There is a need to solidify the common folklore understanding of what acceptable behaviors are for computer network users. The process of solidification should provide for the development of a paradigm that will be utilized in the formulation of computer use policy. Those who craft computer use policy should move away from the model of a network as a superhighway to a model of a network as a commonly shared resource. The current process for formulating and reviewing an Acceptable Use Policy--an AUP--has generally not evolved as quickly as the rapidly expanding user base and changing demographics. Given the changes in user demographics on computer networks, there is a rapidly growing need to better understand the computer network and to create AUP's based upon questions of social interaction. Such questions might attempt to address the issues of cooperation and sharing of resources. For example, faced with the temptation to behave selfishly--to overuse the resources, how can a group of people (through its AUP) establish and maintain cooperative behavior? To begin the process of answering such questions, this dissertation suggests focusing on the question: "How do privacy aspects of the First and Fourth Amendments impact the formulation of Acceptable Use Policy for an on-line computer network?" This dissertation suggests that privacy is a foundational concept in developing an understanding of the nature of the social activities which are growing in cyberspace. This dissertation also chronicles the transition from informal gentleman's agreement AUP's toward more formalized ones. The research in this dissertation was accomplished by accessing a number of legal resources such as Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw, Web sites on the Internet, a law library, and several Mailing Lists involved in discussions of online legal issues. Other sources, such as government documents, existing and out of date Acceptable Use Policies, and legislative testimony, were reviewed. Personal communication with a number of eminent legal scholars also provided a valuable resource. This dissertation concludes that an Acceptable Use Policy should be in place to govern use of computer networks. The Acceptable Use Policy should become much more of a social contract in the manner of many campus faculty and student handbooks, and, even in the manner that the U.S. Constitution is a social contract for the U.S. population. AUP's should be locally developed by those who have a foundational understanding of: (1) legal principles of privacy, search and seizure, and due process, and, (2) management theory involving the use of commonly shared resources.

The research question: What do adults understand about the cyclic nature of organic matter and the concepts in decomposition? This study examined the scientific and alternate views on the concept of decomposition in two phases. The first is a constructive phase and dealt with collecting ideas and terminology. The second, the validation phase, determined how many adults shared the ideas collected. The constructive phase involved clinically interviewing 20 adult subjects of various age groups and educational backgrounds using open ended questions and concepts mapping. The validation stage was administering a survey constructed with the ideas found in the clinical interviewing to various people randomly in public places and employment facilities. Additional data was collected regarding the experience of the subjects in composting and gardening or courses in biology or chemistry. This data was examined to identify what ideas are held most often by adults, what ideas are not in conjunction with scientific concepts, and what variables might have produced the factors based on a constructivist approach to educational development. The findings include firmly held ideas about the decomposition of bones and the lack of understanding of the microbial role of decomposition.

The multicultural and environmental education movements have constituted significant political and educational forces over the last several decades. However, there has been little merger of these in terms of constituencies, ideologies and agendas. In schools, environmental and multicultural education are most often considered occasional additives rather than core curriculum, and rarely are they introduced as interconnected. Educational curricula and programs that support young people, particularly in but not limited to urban areas, in exploring connections between social and environmental issues and becoming knowledgable and conscientious decision makers, leaders and activists are urgently needed. Urban youth involved in environmental issues represent a venue for bridging multiculturalism and environmentalism as change agents who bring multiple cultural perspectives, wisdom, and leadership potential to the discourse. This research study explores conditions that promoted environmental activism and leadership among urban youth. An interview-based methodology was used to gain insights into the experiences and perceptions of twelve young people, male and female, who live in urban areas and are of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The analysis explores influences such as family, culture, neighborhood and school in shaping the study participants' perceptions and involvement in environmentalism. Their perspectives challenge limited and sterotypical definitions of environmental issues and support the notion that 'environment' is a socially constructed concept. The youth illustrate this in the examples of urban environmental concerns they identify and discuss as important to their lives and communities. Their experiences as youth activists and the nature of their activism is explored, including the importance of adult support and membership in community to sustaining their involvement. Their perceptions of leadership as a collaborative process, informed visions for rethinking schooling, and clarity in terms of educational and career aspirations reinforce their importance as contributors to the discourse on environmentalism. The lessons learned from this research are translated into recommendations for rethinking curriculum development and teacher education from a multicultural environmental perspective, and building alliances between schools and community and national organizations.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe how school library media specialists can realize a new role of resource persons for teachers and each other. The re-definition of their role from reactive to proactive enables then to plan and team teach with classroom teachers and to integrate library media and research skills programs into the classroom curriculum, using the cooperative learning model. In addition, a library media specialists' peer support group has been developed for professional growth. The positive ramifications of this for teaching and learning is described. Literature on the role of advisor, library media standards, effective teaching, procedural models, and cooperative learning are reviewed to identify characteristics and methods necessary for school library media specialists to become proactive resource persons and catalysts for change within their schools. Many of these same objectives, characteristics, skills and programs are identified by the American Library Association's (1988) guidelines, Information Power. This qualitative research study involves six library media specialists over a period of three years. Data are collected through observations, questionnaires, field notes, interviews, transcriptions of meetings and document analysis. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that it is possible for library media specialists to realize their potential as resource persons who co-plan and implement instruction in collaboration with classroom teachers. Other conclusions indicate that a peer support group is extremely valuable for self-directed professional growth and development. The study concludes with recommendations for further research in the areas of beliefs and behaviors of practitioners, support groups and teaching models.

