Entrepreneurial opportunities are found in literature to be discovered,recognized, and created by entrepreneurs. This thesis aims to explore andexplain the influences upon entrepreneurs in terms of knowledge, and knowledgesources, in the opportunity identification stage. However, even though it isfound in literature that knowledge is a main influencer in the first stage ofthe entrepreneurial process, the approaches to explain the influences onentrepreneurs for entrepreneurial opportunities are not consistent, whichcreates confusion about the sources of knowledge that influence entrepreneurs,in combination with the type of knowledge. In order to further explore andexplain the area, research is done, and cases are formed by interviewingentrepreneurs from eleven companies. The results from the interviews are thencompared, and related back to the literature findings. In the analysis it isfound that sources such as work-experience, education, hobbies, and role modelshelp entrepreneurs to gain knowledge in the industry where he or she havestarted a venture from an opportunity. These sources of knowledge havecontributed to market pull knowledge, and it is also found that there is arelationship between prior knowledge and alertness, which has to do with theability to find useful knowledge.

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This study focused on two areas under the overarching theme of the effects of domain-general and domain-specific scaffolds with different levels of support, continuous or faded. First, the study investigated the effects of scaffolds on learning of scientific content and problem-solving outcomes. Second, the study examined whether students’ prior knowledge and meta cognitive skills predict their success in problem solving across different scaffolding conditions. A total of nineteen classes were randomly assigned to one of the four scaffolding conditions: domain-general continuous (DG-C), domain-general faded (DG-F), domain specific continuous (DS-C), and domain-specific faded (DS-F). Each class had access to different worksheets depending on the scaffolding condition they had been assigned. All students engaged in four problem-solving activities for thirteen class periods. Students’ scores on a multiple-choice pretest, post test, inventory of meta cognitive self-regulation, and four recommendation forms were analyzed. Results of the study revealed that students’ content knowledge in all conditions significantly increased over the thirteen class periods. However, the continuous domain specific condition outperformed the other conditions on the post test. Although domain general scaffolds were not as effective as domain-specific scaffolds on learning of scientific content and problem representation, they helped students develop solutions, make strong justifications, and monitor their learning. Unlike domain-specific scaffolds, domain-general scaffolds helped students transfer problem-solving skills even when they were faded. In terms of individual differences, results indicated that while students with lower prior knowledge and lower meta cognitive skills benefited from the domain general continuous condition, students with lower regulation of cognition benefited from the domain-general faded condition. Moreover, while students with lower prior knowledge, lower knowledge of cognition, and lower problem representation benefited from the domain-specific continuous condition, students with lower problem representation benefited from the domain-specific faded condition. In contrast, results of the study suggested that scaffolds did not substantially benefit the students with higher prior knowledge and higher meta cognitive skills. Several suggestions are discussed for making further improvements in the design of scaffolds in order to facilitate ill-structured problem solving in hypermedia learning environments.

The general goal of this study was to investigate the feasibility of creating a constructivist learning environment in a university mathematics course as an alternative to the dominant transmissionist learning environments currently in place in most such courses. In order to accomplish this goal the researcher, a university professor, attempted to create this environment and document it in a case study.The study sought to ascertain which dimensions of a constructivist learning environment - autonomy, prior knowledge, negotiation, student-centeredness - university students preferred and how these preferences changed after being in such an environment. It also sought to find out how students' preferred environments matched the environment they perceived to be in place. In addition, the study sought to determine what changes the instructor had to make in his teaching practice to implement each of the dimensions.The results of the study suggest most students very strongly preferred the prior-knowledge and negotiation dimensions, strongly preferred the autonomy dimension, and weakly to moderately preferred the student-centeredness dimension. The data indicate that during the study student preferences for prior knowledge and negotiation increased slightly, preferences for student centeredness increased moderately, and preferences for autonomy increased significantly.In addition, the researcher found that the four dimensions were not implemented equally. While the first three dimensions were strongly implemented, the student-centeredness dimension was only moderately implemented. Interestingly, the learning environment the students perceived to be in place closely matched their preferences.

We had previously shown that regularization principles lead to approximation schemes, as Radial Basis Functions, which are equivalent to networks with one layer of hidden units, called Regularization Networks. In this paper we show that regularization networks encompass a much broader range of approximation schemes, including many of the popular general additive models, Breiman's hinge functions and some forms of Projection Pursuit Regression. In the probabilistic interpretation of regularization, the different classes of basis functions correspond to different classes of prior probabilities on the approximating function spaces, and therefore to different types of smoothness assumptions. In the final part of the paper, we also show a relation between activation functions of the Gaussian and sigmoidal type.

