Fachhochsch. Solothurn Nordwestschweiz (FH), Diplomarbeit--Solothurn, 2006. / Diese Diplomarbeit wurde im Auftrag vom Verband Interieursuisse erstellt.

Bielefeld, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

The University of Waikato brought the Internet to New Zealand, was one of the first Universities in New Zealand to graduate students who had completed a bachelor's degree online, and recently won an award for innovative use of video software in an online classroom. The video software was created by a company that had its beginnings within the University. However, the use of the Internet for teaching and learning in the University has reached a plateau in the last few years, as measured by the daily page views of the online platform (Moodie, 2004), the number of courses taught online and staff teaching online remaining fairly constant. This thesis sets out to investigate why the use of online teaching at the University has not increased to a point where a majority of staff are using online teaching to at least supplement their classroom teaching. Previous research into online teaching and learning focused heavily on technology barriers and lack of access to computers and the Internet. It is the position of the researcher that this lack of access is no longer a valid reason for academics not to use online environments for teaching and learning in a tertiary environment. This study hypothesized that enhancing their teaching using online technologies may be related to the culture of different subjects, disciplines and Schools of study. Accordingly three groups of lecturers from different Schools within the University were invited to participate in focus group interviews. Questions asked were related to their approach to teaching in their subject areas, the culture of their Schools and the University, as well as their reflections on teaching online. The study found that there was a strong relationship between the use of online technologies and subject areas as well as the culture that exists within the School of study. The influence of University management on the use of online technologies was also highlighted. But more surprising was the relationship between trained teachers in the University, and their uptake and use of online technologies. To take advantage of the changing student population, with their greater awareness and use of computing and new technologies, the University of Waikato, and indeed many other similar institutions, are now at a technological and educational crossroad. Decisions need to be made by senior management regarding the importance of the Internet and emerging media technologies in shaping the teaching and learning environment of tomorrow's University.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 296-311).

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. Directed by Phillip L. Ackerman. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-122).

This dissertation is entitled, "The Awareness of Wildlife Conservation by learners and educators in the Bojanala District". Following a national initiative driven by the Department of Education, the entire School Curriculum is being changed. Since 1998 there has been a shift from the traditional system of individual, unrelated subjects to an emphasis on integrated themes. The subject of environment was to be incorporated into the new curriculum, particularly at the primary school level, through these themes. The Environmental Education, particularly wildlife conservation topics are therefore likely to receive more attention than it has in the past. However the system has not yet been designed to cater for such topics, which can educate learners on how to preserve, protect and conserve their wildlife species. It is unclear how effective education around environmental issues will be. The study sought to answer the following research questions: • Does the National Curriculum Statement cater for Environmental Education, particularly for the wildlife conservation topics in Bojanala District? • Do educators in schools and other NGO'S promote wildlife conservation in Bojanala District? • What learners' and educators' activities and natural traits endanger wildlife? • Can game animals be managed sustainably? The study drew its population and sample from the Bojanala District area which included both Bojanala West and Bojanala East. The data collected through questionnaire and interviews were subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The literature search revealed that wildlife extinction comes about when the birth rate of an established population remains less than its death rate for a sufficiently long time interval to allow random fluctuations in the yearly death rate to diminish the population size to zero. Findings on the view of people were also noted. Learners and educators, including other community members around the Bojanala District area, particularly in the rural areas, have unquestionably contributed to the high rate of extinction of many modem species either directly through hunting or indirectly through habitat destruction. Most of the learners lack information as far as wildlife conservation is concerned. Concerning the remedies, environmentalists and NGO'S around the Bojanala District areas should ensure and encourage the conservation organizations to collaborate their conservation projects together with the local schools to ensure proper understanding as far as wildlife conservation is concerned and to educate both learners and educators on how to protect wildlife species. Finally, to ensure success in trying to deal with the problem caused by lack of knowledge in wildlife conservation matters or projects, the study expressed the need for further research to be conducted on the Curriculum Development, to find out why Environmental Education programmes, particularly wildlife conservation topics are not yet included or integrated into other school learning areas. / Thesis (M.Ed) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2010

