In this investigation, two schools - a control school and an experimental school – were compared in terms of learner performance in two traditional grade 11 mathematics tests, namely the pre-intervention test and the post-intervention test. Both schools completed the two tests simultaneously. Educators saw both tests before intervention. In the experimental school, four grade 11 mathematics classes were studied. The four classes were given worksheets that complied with an open-ended approach (OEA) to mathematics teaching and learning for learners to work independently on, with the teacher only facilitating. The learner-centredness expressed in the OEA complied with learner-centredness as envisaged by the National Curriculum Statement (NCS), and was predominantly constructivist in character. Throughout the five-month intervention, the author observed proceedings in two of the four classes in the experimental school, ensuring that questions the teacher asked complied with the OEA. The two classes would be referred to as monitored classes. The other two classes at the experimental school worked on the worksheet, with the teacher having been briefed about what was expected of the learners using the worksheet -basically that the learners would have to take own initiatives in solving the mathematics problems with minimal teacher intervention. The two grade 11 mathematics classes were monitored, but not as frequently as the monitored classes. The classes will be referred to as unmonitored classes. At the control school the educators followed their usual (traditional) teaching approach. Both the experimental and control schools followed the same grade 11 mathematics work schedule. The educators in the control school taught without any interference from the author, but the classes at the control school were occasionally observed by the author. In addition to the intervention comparison, the author also gathered qualitative information about participating educators' and learners' experiences and opinions about the OEA at the experimental school by using interviews. The results of the pre-intervention test showed no statistical difference between the experimental and control school performance, meaning that the learners from both schools were of comparable pre-requisite knowledge. In the post-intervention test, learners from the two monitored classes meaningfully outperformed those from the two unmonitored experimental classes and those from the control school. However, there was no significant difference in performance between learners from the two unmonitored classes and those from control school, The study concludes that the appropriate OEA intervention was responsible for the good results of the monitored classes., and then uses the gathered qualitative information to design a model for the successful implementation of' OEA in mathematics classes. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.

This thesis analyzes the wavering characteristic of the relations between the United States and the European powers by taking the Iraqi war of 2003 as a case in point. The tension in transatlantic relations that emerged with the US&rsquo / Iraqi invasion in March 2003 is analyzed within the framework of the structural analysis. The broader context of the causes of tension in transatlantic relations is further explored. The US&rsquo / Iraqi invasion has demonstrated us that she wants to reproduce her Middle Eastern policy by having a direct possession over the power structures. This fact led to the opposition of two main European powers, namely France and Germany. Those countries, which might be regarded as constituting the Franco-German axis, have been trying to involve into the US&rsquo / policy of reproducing the power structures. Whether the US is willing to give the Franco-German axis this role is also a key point, which is explored. Furthermore, in the thesis, attempts of the US and the Franco-German axis towards mending the fences in transatlantic relations that have been deteriorated with the Iraqi crisis are analyzed. The thesis seeks to show that the prospects for cooperation in transatlantic relations are an open-ended process due to the fact that there are both existing problems and opportunities for cooperation in transatlantic relations.

本研究的目的，是在實作一個以開放式問答題的作答方式為基礎的線上輔助學習系統，藉以提升評量及學習的效果。我們選定的問題領域在地球科學，以極光的發生為例，將問題所涉及的觀念進一步拆解細分成許多小觀念，建立階層化使用者知識模型，以評估學生於各個觀念的分別表現。學生於作答時，系統會即時分析學生的答案，以評估學生在各觀念的表現，並在適當的時機提供回饋，嘗試協助學生思考原本未能答好的觀念。我們以不同的回饋時機及回饋內容為獨立變因，嘗試瞭解對使用者答題表現的影響。我們也以個案分析的方式將學生的對於系統學習態度分類，藉以瞭解不同類型學生對此類系統的接受程度。我們認為此系統可以提供學生作答歷程予教學者進行分析，用以找出學生缺漏的觀念，進而協助提升教學效果。 / The purpose of this research is to use an open-ended based on-line learning system to improve the effects of evaluation and learning. We set the question domain at Earth Science. Taking the occurrence of polar lights, we divide the related concept into many small concepts, and build the hierarchical user knowledge model to evaluate student’s reactions to each concept. While students take the test, the system will analyze the answers to evaluate the students, and provide feedbacks timely to help the student think over the missing concept. Taking the different feedback timing and feedbacks as independent factors, we try to understand the influence to the users’ performance. By using case study, we classify the students’ learning attitudes to understand the different types of students’ acceptance of this system. We think that this system can provide student’s answering process to teachers for analyzing. By using this, teachers can find out students’ missing concept and to provide teaching effectiveness.