Information in a message can either be fully expressed (explicitly) or indirectly stated (implied) and understood by inference or association. Previous research suggested an age-related decline in performance of implicit compared to explicit information and that this relationship is moderated by prior knowledge. Whereas previous studies mainly obtained quantitative data of inferencing performance, the current study employed both quantitative and qualitative techniques to understand age-related differences in inferencing. Twenty younger and older participants evaluated whether a series of one-sentence statements were true or false based on specific two-sentence text passages. Text passages either resembled real warnings (taken from actual products) or were novel (the opposite of a warning found on an actual product). Statements either explicitly stated information from the text passage or required participants to go beyond information given in the text. Quantitative analysis showed that older adults accuracy compared to that of younger adults when evaluating real text passages, with explicit items being evaluated more accurately than implicit items. For novel text passages (generally lower accuracy scores), younger adults showed the same pattern as for real text passages, whereas older adults accuracy was low for both explicit and implicit statements. Qualitative analyses supported that participants correct answers generally reflected that the intended inference was drawn and that for incorrect answers the inference was not mentioned. The data also suggested that accuracy scores may underestimate the actual ability to infer. Both age groups mentioned most often that text-related factors (e.g., clarity) influenced their decision and brought outside information (e.g., education, experience, expectations) to the task regardless of text passage or statement type. Older adults more often referred to outside information than younger adults, particularly when evaluating novel text passages and their answer was wrong. This study substantiated that age-related differences in a task requiring inferencing may be explained by a combination of the factors of working memory (time and availability of information) and prior knowledge as well as a possible decline in inferencing ability. Prior knowledge is important for both age groups and especially so for older adults. Important implications for designers are to make information available and explicit.

Many people instinctively agree that entrepreneurial experience is a valuable property more useful in identifying new opportunities. In fact, many entrepreneurs who had started an enterprise thought that they identified a new opportunity but failed in new enterprise. This let us consider a question ¡§How entrepreneurial experience effects opportunity identification¡H¡¨ Past researches have discussed more about ¡§prior knowledge¡¨, but not deeply discussed about the content of entrepreneurial experience. It is hard to express the unique value of entrepreneurial experience and to explain the logic of the relation between entrepreneurial experience and opportunity identification. This research further describes and defines the content of entrepreneurial experience on the basis of ¡§prior knowledge¡¨ discussed by past researches, and explains the relation between entrepreneurial experience and opportunity identification. Analyzing literature, this research generalizes a conclusion that entrepreneurial experience includes ¡§start-up experience¡¨, ¡§management experience¡¨ and ¡§industry-specific experience¡¨. ¡§Start-up experience¡¨ is the most unique and is also the key point of this research. Through discussion with entrepreneur, the content of ¡§start-up experience¡¨ includes ¡§sustained opportunity identification¡¨, ¡§establishment of networks of stakeholders¡¨ and ¡§establishment of honor¡¨. The goals of these activities are reacting to the environmental impact of high uncertainty, variance and time pressure in start-up period. Finally, according to the result of case study, this research finds ¡§sustained opportunity identification¡¨ and ¡§establishment of networks of stakeholders¡¨ could be useful or harmful to opportunity identification in different conditions. ¡§Establishment of honor¡¨ is absolutely useful to opportunity identification. So it can be understood that entrepreneurial experience could give opportunity identification a positive or negative effect.

Cooperative learning is a major teaching method which is used by many instructors as their teaching framework. It has been proven better than individual and competitive teaching methods by raising higher group achievements and individual achievements with more diverse reasoning and logic thinking, and more creative ideas. Many researchers make their efforts in promoting the outcomes of cooperative learning from different viewpoints. One of them is Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which emphasizes that teachers and learners with higher capability can support other learners to develop their ZPD through proper scaffolding. Prior Knowledge plays an important role in scaffolding. In order to maximize the effect of scaffolding, learners supported by scaffolding must possess enough prior knowledge. At the same time, teachers must consider the whole teaching progress and it is difficult to be aware of every individual learner¡¦s learning progress and offer adaptive assistance to each of them. Thus, we propose two mechanisms: knowledge diagnostic and learning material developed by using IT techniques to promote learners¡¦ prior knowledge in a specific domain. Students were given different mechanisms and divided into twenty groups to resolve their cooperative tasks. Their cooperative learning outcomes were measured by tasks achievement and perceived of cooperation process that is composed of perceived of cooperation extent, perceived of task conflict and perceived of emotional conflict. The result shows that the combination of knowledge diagnostic and learning material can promote students¡¦ prior knowledge in the domain we selected. The result of cooperative learning outcomes shows that there is a positive relationship between prior knowledge and task achievement, and a positive relationship between prior knowledge and perceived of task conflict, but there is no significant relationship between prior knowledge and perceived of cooperation extent and nor between prior knowledge and perceived of emotional conflict.