I argue in this dissertation that the plays of Aeschylus are best understood as appeals to their predominantly male fifth-century Athenian audience centered around the presentation of dramatic character. I maintain that an examination of the Persians, Seven against Thebes, and Suppliants in these terms reveals that these plays are not primitive, static, or simplistic plays from early in Aeschylus’ career, but rather dramatically complex and mature works. More broadly, I assert that character studies are not hopelessly outdated nor at odds with audience-centered and cultural studies. By combining these approaches, we gain a fuller understanding of how playwrights composed the plays and how spectators responded to them. I also assert that divergent responses to dramas based on individual experiences are not only the rule for spectators of tragedy, but directly influence how playwrights approached their dramatic characters. The Introduction includes theoretical background for spectators’ relationship to dramatic characters culled from film theory and an application of its general principles to the Oresteia. In chapter 1, I examines how the Persians invites spectators to experience a range of potentially contradictory emotional states that include fear of the Persian invaders and sympathy with the inhabitants of the Persian Empire, with the men who fought against them in the war, and perhaps even with Xerxes himself. In Chapter 2, I show how, initially, the Seven against Thebes strongly implies, but does not establish beyond a doubt, that Eteocles is a paragon of Greek manhood and a noble defender of his city with whom Athenian spectators could identify. Questions about Eteocles emerge, however, when the play introduces Polyneices’ accusations of injustice against him, points to increasing similarities between the brothers, and shows how their fates have long since been sealed by their father’s curse and by the will of Apollo. In Chapters 3 and 4, I argue that the portrayal of the Danaids in the Suppliants is intentionally ambiguous. Spectators may have known that the Danaids would kill the Aegyptids, but the play offers vague and contradictory evidence regarding them and their situation to generate suspense in this early play of the trilogy. / text

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of audience response systems on the secondary classroom. High school students (n=61) participated in one of three groups: (1) a control group, which heard traditional lectures with verbal questions only, (2) a clicker group, which had questions displayed and used clickers to answer, and (3) a questions only group, which had questions displayed but used slips of paper to answer the question. ANOVA was used to analyze various sources of data, including: test scores, post-test scores, and others, and it was found that there was no statistical difference between the control and two treatment groups. A focus group (n=4) was held to gather qualitative data. Students in the focus group indicated that they enjoyed using clickers for various reasons. Focus group participants indicated that clickers allowed for increased interaction between students and teacher and between students, the graphs allowed students to understand how they performed compared to the class, and gave opportunities for competition. More data needs to be collected on the use of clickers and how the discussion they foster might lead to increased learning. / text

No description available.

Audience Response Systems (ARSs) provide a promising opportunity to address issues occurring in traditional higher education, e.g., the lack of interaction, by allowing students to participate anonymously in lectures using their mobile devices. This can promote the students' attention, increase the interaction between the lecturer and the students and foster active thinking during class. In order to choose an appropriate ARS, numerous surveys list and classify these systems according to different criteria, e.g., supported features and platforms. [From the introduction]

Der vorliegende Beitrag beleuchtet als Teil eines Blended-Learning Ansatzes vorrangig den Einsatz von Live-Umfragen (ARS – Audience Responce Systems) im Vorlesungsrahmen. Gerade naturwissenschaftlich geprägte Studiengänge (hier die Fachrichtung Physik) sind häufig durch Frontalunterricht geprägt. Das maßgebliche Ziel des Projektes war es, das Format durch gezielte Einbindung der Studierenden aufzulockern und die Diskussionskultur in der Lehrveranstaltung zu stärken. Einhergehend mit der Aktivierung erhalten die Lernenden eine unmittelbare Rückmeldung zu ihrem Wissensstand und die/ der Lehrende ein Feedback zu möglichen Wissenslücken. Die Live-Umfragen fanden über die Online- Plattform invote.de in Form von Single-Choice-Fragen statt. Erweitert wurde dieser Ansatz, indem diese Inhalte ebenfalls für eine asynchrone Wissensvermittlung im Lernmanagement-System (LMS) Moodle implementiert und mit Feedback flankiert wurden. Dies führte im Vergleich zu früheren Iterationen der Lehrveranstaltung zu einem höheren Aktivitätslevel des Plenums und fachlich fundierten Diskussionen. In Evaluationen zum Ende des Semesters sowie in persönlichen Gesprächen mit den Studierenden, wurde der Einsatz der Fragen in synchroner sowie asynchroner Form explizit als Zugewinn für die Qualität der Lehrveranstaltung herausgestellt.

