The present thesis examines the possible reasons social workers have for entering and eventually graduating from the Social Work Department in Iraklio, Greece. It is a three-phase study, consisting of three distinct but related research parts; each research part is built upon knowledge, issues and questions derived from the preceding part. My background in sociology influenced the choice of theoretical perspectives; I was not interested in investigating students’ choice from a psychologically-based perspective. Bourdieu (e.g. 1977; 1987) and the work of others who have drawn on and developed his work (e.g. Hodkinson & Sparkes, 1997; Reay, 1998a) constituted a theoretical framework. In addition, theoretical perspectives which recognise the interplay between individual and structural factors (e.g. Kasimati, 1991) also proved useful. In this work both quantitative and qualitative approaches (grounded theory, narrative analysis) were employed. The findings contradict views that stress the degree of free choice people have about work; it is clear that external structural factors limit or contribute to the shaping of this choice. This is not to say, however, that the findings stress the determining influence of solely external factors on students’ choice. Students in this thesis describe actively making decisions; they are players in the field of education. They enter the field with unequal amounts of capital (economic, cultural); thus, although in theory everyone is free to play, not everyone is equal. To the extent that they have different social backgrounds (gender, class), their classed-and-gendered habitus differs as well. In the process of students’ educational choice, their habitus along with the particular educational system (with all its opportunities and restrictions) influence students’ horizons for action, their perceptions of what is available and appropriate for them. The high value placed on higher education (educational fetishism) is another factor influencing students’ horizons for action. In the context of their horizons for action, students employ a variety of strategies in order to enter higher education (e.g. the way they prepare for the exams, their ranking of Schools in preference order etc). The outcome of these strategies is their admission to the Social Work Department, which may have been intended or unintended. After having entered Social Work, additional factors influence students’ educational choice; experiences within the School (e.g. practice tutorials) contribute to their attitude towards social work and their studies, thus to their decision to graduate from the Social Work Department. Students’ decision-making process is made up of patterns of routine experience interspersed with turning points.

Nachdem im Jahr 2011 die Stadtbibliothek Pirna den Sächsischen Bibliothekspreis für die Ehrenamtsarbeit zur Leseförderung von Kindern erhalten hat, ist in diesem Jahr die Stadtbibliothek Chemnitz für das Konzept eines interaktiven E-Tutorials zum Ausbau von Bildungspartnerschaften mit Schulen ausgezeichnet worden. Mit diesen Worten empfing Bürgermeister Rochold die Gäste zur Preisverleihung. Mit jährlich 675.000 Besuchern stärke die Stadtbibliothek die Mitte von Chemnitz. Das Konzept eines Bildungszentrums im TIETZ mit Volkshochschule, Naturkundemuseum und Bibliothek habe sich bewährt. Mit 35 regionalen und nationalen Vereinen und Institutionen sei die Stadtbibliothek gut vernetzt und arbeite mit Kindertagesstätten, Grund- und Mittelschulen, Gymnasien und Berufsschulen auf der Basis von Vereinbarungen eng zusammen. „Bildungspartnerschaften können für alle Beteiligten ein Gewinn sein. Das Angebot der Schule wird erweitert, die Bibliothek und andere Anbieter entwickeln passgenaue Angebote zur Leseförderung und Vermittlung von Medien- und Informationskompetenz und gewinnen so an Attraktivität. Die Erwartungen an die Synergien tragen vielfältig sichtbare Früchte. Die Stadt ist stolz auf die Leistungen und Erfolge ihrer Bibliothek“, resümierte Bürgermeister Rochold seine Begrüßung.

La presente tesis plantea la comparación del rendimiento académico en el área de Plástica en el primer curso del Segundo Ciclo de Educación Infantil en tres situaciones específicas de trabajo en el aula (individualización, cooperación y tutoría) en interacción con el tipo de contenido (tipo de dibujo, con tres niveles: trazo, representación y color / tipo de actividad, con trece niveles que se corresponden a las trece unidades didácticas globalizadas desarrolladas en el curso académico). Los análisis de los datos obtenidos arrojan unos resultados que permiten concluir que el rendimiento en situación de cooperación es superior a las otras dos situaciones, no encontrándose diferencias estadísticas entre las situaciones de individualización y tutoría, aunque el comportamiento en esta última es inferior al de la primera. Estos resultados se mantienen en todas las actividades, aunque las diferencias son más acusadas en actividades que llevan, de manera intrínseca, el valor de la cooperación. Igualmente se pueden generalizar los resultados al tipo de dibujo, destacando la mayor dificultad del elemento color sobre los otros dos (trazo y representación). / This thesis aims at comparing academic performance in the Visual and Plastic Arts class during the first year of the second cycle of Infant and Nursery Education. It does so for three different working situations in the classroom - individualization, cooperation and tutorial and in connection with different categories of content - type of drawing (with three separate components: line, representation and colour); and type of activity (with thirteen components corresponding to thirteen course units). The analysis of the data obtained leads us to conclude that academic performance in the cooperation situation is higher than in the other two situations, no statistical differences having been found between the individualization and tutorial situations, although behaviour in the latter was worse than in the former. These results remained unchanged regardless of the activity involved, although differences were greater in activities with an element of cooperation. These results also apply to type of drawing, with the level of difficulty of the colour component ranking higher than line or representation.

