Historically, a disconnect has existed between the education and practice of architecture. Architectural education has long prided itself on the value of creative problem-solving, research, and the fine arts. In contrast, the practice of architecture has evolved to emphasize technical knowledge, specialization, communication, business, and collaboration. This disconnect has led education to miss opportunities to teach students business skills and knowledge required for the workplace, and allowed practice to lose sight of the importance of artistry and research. Architecture educators, students, and practitioners each have a unique set of knowledge and skills to offer the other, and a corresponding set of need and challenges which must be addressed for the profession’s continued success. By analyzing history, current debates in the field, and case studies of current innovative practices and educational models, this thesis addresses these issues with a new model of architectural synergy, embodied through a facility for lifelong learning in architecture. The primary goal of this building is to inspire integrative and collaborative processes between students, researchers, educators, and practitioners to address the current disconnect between them. Through this facility, each group will have the opportunity to leverage their unique strengths and successes to help the others. This collaborative model will allow each role mutually beneficial opportunities for lifelong learning through the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and processes between different groups.

<div>Supervised classification methods based on deep learning have achieved great success in many domains and tasks that are previously unimaginable. Such approaches build on learning paradigms that require hundreds of examples in order to learn to classify objects or events. Thus, their immediate application to the domains with few or no observations is limited. This is because of the lack of ability to rapidly generalize to new categories from a few examples or from high-level descriptions of categories. This can be attributed to the significant gap between the way machines represent knowledge and the way humans represent categories in their minds and learn to recognize them. In this context, this research represents categories as semantic trees in a high-level attribute space and proposes an approach to utilize these representations to conduct N-Shot, Few-Shot, One-Shot, and Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL). This work refers to this paradigm as the problem of general classification (GCP) and proposes a unified framework for GCP referred to as the Few and Zero-Shot Technique (FAZT). FAZT framework is an end-to-end approach that uses trainable 3D convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks to simultaneously optimize for both the semantic and the classification tasks. Lastly, the problem of systematically obtaining semantic attributes by utilizing domain-specific ontologies is presented. The proposed framework is validated in the domains of hand gesture and action/activity recognition, however, this research can be applied to other domains such as video understanding, the study of human behavior, emotion recognition, etc. First, an attribute-based dataset for gestures is developed in a systematic manner by relying on literature in gestures and semantics, and crowdsourced platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ZSL dataset for hand gestures (ZSGL dataset). Next, our framework is evaluated in two experimental conditions: 1. Within-category (to test the attribute recognition power) and 2. Across-category (to test the ability to recognize an unknown category). In addition, we conducted experiments in zero-shot, one-shot, few-shot and continuous learning conditions in both open-set and closed-set scenarios. Results showed that our framework performs favorably on the ZSGL, Kinetics, UIUC Action, UCF101 and HMDB51 action datasets in all the experimental conditions.<br></div><div><br></div>

The Diploma thesis deals with general issues in the environment of Czech expertise from the view of ordinary experts. The study fosuses on a critical analysis of expert activities with special regards to remuneration issues, timing of expert fees, expertise, experts‘ inauguration and dismissal from a post and cooperation with government authorities. The methodology used is an array of reactions by experts to individual and specific points, which are then evaluated and possible methods of solution are proposed. The end of the thesis statistically summarises all problems in a graph and highlights the most critical ones.

In this study the role of the educational publisher as an information intermediary is considered. The focus is on the developmental role of the publisher, against the background of the information age the world is entering today. The publishing industry is regarded as both a vehicle for and the product of development, which entails a twofold responsibility: the development of society in general and the development of the industry in particular. This study highlights the role of the publisher in the development of society, and it is argued that the recent changes in the education system and the language policy potentially offer a great challenge to educational publishers in South Africa to help create suitable educational material in order to facilitate the successful implementation of the new curriculum, thereby contributing to the development of South African society as a whole. However, developments since 1994, when the new political dispensation came into effect, have practically halted the development input of publishers in the new education system and created a severe crisis for the educational publishing industry. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Information Science / unrestricted

The purpose of the study has been to discover what motivates the elderly to participate in informal learning activities after the retirement age. The study is qualitative, interpretation being used as the theoretical knowledge approach. The result is based on interviews that have been focusing on eight respondents aged over 65 years old residents in Ängelholm Municipality, Sweden. The interpretation of the data collected is mainly based on the Health Lifestyles theory (Cockerham, 2005) and on the framework for the benefits of learning (Schuller, 2004). The interviews were interpreted, thematized and presented as results in Chapter 5 of the present study. The interpretation resulted in four main themes: a healthier lifestyle, the feeling of self- realization, a new aim in life and an active social life. From those themes, the analysis of the results presents three main motivational factors that are found as stimulating the elderly to participate in informal learning activities: the psychological factor, the social factor and the healthy lifestyle factor. The study presents a clear connection between the mental wellbeing among the elderly and their participation in activities promoting informal learning. The results show clearly that elderly who are taking part in informal learning activities have a defined, active social life and a broad social network, signalling clearly the positive effects of learning activities on combating social isolation and loneliness. The results of the study can be used in future research projects analysing the concept of lifelong learning in the elderly age, and it can constitute as well a starting point for social strategies at the municipality and local level that focus on combating loneliness and social isolation among elderly.