Audience Response Systeme (ARS) sind in der Lage, Probleme in der universitären Lehre, wie die fehlende Interaktion zwischen dem Lehrenden und den Studierenden, durch die Benutzung technischer Werkzeuge in der Lehrveranstaltung zu lösen. Der Einsatz solcher Systeme bringt jedoch eigene Probleme mit sich: Der Lehrende muss oftmals sein Lehrkonzept an das jeweilig gewählte System anpassen, da dieses in seinem Funktionsumfang und seinen unterstützten didaktischen Konzepten sehr eingeschränkt ist. Eine Adaption oder gar eine Erweiterung des Funktionsumfangs zur Unterstützung selbst gewählter didaktischer Konzepte wird selten erlaubt, ebenso wie stark kollaborative Szenarien. Diese Arbeit stellt grundlegende Gedanken zur Konzeption und Umsetzung einer Lernumgebung vor, die in der Lage ist, verschiedenste didaktische Abläufe auf Grundlage eines einheitlichen (Meta-)Modells zu modellieren und ihren Funktionsumfang auf den gewählten Anwendungsfall anzupassen. Neben klassischen Anwendungsfällen sollen weitergehende, stark kollaborative Anwendungsfälle unterstützt werden und die Funktionalität einfach erweiterbar sein. Durch den Einsatz in realen Anwendungsszenarien und damit verbundenen Lasttests und Benutzerbefragungen soll das System evaluiert werden.

In recent years, the adoption of digital learning environments has been proven as a suitable complement to traditional lectures, allowing to involve students more actively. However, current approaches lack at supporting both lecturers' individual teaching scenarios and collaborative activities. Thus, this thesis introduces an adaptable collaborative learning environment that enables lecturers to model and execute customized teaching scenarios. In addition to expressive means of adaptation, it includes collaborative functions which support group and peer interactions. The approach was implemented in a role-based prototype called scenario-tailored Audience Response System (stARS), demonstrating its applicability through seven well-known teaching scenarios. Furthermore, a thorough evaluation based on various user studies and lecture experiments confirmed the ability to support lecturers' individual teaching scenarios and integrate advanced collaborative activities into digital learning environments.

The integration of technology into STEM education has been shown to increase classroom interaction and thus has the potential to improve student's learning. However, current approaches are designed to support specific scenarios and therefore have predefined functional scopes and limitations. This results in lecturers having to adjust their preferred teaching strategy to the currently used system. Hence, our goal is to allow lecturers to customize the system's functionality to their strategy in mind. As a solution, we created a prototype called stARS (scenario-tailored Audience Response System) that builds on top of a uniform metamodel and allows lecturers to create customized teaching scenarios using a graphical editor. First user studies have confirmed that users with different modeling abilities are able to understand the metamodel and use the graphical editor. In order to demonstrate the intuitive use of our prototype, this paper presents concepts to support both the starting phase and modeling of complex scenarios. However, an implementation in real-life scenarios has to be conducted to show its applicability.