Artificial intelligence has traditionally been approached through centralized architectures and optimization of specific metrics on large datasets. However, the frontiers of fields spanning cognitive science, biology, physics, and computer science suggest that intelligence is better understood as a multi-scale, decentralized, emergent phenomenon. As such, scaling up approaches that mirror the natural world may be one of the next big advances in AI. This thesis presents Coralai, a framework for efficiently simulating the emergence of diverse artificial life ecosystems integrated with modular physics. The key innovations of Coralai include: 1) Hosting diverse Neural Cellular Automata organisms in the same simulation that can interact and evolve; 2) Allowing user-defined physics and weather that organisms adapt to and can utilize to enact environmental changes; 3) Hardware-acceleration using Taichi, PyTorch, and HyperNEAT, enabling interactive evolution of ecosystems with 500k evolved parameters on a grid of 1m+ 16-channel physics-governed cells, all in real-time on a laptop. Initial experiments with Coralai demonstrate the emergence of diverse ecosystems of organisms that employ a variety of strategies to compete for resources in dynamic environments. Key observations include competing mobile and sessile organisms, organisms that exploit environmental niches like dense energy sources, and cyclic dynamics of greedy dominance out-competed by resilience.

My dissertation is about how engineering educators can use natural language processing (NLP) in implementing open-ended assessments in undergraduate engineering degree programs. Engineering students need to develop an ability to exercise judgment about better and worse outcomes of their decisions. One important consideration for improving engineering students' judgment involves creating sound educational assessments. Currently, engineering educators face a trad-off in selecting between open- and closed-ended assessments. Closed-ended assessments are easy to administer and score but are limited in what they measure given students are required, in many instances, to choose from a priori list. Conversely, open-ended assessments allow students to write their answers in any way they choose in their own words. However, open-ended assessments are likely to take more personal hours and lack consistency for both inter-grader and intra-grader grading. The solution to this challenge is the use of NLP. The working principles of the existing NLP models is the tallying of words, keyword matching, or syntactic similarity of words, which have often proved too brittle in capturing the language diversity that students could write. Therefore, the problem that motivated the present study is how to assess student responses based on underlying concepts and meanings instead of morphological characteristics or grammatical structure in sentences. Some of this problem can be addressed by developing NLP-assisted grading tools based on transformer-based large language models (TLLMs) such as BERT, MPNet, GPT-4. This is because TLLMs are trained on billions of words and have billions of parameters, thereby providing capacity to capture richer semantic representations of input text. Given the availability of TLLMs in the last five years, there is a significant lack of research related to integrating TLLMs in the assessment of open-ended engineering case studies. My dissertation study aims to fill this research gap. I developed and evaluated four NLP approaches based on TLLMs for thematic analysis of student responses to eight question prompts of engineering ethics and systems thinking case scenarios. The study's research design comprised the following steps. First, I developed an example bank for each question prompt with two procedures: (a) human-in-the-loop natural language processing (HILNLP) and (b) traditional qualitative coding. Second, I assigned labels using the example banks to unlabeled student responses with the two NLP techniques: (i) k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), and (ii) Zero-Shot Classification (ZSC). Further, I utilized the following configurations of these NLP techniques: (i) kNN (when k=1), (ii) kNN (when k=3), (iii) ZSC (multi-labels=false), and (iv) ZSC (multi-labels=true). The kNN approach took input of both sentences and their labels from the example banks. On the other hand, the ZSC approach only took input of labels from the example bank. Third, I read each sentence or phrase along with the model's suggested label(s) to evaluate whether the assigned label represented the idea described in the sentence and assigned the following numerical ratings: accurate (1), neutral (0), and inaccurate (-1). Lastly, I used those numerical evaluation ratings to calculate accuracy of the NLP approaches. The results of my study showed moderate accuracy in thematically analyzing students' open-ended responses to two different engineering case scenarios. This is because no single method among the four NLP methods performed consistently better than the other methods across all question prompts. The highest accuracy rate varied between 53% and 92%, depending upon the question prompts and NLP methods. Despite these mixed results, this study