(English) The aim of this diploma thesis is to assess the current state of the educational structure of staff in university libraries on a research sample of university libraries, which are members of the Association of Libraries of Czech Universities. In the introduction, the thesis presents a brief historical excursion into the development of the position of the university librarian. At present, greater demands are placed on the skills and knowledge of the university librarian. The librarian can obtain them by starting school, retraining courses, or lifelong learning. The legislation does not yet specify the requirements of the professional competence for work as a librarian in the library. The practical part deals with the analysis of the educational structure of staff and the management of university libraries. I am interested in their attitude to further education and also what they would appreciate in this area. Data collection is ensured via a combination of a questionnaire survey and subsequent interviews, which complete the results of the questionnaires. Chosen research methods were intended for both groups. The conclusion of the thesis evaluates all findings and offers possible solutions to the problems existing in the field of further education.

(English) The aim of this diploma thesis is to assess the current state of the educational structure of staff in university libraries on a research sample of university libraries, which are members of the Association of Libraries of Czech Universities. In the introduction, the thesis presents a brief historical excursion into the development of the position of the university librarian. At present, greater demands are placed on the skills and knowledge of the university librarian. The librarian can obtain them by starting school, retraining courses, or lifelong learning. The legislation does not yet specify the requirements of the professional competence for work as a librarian in the library. The practical part deals with the analysis of the educational structure of staff and the management of university libraries. I am interested in their attitude to further education and also what they would appreciate in this area. Data collection is ensured via a combination of a questionnaire survey and subsequent interviews, which complete the results of the questionnaires. Chosen research methods were intended for both groups. The conclusion of the thesis evaluates all findings and offers possible solutions to the problems existing in the field of further education.

The thesis focuses on art education of adults, more specifically on art education of adults at basic art schools in Prague and Central Bohemia. The thesis discusses the low frequency of exploiting of this kind of education and its reasons and presents suggestions to broaden education of adults at basic art schools. Theoretical part of the thesis defines leisure education of adults at the beginning and continues with definition of cultural and aesthetic education of adults, while it focuses on art and music education. The final chapter of theoretical part describes basic art schools and their associations. Statistical and other data connected to edult education at basic art schools in Prague and Central Bohemia are analysed in analytical part of the thesis. The research is completed with a questionnaire inquiry and is followed by suggestions for more frequent exploiting of adult education at basic art schools. The results are summarized at the end of the thesis. KEYWORDS Andragogy, Basic Art Schools, Adult Education, Lifelong Learning, Leisure Education, Art Education

This dissertation consists of three journal articles that explored the effectiveness of a digital game, called EnerCities, in producing pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors by using a mixed-methods study approach. The first study was conducted as a quasi-experimental study among undergraduate students in the United States. Based on the Attitudinal Learning Instrument (ALI), this study found that the attitudinal learning gained from EnerCities influenced participants’ pro-environmental behavioral intentions significantly. This learning was retained until five weeks after game play according to the qualitative results of the study. The second study, conducted in India, used EnerCities to study the differences in attitudinal learning among high school students who played the game collaboratively or individually, using the ALI and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Results showed that the attitudinal learning and its effect on pro-environmental behavioral intentions between collaborative and individual players was similar. This study also showed that EnerCities had significantly impacted the environmental attitudes and behaviors of the game players when compared to students who did not play any game, although all students had studied environmental studies through traditional instructional methods since elementary school. The third study, conducted among high school students in India, compared the environmental attitudes between game players and students who did not play any game based on the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. Both the unidimensional and multi-dimensional properties of the NEP were considered. It was found that EnerCities had impacted game players’ environmental attitudes significantly. All the three studies showed that digital games are more effective in promoting attitudinal (cognitive, affective, behavioral and social) learning compared to traditional instructional methods. This supports the implementation of digital games as a pedagogical tool in influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors.

The purpose of the research was to determine how educators could be motivated to implement internet technology in education. The literature study highlighted the need for e-learning while suggesting that educator support would not be achieved easily. The empirical study, however, revealed that at the international school examined, educators accept internet learning and demonstrate a willingness to introduce it into their pedagogy, were a blended approach to be adopted. Technological and psychological barriers had already been breached, as e-learning was taking place in a non-threatening environment. Educators were being empowered to experiment with e-learning in their subject areas. The study revealed that, having already embraced e-learning methodology educators would continue to do so if they could clearly perceive the benefits to be achieved. The study also showed that given a technologically nurturing environment, it would not be difficult to motivate educators to introduce internet technology into their pedagogy. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Adult Education)