Software applications for design and creation typically contain hundreds or thousands of commands, which collectively give users enormous expressive power. Unfortunately, rich feature sets also take a toll on usability. Current interfaces to feature-rich software address this dilemma by adopting menus, toolbars, and other hierarchical schemes to organize functionality—approaches that enable efficient navigation to specific commands and features, but do little to reveal how to perform unfamiliar tasks. We present an alternative task-centric user interface design that explicitly supports users in performing unfamiliar tasks. A task-centric interface is able to quickly adapt itself to the user’s intended goal, presenting relevant functionality and required procedures in task-specific customized interfaces. To achieve this, task-centric interfaces (1) represent tasks as first-class objects in the interface; (2) allow the user to declare their intended goal (or infer it from the user’s actions); (3) restructure the interface to provide step-by-step scaffolding for the current goal; and (4) provide additional knowledge and guidance within the application’s interface. Our inspiration for task-centric interfaces comes from a study we conducted, which revealed that a valid use case for feature-rich software is to perform short, targeted tasks that use a small fraction of the application’s full functionality. Task-centric interfaces provide explicit support for this use. We developed and tested our task-centric interface approach by creating AdaptableGIMP, a modified version of the GIMP image editor, and Workflows, an iteration on AdaptableGIMP’s design based on insights from a semi-structured interview study and a think-aloud study. Based on a two-session study of Workflows, we show that task-centric interfaces can successfully support a guided-and-constrained problem solving strategy for performing unfamiliar tasks, which enables faster task completion and reduced cognitive load as compared to current practices. We also provide evidence that task-centric interfaces can enable a higher-level form of application learning, in which the user associates tasks with relevant keywords, as opposed to low-level commands and procedures. This keyword learning has potential benefits for memorability, because the keywords themselves are descriptive of the task being learned, and scalability, because a few keywords can map to an arbitrarily complex set of commands and procedures. Finally, our findings suggest a range of different ways that the idea of task-centric interfaces could be further developed.

Mit dem Projekt ID4BM wurde eine hochschulübergreifende Lehrkooperation umgesetzt. Es wurden zwei Seminare in allen Phasen – von der Wissensbereitstellung über die Wissensanwendung bis hin zur Bewertung – miteinander verzahnt. Technologische Basis war die Lernplattform OPAL. Verwendete Methoden waren projektbasiertes Lernen, Flipped Classroom, Virtual Classroom, Gruppenarbeit, eTutoring, Gruppencoaching und Peer Review. Dieser Beitrag liefert Einblicke in die Konzeption der Lehrveranstaltung und die Evaluationsergebnisse.

