The virtual world exists as a dimension between concrete physical reality and abstract fictional fantasy. This cyber essence has become a place of commerce, social development, and educational pursuit. To build an understanding of the Kingdom of the Internet, the resulting case study sought to explore the community learning experiences of groups involved in an international online distance education program to create a tale of the process of a system. An assumption in this research was that the program under study was framed within a social learning context. Therefore, the recommendations and findings must be considered within this context and applied within similarly framed learning programs. The method of this study followed an input-process-output model with an added element of outcomes. Participants completed a preliminary technology survey, locus of control instrument, self-regulated learner instrument and a learning styles inventory along with provided background information to form group input profiles. The process of the system was observed through the use of focus groups with the participants, process leaders and instructors as well as transcripts from discussion and chats. The group interaction, the site usage information and technical feedback all served as output information. The outcomes were measured through the use of a group effectiveness measure and instructor rating of final products.

Poor student achievement at some community colleges results in low retention and graduation rates. Addressing the problem of unpreparedness for college with good academic advising may help to improve student achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a difference in the academic achievement of 1st year full-time (FYFT) community college students, based on having received 1 semester of any of 4 different academic advising methods (prescriptive, developmental, intrusive, proactive) while controlling for high school grade point average (GPA). Bandura's social learning theory was used as the theoretical framework. A quantitative research method, deploying 1 research question and 5 hypotheses, was used to guide the examination of a sample of 349 archived data records of Fall 2016 FYFT students at a community college in the northeastern United States. The study included a categorical (factor) and a metric (covariate) measures of variables; therefore, a 1-way ANCOVA was used to estimate the effect of the academic advising method on student achievement. The findings showed no significant difference in FYFT student GPA, based on having received academic advising in general or any method of academic advising, during the 1st semester of enrollment. Despite these findings, the literature supports academic advising as critical for improving GPA, implying that further research is needed to adequately determine trends in student achievement related to advising over more than 1 semester at the college studied. By understanding the difference in the academic achievement of FYFT students based on having received academic advising consistently, academic advisors will have information that can potentially enhance student achievement and increase students' chances of graduating, thus promoting positive social change.

Syftet med denna studie är att få ökad kunskap om hur lärare i fritidshemmet beskriver det arbete som sker med det sociala lärandet i fritidshemmet och vad lärarna ser som viktiga faktorer inom detta. Frågeställningarna som har använts i studien är: ·Vilka faktorer anser lärare i fritidshemmet är viktiga i arbetet med det sociala lärandet? · Hur beskriver lärare i fritidshemmet arbetet med det sociala lärandet i den dagliga verksamheten? Studien baseras på kvalitativ datainsamling genom semistrukturerade intervjuer där sex respondenter har medverkat och tidigare forskning använts som underlag för vår studie. Resultatet visar att lärarna i fritidshemmet anser att faktorer som kan påverka socialt lärande i fritidshemmet är bland annat personalens utbildning, personaltäthet, samspel med klasslärare och vårdnadshavare, lokaler och rektor. Vidare visar resultatet att lärarna i fritidshemmet beskriver arbetet som viktigt för eleverna. I studien framgår det utifrån resultatet att det sociala lärandet är en stor del av livet och det förklaras av respondenterna att det blir svårt att fungera som människa i ett samhälle utan detta lärande. Resultatet visar även att det sociala lärandet ofta sker i spontana situationer, för lärare kan det vara bra att ta vara på dessa situationer för att sedan utveckla lärandet vidare.Sammanfattningsvis visar resultatet i studien att det sociala lärandet fyller en viktig funktion inom fritidshemmets verksamhet samt i det vardagliga livet som majoriteten av respondenterna menar är ett lärande för livet.

In this study, the social experiences of a young adult growing up as an only-child were explored. A single case study with a female only-child, 23 years of age was used to elicit the themes related to these social experiences. The conceptual framework utilised for this study included the concepts of social identity, social relations and social learning, which incorporated the various social agents and contexts explored in this study. Data was generated through multiple sessions, which consisted of the participant’s life story, people and places maps, as well as unstructured and semi-structured interviews. In addition, field notes and observations were recorded in a reflective journal. The data was analysed and interpreted through thematic analysis, which involved an in-depth selection of themes evident in the participant’s written and verbal expressions. The results of the study were presented in the form of themes, subthemes and categories depicting the social experiences of the participant. The primary themes that seemed to have influenced the social experiences of the participant were her relationships (specifically that with her primary caregivers) and her experiences (attached to these relationships). This study yielded an additional category, which can be seen as contributing to the literature on the social experiences of only-children. This category focused on the cultural influences of the participants’ family, which seemed to be significant in shaping her identity. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

