Group Project

In the fall of 1997, we started using small groups in our large ( 100 ± 200 students ) junior level introductory microbiology course. Students form five -person groups early in the semester, and work on projects within these groups throughout the semester. These projects involve exploration of concepts such as metabolism, protein synthesis, and viral reproduction strategies and the submission of a poster describing a disease of their choice at the end of the semester. We have refined the use of the small groups during the last three semesters, and student acceptance and performance have improved steadily. In the fall semester of 1998, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of these group projects was performed. Students were chosen at random to participate in student consultation groups to discuss group projects. Furthermore, we utilized a master teacher -in -residence from the Rocky Mountain Teachers Education Collaborative ( RMTEC ) . This teacher -in -residence attended our classes, spoke with students, helped with student consultation groups, and provided observations of student responses to group work activities. RMTEC also provided funds to hire a research assistant to conduct student consultation groups, analyze student evaluations of our course, and compare evaluations from before and after the implementation of group examinations. Additionally, the Center for Teaching and Learning at Colorado State University assisted with mid -semester evaluations in each subsequent semester. The results of our analysis show that small groups in large lectures can be an effective learning tool provided students are given well -designed activities with clearly defined, obtainable goals and clearly articulated guidelines. Our experience also shows that the manner in which the instructor presents the process to students affects students' willingness to participate in the process. It must be clearly articulated to students why he has incorporated active learning strategies into the course, what he hopes students will gain from the experience, and how he expects students to participate in these activities. We recognize the increase in workload on ourselves as instructors, but the benefits seem worth the additional time and effort. This paper describes the group process that we use and provides an evaluation of the effort.

We report the findings from two studies that examine the association between emotional intelligence and leadership emergence in small groups. In both studies, members of groups completed measures of emotional intelligence and other individual differences prior to working on a group project. Their peers rated their leadership emergence at the conclusion of the project. Overall emotional intelligence and a number of its dimensions were associated with leadership emergence over and above cognitive intelligence, personality traits, and gender. These findings were observed when emotional intelligence was measured with an ability test but not when it was measured with a self-report scale. Among the dimensions of emotional intelligence, the ability to understand emotions was most consistently associated with leadership emergence.

A model for community-based conservation and development is presented, potentially applicable wherever communities rely on locally collected medicinal plants. The motivational foundation for conservation offered by these plants relates to people's interests in health support, financial income and cultural identity. The model is based on experiences in the Medicinal Plants Conservation Initiative, a four-year programme (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) of Plantlife International with national partners, involving 14 projects in 8 countries in East Africa and the Himalayas. All projects provide evidence on the question ''How best can communities conserve their medicinal plants?''. One of the projects (in China) is described to illustrate the types of evidence offered by the projects. The model consists of three social elements (community groups, project teams, policy makers), the relationships between them, and types of activity suggested for each group. Not all types of activity are relevant in all contexts. It is suggested that faith-based organisations, women's associations and indigenous people's groups are often well placed to take the model forward in terms of practical application at the landscape scale. The (on-going) project in China is at Ludian, a Naxi community in Northwest Yunnan. There is a secondary project site at Yongzhi, a Tibetan and Lisu village. The Ludian project is notable within the modern Chinese context for establishment of the first community group concerned specifically with the conservation of medicinal plants and the first community protected areas for medicinal plants.

The Journal of Business Cases and Applications is dedicated to publishing quality applied business small cases and classroom applications/exercises designed to help business academics. Our goal is to share short cases and exercises developed for classroom use in any area of business education.

Work culture is a way of working based on a value system that is upheld and accepted by every individual in a group or organization. In this study, a group is defined as a group of students who were given a responsibility to execute an assignment in one of the basic statistics courses, Statictics II, which is a compulsory subject at School of Mathematical Sciences, FST. The objective of this study are to investigate the tamwork effectiveness in improving the quality of teaching and learning Statistics II course and to investigate the students opinion on teamwork approach. Questionnaire is used as the data collection instrument in this study and students' perception towards teamwork culture are measured by requiring them to involve in a group project and work as a team. Students' opinion on the advantages of teamwork activities in improving their learning are also solicited. Lastly, a comparative analysis is carried out on the students' performance in Statistics II course. .