accomplishes multiple goals. My dissertation demonstrates to community members that TLLMs have potential for positive impacts on improving classroom practices in engineering education. In doing so, my dissertation study takes up one aspect of instructional design: assessment of students' learning outcomes in engineering ethics and systems thinking skills. Further, my study derived important implications for practice in engineering education. First, I gave important lessons and guidelines for educators interested in incorporating NLP into their educational assessment. Second, the open-source code is uploaded to a GitHub repository, thereby making it more accessible to a larger group of users. Third, I gave suggestions for qualitative researchers on conducting NLP-assisted qualitative analysis of textual data. Overall, my study introduced state-of-the-art TLLM-based NLP approaches to a research field where it holds potential yet remains underutilized. This study can encourage engineering education researchers to utilize these NLP methods that may be helpful in analyzing the vast textual data generated in engineering education, thereby reducing the number of missed opportunities to glean information for actors and agents in engineering education. / Doctor of Philosophy / My dissertation is about how engineering educators can use natural language processing (NLP) in implementing open-ended assessments in undergraduate engineering degree programs. Engineering students need to develop an ability to exercise judgment about better and worse outcomes of their decisions. One important consideration for improving engineering students' judgment involves creating sound educational assessments. Currently, engineering educators face a trade-off in selecting between open- and closed-ended assessments. Closed-ended assessments are easy to administer and score but are limited in what they measure given students are required, in many instances, to choose from a priori list. Conversely, open-ended assessments allow students to write their answers in any way they choose in their own words. However, open-ended assessments are likely to take more personal hours and lack consistency for both inter-grader and intra-grader grading. The solution to this challenge is the use of NLP. The working principles of the existing NLP models are the tallying of words, keyword matching, or syntactic similarity of words, which have often proved too brittle in capturing the language diversity that students could write. Therefore, the problem that motivated the present study is how to assess student responses based on underlying concepts and meanings instead of morphological characteristics or grammatical structure in sentences. Some of this problem can be addressed by developing NLP-assisted grading tools based on transformer-based large language models (TLLMs). This is because TLLMs are trained on billions of words and have billions of parameters, thereby providing capacity to capture richer semantic representations of input text. Given the availability of TLLMs in the last five years, there is a significant lack of research related to integrating TLLMs in the assessment of open-ended engineering case studies. My dissertation study aims to fill this research gap. The results of my study showed moderate accuracy in thematically analyzing students' open-ended responses to two different engineering case scenarios. My dissertation demonstrates to community members that TLLMs have potential for positive impacts on improving classroom practices in engineering education. This study can encourage engineering education researchers to utilize these NLP methods that may be helpful in analyzing the vast textual data generated in engineering education, thereby reducing the number of missed opportunities to glean information for actors and agents in engineering education.

Over 20,000 Swedish lower high school students are currently learning mathematics in English but little research has been conducted in this area. This study looks into the question of how much second language learner training teachers teaching mathematics in English to Swedish speaking students have acquired and how many of those teachers are using effective teaching practices for second language learners. The study confirms earlier findings that report few teachers receive training in second language learning but indicates that some of the teaching practices shown to be effective with second language learners are being used in some Swedish schools / Mer än 20 000 högstadiet elever i Sverige har valt att lära sig matematik på engelska, men det finns väldigt lite forskning inom området. Detta arbete granskar hur mycket utbildning i andraspråksinlärning har lärare som undervisar matematik på engelska till svensktalande elever och hur många av de undervisnings-strategier som tidigare forskning har visat att vara effektiva används numera under matematiklektionerna på engelska? Arbetet bekräftar tidigare forskning, som visar att få lärare som undervisar matematik på engelska till svensktalande elever har fått utbildning i andraspråksinlärning, men den här forskningen visar att några av de effektiva strategierna numera används under matematiklektioner i vissa skolor. / <p>Matematik</p>