In recent years, there has been an increase in women securing leadership positions across Canadian sport. However, when compared with their male counterparts, there continues to be an imbalance of women in these roles. The purpose of this doctoral dissertation was to evaluate a social learning initiative implemented in the province of Alberta to address these existing gender disparities by increasing gender equity, leadership development/diversity, and knowledge transfer across sport systems. The Alberta Women in Sport Leadership Impact Program (AWiSL) was framed using Wenger’s (1998) concept Communities of Practice and consisted of 12 sport leaders (from various PSOs, clubs, and other sport organizations) and six mentors (with leadership expertise). Each sport leader planned and implemented a project in their home sport organizations to support the increase of gender equity and leadership development/diversity. The mentors were responsible for supporting the sport leaders in achieving their project goals and facilitating leadership development opportunities to inspire growth in the sport leaders. Accordingly, an evaluation was conducted using the Value Creation Framework (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2011) to examine the perceived value of participating in this social learning initiative. Data were collected over a year and a half period, from the 18 members who made up the AWiSL group and other important stakeholders. The data included in-depth interviews, informal conversations, observations, surveys, and collecting organizational documents resulting in over 700 pages of transcribed data. The findings are presented in four articles and an additional findings section. The first article focuses on one of the sport leader’s projects which aimed to foster a collaborative women-only training program for 10 women to become certified coach developers. The second article examines the development of the AWiSL mentors’ social learning leadership capabilities during their first attempt at facilitating a CoP to promote gender equity and leadership development/diversity, through an action learning approach. The third article delves into the sport leaders’ perceptions of their leadership skill development through their participation in the two and a half year social learning initiative, specifically a CoP of femininity. Finally, the fourth article highlights the 12 sport leaders’ projects to examine the impacts of the AWiSL in terms of moving gender equity forward across the province. The additional findings section touches on the knowledge transfer outcome of the AWiSL, including the development of a how-to model for organizations wishing to implement a similar initiative and the overall perceived value of this initiative. The dissertation is concluded with a general discussion highlighting the theoretical contributions and practical implications, along with future recommendations for research.