On the basis of the first frames obtained by using CCD cameras SBIG ST-10ME and Apogee Alta U42 attached to the 60 cm telescope at Vidojevica, we report the measurements of double and multiple stars and the parameters of the limiting capabilities of the telescope and weather conditions. We also present the results for the position angle, angular separation and residuals for 10 star pairs with published orbital elements or linear solutions. The first linear fits are presented for 2 star pairs of the multiple system ADS 48.

Background: The behaviour of individuals is affected by the social networks in which they are embedded. Networks are also important for the diffusion of information and the influence of employees in organisations. Yet, at the moment little is known about the social networks of nursing staff in healthcare settings. This is the first study that investigates informal communication and advice networks of nursing staff in long-term care. We examine the structure of the networks, how they are related to the size of units and characteristics of nursing staff, and their relationship with job satisfaction. Methods: We collected social network data of 380 nursing staff of 35 units in group projects and psychogeriatric units in nursing homes and residential homes in the Netherlands. Communication and advice networks were analyzed in a social network application (UCINET), focusing on the number of contacts (density) between nursing staff on the units. We then studied the correlation between the density of networks, size of the units and characteristics of nursing staff. We used multilevel analyses to investigate the relationship between social networks and job satisfaction of nursing staff, taking characteristics of units and nursing staff into account. Results: Both communication and advice networks were negatively related to the number of residents and the number of nursing staff of the units. Communication and advice networks were more dense when more staff worked part-time. Furthermore, density of communication networks was positively related to the age of nursing staff of the units. Multilevel analyses showed that job satisfaction differed significantly between individual staff members and units and was influenced by the number of nursing staff of the units. However, this relationship disappeared when density of communication networks was added to the model. Conclusions: Overall, communication and advice networks of nursing staff in long-term care are relatively dense. This fits with the high level of cooperation that is needed to provide good care to residents. Social networks are more dense in small units and are also shaped by characteristics of staff members. The results furthermore show that communication networks are important for staff's job satisfaction.

Teachers and students from St. Mary's School in Medford, Oregon attended the 2009 and 2010 Astronomy Research Workshop at Pine Mountain Observatory in Oregon. They compared the accuracy of their double star observations on an Alt-Az and equatorial telescope mount using the star Iota Bootes. Our results showed no significant difference between the use of either mount.

One of the most important questions for an educator is how best to help students learn, and another is of course what they should learn. We will address both these questions from a learning theory perspective in the context of Open Ended Group Projects (OEGPs). We argue that OEGPs provide a useful tool for instructors to reach towards higher order thinking skills in students. The intent of this paper is to inspire readers to also consider the general learning objectives of an engineering education programme and build on learning theories in setting up a learning environment using an OEGP structure. We argue that OEGPs are a suitable structure to develop knowledge and problem solving skills to deal with real-world problems in the future professional lives of engineering students.

There is a gap between the problems our students typically encounter in their education and the problems they are likely to be asked to solve in their future employments. Real-world problems are often illstructured (open ended) and we argue that working on well-structured problems, as is common in educational settings of today, does not fully prepare students for the problems they will encounter in their professional life. This paper will focus on the use of Open Ended Group projects as an educational setting and address why it can be useful in reaching general goals of engineering education and how scaffolding can balance the inherent complexity of such educational settings.

