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International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper presents a new multimedia CD ROM course on Telemetry that has is just being developed for DoD by the Defense Test and Evaluation Professional Institute (DTEPI). The paper will discuss the Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software packages that were used to develop the course. It will discuss the methodology used to develop the course and lessons learned in its development. During the presentation of this paper a computer and VGA projector will be used to show some of the material in the course. This is the second CD ROM course developed by DTEPI, the first one was on Time, Space-Position Information (TSPI). The TSPI course has been completed, passed Beta testing at most of the National Ranges, and has been released. About 800 CD ROM disks have been distributed to the Ranges and other qualified users. The Telemetry course will be similarly completed and distributed. The course is intended to be an introduction to the subject of telemetry for use by engineering professionals just entering the workforce, by professionals cross training into T&E, and by others with a need or desire to understand telemetry. The value of developing an interactive course using audio narration, animations, as well as still pictures and video of actual instrumentation and equipment cannot be overemphasized. This multimedia environment makes the explanation of concepts like an optical encoder easily understandable as the student can "see" a simulation of the encoder in operation. The course is designed to be self paced with students controlling their own progress and choosing the topics they want to cover. The student also has the option to print a hard copy of the page narration or read them on screen. The course facilitates the rapid learning of the jargon of telemetry, all the essential acronyms, the way telemetry systems work, what they look like, and many of the limitations of telemetering systems. The course covers the History of Telemetering, Telemetry Subsystems, Range Applications, Telemetry Schemes, Theory of Operation, Telemetry Processing Systems, Testing Telemetry Systems, and other Miscellaneous Topics. It will afford the student a lot of insight into telemetry without the mathematics and detail required of a telemetry design engineer.

This thesis presents a study of current research on effective teaching strategies in art beyond the European tradition content area of the Advanced Placement Art History (APAH) examination administered by the College Board. Three Advanced Placement Art History teachers participated in this study. Each teacher demonstrated successful and effective strategies in her APAH program. The criteria for selection required that each participant taught the class for three years (2001-4) and their students scored higher than the national average as published by the College Board. Each teacher discussed with the author how they teach the art beyond the European tradition content area. Presented in this study are teaching strategies each participant used in the classroom. Emphasis is placed on effective strategies that ask the students to participate in their learning.

This thesis is divided into two parts. In part one, we study the k-median and the k-means clustering problems. We take a different approach than the traditional worst case analysis models. We show that by looking at certain well motivated stable instances, one can design much better approximation algorithms for these problems. Our algorithms achieve arbitrarily good approximation factors on stable instances, something which is provably hard on worst case instances. We also study a different model for clustering which introduces limited amount of interaction with the user. Such interactive models are very popular in the context of learning algorithms but their effectiveness for clustering is not well understood. We present promising theoretical and experimental results in this direction. The second part of the thesis studies the design of provably good learning algorithms which work under adversarial noise. One of the fundamental problems in this area is to understand the learnability of the class of disjunctions of Boolean variables. We design a learning algorithm which improves on the guarantees of the previously best known result for this problem. In addition, the techniques used seem fairly general and promising to be applicable to a wider class of problems. We also propose a new model for learning with queries. This model restricts the algorithms ability to only ask certain “local” queries. We motivate the need for the model and show that one can design efficient local query algorithms for a wide class of problems.

Class of 2012 Abstract / Specific Aims: The purpose of this study was to test an interactive educational program for older adults on preventing accidental falls. Methods: This was a prospective, descriptive study evaluating the helpfulness of an interactive educational program. English speaking residents were recruited from five independent senior living communities in Arizona. The intervention consisted of a 30-minute interactive PowerPoint presentation followed by a 10-minute question and answer session. Information provided during the presentation focused on information from the CDC and the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence. Participants completed an anonymous questionnaire to rate the helpfulness of the program. The primary dependent variable was overall helpfulness of the educational session. Other variables included: intention of changing future behavior related to preventing falls, whether participants would recommend the program to others, participant perception of gained knowledge, change in fear of falling, and interest in meeting with pharmacist to discuss medications. Categorical data was analyzed by calculating frequencies and percentages and continuous data by calculating means and SDs. A t-test for independent groups was used to compare men and women. Main Results: A total of 93 individuals attended the presentations. Out of 81 completed surveys, 5 did not indicate gender, 7 additional did not indicate age, and 6 were over 89 years of age. Demographic data for the men and women was similar. 90% of participants indicated that the program was either "very helpful" or "moderately helpful". 92% of participants responded “absolutely yes” or “likely” that they would recommend the program. No participants strongly disagreed that they had a better understanding of fall risks or medications that increase fall risk. 87% of participants responded “absolutely yes” or “likely” that they plan to increase daily exercise . 42% of participants said it was “not likely” that they plan to make changes in their living environment. Conclusions: An interactive educational program on fall safety and prevention is helpful for older adults. As one of the most widely accessible health care providers, pharmacists and pharmacy students are well suited to provide patient education and improve outcomes. The results of this study provide preliminary data supporting the usefulness of a patient education program on fall safety prevention administered by pharmacy students.

