Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Douglas K. Benson / This thesis answers the questions: How should the terms interaction, individualization, and personalization be applied to Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) software? What progress has been made in their implementation? How can CALL software developers better incorporate them in the future? For each of the three terms, I explain how it is applicable to the CALL software environment by defining it, describing the pedagogical research supporting it, and then giving general guidelines for incorporating it into a CALL software program. I measure the progress of the implementation of the three terms in CALL software through compiling and analyzing data from reviews of 44 software titles. The publication dates of the software titles are from 1981 to 2008. I propose through description and a proof-of-concept software program ways to improve the incorporation of the terms in question into CALL software. As a result of answering the three questions, this thesis shows that the current accepted definitions and ways of implementing interaction, individualization, and personalization need to be improved in order to comply with pedagogical research and make full use of current technology. The general guidelines given in the explanation of each term relative to CALL and the attributes under each term in the analysis of the compilation data provide examples of areas on which to focus development. Additionally, I specifically comment on pedagogically supported attributes within each term that have a weak representation in the software compilation and therefore need more development. In addition, this thesis is accompanied by “Mis vacaciones”, a proof-of-concept software program, which demonstrates ways to improve the incorporation of interaction, individualization, and personalization into CALL software. In “Mis vacaciones”, the learner takes a virtual trip to Nuevo Leon, Nicaragua. The multimedia sent to the learner by a previous traveler shows Nicaraguan city people and the La Gigatona festival. After visiting, the learner is asked to describe the Nicaraguans that they saw. If the learner needs help, Structured Input activities lead the learner to develop the third person singular imperfect form. Buttons in the software environment provide access to internet sources. The learner is able to draw and take photos to create a visual prop to aid in the description task.

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>

This thesis is done during the spring semester 2016 for the Bachelor of Science in Innovation and Design programme at Karlstad University. The mission of the thesis was provided by the company 3TEMP AB in Arvika. In order to serve large quantities of coffee at big events, festivals and fairs a powerful coffee machine is required. Due to its size the machine is difficult handle during transport. This project is about finding a solution that makes the transport of the coffee machine and its related equipment safer and easier to handle during transportation between events. The goal of the project was to find a possible solution that makes the transportation of the equipment more efficient and ergonomic. In order to find as many ideas as possible the design process has been used. This includes a research followed by an ideation, concept development and concept evaluation. The project ended with one concept presented in the form of a layout design in CAD together with assembly drawings, sketches and a model. In this project interviews and observations has been done together with the people who transport coffee equipment on a daily basis. The results of the observations were later compared with the recommended lifting weight for manual lifting tasks using NOISH lifting equation. In the event business different types of vehicles are used to transport equipment at the event areas. Everything from ATVs and snowmobiles to tractors and caterpillar vehicles are used. In the project there has been a search for a common denominator between those vehicles. During the project benchmarking of similar products has also been done to find inspiration for new ideas. To further evaluate the concepts an examination of laws and regulations for transportation of equipment in traffic and off-road has been done. The equipment also has to withstand long distance transport by rail, road, sea and air. To meet these requirements interviews were made with the company MariTerm AB who works with educating in cargo securing of goods for worldwide shipment. / Detta examensarbete är utfört under vårterminen 2016 för högskoleingenjörsprogrammet i innovationsteknik och design på Karlstad universitet. Uppdraget tillhandahölls av företaget 3TEMP AB i Arvika. För att kunna servera stora mängder kaffe på stora event, festivaler och mässor krävs kraftfulla kaffemaskiner som är svåra att transportera. Det här projektet handlar om att ta fram ett förslag på en lösning som gör transporten av kaffemaskinen med tillhörande utrustning lättare och mindre påfrestande för brukaren i samband med förflyttning mellan olika event. Målet med projektet har varit att föreslå en lösning på hur transport av kaffemaskin och kringutrustning kan ske effektivt och ergonomiskt. För att hitta så många möjliga lösningar som möjligt användes designprocessen. Detta inkluderade en förstudie, idegenerering, konceptutveckling och konceptutvärdering. Resultatet av arbetet slutade med ett koncept som presenteras i from av en layoutkonstruktion i CAD med tillhörande sammanställningsritningar, skisser och en modell. I det här projektet intervjuaedes och observerades brukaren vid det befintliga arbetet. Resultatet av observationerna jämfördes sedan med den rekommenderade lyftvikten för manuella lyftarbeten genom att använda NOISH lyftekvation. Vid event används olika typer av hjälpmedel för att förflytta olika typer av utrustningen på eventområdena. Det används allt från fyrhjulingar och snöskotrar till traktorer och larvfordon. I projektet söktes en gemensam nämnare mellan dessa fordon. I projektet genomfördes även benchmarking på liknande produkter samt en undersökning av vilka lagar och regler som finns i samband med transport på landsväg och i terräng. Utrustningen skall gå att transportera längre sträckor på räls, landsväg, båt eller flyg. För att lösningen skall uppfylla dessa krav har intervjuer gjorts med Mariterm AB som arbetar med utbildning av lastsäkring av olika gods för transport över hela världen.