This paper examines the role of farmer groups in information and technology dissemination, focusing on the factors that make groups effective in extending technologies to farmers in Meru Central District of Kenya. The research method was an in-depth case study of dairy goat farmers and farmer groups in Meru Central District. Qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to provide deep and rich accounts of the study and to triangulate data. Survey research was also used, and the data entered into the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) for analysis. According to informants, farmer groups have an important role to play in the technology dissemination process. Nearly all farmer groups interviewed were involved in technology and information dissemination. There are certain factors that appear to contribute to these groups' success in such extension. These include leadership, group resources, the type of group, size of group, number of activities, number of linkages and the wealth of the members. Extension is at a crossroads. With the focus today on issues such as decentralization, democratization, pluralism and privatization, one important focus for extension should be the grassroots level. Farmer groups are therefore vital stakeholders in extension. This study shows some of the factors that make them more successful in disseminating to other smallholders. This provides important information for stakeholders in agricultural extension who are seeking means to effectively extend technologies.

Jameson contends that the individual self has been annihilated by postmodernism since it is no longer a centred subject, yet this presupposes that subjectivity is impossible without a rigorous homogeneity of all ideological messages within a given context. But in the face of competitive interpellation the subject is seldom answering one uniform`call,' but rather being hailed by multiple, competing messages all issued simultaneously. The`disappearing self' criticism has become commonplace, but it fails to take into account the centring power of individual discourses, or the power of individuals to make choices regarding those discourses. While a unitary culture may have disappeared, unitary discourses constructing very specific subjects have only intensified. The category of the subject remains highly viable in large part because it has never been so hotly contested. (James Collins') Preface Film has always had a major stake in what Collins terms "the category of the subject ." Mainstream cinema forms the most recent and perhaps the most insistent chapter in the dominant text of the "hero" in Western thought. This has been both cause and effect of the common assumption that film has a unique capacity to "individuate"-to affirm what is unique and special about the human image (note, for example, the emphasis on *Capt. Edelson to Steve Burns early on in Cruising

A cover for a group is a collection of proper subgroups whose union is the whole group. A cover is irredundant if no proper sub-collection is also a cover and is called maximal if all its members are maximal subgroups. For an integer n > 2, a cover with n members is called an n-cover. A cover C for a group G is called a C n-cover whenever C is an irredundant maximal core-free n-cover for G and in this case we say that G is a C n-group. Let G denote a semisimple C 8-group and {M i |1 ≤ i ≤ 8} be a maximal irredundant 8-cover for G, with core-free intersection D. Also for each i, 1 ≤ i ≤ 8 we assume that |G : M i | = α i such that α 1 ≤ α 2 ≤ α 3 ≤ α 4 ≤ α 5 ≤ α 6 ≤ α 7 ≤ α 8. In this paper we prove that if G be a semisimple C 8-group and α 3 ≤ 6, then every minimal normal subgroups of G isomorphic to Alt 5 or Alt 6 .

Since the mid 1970s, project management associations around the world have made serious attempts to conduct themselves as professional associations. Traditional professions distinguished themselves by emphasising standards such as service to the public and competence in their field, and by ensuring that their membership meets these standards. An important element of a profession is ownership of a body of knowledge that is distinctive to the professional group. Project management associations have spent considerable time and effort in developing Bodies of Knowledge (BOKs) and their associated certification programs, and indeed the popularity of these has been notable. Yet there are problems, some relating to the broader issue of whether the project management associations really are equipped to act as professional bodies, others related to the specific challenge of agreeing the 'distinctive body of knowledge' and to the value of certification. This paper draws on insights from the rethinking project management EPSRC project as well as several separate research programs to explore the development of project management as a profession and the role of the formal BOKs in this professionalization, and to suggest a research agenda for critiquing, contributing to, and maintaining both the formal BOKs and the more general body of knowledge relevant to the needs of the discipline.

This study examined the factors perceived by in-service teachers as either facilitating or impeding successful completion of online group work in a virtual graduate school of education program. Based on a quantified qualitative data analysis of open-ended questions, five facilitative factors were identified as (a) individual accountability, (b) affective team support, (c) the presence of a positive group leader, (d) consensus building skills, and (e) clear instructions. There were also seven impeding factors perceived by the teacher participants. Although four of the factors described a lack of the aforementioned facilitative factors, another three broached new, problematic issues that need to be further considered in online teacher education programs. At the conclusion of this article, recommendations are provided that online teacher educators might consider as they initiate group projects in online environments. Characterized as "anytime and anywhere learning," online degree programs are currently attracting an increasingly large number of in-service teachers who lack opportunities to attend traditional face-to-face classes during specific time periods (

This paper uses a survey of over 330 colleges of business to examine: 1) Whether an Information Systems core course is employed by the college? 2) What content this required course contains? 3) How many colleges are now requiring students to take a basic computer literacy course prior to taking any of the core sequence? From these three key questions, other related questions were posed for the survey.

