Applications for sensor-based human activity recognition use the latest algorithms for the detection and classification of human everyday activities, both for online and offline use cases. The insights generated by those algorithms can in a next step be used within a wide broad of applications such as safety, fitness tracking, localization, personalized health advice and improved child and elderly care.In order for an algorithm to be performant, a significant amount of annotated data from a specific target audience is required. However, a satisfying data collection process is cost and labor intensive. This also may be unfeasible for specific target groups as aging effects motion patterns and behaviors. One main challenge in this application area lies in the ability to identify relevant changes over time while being able to reuse previously annotated user data. The accurate detection of those user-specific patterns and movement behaviors therefore requires individual and adaptive classification models for human activities.The goal of this degree work is to compare several supervised classifier performances when trained and tested on a newly iterative user-specific human activity classification approach as described in this report. A qualitative and quantitative data collection process was applied. The tree-based classification algorithms Decision Tree, Random Forest as well as XGBoost were tested on custom based datasets divided into three groups. The datasets contained labeled motion data of 21 volunteers from wrist worn sensors.Computed across all datasets, the average performance measured in recall increased by 5.2% (using a simulated leave-one-subject-out cross evaluation) for algorithms trained via the described approach compared to a random non-iterative approach. / Sensorbaserad aktivitetsigenkänning använder sig av det senaste algoritmerna för detektion och klassificering av mänskliga vardagliga aktiviteter, både i uppoch frånkopplat läge. De insikter som genereras av algoritmerna kan i ett nästa steg användas inom en mängd nya applikationer inom områden så som säkerhet, träningmonitorering, platsangivelser, personifierade hälsoråd samt inom barnoch äldreomsorgen.För att en algoritm skall uppnå hög prestanda krävs en inte obetydlig mängd annoterad data, som med fördel härrör från den avsedda målgruppen. Dock är datainsamlingsprocessen kostnadsoch arbetsintensiv. Den kan dessutom även vara orimlig att genomföra för vissa specifika målgrupper, då åldrandet påverkar rörelsemönster och beteenden. En av de största utmaningarna inom detta område är att hitta de relevanta förändringar som sker över tid, samtidigt som man vill återanvända tidigare annoterad data. För att kunna skapa en korrekt bild av det individuella rörelsemönstret behövs därför individuella och adaptiva klassificeringsmodeller.Målet med detta examensarbete är att jämföra flera olika övervakade klassificerares (eng. supervised classifiers) prestanda när dem tränats med hjälp av ett iterativt användarspecifikt aktivitetsklassificeringsmetod, som beskrivs i denna rapport. En kvalitativ och kvantitativ datainsamlingsprocess tillämpades. Trädbaserade klassificeringsalgoritmerna Decision Tree, Random Forest samt XGBoost testades utifrån specifikt skapade dataset baserade på 21 volontärer, som delades in i tre grupper. Data är baserad på rörelsedata från armbandssensorer.Beräknat över samtlig data, ökade den genomsnittliga sensitiviteten med 5.2% (simulerad korsvalidering genom utelämna-en-individ) för algoritmer tränade via beskrivna metoden jämfört med slumpvis icke-iterativ träning.

The dynamics of the social interaction within the cooperative learning group are accepted and considered to be one of the aspects that will influence the individual learner's feelings regarding the group activity. The impact of the groupings on the quality and quantity of the observable learning within the class is considered. For this study the cooperative learning groupings were manipulated, considering aspects of the learner's social relationships uncovered with the use of a social questionnaire, which the learners completed. These details were summarised by means of a sociometric table and a sociogram. This study approaches the topic from two main perspectives. Primarily observation and naive sketches, from the learners, formed the source of the data and provided the initial perspective on the area of study. From the viewpoint provided in this information specific grouping paramaters were applied to later groups of learners, and a survey conducted. / Educational Studies / M. Ed (Socio-Education)