For as long as managed mutual funds have been in existence there has been a desire to accurately assess their relative performance against each other, and also their respective performance in relation to an appropriate stock market index. There has been a specific interest in whether the expensive, professionally managed mutual funds can justify their high cost with respect to low cost, simple index trackers by producing superior, post-cost performance, and this proposition is implicitly tested within this thesis. The aim of this thesis is to undertake an empirical assessment of the managerial performance of mutual funds utilising a three-stage DEA-SFA-DEA methodology which combines linear mathematical programming (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Specifically, this thesis focuses on evaluating the managerial performance of UK domiciled open-ended investment companies (OEICs) and unit trusts (UTs) over a three year period from 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2010. Various DEA models are utilised including CCR, BCC and SBM DEA models with various orientations, and also versions of these DEA models which make use of the SORM procedure. These are used to carry out an initial evaluation of the managerial performance of the OEICs/UTs, before two of these DEA models are combined with SFA regression analysis in a three-stage DEA-SFA-DEA methodology to purge the influence of environmental factors and statistical noise, thus leading to a more robust evaluation of the true managerial performance of the OEICs/UTs under assessment. The results of this thesis extend support to the premise of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) that financial markets are information efficient , and thus it is not possible, given the information available when the investment is made, to consistently obtain returns in excess of the average market return on a risk-adjusted basis, and this thesis does so through the use of a novel approach.

政治知識之於民主社會有其重要性，在政治學界中與政治知識相關的研究產出相當豐富，研究者利用政治知識此一變數進行相關研究前，對於題目如何選定、選項如何提供、題型的差異都是研究者需要去關注的重點，而本文主要的研究目的即是聚焦於討論何種題型更適合用來測量民眾的政治知識。 目前國內測量政治知識的問卷題型較為常見的為開放題與選擇題題型，在這兩類題型的討論上，前者被認為會低估受訪者政治知識程度，後者的測量結果則被質疑提供猜題空間導致高估了受訪者的政治知識程度，然而目前國內外卻缺乏足夠的實證研究來證明這兩個題型的適用性。 本文採用具有實驗設計性質的二手資料，利用前後測的方式讓受測者填答相同題目不同題型的問卷，藉此檢視各種知識程度的受測者在面對不同題型時是否會產生回應模式上的差異。本研究發現，開放題會使得較高政治知識程度的受訪者被低估，選擇題反而能準確測量出此類受訪者的知識程度。為了進一步證實受訪者在偏難的題目上所增加的猜題比例並非是來自於盲猜，本文採用多項機率單元模型來檢視受訪者於於選擇題選擇各個答項的機率。研究發現，儘管選擇題無法避免受訪者猜題，但受訪者並非是盲猜，反而會根據其具有的知識依據來答題，故政治知識程度高的受訪者能採用猜題方式答對題目，政治知識低的受訪者無法利用猜題方式猜中答案。整體而言，選擇題比起開放題更適合用來測量民眾的政治知識。 / Political knowledge plays an important role in the democratic society, and therefore there has been much research on political knowledge in the discipline of political science. To study political knowledge, political scientists have to understand the way of questions and options presented, and also the differences between a variety of question formats. This paper aims to analyze which question format is better for measuring the political knowledge of the public. The open-ended and multiple-choice items are both common formats for measuring political knowledge in Taiwan. The open-ended question is always considered to underestimate the respondents’ level of political knowledge, while the multiple-choice format is thought of overestimating the levels of political knowledge for providing the respondents with opportunity to guess. However, a strong evidence to decide the most suitable format for the measurement of political knowledge is still lacking. This paper uses the secondary data which is collected by a pretest-posttest questionnaire to examine whether guessing behavior will emerge or not when the respondents facing the same question with different formats. This research finds that open-ended questions underestimate the respondents’ knowledge levels who has higher level of political knowledge originally, but the multiple-choice questions can estimate the levels more accurately. To further confirm that the higher guess proportions in the more difficult questions are not resulted from the blind guessing, the study examines the probabilities of options selected by Multinomial Probit Model. The research finds that though the respondents may have guess more in multiple-choice question, however, they tend to answer the questions based on their knowledge instead of blind guessing. Therefore, the respondents who have higher levels of political knowledge can guess correctly, while those who have lower levels of political knowledge cannot. In summary, the multiple-choice questions are more suitable to measure people’s political knowledge.