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Numerous reports have noted that the IMF's medium-term growth projections are overly optimistic, raising questions as to how these can be improved. To this end, we estimate a growth model and examine its out-of-sample forecasting properties relative to those of IMF projections. The model's projections outperform those of the IMF in all regions and among most income groups-projections are less biased (one-quarter of the IMF bias) and have smaller standard errors (20 percent lower root mean squared errors) even after controlling for the IMF's macroeconomic assumptions. The paper does not attempt to address the criticisms that have been leveled against the empirical growth literature, but the results suggest that benefits can be derived from bringing systematic analysis to bear on crosscountry information.

The study aims at investigating students' behaviors and perceptions regarding the collaborative learning based group project using the wiki environment. The study utilized Google Sites as a case, and analyzed file unloads, the use of web pages, navigation bars, and comments as well as surveys. The study discusses main characteristics of students' activities in the collaborative learning group project, which are drawn from the analysis of students' behaviors and perceptions. The study also provides implications for improvement of wiki environment to support collaborative learning in education.

Given a ring of ternions R, i. e., a ring isomorphic to that of upper triangular 2 × 2 matrices with entries from an arbitrary commutative field F , a complete classification is performed of the vectors from the free left R-module R n+1 , n ≥ 1, and of the cyclic submodules generated by these vectors. The vectors fall into 5 + |F | and the submodules into 6 distinct orbits under the action of the general linear group GLn+1(R). Particular attention is paid to free cyclic submodules generated by non-unimodular vectors, as these are linked with the lines of PG(n, F), the n-dimensional projective space over F. In the finite case, F = GF(q), explicit formulas are derived for both the total number of non-unimodular free cyclic submodules and the number of such submodules passing through a given vector. These formulas yield a combinatorial approach to the lines and points of PG(n, q), n ≥ 2, in terms of vectors and non-unimodular free cyclic submodules of R n+1 .

The aim of this special session is to connect researchers interested in computing and engineering education for sustainability. We will explore the use of care and care ethics as a theoretical perspective to develop sustainability education. Theoretical discussions in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research and feminist research will be introduced to develop an understanding of care for education. Those theories will be illustrated and motivated based on concrete examples in computing and computing education. The participants get to choose among four different topics of discussion in the session, 1) the role of education to prepare for care, 2) theoretical discussions of care as a concept to develop education and education research, 3) pedagogical methods to foster care, 4) care and responsibility in the curriculum. The outcome of this session is twofold: The participants will gain new ways of conceiving education for human and planetary well-being and they will get to know researchers and educational developers with an interest in and experiences with sustainability education.

The IT in Society course is based on an Open Ended Group project framework that has been developed in an action research manner. It is a course where students participate in a real project, where they have the possibility to take part of an unusual learning experience where they address a complex and multifaceted real problem. A learning theory has evolved in parallel to the process of developing the course, and this paper will illustrate how the instructional procedure constructive controversy has influenced a recent development of the course and the underlying learning theory. The focus has been on the issue of creating "true collaboration" through introducing the action speed dating.

Students of today need to be prepared to work in globally distributed organizations. Part of that preparation involves teaching students to work effectively in teams to solve problems. Students also must be able to work with individuals located at distant sites where there is no or very little face-to-face interaction. The Runestone project, an international collaboration between two universities, adds new dimensions to student teamwork, requiring students to handle collaboration that is remote, cross-cultural, and technically challenging. Runestone is a three-year project funded by the Swedish Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education. A pilot study in 1998 was followed by a full-scale implementation in 1999 with another implementation ongoing in 2000.Each time this global cooperation project is run, both students and faculty learn important lessons in how to work with each other in a virtual environment. This paper discusses both student and faculty learning outcomes for ...