The paradigm shift in teaching from the teacher-centred approach to the learner-centred approach in recent years has impacted on the way teachers go about their duties in the classroom. This paradigm shift necessitated this research with the aim of investigating how the Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD) technique can be used as a cooperative learning technique to teach EFAL in Kwazulu-Natal. The purpose of this study was to design a framework for the implementation of STAD as a cooperative teaching strategy for EFAL teachers by gleaning literature on teaching and learning, cooperative learning and STAD in chapters two to four of this study. Empirical research, by way of a survey and focus group discussions were also conducted in four out of the twelve districts in the Kwazulu-Natal Province to help solidify the framework designed in this study. In striving to get in-depth insight into this study, the post-positivist-constructivist paradigm, which calls for the mixed methods research design was employed for the collection and analysis of data. Specifically, the Likert scale survey questionnaire and focus group discussions were used to collect data, through the sequential mixed methods design for the quantitative and qualitative phases of this study respectively, from a sample of 220 respondents and twelve participants. The findings of this research indicated that the time spent in training teachers towards the implementation of the STAD technique was not adequate. That notwithstanding, it was indicative that teachers make efforts to implement the strategy in their teaching and the results proved to be very positive as the technique continues to help improve upon learners’ performances and builds in them qualities such as critical thinking skills, good discussion skills and positive collaborative learning. In the nutshell, the literature study, the findings of the empirical research and the recommendation of this study forms the basis for designing the framework for the implementation of STAD as a teaching strategy for EFAL teachers. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

This mixed methods research design, which was modelled on the constructivist view of schooling, sets out to investigate the effect of developing mathematical problem solving skills of grade 8 learners on their performance and achievement in mathematics. To develop the mathematical problem solving skills of the experimental group, a problem-centred teaching and learning environment was created in which problem posing and solving were the key didactic mathematical activity. The effect of the intervention programme on the experimental group was compared with the control group by assessing learners’ problem solving processes, mathematical problem solving skills, reasoning and cognitive processes, performance and achievement in mathematics. Data were obtained through questionnaires, a mathematical problem solving skills inventory, direct participant observation and questioning, semi-structured interviews, learner journals, mathematical tasks, written work, pre- and post- multiple-choice and word-problem tests. Data analysis was largely done through descriptive analysis and the findings assisted the researcher to make recommendations and suggest areas that could require possible further research. / Mathematics Education / M. Ed. (Mathematical Education)

The paradigm shift in teaching from the teacher-centred approach to the learner-centred approach in recent years has impacted on the way teachers go about their duties in the classroom. This paradigm shift necessitated this research with the aim of investigating how the Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD) technique can be used as a cooperative learning technique to teach EFAL in Kwazulu-Natal. The purpose of this study was to design a framework for the implementation of STAD as a cooperative teaching strategy for EFAL teachers by gleaning literature on teaching and learning, cooperative learning and STAD in chapters two to four of this study. Empirical research, by way of a survey and focus group discussions were also conducted in four out of the twelve districts in the Kwazulu-Natal Province to help solidify the framework designed in this study. In striving to get in-depth insight into this study, the post-positivist-constructivist paradigm, which calls for the mixed methods research design was employed for the collection and analysis of data. Specifically, the Likert scale survey questionnaire and focus group discussions were used to collect data, through the sequential mixed methods design for the quantitative and qualitative phases of this study respectively, from a sample of 220 respondents and twelve participants. The findings of this research indicated that the time spent in training teachers towards the implementation of the STAD technique was not adequate. That notwithstanding, it was indicative that teachers make efforts to implement the strategy in their teaching and the results proved to be very positive as the technique continues to help improve upon learners’ performances and builds in them qualities such as critical thinking skills, good discussion skills and positive collaborative learning. In the nutshell, the literature study, the findings of the empirical research and the recommendation of this study forms the basis for designing the framework for the implementation of STAD as a teaching strategy for EFAL teachers. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