This study examined the relationship between the open-endedness of activities and the creativity of young children. Eleven prekindergarten classes were observed and rated twice using a researcher-developed instrument, the Open-endedness of Activities Rating Scale (OARS). Three classes were selected from the 11 based on their cumulative ratings in the first observation (CROBS1): the class with the lowest degree of open-endedness of activities (CLSL), the class with a medium degree of openendedness of activities (CLSM), and the class with the highest degree of open-endedness of activities (CLSH). Fifty-two "atrisk" students in these three classes (24 boys, 28 girls), who had no identified disabilities or delays, were tested utilizing Torrance's (1981) Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM). A correlation was then drawn between the three classes' ranks of CROBS1 and their respective ranks of mean TCAM scores: fluency scores (FLUE), originality scores (ORIG), imagination scores (IMAG), and total scores (TTCAM). The 11 classes' CROBS1 was correlated and compared with their cumulative ratings in the second observation CROBS2 in order to examine the reliability of the OARS. The results from the study indicated that: (1) the researcher-developed instrument, the OARS, is reliable for research purposes; (2) the degree of openendedness of activities is significantly positively related to the level of creative thinking ability of the young children engaged in these activities; (3) increasing the open-endedness of activities is most beneficial for a class with a relatively low degree of openendedness, because a moderate increase in its open-endedness can result in a noticeable improvement in the fluency, originality, and total creative thinking ability of its students; and (4) increasing the open-endedness of activities is also beneficial for a class with a relatively medium degree of open-endedness, because a moderate increase in its open-endedness can result in a noticeable improvement in its students' imagination.

Diese Forschungsarbeit beschreibt und bewertet beobachtbare Experimentierprozesse hinsichtlich der grundlegenden naturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitsweise „Umgang mit Variablen“, die Gymnasiasten am Ende der Sekundarstufe I bei der Bearbeitung einer offenen Experimentieraufgabe im Physikunterricht zeigen. Dargelegt wird zudem der Nutzen einer differenzierten Begriffsbestimmung für eine zielorientierte und strukturierte Entwicklung von offenen Experimentieraufgaben. In einer empirisch-quantitativen Exploration mit 82 Schülern wird eine offene Aufgabenstellung zum Thema Windenergie eingesetzt, die den Experimentierenden bezüglich der naturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitsweise einen hohen Grad an Entscheidungsmöglichkeiten erlaubt. Die Studie möchte für den Umgang mit Variablen die Wirksamkeit der offenen Experimentieraufgabe aufzeigen und zwar unter der Bedingung, dass Schüler vor der Bearbeitung der offenen Experimentieraufgabe eine vorbereitende bzw. keine vorbereitende Instruktion erhalten. Das Hauptinteresse der vergleichenden Studie liegt bei einem Kontexttransfer, den die Schüler von der vorbereitenden Instruktion auf die offene Experimentieraufgabe leisten müssen, wenn sie a) keinen Wechsel der Experimentierbedingungen und b) einen Wechsel der Experimentierbedingungen vorfinden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Fähigkeit der Probanden mit Variablen umzugehen, durch den Einfluss einer vorbereitenden Instruktion erheblich gesteigert wird. Eine Abhängigkeit vom Grad der Kontextunterschiede zwischen der vorbereitenden Instruktion und der offenen Experimentieraufgabe wird nur gefunden, wenn die Probanden neben den veränderten Kontexten auch veränderte Experimentierbedingungen vorfinden. Die Ergebnisse verleiten für die Vermittlung der naturwissenschaftlichen Arbeitsweise „Umgang mit Variablen“ zu der forschungsbezogenen Aussage: Mehr Offenheit beim Experimentieren wagen! / This research paper describes and rates observable experimental processes secondary school students’ (aged 16) reveal concerning the fundamental scientific method of using variables in open-ended experimental tasks in the physics classroom. In addition, the benefit of a corresponding sophisticated definition will be shown in order to enable a goal-oriented and structured development of open-ended experimental tasks. In an empirical quantitative exploration with 82 school students, an open-ended problem on the topic “wind power” is utilized, allowing a high degree of autonomy in decision-making concerning the scientific method of using variables. The study aims at demonstrating the effectiveness of open-ended experimental tasks depending on whether the students received preparing instruction beforehand. The main interest of the comparative study lies in a transfer of context that students need to perform between the preparing instruction and the open-ended experimental task with or without a shift of experimental conditions. The results show that the students’ ability to use variables is highly enhanced by receiving preparing instructions. Dependence on the degree of context-shift between preparing instruction and open-ended experimental task is only the case when students find beyond shifted contexts altered experimental conditions. Concerning the teaching of the scientific method of using variables, the results lead to a research-related statement: dare to employ more open-ended experiments!