Instructional technologies can be effective tools to foster student engagement, but university faculty may be reluctant to integrate innovative and evidence-based modern learning technologies into instruction. It is important to identify the factors that influence faculty adoption of instructional technologies in the teaching and learning process. Based on Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory, this quantitative, nonexperimental, one-shot cross-sectional survey determined what attributes of innovation (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability) predict the probability of faculty adopting the audience response system (ARS) into instruction. The sample for the study consisted of 201 faculty who have current teaching appointments at a university in the southeastern United States. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to determine the attributes of innovation that predict the probability of faculty adopting the ARS into instruction. The data indicated that the attributes of compatibility and trialability significantly predicted faculty adoption of ARS into instruction. Based on the results of the study, a professional development project that includes 3 full days of training and experiential learning was designed to assist faculty in adopting ARS into instruction. Because the current study only included the faculty at a single local university, future studies are recommended to explore a more holistic view of the problem from different institutions and from other stakeholders who may contribute to the process of instructional technology adoption. The project not only contributes to solving the local problem in ARS adoption, but it is also instrumental in promoting positive social change by fostering evidence-based teaching strategies and innovations that maximize student learning.

Feedback plays an important role in evaluating and developing courses in higher education. Due to inefficient factors, the feedback cycle does not meet its full potential and can therefore be counterproductive. Current evaluation methods typically demand much effort from both students and teachers, when asking for feedback at the end of the course and analyzing the results. Lack of engagement can thus be observed in both parties. Moreover, we can see an increasing trend of ARS used in educational settings, to improve learning quality and enhance the relationship between the presenter and audience. This study’s aim was to make the feedback process more efficient and to explore how to provide insight in lecture quality for continuous course development. To fully understand the target user, a pre-study was conducted to identify design requirements and to investigate which areas to evaluate during the courses and why. The interview sessions resulted in four main dimensions to evaluate; Meaningfulness, comprehension, knowledge and attitude. Based on these dimensions, a feedback tool was developed to gather the feedback data from students in two different cohorts. The tool was developed in a survey format, with the help of an existing ARS. The feedback was then collected after two university lectures during two courses. To explore the potential of providing useful insight to the lecturer, and to facilitate the analytical step of the process, an interactive visualization tool was prototyped to display the data. The visualization tool was evaluated, both in terms of usability and its overall concept, with a total of eight lecturers, two of which were lecturers in the courses used to gather the feedback data. Even though the results show that it might be difficult to draw a single conclusion of the tools’ usability, the users found the concept interesting and were positive towards the idea. The perception of the tool’s intended use varied and is discussed along with future development. / Feedback spelar en viktig roll när det kommer till utvärdering och utveckling av kurser inom högre utbildning. På grund av ineffektiva faktorer uppnår feedbackcykeln inte sin fulla potential och kan därför vara kontraproduktiv. Aktuella utvärderingsmetoder kräver typiskt mycket ansträngning från både elever och lärare och brist på engagemang kan således observeras hos båda parter. Dessutom kan vi se en ökande trend av ARS som används i utbildningsinstitutioner, för att förbättra utbildningskvaliteten samt förhållandet mellan presentatören och publiken. Syftet med studien var att göra feedbackprocessen mer effektiv och undersöka hur man kan ge insikt i föreläsningskvaliteten för kontinuerlig kursutveckling. För att förstå slutanvändaren genomfördes en förundersökning för att identifiera deras begär och för att undersöka vilka områden som ska utvärderas under kurserna och varför. Intervjuerna resulterade i fyra huvuddimensioner att utvärdera och ge insikt inom; Betydelse, förståelse, kunskap och attityd. Baserat på dessa dimensioner utvecklades ett feedbackverktyg. Verktyget var i form av ett formulär och producerades med hjälp av ett befintlig ARS. Feedbackdatan samlades sedan in efter två universitetsföreläsningar under två kurser. För att undersöka möjligheten att ge föreläsaren användbar insikt och för att underlätta det analytiska steget i processen, utvecklades ett interaktivt visualiseringsverktyg. Visualiseringsverktyget utvärderades, både vad gäller användbarhet och dess övergripande koncept, med totalt åtta föreläsare. Även om resultaten visar att det kan vara svårt att dra en enda slutsats av verktygets användbarhet, fann användarna konceptet intressant och var överlag positiva. Uppfattningen av verktygets avsedda användning varierar och diskuteras tillsammans med framtida utveckling.