This mixed methods research design, which was modelled on the constructivist view of schooling, sets out to investigate the effect of developing mathematical problem solving skills of grade 8 learners on their performance and achievement in mathematics. To develop the mathematical problem solving skills of the experimental group, a problem-centred teaching and learning environment was created in which problem posing and solving were the key didactic mathematical activity. The effect of the intervention programme on the experimental group was compared with the control group by assessing learners’ problem solving processes, mathematical problem solving skills, reasoning and cognitive processes, performance and achievement in mathematics. Data were obtained through questionnaires, a mathematical problem solving skills inventory, direct participant observation and questioning, semi-structured interviews, learner journals, mathematical tasks, written work, pre- and post- multiple-choice and word-problem tests. Data analysis was largely done through descriptive analysis and the findings assisted the researcher to make recommendations and suggest areas that could require possible further research. / Mathematics Education / M. Ed. (Mathematical Education)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3512.pdf: 1897835 bytes, checksum: 598f309a846cb201fe8f13be0f2e37da (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-12-21 / Automatic text summarization has been of great interest in Natural Language Processing due to the need of processing a huge amount of information in short time, which is usually delivered through distinct media. Thus, large-scale methods are of utmost importance for synthesizing and making access to information simpler. They aim at preserving relevant content of the sources with little or no human intervention. Building upon the extractive summarizer SuPor and focusing on texts in Portuguese, this MsC work aimed at exploring varied features for automatic summarization. Computational methods especially driven towards textual statistics, graphs and machine learning have been explored. A meaningful extension of the SuPor system has resulted from applying such methods and new summarization models have thus been delineated. These are based either on each of the three methodologies in isolation, or are hybrid. In this dissertation, they are generically named after the original SuPor as SuPor-2. All of them have been assessed by comparing them with each other or with other, well-known, automatic summarizers for texts in Portuguese. The intrinsic evaluation tasks have been carried out entirely automatically, aiming at the informativeness of the outputs, i.e., the automatic extracts. They have also been compared with other well-known automatic summarizers for Portuguese. SuPor-2 results show a meaningful improvement of some SuPor-2 variations. The most promising models may thus be made available in the future, for generic use. They may also be embedded as tools for varied Natural Language Processing purposes. They may even be useful for other related tasks, such as linguistic studies. Portability to other languages is possible by replacing the resources that are language-dependent, namely, lexicons, part-of-speech taggers and stop words lists. Models that are supervised have been so far trained on news corpora. In spite of that, training for other genres may be carried out by interested users using the very same interfaces supplied by the systems. / A tarefa de Sumarização Automática de textos tem sido de grande importância dentro da área de Processamento de Linguagem Natural devido à necessidade de se processar gigantescos volumes de informação disponibilizados nos diversos meios de comunicação. Assim, mecanismos em larga escala para sintetizar e facilitar o acesso a essas informações são de extrema importância. Esses mecanismos visam à preservação do conteúdo mais relevante e com pouca ou nenhuma intervenção humana. Partindo do sumarizador extrativo SuPor e contemplando o Português, este trabalho de mestrado visou explorar variadas características de sumarização pela utilização de métodos computacionais baseados em estatísticas textuais, grafos e aprendizado de máquina. Esta exploração consistiu de uma extensão significativa do SuPor, pela definição de novos modelos baseados nessas três abordagens de forma individual ou híbrida. Por serem originários desse sistema, manteve-se a relação com seu nome, o que resultou na denominação genérica SuPor-2. Os diversos modelos propostos foram, então, comparados entre si em diversos experimentos, avaliando-se intrínseca e automaticamente a informatividade dos extratos produzidos. Foram realizadas também comparações com outros sistemas conhecidos para o Português. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam uma melhora expressiva de algumas variações do SuPor-2 em relação aos demais sumarizadores extrativos existentes para o Português. Os sistemas que se evidenciaram superiores podem ser disponibilizados no futuro para utilização geral por usuários comuns ou ainda para utilização como ferramentas em outras tarefas do Processamento de Língua Natural ou em áreas relacionadas. A portabilidade para outras línguas é possível com a substituição dos recursos dependentes de língua, como léxico, etiquetadores morfossintáticos e stoplist Os modelos supervisionados foram treinados com textos jornalísticos até o momento. O treino para outros gêneros pode ser feito pelos usuários interessados através dos próprios sistemas desenvolvidos