Educational methods race to keep pace with the opportunities afforded by technology, and in computer science we need methods that tie together the diverse aspects of the discipline and set them in a realistic human context. Projects have the potential to address various aims and perspectives, and international projects add new dimensions to student teamwork, requiring students to handle collaboration that is remote, cross-cultural, and linguistically challenging. This paper examines some of the educational issues associated with international projects, in the discussion of two examples: PASTICS and Runestone.

We have been engaged in computing education research for close to two decades. One characteristic of the field has been a preponderance of exploratory research, Marco Polo papers as Valentine termed them. Even considering the entire research corpus it is hard to discern a clear trend in terms of models and methods for conducting research. While some prominent researchers, such as Fincher, have established a tradition of mixed method research and multi-institutional studies, these approaches form a branch of the discipline ...

This paper describes some issues concerning assessment and the corresponding motivation for students to work in a desired manner. The issues came from studying assessment in the Runestone project, but are, as we see them, of general interest. Our findings illustrate the need to not take the effects of assessment, nor what it measures, for granted. It is our intention to promote Computer Science Education research as an essential area for improving our education, in this case by exposing myths about assessment as ...

BackgroundThe Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has since 2012 conducted pre and in-service One health (OH) trainings with the objective of improving global health security through a well-trained multidisciplinary health workforce. These trainings aim to build OH competencies among participants with the ultimate goal of promoting a multidisciplinary approach to solving global health challenges. Despite these trainings, there is limited documentation of the extent of acquisition and application of the One Health competencies at workplaces. This tracer study established the extent of acquisition and application of the One Health competencies by the AFROHUN-Uganda alumni.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among a random sample of 182 AFROHUN-Uganda alumni of 2013-2017. A blended approach of interviewer and self-administered was used during data collection. Virtual interviews using z...

Every semester, we deliver a capstone course on software engineering where students undertake a real-world project in three iterations. By the end of each iteration, students are graded in several dimensions: software quality, project management, and peer assessment. The latter is the only grade assigned individually; therefore, students who are penalized by their teams (e.g., for being perceived as low contributors to the team effort) are not severely affected. This results in little incentive for improvement, which potentially jeopardizes the overall quality of the project outcome. Envisaging to promote team cohesion, we devised a new grading rule: if the peer assessment of a student is lower than a threshold, that would be their final grade in the iteration. This paper reports the results of studying the effectiveness of the proposed rule. We recorded peer assessments over six consecutive semesters: (1) the first three as the baseline measure; (2) the semester where we introduced the new grading rule; and (3) the following two semesters, as a contrast. When the rule was first introduced, peer assessments resulted low and heavily spread at the beginning, but they consistently improved toward the end of the semester. When the instructional team already trusted the rule and explicitly emphasized its application, peer assessments consistently grew along the semester but resulted in fewer outliers. The study results show that exposing peer assessments earlier on helps promote team reflection. They also made evident the positive impact of teamwork for producing quality products in a software engineering capstone course. INDEX TERMS Capstone course, software engineering education, teamwork.

This research explored how between-group eollaboration enhanced the co-construction of knowledge and performance on project-based learning tasks of collaborative learning groups. The findings of 2 case studies, one that focused on between-group mentoring and one that focused on between-group project review, revealed that both strategies were perceived favorably by the students and had a positive impact on the collaborative learning skills, the knowledge revealed through their online dialogue, and the project performance of all students, especially the less effective groups. The results provide some insights into the computersupported collaborative learning process among students in a higher education context.

Since the late 1930s when Kurt Lewin and his coworkers began their pioneering investigation on the impact of group work on children's behavior and performance, the benefits of cooperative learning strategies have often been extolled by researchers in a wide range of contexts. Johnson and Johnson (1989) defined cooperation as "working together to accomplish shared goals", and further as "the use of small groups so that individuals work together to maximize their own and each other's productivity and achievement" (p. 2).