In this study, the students in my Year 8 high school mathematics class and I set out to develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. This research was informed by the multiple theoretical perspectives of collaborative learning in mathematics education, Vygotskian learning and teaching approaches, and the Constructivist referent for pedagogic practices. Merging these perspectives into a viable foundation for our classroom practices led to the successful development of our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment.Working in groups of three or four, the students developed their social norms and utilised a collaborative approach to their learning of mathematics. Groups engaged in discussion, explanation, negotiation, peer teaching, giving help, receiving help and consensus building as part of their daily routine in our classroom. I kept qualitative and quantitative records of our progress as we worked to improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment during the first six months of the school year. I collected daily fieldnotes, audio and video recordings, observations taken by researcher colleagues, learning environment surveys and a variety of other artefacts. All of this data was analysed daily, weekly and monthly, so producing the monthly narratives upon which we based our determination of the success of this implementation.By adopting a Vygotskian perspective we utilised our peer interactive environment to develop and enhance 'scientific' and 'everyday' concepts through individual and group dynamic, overlapping (multiple) 'zones of proximal development' as well as our classwide 'zone of proximal development'. Our constructivist perspective aided us in focusing on our prior knowledge and experiences, which in turn enhanced the effectiveness of our collaborative ++ / classroom learning environment. We utilised the MCI and CLES learning environment measures to direct our endeavours to further improve our collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment. The detailed analysis of the data from Months 1, 2 and 3 of this implementation, coupled with highlight analysis of the data from Months 4, 5 and 6, led me to conclude that teachers and their students can develop a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment based on the multiple theoretical perspectives utilised in this study.This research improved my practice as a teacher and provided a functional and effective collaborative peer interactive classroom learning environment for the students to work in. It informed many of the calls for further research of this type and established that the theoretical concepts, upon which the implementation was founded, were valuable and useful in the practical setting of our collaborative peer interactive classroom. The findings are also valuable for the support which they offer to the latest movements in education, particularly the student-centred, outcomes-based approaches to learning and teaching. These approaches advocate the use of collaborative learning environments, and this study provides strong guidance as to how such environments can be successfully implemented.

Visitors use and understanding of interactive exhibits and their learning of scientific concepts was investigated by three studies. The first study categorised visitors' use of a sound exhibit and found that 49% successfully used the exhibit. Understanding was described with a knowledge hierarchy and learning was measured using a pre-test and post-test. Findings indicated that many visitors had prior knowledge of the relevant concepts and 50% of visitors learnt a concept from the exhibit. The second study investigated young children's understanding and interaction with the Mitey Quarry, a cooperative exhibit of four elements, conveyor, elevator, auger and sorter, which were used to move balls around the exhibit. Findings indicated that children's activities and their level of understanding varied for each element, though higher levels were achieved with elements that were easily observable. The children's activities began with observation, and then vacillated between manipulation, operation and control of an element. The third study identified the educational objectives of a physical fitness exhibit, Let's Get Physical, and their achievement by high school students. Findings indicated that the instructional sequence integrated cognitive and affective objectives, and although 42% of students stated their intentions to begin new exercise activities in response to the exhibit message "to be active everyday", after two weeks, these intentions had not been enacted. The research has contributed to improved exhibit design by demonstrating the value of knowledge, activity and affective hierarchies in identifying exhibit objectives and providing a means for evaluation. Hierarchies are an effective way to describe and measure the visitors' use and understanding of interactive exhibits and learning from them.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of utilizing learning website on the learner¡¦s performance. We chose the learning website of Koa-Yuan university as an experimental platform and investigated student performance in the ¡§Copywriting¡¨ course. Task-Technology Fit¡]TTF) model was used to develop the research framework. We also add ¡§expert guidance¡¨ into this experiment as a moderating variable. The experimental result shows that task characteristic and technology characteristics well explained the perceived task-technology fit. For all students, the fit level impacts on their learning performance. In the TTF factors, ¡§relationship with users¡¨,¡¨ timeliness¡¨, and ¡§quality¡¨ have more influence on learning performance. For students with ¡§expert guidance¡¨, the effect of ¡§relationship with users¡¨, and ¡§quality¡¨ were significant; while ¡§relationship with users ¡¨and ¡¨ timeliness¡¨ were significant for students without ¡§expert- guidance¡¨.