The problem of developing skill repertoires autonomously in robotics and artificial intelligence is becoming ever more pressing. Currently, the issues of how to apply prior knowledge to new situations and which knowledge to apply have not been sufficiently studied. We present a transfer setting where a reinforcement learning agent faces multiple problem solving tasks drawn from an unknown generative process, where each task has similar dynamics. The task dynamics are changed by varying in the transition function between states. The tasks are presented sequentially with the latest task presented considered as the target for transfer. We describe two approaches to solving this problem. Firstly we present an algorithm for transfer of the function encoding the stateaction value, defined as value function transfer. This algorithm uses the value function of a source policy to initialise the policy of a target task. We varied the type of basis the algorithm used to approximate the value function. Empirical results in several well known domains showed that the learners benefited from the transfer in the majority of cases. Results also showed that the Radial basis performed better in general than the Fourier. However contrary to expectation the Fourier basis benefited most from the transfer. Secondly, we present an algorithm for learning an informative prior which encodes beliefs about the underlying dynamics shared across all tasks. We call this agent the Informative Prior agent (IP). The prior is learnt though experience and captures the commonalities in the transition dynamics of the domain and allows for a quantification of the agent's uncertainty about these. By using a sparse distribution of the uncertainty in the dynamics as a prior, the IP agent can successfully learn a model of 1) the set of feasible transitions rather than the set of possible transitions, and 2) the likelihood of each of the feasible transitions. Analysis focusing on the accuracy of the learned model showed that IP had a very good accuracy bound, which is expressible in terms of only the permissible error and the diffusion, a factor that describes the concentration of the prior mass around the truth, and which decreases as the number of tasks experienced grows. The empirical evaluation of IP showed that an agent which uses the informative prior outperforms several existing Bayesian reinforcement learning algorithms on tasks with shared structure in a domain where multiple related tasks were presented only once to the learners. IP is a step towards the autonomous acquisition of behaviours in artificial intelligence. IP also provides a contribution towards the analysis of exploration and exploitation in the transfer paradigm.

D.Ed. / Teachers do not easily identify or use the thinking skills (support skills) present in themselves in their planning activities. The learners equally when they move from the Foundation phase to the Intermediate phase [from grade 3 to grade 4] do not reflect such support skills. Learners are thus unable to work quickly enough to acquire the new skills that are required in the next stage of their education. The problem of learning another language often encountered by learners when they come to formal school exacerbates the already challenging circumstances reflected in a country impacted by poverty. They have already acquired thinking skills in the process of learning their primary or home language. They often begin to learn this additional language during the foundation phase, and then in the intermediate phase they have to use the new language for the acquisition of knowledge and learning. In the schools in this study both the teachers and learners usually have to use the additional language as the language of learning and teaching (lolt). The main thrust of learning and teaching takes place in the intermediate phase where new subjects and learning areas are introduced and grounded. The research objectives of this study are to develop, implement and develop guideline for the evaluation of an educational programme that will assist Grade 4 teachers identify the schema or support skills that they use in planning for teaching and specifically language teaching. To enable the PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com v teachers to act upon this information [data] in such a way that it will assist their learners with their learning needs during the first stage of the Intermediate Phase (grade 4) of their schooling, to promote faster learning. A long-term aspect of this intervention would be accelerated or assisted learning that will better equip the learner to more successfully move through all the phases of their education and eventually for life. The teachers would, as a result of the success of the programme, be further encouraged and motivated in their work. Further goals that arise out of the overall objectives of the study § Exploration and description of grade 4 teacher’s experience of scaffolding they use when planning their programmes with their learners. § Description of an approach to support the Grade 4 teacher and the teacher educator. § Description of guidelines to operationalise the support approach by the curriculum specialist. Qualitative strategies such as focus group interviews and naïve essays were engaged in and this resulted in the discovery that planning did not play an important part in the lives of the participant teachers nor for that matter were they using cognitive structures that led to planning. The lack of reflection on PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com vi the meta-cognitive structures in their own lives led to the learners being undirected and thus impeding their learning. With this in mind a conceptual framework was developed out of which a programme was subsequently developed that looked at ways in which the problems experienced by teachers in using their cognitive support skills or scaffolding for planning could be obviated. A programme that assists teachers identify their own support skills and to use them appropriately, so the learners are enabled to learn faster was then developed. Once the programme had been developed, guidelines for its implementation and evaluation were then designed so that the programme could be assessed as to its effectiveness.

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