The A9 dopaminergic (DA) neuronal group projecting to the dorsal striatum is the most vulnerable in Parkinson's disease (PD). We genetically engineered mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells to express the transcription factors Nurr1 or Pitx3. After in vitro differentiation of Pitx3-expressing ES cells, the proportion of DA neurons expressing aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (AHD2) increased, while the total number of DA neurons remained the same. The highest levels of AHD2 expression were observed in mouse A9 DA neurons projecting to the dorsal striatum. Furthermore, real-time PCR analyses of in vitro differentiated Pitx3-expressing ES cells revealed that genes highly expressed in A9 DA neurons were up-regulated. When transplanted into the mouse striatum, Pitx3-expressing cells generated an increased proportion of AHD2-expressing DA neurons. Contrastingly, in Nurr1expressing ES cells, increases of all midbrain DA markers were observed, resulting in a higher total number of DA neurons in vitro and in vivo, whereas the proportion of AHD2-expressing DA neurons was not changed. Our data, using gain-of-function analysis of ES cells, suggest that Pitx3 may be important for specification and/or maintenance of A9-like neuronal properties, while Nurr1 influences overall midbrain DA specification. These findings may be important for modifying ES cells to generate an optimal cell source for transplantation therapy of PD.

This study aims to assess the students' achievement of program outcomes (POs) for the Reinforced Concrete Design Course. The POs achievement for students in session 2009/2010 is evaluated and then compared with the previous session of 2008/2009. The course was selected as it is a compulsory course for all students in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering (JKAS) and furthermore the project given to the students are always related to the real structural design project. POs achievement for the session 2009/2010 was evaluated based on the new improved POs compared to the previous POs used in session 2008/2009. The assessment of POs achievement is measured based on final examination, mid semester examination, tutorials and group project. The comparison results between the two sessions have successfully showed the increment of students' achievement around 9-39% on all identified POs. The comparison is made in view to look on how effective the continuous quality improvement (CQI) that has been proposed in the previous session can affect the students' performance. The effect of changes in the new improved PO as outlined in the course will also be assessed and discussed.

Mesencephalic neurons projecting to the upper cervical spinal cord were examined by mapping the distributions of labeled cells after injecting fluorescent tracers or wheat-germ agglutinin conjugated to horseradish peroxidase (WGA-HRP) into the C1 segment. Injections into the central or deep regions of the ventral horn produced retrograde labeling in cells of several mesencephalic regions. The majority of cells were found contralaterally in the superior colliculus and red nucleus, and ipsilaterally in and around the interstitial nucleus of Cajal (INC), in the cuneiform region, and in the fields of Forel. Smaller numbers of cells were located in the periaqueductal gray matter, nucleus annularis, and magnocellular nucleus of the posterior commissure. Dorsomedial injections in the ventral horn near the ventral commissure labeled only a subset of these projections, including cells in the mesencephalic reticular formation adjacent to the INC and in the nucleus annularis. Dorsolateral injections labeled some cells in the superior colliculus and were particularly effective at labeling cells in the red nucleus. These results suggest that at least ten different cell groups project to the ventral horn of the first cervical segment. Most, but not all, groups originate from regions implicated previously in the control of eye or head movements. Keywords Fluorescent tracers • Spinal cord • Superior colliculus • Mesencephalic reticular formation • Cat Abbreviations BC Biventer cervicis • BDA Biotinylated dextran • CCN Central cervical nucleus • CM Complexus • CN Cuneiform nucleus • CTF Central tegmental field • DAB Diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride • FB Fast blue • FD Fluorescein-conjugated dextran • FF Fields of Forel • FR Fluoro-ruby • IC Inferior colliculus • INC Interstitial nucleus of Cajal • LCN Lateral cervical nucleus • LN Lemniscal nuclei • MGB Medial geniculate body • MLF Medial longitudinal fasciculus • MRF Mesencephalic reticular formation • NA Nucleus annularis • NPC Nucleus of the posterior commissure • OCI Obliquus capitis inferior • PAG Periaqueductal gray matter • PC Posterior commissure • PG Pontine gray • PHA Posterior hypothalamic area • PPT Pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus • PTM Medial pretectal area • riMLF Rostral interstitial nucleus of the medial longitudinal fasciculus • RCA Rectus capitis anterior • RCP Rectus capitis posterior • RF Retroflex bundle • RN Red nucleus • SAN Spinal accessory nucleus • SC Superior colliculus • STN Subthalamic nucleus • SP Splenius • WGA-HRP Wheat-germ agglutinin-horseradish peroxidase • ZI Zona incerta

