a37dbdf5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-01T14:03:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Chang Chih Kuo.pdf: 2616110 bytes, checksum: be64d229df1b1083f497d703a37dbdf5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-31 / As the market becomes more competitive, more companies strive to improve efficiency and productivity. As a result, waste elimination using techniques and tools based on the approach of Lean Manufacturing focused on Lean Thinking becomes an alternative for companies. In order to achieve this condition, a main step is the development and training of colaborator. In recent years, Active Learning methodology have shown a potential application in training, through methods and techniques that encourage greater interaction of participants in analysis and problems solving listed, and checked application cases in the automotive industry. The objective of this study is to research, evaluate and characterize aspects related to the dynamics of colaborators training of an organization in concepts of Lean Thinking by addressing the Active Learning methodology, preparing a proposal for a method of implementing development training in the segment of pharmaceutical industry. Based on the observations of training with a focus on simulation games, on the applications questionnaires to participants, on the interviews with experts from companies, as well as the use of other techniques of documentary analysis, this work has resulted in a method of training and capacity for the pharmaceutical segment. / À medida que o mercado se torna mais competitivo, um maior número de empresas se esforça em melhorar a eficiência e produtividade. Como resultado, a eliminação dos desperdícios utilizando técnicas e ferramentas baseadas na abordagem da Manufatura Enxuta (Lean Manufacturing) com enfoque na Mentalidade Enxuta (Lean Thinking) torna-se uma alternativa para as empresas. A fim de alcançar esta condição, um dos principais passos é o desenvolvimento e capacitação dos colaboradores. Nos últimos anos, as metodologias de Aprendizagem Ativa (Active Learning) têm mostrado potencial de aplicação em treinamentos, através de métodos e técnicas que estimulam uma maior interação dos participantes voltada à análise e solução dos problemas elencados, sendo verificados casos de aplicação na indústria automotiva. O objetivo deste trabalho é pesquisar, avaliar e caracterizar aspectos relacionados à dinâmica de capacitação de colaboradores de uma organização em conceitos da Mentalidade Enxuta, através da abordagem da metodologia de Aprendizagem Ativa, elaborando uma proposta de método para implementação em treinamentos de capacitação no segmento da indústria farmacêutica. Com base nas observações de treinamentos com enfoque em jogos de simulação, nas aplicações de questionários aos participantes, em entrevistas com especialistas das empresas, bem como a utilização de outras técnicas de análises documentais, este trabalho resultou em um método de treinamento e capacitação para o segmento farmacêutico.

abstract: Clickers are a common part of many classrooms across universities. Despite the widespread use, education researchers disagree about how to best use these tools and about how they impact students. Prior work has shown possible differential impacts of clickers based on demographic indicators, such as age, gender, and ethnicity. To explore these topics a two-part project was designed. First, a literature review was completed focusing on past and current clicker practices and the research surrounding them. Second, original data, stratified by demographic characteristics, was collected on student perceptions of clickers. The literature review revealed that not all uses of clickers are created equal. Instructors in higher education first introduced clickers to enhance traditional pedagogies by simplifying common classroom tasks (e.g. grading, attendance, feedback collection). More recently, instructors pair clickers and novel pedagogies. A review of the identified benefits and drawbacks for students and instructors is provided for both approaches. Instructors can use different combinations of technological competency and pedagogical content knowledge that lead to four main outcomes. When instructors have both technological competency and pedagogical content knowledge, all the involved parties, students and instructors, benefit. When instructors have technological competency but lack pedagogical content knowledge, instructors are the main benefactors. When instructors have pedagogical content knowledge alone, students can benefit, but usefulness to the instructor decreases. When instructors have neither technological competency nor pedagogical content knowledge, no party benefits. Beyond these findings, recommendations are provided for future clicker research. Second, the review highlighted that clickers may have a differential impact on students of different demographic groups. To explore this dynamic, an original study on student views of clickers, which included demographic data, was conducted. The original study does not find significantly different enthusiasm for clickers by demographic group, unlike prior studies that explored some of these relationships. However, white students and male students are overrepresented in the group that does not enjoy clickers. This conclusion is supported by visual observations from the means of the demographic groups. Overall, based on the review of the literature and original research, if instructors pair clickers with validated pedagogies, and if researchers continue to study clicker classrooms, including which students like and benefit from clickers, clickers may continue to be a valuable educational technology. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Biology 2020

Humanizing Technologies GmbH develops Intelligent software for the humanoid robots from Softbank Robotics. The main objective of this thesis is to develop and deploy Conversational Artificial Intelligence software into the humanoid robots using deep learning techniques. Development of conversational agents using Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence is an intriguing issue with regards to Natural Language Processing. Great research and experimentation is being conducted in this area. Currently most of the chatbots are developed with rule based programming that cannot hold conversation which replicates real human interaction. This issue is addressed in this thesis with the development of Deep learning conversational AI based on Sequence to sequence, Attention mechanism, Transfer learning, Active learning and Beam search decoding which emulates human like conversation. The complete end to end conversational AI software is designed, implemented and deployed in this thesis work according to the conceptual specifications. The research objectives are successfully accomplished and results of the proposed concept are dis- cussed in detail.

No description available.

The flipped classroom as an educational model is perfectly aligned with the current demands of higher education. Therefore, the objectives of this article were to carry out a bibliometric analysis of the scientific production of the flipped classroom in higher education (2012-2020) and to propose a framework for its implementation in face-to-face, blended or online learning modalities. The records were recovered from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus, from which, after a five-phase methodological process, a consolidated dataset of 782 documents was obtained. The results showed the importance of the subject matter as scientific production reflected a continuous growth during the period of study. For their part, the most productive authors come from various institutions worldwide with an H index of over 50. The collaboration indicators show the growth trend of these indexes over the years, which reflects the capacity to generate national and international impact in the documents published in collaboration. The keywords co-occurrence analysis showed that the flipped classroom as a technological and innovative approach is complemented by active learning, blended learning, e-learning, ICT, teaching method, among others. Finally, a framework with five components was proposed as a basic guide for the implementation of the flipped classroom in higher education. / Revisón por pares

The semantic annotation of large multimedia corpora is essential for numerous tasks. Be it for the training of classification algorithms, efficient content retrieval, or for analytical reasoning, appropriate labels are often the first necessity before automatic processing becomes efficient. However, manual labeling of large datasets is time-consuming and tedious. Hence, we present a new visual approach for labeling and retrieval of reports in multimedia news corpora. It combines automatic classifier training based on caption text from news reports with human interpretation to ease the annotation process. In our approach, users can initialize labels with keyword queries and iteratively annotate examples to train a classifier. The proposed visualization displays representative results in an overview that allows to follow different annotation strategies (e.g., active learning) and assess the quality of the classifier. Based on a usage scenario, we demonstrate the successful application of our approach. Therein, users label several topics which interest them and retrieve related documents with high confidence from three years of news reports.