La géophagie désigne l’ingestion volontaire de terre et est répandue à travers le règne animal, l’Homme inclus. Cette large distribution souligne la longue histoire évolutive du comportement et suggère que la terre ingérée confèrerait des bénéfices adaptatifs aux consommateurs. L’Homme possède une longue histoire de la géophagie. Depuis deux dizaines d’années, la géophagie chez les primates non-humains connaît un intérêt scientifique croissant. Elle a été observée chez 27% des espèces de primates reconnues actuellement. Deux hypothèses majeures expliqueraient la géophagie chez les primates :la supplémentation et la protection. Dans le premier cas, la terre ingérée procurerait des éléments essentiels que l’individu ne trouve pas dans d’autres ressources. Dans le second cas, la terre consommée protègerait son tractus gastro-intestinal contre les endoparasites et/ou contre les effets néfastes des composés secondaires contenus dans les items végétaux ingérés. Toutefois, le manque de recherches multidisciplinaires ne facilite pas la compréhension du comportement et de son rôle chez les primates. Cette thèse s’intéresse à la géophagie chez le singe laineux à queue jaune (Lagothrix flavicauda), espèce pour laquelle ce comportement n’avait pas encore été décrit. C’est un des plus grands et un des plus rares primates néo-tropicaux. Ce primate peu étudié est endémique du Pérou et en Danger Critique d’extinction. Il est arboricole et principalement frugivore. Un groupe de singes habitués à la présence de chercheurs a été suivi au site d’étude de La Esperanza, afin de dresser les premières caractéristiques de la géophagie (Chap. 4) :i) toutes les classes d’individus (âge/sexe) consomment de la terre ii) en de rares et brefs événements (15 ± 9 secondes), iii) principalement pendant la saison sèche. Les singes semblent développer des stratégies pour gérer les risques de prédation liés à la terrestrialité qu’implique la géophagie :ils sélectionnent les sites de géophagie selon des paramètres qui pourraient promouvoir leur sécurité ;ils sont plus vigilants ;ils consomment souvent de la terre ex situ, sur une haute branche. La géophagie nécessite donc acquisition de connaissances particulières et nos observations mettent en évidence que l’apprentissage débute très tôt dans la vie de l’individu, la mère jouant un rôle crucial dans le processus de transmission du comportement. Ce travail s’est aussi focalisé sur l’échantillonnage et l’analyse de la composition des terres consommées et contrôles (Chap. 5) :la terre ingérée contient plus d’argile et moins d’éléments essentiels (e.g. Ca, Mg, K, Fe), supportant davantage l’hypothèse de protection, l’argile étant connue pour ses propriétés d’adsorption et d’évacuation des toxines. Enfin, les patterns temporels de la consommation de la terre et des items végétaux ont montré que la géophagie est directement associée à l’augmentation de la consommation de feuilles pendant la saison sèche (Chap. 6). Nos résultats suggèrent que ces primates ingèrent de la terre pour se protéger des composés secondaires pouvant être plus abondants dans les feuilles en saison sèche. Cette étude souligne que des données comportementales détaillées ainsi que des recherches comprenant plusieurs axes d’investigation sont essentielles pour comprendre la façon dont les individus acquièrent les connaissances liées à une pratique si rare. / Geophagy, i.e. the deliberate ingestion of earth, is largely described across the animal kingdom, including in human and non-human primates. Its widespread distribution highlights its long evolutionary history and its widely hypothesized selective benefits. Humans have a long history of geophagy. Since two decades, scientific interest in non-human primate geophagy is growing. The behavior has been described in 27% of the known primate species. In non-human primates, two major adaptive hypotheses are proposed to explain geophagy. The supplementation one argues that earth provides micronutrients individuals cannot find in their diet. The protection one argues that earth protects the gastrointestinal tract from secondary plant compounds and/or parasites. However, multidisciplinary research is lacking to fully understand the geophagy behavior in primates.I studied the geophagy behavior in the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda), for which there was no earth consumption data. This monkey is one of the largest and rarest neotropical primates but remains little studied. Yellow-tailed woolly monkeys are Critically Endangered and endemic to northern Peru. They are arboreal and have a primarily frugivorous diet. Their simple gastro-intestinal tract makes digestion of cell walls and secondary plant compounds difficult.One habituated group of yellow-tailed woolly monkeys was studied at La Esperanza study site, allowing to provide the first descriptions of (Chap. 4) i) individuals of all age/sex classes consumed earth ii) in rare and very brief events (15 ± 9 seconds), and iii) mainly occurring during dry seasons. We also examined how these arboreal primates deal with the higher predation pressure linked to this terrestrial behavior: yellow-tailed wooly monkeys selected sites according to some parameters that may ensure their safety; they showed increased vigilance; and they often consumed earth ex situ, on a branch. Geophagy therefore requires the acquisition of specific knowledge and our observations show that learning begins very early in the individual's life, the mother playing a crucial role in the behavior transmission process. This research also focused on sampling and analyzing the composition of consumed and control earths (Chap. 5): earth consumed was richer in clay and poorer in micronutrients (e.g. Ca, Mg, K, Fe), better supporting the protection hypothesis, as clay is known to adsorb and evacuate toxins. Finally, temporal patterns of earth and vegetal items consumptions was also examined and showed geophagy was directly associated with the increased leaf consumption during the dry season (Chap. 6) and, through a geophagy day, earth and leaves consumption were synchronized. This study suggests that these primates eat earth to protect themselves against gastro-intestinal disorders caused by an increased ingestion of secondary compounds that might be more abundant in leaves and during the dry season. It also underlines that detailed behavioral data and multiple axed research are necessary to understand how a rare practice implying specific knowledge and aptitudes emerge in the behavioral repertoire of an individual. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p>    </p> <p>The first article presents a study that measured exhibit visitors' reported attitudes as measured by an early iteration of the attitudinal learning inventory (ALI) (Watson et al., 2018). The study, which was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and measured visitors’ self-reported attitude changes after visiting an exhibit about hellbender salamanders, found that 73% of survey respondents claimed they would change their behavior and 70% claimed they would tell others what they learned by visiting the exhibit. The second article presents a study that measured visitors' time spent at the exhibit to calculate holding power. Holding power was calculated by dividing the amount of time spent at the exhibit by the minimum amount of time it takes to read the text and interact with the exhibit. The holding power for the <em>What's Bugging Belva? </em>exhibit was favorable at .67 and is compared with exhibits with holding powers of .47 (Boisvert et al, 1995) and .69 (Peart, 1984). The third study gathered visitor data using the validated ALI and analyzed the data using the FREQ procedure (SAS 9.4). The study was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and Purdue Springfest and measured visitors’ responses to an exhibit about animal welfare. At both events, visitors had positive perceptions in the categories of cognitive and general learning, affective learning, behavioral learning, and social learning.  </p>