Approximately 57% of students in the United States work while attending college. For most of these students (81%), this is more than 20 hours a week. There has been shown to be a negative relationship between hours worked and academic achievement in studies in the United States as well as the United Kingdom and Australia. There is, however, no research to the authors' knowledge as to how the number of working hours affects student learning in groups, and whether students in groups with varying work patterns report better learning outcomes in groups where student working hours are similar. This study reports that overall, greater working hours decrease students' perceptions of the value and their experience of group work, and this occurs more with second-and third-year students. It also reveals that students studying in groups where there is a large proportion of students working more than 2 days a week displayed significantly more negative appraisals of their experience at the end of a project than their peers in groups where few students were working.

In this paper, we describe an embodied conversational kiosk that builds on research in embodied conversational agents (ECAs) and on information displays in mixed reality and kiosk format in order to display spatial intelligence. ECAs leverage people's abilities to coordinate information displayed in multiple modalities, particularly information conveyed in speech and gesture. Mixed reality depends on users' interactions with everyday objects that are enhanced with computational overlays. We describe an implementation, MACK (Media lab Autonomous Conversational Kiosk), an ECA who can answer questions about and give directions to the MIT Media Lab's various research groups, projects and people. MACK uses a combination of speech, gesture, and indications on a normal paper map that users place on a table between themselves and MACK. Research issues involve users' differential attention to hand gestures, speech and the map, and flexible architectures for Embodied Conversational Agents that allow these modalities to be fused in input and generation.

Statistics show that the number of students enrolling in technology based degree programmes has dropped dramatically in the past number of years. There are many possible reasons for this, including misconceptions on the nature of the discipline and a media fueled perception of a lack of employment in the field. This paper reports on the design, realisation and assessment of an event designed to encourage Transition Year (Grade 10 equivalent) students to consider Computer Science as a viable career choice. It documents how the event was planned and implemented, reports on the staff and student experiences, and provides both objective and subjective assessments of the event and its outcomes.

Reciprocal peer learning involves students learning from, and with, each other. This paper details a peer learning centred course where small teams of students design and develop a multifunctional robot using LEGO Mindstorms™. In particular, it describes how students were introduced to the concept of peer learning and outlines how the learning environment was managed and sustained. Particular emphasis is placed on acknowledging and rewarding peer collaboration as part of the assessment procedures, thus encouraging active student engagement with the peer learning process.

Background The Africa One Health University Network (AFROHUN) with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has since 2012 conducted pre and in-service One health (OH) trainings with the objective of improving global health security. These trainings aim to build competencies that, enhance a multidisciplinary approach to solving global health challenges. Despite the investment in OH trainings, there is limited documentation of the extent of acquisition and application of the OH competencies at workplaces. This tracer study explored the extent of acquisition and application of the OH competencies by the AFROHUN-Uganda alumni. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among a random sample of 182 AFROHUN-Uganda alumni of 2013–2018 cohorts. A blended approach of interviewer-administered and self-administered questionnaires was used. Virtual platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft teams, and Skype, and phone interviews were used to collect data when face...

