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Engagement is critical to the success of learning activities such as writing, and can be promoted with appropriate feedback. Current engagement measures rely mostly on data collected by observers or self-reported by the participants. In this paper, we describe a learning analytic system called Tracer, which derives behavioral engagement measures and creates visualizations of behavioral patterns of...
Critical thinking is one of the key competencies listed by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) [1], a central European Community organization, and is also mentioned as a learning outcome for higher education by international organizations, such as ABET, ACM, and IEEE, as well as in numerous national and university legislations regarding higher education degrees. The ability...
We present a synopsis of instructor experience on the mastery learning approach as implemented in our school for key fundamental engineering courses. The mastery learning approach revolves around the idea of dividing the course into modules, each module culminates in an exam comprised of 2 or 3 problems where each problem tests one important concept. For each exam, a student can make up to 3 attempts,...
This paper describes work in progress to develop and evaluate a three-week program focusing on academic language and culture for international students beginning a two-year program of study in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We provide a rationale and theoretical background for the program, describe the curriculum, and summarize...
Over the past two decades, one of the key changes in Engineering curricula has been in the emphasis placed on the development of personal transferable skills. Employers also profess to seek these competencies when making recruiting decisions. Such skills include the ability to learn through collaboration and through meaningful critical reflection on one's own performance, both as an individual and...
Learning of threshold concepts in courses such as statics has traditionally been a difficult and critical juncture for students in engineering. Research and other systematic efforts to improve the teaching of statics in recent years range widely, from development of courseware and assessment tools to experiential and other "hands-on" learning techniques. This paper reports a portion of the...
It has become easier to create a lifelog by using smart phones. Lifelogs can be used in several ways. However, some problems exist in memory recollection; as many lifelogs owned by a person are partial information, it is impractical to remember days themselves. Therefore, a lifelog sharing system for memory recollection is proposed. The system elicits related information from other people's lifelogs...
Corpora have become bigger, better and more numerous, and their interfaces are quicker, simpler and freely available for use on any computer. At the same time, user manuals and teaching materials have been created to support the technology. The technological and pedagogical aspects of corpus-based language learning are equally important, but the previous research has been weighted towards the creation...
We investigate how storytelling techniques might support students in writing final papers. We suggest a new structure and a new process for student paper production, borrowed from creative writing. We argue that adopting this approach might improve the quality of scientific student papers, increase the satisfaction of writing them and the pleasure of reading them. To test our assumptions we outline...
The implementation of iPads in the process of teaching and learning brings new opportunities for teachers and learners in and beyond the classroom. This work deals with the experience of the very first five months of the 1:1 model of implementation of iPads in foreign language classes with 11 and 12-year-olds in a primary school in Rijeka, Croatia.
Interdisciplinary faculty from Physics, Biology and Electrical and Computer Engineering, (ECE) have created a sequence of three stand-alone 300-level general education lecture courses in nanotechnology with one supporting laboratory course, with the support of National Science Foundation funding through the nanotechnology Undergraduate Education initiative. These three lecture courses can be taken...
Over the past forty years, significant research has been done on story/narrative generation in which the computer is the author. Many existing systems generate stories by filling in a template or copying an analogous story (and changing the time, place, etc.) or by prompting the user to provide a start to the story. Very few systems generate variable stories without these techniques. While it is impossible...
This paper presents an approach to technical communication pedagogy that considers the student's learning environment as a system consisting of multiple learning opportunities — including both digital and human resources. In this system, in-class instructions, short video descriptions, a writing center, and relevant exercises function as scaffolded steps in the learning process to pique the students'...
This paper describes the methodology component of a funded project which has brought together faculty on technical communication and the learning sciences from our campuses in the US and the Middle East. The goal of the project is to research, develop and disseminate in classrooms and local workplaces online modules aimed at improving professional communication practices. In order to understand such...
Effective communication and life-long learning skills have been identified as critical competencies for the engineering workplace in ABET's accreditation guidelines, in NAE's vision for the engineer of 2020, and by professionals working in the field. Engineering educators have responded with increased attention to communication instruction and the development of life-long learning skills; however,...
In the next generation of learning environment, a tablet PC with a stylus pen can be a learning tool. In this paper, a framework for learner centered question generation on the tablet PC is proposed. The framework is based on a learner's actions and context of an expository text. In assisting active learning, three different types of questions can be generated according to the learner's marking actions...
Within technical and engineering communication, this paper specifically frames the concept of microgenres and locates them within the well-established and now international field of genre studies. It describes a methodology for identifying microgenres and presents the promising early results related to the possibility of mapping these microgenres within a corpus of student texts produced for a writing-intensive...
In the context of global education and the rapid advancement of data analytics, STEM educators face the challenge of preparing future statisticians to communicate the data. In a project that intersects the realms of mathematics and rhetoric, we collaborate with faculty from the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia. Our purpose is to explore the genre of the statistical consulting...
This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of engineering students' perceptions of reflection and independent learning before and after taking a mandatory technical communication course titled Professional and Technical Oral Communication for Engineers in their first semester of study at a university in Hong Kong. Three kinds of research instruments were used to generate data for analyses:...
As several US institutions are attempting to enhance students' communication skills within science-based curricula either by focusing on the development of a single technical communication course, or by introducing an aspect of communication (such as oral communication) across several courses, there is a need for studies which will identify instructional methods and strategies which can benefit students...
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