No description available.

This research seeks to apply the concepts of collaborative learning and open learner modelling in order to find out whether seeing their own group learner model helps learners improve their learning in a computer-based collaborative learning environment. There is previous work on giving back information about learning performance as a group but very little, if any, empirical work on the benefits of a group open learner model (GOLM). A major benefit of collaborative learning is to encourage learners to learn further from what they cannot achieve when do it by themselves but they can manage with another. Combining this with viewing and judging the information about learning found in a learner model, it was expected that this would increase their learning awareness in order to improve their learning performance. Without such group learner models, learners might not improve their learning performance in the collaborative learning environment as much as they might. To find out whether opening the group learner models helped learners to improve their learning performance we developed a system called 'GOLeM', and we focused on the learner's score on learning concepts and their degree of confidence in their answer. GOLeM was used as a learning environment to test for evidence in relation to two comparisons of individual performance. The first was a comparison of individual performance between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment. The second respect was to compare the results of learning in two different computer-based collaborative learning environments which were only different in terms of whether or not the learners could see their group learner model. The content of number-conversion is chosen for the domain knowledge. Dialogue games and sentence openers are used to implement a chat-tool to exchange beliefs between peers. Bar charts and textual explanations are used as external representations of learning performance as a group. The system was implemented and tested in two versions: paper-based, for the plausibility of the content and the user interface; and computer-based, for comparing the learning results among three different learning environments regarding the two respects above. To make sure what we built was valid – in terms of suitable content applied to the right target group of learners, we did several tests. These tests consist of a questionnaire with multiple choice questions applied to a small group of participants some of whom have a background in computing, and some have no background in computing. The questionnaire was examined for the suitability of its content and for the target group. A modified questionnaire was used with 122 participants who have a background in computing to validate in relation to the difficulty level and item discrimination. Five questions were selected as representative of the domain knowledge for a paper-based design and applied to six pairs of learners for the suitability of the questions and the number to be used, time taken, user interface, etc before developing the computer-based version. Regarding the comparison between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment, the results show there is a significant difference at the 5% level in terms of learning concept-score and degree of confidence in favour of individual learning performance of learners in collaborative learning environment. Considering the comparison of learning between the two computer-based collaborative learning environments, participants who are able to see their learning performance as a group learner models both before the group test and after each item of the group test, have a slightly higher concept-score and improved degree of confidence than those who cannot see these learner models. Moreover there evidence regarding the participant's self-assessment and peer-assessment, their opinion of the helpfulness of seeing the group learner model and their satisfaction in using this system confirms that further study in this area is justified. It leads to the conclusion that in these specific circumstances, learners benefit more from learning and seeing their group learner model. However the evidence that we have here is not sufficient to answer whether it is likely to be true that other systems like this will always lead the better learning. As a result, we plan to continue our work in both similar and different directions to improve the strength of the conclusion that providing group learner model in a computer-based collaborative learning environment helps learners to benefit from learning. The thesis mainly contributes to both CSCL and AIED communities for further study of GOLeM itself. Regarding the AIED community, GOLeM can be used for the further study on the benefits of seeing learning performance as a group learner model both before and after performing a group-test. Regarding the CSCL community, using this GOLeM with either a larger or a wider variety of groups of learners focusing on knowledge contribution during the group-test for the concrete evidence to support that social interaction has an impact on collaborative learning. The evidence that we have found suggests that being able to see a GOLM improves learning. Though this evidence is not statistically significant, this thesis has provided the most thorough empirical examination of the benefits of a GOLM so far.