The South African school curriculum recognises the vital importance of life skills acquisition through the learning area, Life Orientation (referred to in the primary school as Life Skills). The Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) Life Skills (Creative Arts) for the Intermediate Phase promotes drama-based instruction in life skills learning. The curriculum links to Forum Theatre techniques which are aimed at the learner’s holistic development through, among others, social game playing, improvised role-play and devising and performing a problem play which includes audience participation mediated by a ‘Joker,’ a facilitator role usually filled by an experienced and trained teacher. Children learn about the self, their peers and society through reality-based exploration and the conflicts that arise due to socialisation and power-based problems. Cognitive behavioural, existential and experiential learning theories and the theatrical theory and practice of Augusto Boal, who invented Forum Theatre as part of the Theatre of the Oppressed, formed the framework for this performative case study inquiry conducted in a South African primary school. A researcher-designed Forum Theatre intervention was implemented by the Grade 6 (Creative Arts) teacher with four Grade 6 classes over eight weeks in Life Skills (Creative Arts) classes, culminating in Forum Theatre performances by the four classes, respectively. Data were gathered through classroom observation in which the researcher assumed the role of observer-participant, conducted individual and focus group interviews with Grade 6 teachers, did interviews with Grade 6 learners, took video recordings of learners’ classroom activities, recorded the Forum Theatre performances, and collected the learners’ written reflections. The findings indicated: the process adjustments required to facilitate Forum Theatre activities in a primary school setting; effectiveness of experiential learning of life skills through game-playing and discovery; performative pedagogy fostered life skill acquisition; performative pedagogy harnessed nonverbal, embodied learning to build social insight; and describes the teacher experience in implementing a Forum Theatre intervention. Recommendations for practice include teacher training for experiential, explorative, and performance-based teaching in line with the CAPS document, which provides for a range of performative teaching and learning activities to promote effective life skills acquisition in primary school learners. / Educational Studies / Ph. D. (Education)

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an active learning approach (ALA) on the achievement of 11 th grade learners in Newton’s laws of motion, The case study was done in one school by comparing the achievement of learners in Newton’s laws of motion through an Active Learning Approach (ALA) with that of learners taught through Traditional Direct I nstruction (TDI) and to determine whether learners taught with ALA retained the material better than those taught with TDI. Two grade 11 classes in one school in the Queenstown District of the Eastern Cape were selected on their performance in two differen t tests and used as case study . The Force Concept Inventory was used to determine the achievements and retention of knowledge of the two groups. The effect of the active lear ning approach on the treatment group was also measured by ask ing each learner in t he group to complete a learner assessment of instruction form. The treatment group was also subjected to a classroom group interview. T he following information emerged from the study: i) Learners taught using the ALA achieved significantly better in FCI pos t - test than those taught with traditional direct instruction. ii) In the retention of knowledge test, the mean score of the learners taught using the ALA was 4.8% higher than those taught with TDI although insignificant. iii) Learners subjected to the ALA liked the instructional approach and as such put in extra time to learn. The findings suggest that the active learning approach had positive effect on the achievement of the Grade 11 learners and thus, can be adapted to enhance learning in the classroom. / Physics

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL) workshops are a synchronous online adaptation of the educational intervention PLTL, in which students, under the guidance of undergraduate peer facilitators, collaboratively solve problems in small groups. The purpose of this parallel convergent mixed methods study was to assess the impact of implementing cPLTL in an organic chemistry course on students’ workshop experiences, performance, and development of curved-arrow formalism skills. Statistical analyses revealed comparable attendance rates, distribution of course grades, and achievement on American Chemical Society First-semester Organic Chemistry Exams. However, plotting workshop grades by AB, C, and DFW grade groupings revealed that PLTL students earned more successful grades than their cPLTL counterparts (91% vs 77% ABC grades). Utilization of a new curved-arrow formalism analytic framework for coding student interview artifacts revealed that cPLTL students were statistically less likely to successfully draw the product suggested by the curved-arrows than their PLTL classmates. Both PLTL and cPLTL students exhibited a comparable incidence of relational to instrumental learning approaches. Similarly, both PLTL and cPLTL students were more likely to exhibit a common Scheme for Problem-Solving in Organic Chemistry (SPOC) than having dialogue that could be characterized by Toulmin’s Argumentation scheme. Lastly, implications for faculty are suggested, including: developing more explicit connections concept, mode, and reasoning components of understanding curved-arrow formalism for organic chemistry students; optimizing graphical collaborative learning activities for online learners; and developing online students’ sense of community.