<p>We consider the problem of developing innovative machine learning tools for online education and evaluate their ability to provide instructional resources.  Prediction tasks for student behavior are a complex problem spanning a wide range of topics: we complement current research in student grade prediction and clickstream analysis by considering data from three areas of online learning: Social Learning Networks (SLN), Instructor Feedback, and Learning Management Systems (LMS). In each of these categories, we propose a novel method for modelling data and an associated tool that may be used to assist students and instructors. First, we develop a methodology for analyzing instructor-provided feedback and determining how it correlates with changes in student grades using NLP and NER--based feature extraction. We demonstrate that student grade improvement can be well approximated by a multivariate linear model with average fits across course sections approaching 83\%, and determine several contributors to student success. Additionally, we develop a series of link prediction methodologies that utilize spatial and time-evolving network architectures to pass network state between space and time periods. Through evaluation on six real-world datasets, we find that our method obtains substantial improvements over Bayesian models, linear classifiers, and an unsupervised baseline, with AUCs typically above 0.75 and reaching 0.99. Motivated by Federated Learning, we extend our model of student discussion forums to model an entire classroom as a SLN. We develop a methodology to represent student actions across different course materials in a shared, low-dimensional space that allows characteristics from actions of different types to be passed jointly to a downstream task. Performance comparisons against several baselines in centralized, federated, and personalized learning demonstrate that our model offers more distinctive representations of students in a low-dimensional space, which in turn results in improved accuracy on a common downstream prediction task. Results from these three research thrusts indicate the ability of machine learning methods to accurately model student behavior across multiple data types and suggest their ability to benefit students and instructors alike through future development of assistive tools. </p>

This doctoral dissertation provides conceptual contributions to understanding and analysing transboundary river basin management practices and processes. The conceptual framework of this thesis is embedded in the social learning literature. This thesis builds on prior efforts by scholars (see Keen et al., 2005; Muro & Jeffrey, 2008; Newig et al., 2010; Pahl-Wostl, 2009; Reed et al., 2010; Schusler et al., 2003) to evaluate and analyze social learning processes. In particular, the concept of learning space as used in this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the context in which social learning occurs by combining an analysis of interactions, deliberations and reframing processes. Three research gaps are identified and addressed in this dissertation. First, conceptualisation and evaluation of social learning in emergent processes. Second, an analysis of how relational features (such as trust and shared identities) impact on social learning outcomes. Third, the lack in understanding of how contextual features (such as frames) shape social learning processes and influence transboundary river basin management practices. To address these gaps, this thesis employed case study approach of two transboundary river basins; the Omo-Turkana and Zambezi river basins in Africa. The two case studies fit a better understanding of transboundary river basin management processes and practices as both river basins are shared by different riparian states with competing interests. This thesis explores the general research question: How do learning spaces shape transboundary river basin management practices and processes? This thesis found that the success of transboundary basin cooperation lies not only in actors solving technical problems but also hugely relates to how actors interact with one another to build the needed capacity to address technical issues. As such, creating trust and shared identities, as well as paying attention to problem framing plays a considerable role in defining how actors learn. Overall, by incorporating concepts such as trust, shared identity and frames into the concept of learning space, this thesis was able to provide a better understanding of transboundary river basin management practices. Such a perspective could provide a deeper understanding of how management practices and institutions can be better designed.

School drug use has been attributed to the annual suspension of thousands of secondary adolescents, subsequently contributing to poor academics, low graduation rates, and continued school drug use. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the experiences of former adolescents who engaged in school drug use. Social learning theory suggests that behaviors observed from within the environment may later be modeled. Using Bandura's social learning theory, 10 participants, 18 years old and older responded to open-ended questions about how they processed school drug use. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the responses to the open-ended questions were coded and analyzed. Bandura's social learning theory supports the key findings. Findings indicated that former students reported being influenced by their environment and others around them, such as friends. Additional findings from the study suggest that boredom was another reason students engaged in school drug use. While a few students enrolled in a new school after being suspended for school drug use, the findings suggest that out-of-school suspensions are not meaningful to students. After returning to school from their suspension, students felt behind in their school work. Implications for social change include understanding potential influences of school drug use on students and their environment. This understanding can benefit schools, parents, and the community through interventions and proactive measures that target school drug use among adolescents.