This thesis is about students’ approaches to learning (SAL) in computer science education. Since the initial development of SAL instruments and inventories in the 70’s, they have been used as a means to understand students’ approaches to learning better, as well as to measure and predict academic achievement (such as retention, grades and credits taken) and other correlating factors. It is an instrument to measure a student’s study strategies – not how “good” a student is. A Swedish short version of Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) was used to gather information on whether we, through context and content, encouraged sustainable study behaviour among our students. ASSIST was used in two distinct situations: 1) Evaluation and evolvement of an online programming course design, and 2) Engineering education in media technology and computer science in a campus environment where approaches to learning has been evaluated and studied over time during the five year long programmes. Repeated measurements have been analysed against factors predicting academic achievement, and have been evaluated on a cohort level (not individual) in order to clarify patterns rather than individual characteristics. Significant for both projects was that a surface approach to learning correlated negatively with retention. Students who adopted a combination of deep and strategic approach to learning performed better in terms of grades, ECTS credits completed and perceived value of the education. As part of developmental tools it can be beneficial to use ASSIST at a group level in order to see what kind of approach a course design or a programme supports among the students. / <p>QC 20161028</p>

The aim of this study was to asses the impact of a visit to the NIHERST/NGC National Science Centre in Trinidad on four different school-age visitor groups. The research was conducted through the administering of a post-visit questionnaire immediately upon completion of each visit by each group, and via visitor feedback obtained in post-visit or pre-visit activities conducted within two weeks of the visit for three groups. Teachers/instructors who accompanied the groups on their visit also completed post-visit questionnaires and provided additional information on follow-up activities via an interview. The results of this investigation suggest that the visit to this science centre provided entertainment/enjoyment value and potential educational value to most individuals. The nature of this enjoyment was noted for various age groups and genders in this study. Quantification of the educational impact was not possible within the constraints of this study, which was unable to capture long-term effects of the supply of ‘new knowledge’ to visitors which the visit to the science centre had provided.

The purpose of this study is to explore pre-service science teachers&rsquo / (PST) argumentation in the context of inquiry-oriented laboratory work. Specifically, this study investigated the kinds of argumentation schemes PSTs use as they perform inquiry-oriented laboratory tasks, and how argumentation schemes generated by PSTs vary by tasks as well as by experimentation and critical discussion sessions. The participants in this study were 35 pre-service elementary teachers, who will teach middle school science from 6th through 8th grade students after graduation. In this study, participants were engaged in six inquiry-oriented laboratory tasks. The performance of laboratory tasks consisted of two stages. Through the experimentation stage, PSTs planned and developed their own hypotheses, carried out an experiment and collected data, and processed their data to verify their hypotheses. Through the critical discussion stage, one of the research groups presented their hypotheses, methods, and results orally to the other research groups. Each presentation was followed by a class discussion of weak and strong aspects of the experimentation. The data of this study were collected through video- and audio-recording. The data were the transcribed from video- and audio-recordings of the PSTs&rsquo / discourse during the performance of the laboratory tasks. For the analysis of PSTs&rsquo / discourse pre-determined argumentation schemes by Walton (1996) were employed. The results illustrated that PSTs applied varied premises rather than only observations or reliable sources, to ground their claims or to argue for a case or an action. The interpretation of the frequency data and the kind of the most frequent argumentation schemes can be seen as a positive indication that the inquiry-oriented laboratory tasks that were employed in this study are effective toward promoting presumptive reasoning discourse. Another result of this study, which is worthy of notice is the construction and evaluation of scientific knowledge claims that resulted in different number and kinds of arguments. Results of this study suggest the following implications for improving science education. First, designing inquiry-oriented laboratory environments, which are enriched with critical discussion, provides discourse opportunities that can support argumentation. Second, both the number of arguments and the use of various scientific argumentation schemes can be enhanced by specific task structures. Third, &ldquo / argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning&rdquo / is a promising analysis framework to reveal the argumentation patterns in scientific settings. Last, pre-service teachers can be encouraged to support and promote argumentation in their future science classrooms if they engage in argumentation integrated instructional strategies.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Mark Dressman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-264) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.