Nachdem im Jahr 2011 die Stadtbibliothek Pirna den Sächsischen Bibliothekspreis für die Ehrenamtsarbeit zur Leseförderung von Kindern erhalten hat, ist in diesem Jahr die Stadtbibliothek Chemnitz für das Konzept eines interaktiven E-Tutorials zum Ausbau von Bildungspartnerschaften mit Schulen ausgezeichnet worden. Mit diesen Worten empfing Bürgermeister Rochold die Gäste zur Preisverleihung. Mit jährlich 675.000 Besuchern stärke die Stadtbibliothek die Mitte von Chemnitz. Das Konzept eines Bildungszentrums im TIETZ mit Volkshochschule, Naturkundemuseum und Bibliothek habe sich bewährt. Mit 35 regionalen und nationalen Vereinen und Institutionen sei die Stadtbibliothek gut vernetzt und arbeite mit Kindertagesstätten, Grund- und Mittelschulen, Gymnasien und Berufsschulen auf der Basis von Vereinbarungen eng zusammen. „Bildungspartnerschaften können für alle Beteiligten ein Gewinn sein. Das Angebot der Schule wird erweitert, die Bibliothek und andere Anbieter entwickeln passgenaue Angebote zur Leseförderung und Vermittlung von Medien- und Informationskompetenz und gewinnen so an Attraktivität. Die Erwartungen an die Synergien tragen vielfältig sichtbare Früchte. Die Stadt ist stolz auf die Leistungen und Erfolge ihrer Bibliothek“, resümierte Bürgermeister Rochold seine Begrüßung.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The use of technology in mathematics education has many potentially positive outcomes. There is, however, little evidence to show where the use of technology has made a significant impact on mathematics education in South Africa. This study aims to address the issue of how computer tablets are currently used in the mathematics classroom. The researcher drew a comparison between learners who were taught with computer tablets and learners who were taught in the traditional way by evaluating the learners' progress after being taught on the topic of 3D images. This assessment was done in the form of a pre-test and a post-test that were administered to both classes on a topic of 3D images that was taught during this allocated time. The research is located in the third-generation activity theory. It is based on the socio-cultural theory of Lev Vygotsky, but it is blended with modern western theories as described by Engeström. The researcher made use of a mixed methods approach starting with a qualitative survey, followed by a pre-test, observations and concluding with a post-test. The pre-test and post-test determined whether cognitive knowledge was gained. The participants in the study were a group of 15-year-old learners at a private school where the one class was taught using computer tablets in the mathematics classroom, and the other class was taught the same content without computer tablets. A qualitative survey was sent to 27 schools within a particular school group where teachers indicated the popular Apps that were used in the mathematics classroom in this school group. Teachers also gave reasons why these were the Apps of choice and elaborated on how they were using these Apps. The quantitative part of this research was guided by the results of the survey and the 5 most popular Applications (Apps) were used in the teaching experiment. The quantitative part focused on two classrooms within the same school where the one class were taught with computer tablets and the other class were taught without the use of computer tablets. The t-test for this research showed that the group of learners who were taught with computer tablets achieved significantly better results than the class of learners who were taught using hard copy textbooks with traditional methods of teaching. This study showed that having computer tablets in schools can be effective in the mathematics classroom. The recommendations emanating from this study indicates that school who are planning to use computer tablets in the mathematics classroom should first plan their wi-fi capabilities with enough access points and internet access. These schools also need to decide on a type of computer tablet and what operating system to use. This decision has implications to the accessibility of quality Apps, battery life and storage space of the computer tablet. Schools are recommended to have a plan for training teachers in the use of this computer tablets especially regarding the pedagogical practice when interacting with learners. A last recommendation is to nurture a culture of computer tablet use amongst the learners to discipline themselves to charge and maintain their computer tablets and apply it to educational use. This study includes a pedagogical framework in respect of the effective use of computer tablets in the mathematics classroom.

Throughout the past twenty-five years the process of designing and manufacturing a product has been revolutionized by the integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD). Although three-dimensional solid modeling, or 3-D CAD offers a better representation of the product in a virtual environment, it can be complicated and difficult to learn. Tutorials have been developed to assist manufacturing tool design student in the learning of 3-D CAD principles as they apply to tool design. This study seeks to test the effectiveness of those tutorials. A BYU tool design class was divided into two groups according to their assigned laboratory time. The experimental group used the tutorials in their lab assignments. The other group acted as the control group for the study and did not use the tutorial in their lab assignments. Both groups took a pre-evaluation quiz and three short quizzes throughout the semester to test how well they had learned the software. The short quizzes included ten written answers and a small design project. The answers to the quizzes were graded and the students recorded the time it took to complete the design project. This data was analyzed statistically using an ANCOVA model. The student who used the tutorials performed better on the written answer section of the quizzes. This was proven to be statistically significant. There was no significance difference, however, in the time it took students to complete the design projects on each quiz. It was concluded from this data that the tutorials were effective teaching 3-D CAD principles to tool design students.

If you ask 5 different teachers what the best way to teach a new technology to a student is you will get 5 different answers. (Bork, 2001; Cheong, 2008; Egal, 2009; Howell, 2001) What is the best way to teach a new computer software application to a student? In the technological world we live in today the effective transfer of technological knowledge is paramount. With varying opinions even among the leaders of national technology teacher associations (Haynie, 2005) there is a large level of ambiguity in relation to best practices in technology teaching. This study evaluates five commonly used methods of software application instruction used in technology classrooms. Students and teachers were questioned regarding the effectiveness and frequency of use of each of the instructional methods. Students were also instructed using five commonly used methods of instruction. Student's work was graded and average grades for each method of instruction were obtained. Key findings include: 1 - Students perceive book learning to be the most effective method of instruction for themselves and for their classmates. 2 - Teachers perceived direct instruction as the most effective method of instruction and book learning as the least effective method of instruction. 3 - Although students reported book learning as the most effective method of instruction those receiving direct instruction received the highest grades.

Augmented reality (AR) is beginning to show promise for training workers in industry. However, current methods of making AR instructions for training require technical expertise and high time cost. This thesis presents an AR instruction authoring system for assembly tasks through reducing the AR registration pipeline and keeping the creation process in-situ. We explore the design of an AR interface integrated with an object detection algorithm to accelerate AR registration. We developed an AR-based system to create tutorial content by capturing subject matter expert (SME) environment-object interactions along with voice instructions. To validate the design, a two part evaluation study deployed the system in 3 different real world spatial tasks. The first part showed that expert participants were able to create task instructions faster than other mediums through AR. The second part revealed expert AR instructions can successfully help novice users complete their tasks. The results were used to refine the design into a system that also captures and overlays 2D video in AR.