Typically, most of the feedback to the students in a class is from the grader or instructor. However, enhanced student-student interactions and collaboration are known to improve student motivation and student learning. In this paper, student-student feedback exercises on term projects in the form of student review of reports and in-class café discussions in a graduate heat transfer class are described. Students were assigned individual projects and three-student 'café' groups were formed. Each student submitted a mid-term report, sent it to the other students in the group for their review. Towards the end of the semester, an in-class 'café' discussion session was implemented. The session involved each student presenting his or her project to the others in the group in turn. The instructor also helped facilitate the discussion. An end-of-semester assessment revealed that almost all students wanted it to be continued in the upcoming semesters.

The Fano-Snowflake, a specific configuration associated with the smallest ring of ternions R ♦ (arXiv:0803.4436 and arXiv:0806.3153), admits an interesting partitioning with respect to the Jacobson radical of R ♦. The totality of 21 free cyclic submodules generated by non-unimodular vectors of the free left R ♦-module R 3 ♦ is shown to split into three disjoint sets of cardinalities 9, 9 and 3 according as the number of Jacobson radical entries in the generating vector is 2, 1 or 0, respectively. The corresponding "ternioninduced" factorization of the lines of the Fano plane sitting in the middle of the Fano-Snowflake is found to differ fundamentally from the natural one, i.e., from that with respect to the Jacobson radical of the Galois field of two elements.

To explore how group member behaviour influences group performance, most studies stress on the influences of group leadership. However, the existence of member-roles is also an effective indicator of group performance, meanwhile; teachers have difficult to extract the member-roles which students play on a web-based learning system. This research (1) assist teachers to extract group social communication patterns when monitoring students' social communication (2) assist teachers to extract member-roles that may influence the group learning performance, and (3) assist teachers to extract the influence of member-roles on group learning performance and help teachers to promote group to learn better on web group learning environment. This research derives 11 member-roles by exploring communication with teachers expert knowledge and criteria, and extracting the influence on four primary group performance indicators: (1) individual grades, (2) group project grade, (3) resource-sharing frequency, and (4) group drop out rate. The statistical analysis method shows that most of the member-roles have significant influence on group learning performance.

In a web group-learning environment, students must communicate with other group members on the Internet to accomplish group projects and share knowledge. Communication is likely to affect performance and so analysing the relationship between communicative relationships and group performance may help teachers to monitor groups effectively. Certain tasks are necessary to perform such an analysisrecording group communication, extracting communication relationships and determining the relationship between group communication and group performance. This study developed a method for determining relationships and rules for predicting performance to enable teachers to take act appropriately according to the predicted performance of the group. Four group performance indicators are considered-average grades within a group, project grade, frequency of resource-sharing and drop-out rate. Experimental results are presented, concerning the application of the methodology to a web class of 706 students, divided into 70 groups. The experimental results show that group communication patterns significantly affect group performance.

To evaluate the portfolio in assessing interprofessional learning between medical and midwifery students. The student portfolio is assessed using a rubric consisting of four assessment criteria. A total of 32 student portfolios were tested for reliability coefficients and interrater agreements. We conducted an in-depth interview with mentors and focus group discussion (FGD) with students for exploring their perceptions of the ability of the portfolio to assess the learning. Interview and FGD data were converted into verbatim transcripts then were analyzed by two coders using open coding techniques. The reliability coefficient is 0.808. Inter-rater agreements for each assessment criteria are ranging from moderate to high. Mentors and students have positive insights toward the assessment system. This study supports the use of portfolios as an interprofessional educational assessment tool.

In this study, category-based self and peer assessment were applied twice in a semester in an Elementary Science Teaching Methods course in order to assess individual contributions of group members to group projects as well as to analyze the impact of Individual Weighting Factors (IWF) on individual scores and individual grades. IWF were calculated by applying Conway et al.'s (1993) formula. The resulting individual scores were analyzed to find out the impact of IWF on individual scores and individual grades. It was found that the differentiation of individual scores was very large in both applications and caused dramatic changes in some of the students' grades. For this reason, the IWF had to be scaled down to decrease its effect on individual grades. After scaling down the IWF, more acceptable distribution of student grades was obtained.