An initial review of literature concerned with commercial and industrial office design indicated the need to research and develop a method for the design of the management systems of offices with the purpose of improving the operational effectiveness and alignment to strategy. In particular the literature review indicated that the application of lean methods, in non-manufacturing areas is comparatively rare. A critical review of the literature identified that Value Stream Mapping has been used to map mechanistic task activities, however, a need was identified for a new generation of Value Stream Mapping to map mixed mechanistic and organic task activities. To complement the literature survey and discover if there were significant variables (e.g. task uncertainty, interdependence, task complexity, mechanistic / organic structures, risk, task analysability etc) influencing office design, pilot studies were carried out in a mechanistic and organic office. Several additional variables were identified. From the pilot studies combined with the literature review a conceptual model was formulated which provides guidelines for managers enabling them to design the management systems fully taking all the variables into account. The conceptual model was then tested using a multiple case study design of two small consulting type offices that exhibited mixed mechanistic and organic characteristics. This resulted in an improved version of the model which was then further validated. This validation based upon the opinions of office managers focused mainly on identifying the practical usefulness of the model from an industrial perspective. Following the validation a final form of the model has been proposed in this research. It remains for future researchers to fully test the model by applying it in a wider range of offices. This study makes an explicit contribution to the redesign of offices as well as the utilisation of Value Stream Mapping to the mechanistic and the organic task activities within commercial and industrial offices.

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schank’s Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users’ reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis.

The aim of the thesis is based on the existing approaches to the assessment of the difficulty of the task of teaching with a focus on ICT and computer science to design a methodology for determining the difficulty of the task and verify it on the model examples for elementary schools. The methodology will be to respond to the theoretical background, which are based, in particular, of the parameters, forms, functions, and the specifics of teaching jobs. Other theoretical basis for the analysis of the teaching jobs are from the known taxonomies, Focus group research method and statistical data processing. The empirical part qualitative research including the multi-round testing pupils Elementary school and the analysis of the data obtained.

This master's thesis discusses the use of UV/VIS spectrophotometry in chemistry teacher education. Optical methods principles are described in theoretical part of the thesis, and. the main part is dedicated to UV-VIS spectrophotometry. Tasks for quantifying and qualifying substances determination are described in experimental part. Educational tasks are described in a way so that chemistry teachers could use for instructions.

This thesis deals with the Biology Olympiad and remaking of selected tasks of region round. The remaked tasks can be used in highschool education. The thesis includes theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part provides general information about the Biology Olympiad (BiO), charts the achievements of Czech students in International Biology Olympiad (IBO), includes literary review of selected topics. The practical part encompass four remaked tasks of different topics: Eucaryotic cell as a mosaic, Water in life of animals, Animals' areas and their distribution, History of the flora in Czech Republic. The tasks are processed in the form of worksheets. The worksheets were tested at schools. Knowledge of students was tested by using of created pretests and posttests. The practical part also presents the result of research based on a questionnaire survey focused on the involvement of school in BiO and teachers' opinions on these topics.

Listening with comprehension, one of the basic language skills, is an essential part of teaching Czech as a foreign language. Even though this skill is very important, it is usually not given sufficient attention. This master thesis examines how listening is processed in selected popular textbooks which are, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Language, designed for basic users on level A1 and A2. Based on a critical analysis of textbooks, the output this thesis is the design of several types of listening tasks created with the support of theoretical knowledge based on the literature processed in the introductory part of the thesis. At the same time, it seeks to fill in the gaps in existing listening tasks which are presented in current teaching materials.

Ce travail a pour principal objet d’étude la dynamique sociale développée dans le cadre des activités d’apprentissage des langues en ligne en contexte institutionnel. En s’appuyant sur les propositions faites par la théorie de l’activité, cette thèse présente une analyse de la finalité, du cadre instrumental et du cadre social de l’activité d’apprentissage des langues en ligne en contexte institutionnel et de leur évolution dans le système de l’activité.Cette recherche fournit également une méthode d’analyse permettant d’évaluer l’impact de différents types de tâches et d’environnements virtuels d’apprentissage sur l’intensité de la dynamique sociale développée au sein des groupes d’apprenants d’une langue en ligne en contexte institutionnel. La méthode d’analyse utilisée s’appuie aussi bien sur l’analyse quantitative des traces écrites des communications/productions des apprenants que sur l’analyse du contenu de ces traces.Nous montrons qu’il est possible de développer une dynamique sociale de communauté virtuelle au sein de groupes d’apprenants d’une langue en ligne en contexte institutionnel. Le développement d’une telle dynamique est favorisé par la mise en œuvre de tâches d’apprentissage des langues et d’environnements virtuels d’apprentissage permettant l’action sociale authentique dans des cadres sociaux qui dépassent le cadre formel de l’institution éducative. / Drawing on the proposals made by the activity theory, in this study, we considered learning as a conscious act directed toward a goal. This goal can be achieved through the use of appropriate artifacts and the participation of the individual within a social community. In this perspective, we studied the purpose, the instrumental framework and the social framework of online language learning activities in institutional context and their evolutions in the activity system.We showed that the evolution of the purpose of the act of language learning (development of language competence) inevitably involves the evolution of educational artifacts (language learning tasks), that of technical artifacts (virtual learning environments), as well as the nature of the social dynamics of the learning activity.We particularly focused on social dynamics developed in online language learning activities in the institutional context. In this perspective, we conducted a field study to analyze the intensity of the social dynamics developed through three learning activities involving three different combinations of tasks and virtual environments. The results of the field study confirmed the theoretical foundation of our thesis. Indeed, the types of tasks and virtual learning environments that we presented in the theoretical part as consistent with learning through authentic social action proved to promote significantly more intense social dynamics in the specific context of our field study.