scholarly journals In Search for the Open Educator: Proposal of a Definition and a Framework to Increase Openness Adoption Among University Educators

Author(s):  
Fabio Nascimbeni ◽  
Daniel Burgos

<p class="3">The paper explores the change process that university teachers need to go through in order to become fluent with Open Education approaches. Based on a literature review and a set of interviews with a number of leading experts in the field of Open Educational Resources and Open Education, the paper puts forward an original definition of Open Educator which takes into account all the components of teachers’ work: learning design, teaching resources, pedagogical approaches and assessment methods- of teachers’ activities. Subsequently, to help the development of teachers’ openness capacity, the definition is further developed into a holistic framework for teachers, which takes into account all the dimensions of openness included in the definition and which provides teachers with self-development paths along each dimension. By working on the definition and on the framework with the interviewed experts, the paper concludes that a strong relation exists between the use of open approaches and the networking and collaboration attitude of university teachers, and that in order to overcome the technical and cultural barriers that hinder the use of open approaches in Higher Education, it is important to work on the transition phases – in terms of awareness and of capacity building - that teachers have to go through in their journey towards openness.</p>

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (190) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
Oksana Hubina ◽  

The paper analyzes the essential characteristics of open education, as the global educational system and determines its tendencies in present conditions; discovers the reasons that influenced upon the process of development of open education. The notion «open education» is treated by foreign scientists differently. For example T. Iiyosh, D. Wiley consider open education as a learning system based on open educational resources and open technologies that provide learning with flexibility and opportunities for open exchange of teaching practices, as well as include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning. The study of the concept of «open education» as a learning system that encompasses resources, tools and methods is presented in the work of G. Siemens. G. Tleuzhanova and A. Khamzina consider this phenomenon as a synergetic system capable of self-development and further interaction with the environment. Therefore it was defined that open education flourished in the results of definite changes of society such as the process of integration, democratization and informatisation of society. Open education with its following characteristics as accessibility, parallelity, modulation, internationalization and coordination and with the usage of new technologies of education gives the opportunity to every person to get the education without data of place of his residence, age, nationality, physical condition. The analyze of scientific literature let us to determine the leading tasks of open education: provide the listeners with the means of access to educational materials; organize the management of educational process which gives the opportunity to inform society about educational questions and raise the effective managing of educational system; raise the level of education and educational services; provide the continual renewing of educational means and technologies for the listeners of open education.


Author(s):  
Takis S. Pappas

Based on an original definition of modern populism as “democratic illiberalism” and many years of meticulous research, Takis Pappas marshals extraordinary empirical evidence from Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, the United States, Spain, and Brazil to develop a comprehensive theory about populism. He addresses all key issues in the debate about populism and answers significant questions of great relevance for today’s liberal democracy, including: • What is modern populism and how can it be differentiated from comparable phenomena like nativism and autocracy? • Where in Latin America has populism become most successful? Where in Europe did it emerge first? Why did its rise to power in the United States come so late? • Is Trump a populist and, if so, could he be compared best with Venezuela’s Chávez, France’s Le Pens, or Turkey’s Erdoğan? • Why has populism thrived in post-authoritarian Greece but not in Spain? And why in Argentina and not in Brazil? • Can populism ever succeed without a charismatic leader? If not, what does leadership tell us about how to challenge populism? • Who are “the people” who vote for populist parties, how are these “made” into a group, and what is in their minds? • Is there a “populist blueprint” that all populists use when in power? And what are the long-term consequences of populist rule? • What does the expansion, and possibly solidification, of populism mean for the very nature and future of contemporary democracy? Populism and Liberal Democracy will change the ways the reader understands populism and imagines the prospects of liberal democracy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Marin ◽  
Carla Piazza ◽  
Sabina Rossi

AbstractIn this paper, we deal with the lumpability approach to cope with the state space explosion problem inherent to the computation of the stationary performance indices of large stochastic models. The lumpability method is based on a state aggregation technique and applies to Markov chains exhibiting some structural regularity. Moreover, it allows one to efficiently compute the exact values of the stationary performance indices when the model is actually lumpable. The notion of quasi-lumpability is based on the idea that a Markov chain can be altered by relatively small perturbations of the transition rates in such a way that the new resulting Markov chain is lumpable. In this case, only upper and lower bounds on the performance indices can be derived. Here, we introduce a novel notion of quasi-lumpability, named proportional lumpability, which extends the original definition of lumpability but, differently from the general definition of quasi-lumpability, it allows one to derive exact stationary performance indices for the original process. We then introduce the notion of proportional bisimilarity for the terms of the performance process algebra PEPA. Proportional bisimilarity induces a proportional lumpability on the underlying continuous-time Markov chains. Finally, we prove some compositionality results and show the applicability of our theory through examples.


Open Physics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Prunotto ◽  
Wanda Maria Alberico ◽  
Piotr Czerski

Abstract The rooted maps theory, a branch of the theory of homology, is shown to be a powerful tool for investigating the topological properties of Feynman diagrams, related to the single particle propagator in the quantum many-body systems. The numerical correspondence between the number of this class of Feynman diagrams as a function of perturbative order and the number of rooted maps as a function of the number of edges is studied. A graphical procedure to associate Feynman diagrams and rooted maps is then stated. Finally, starting from rooted maps principles, an original definition of the genus of a Feynman diagram, which totally differs from the usual one, is given.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (11) ◽  
pp. 2395-2399 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZAHI TOUMA ◽  
DAFNA D. GLADMAN ◽  
DOMINIQUE IBAÑEZ ◽  
SHAHRZAD TAGHAVI-ZADEH ◽  
MURRAY B. UROWITZ

Objective.To evaluate the performance of the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) Responder Index (SRI) when the SLE Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI-2K) is substituted with SLEDAI-2K Responder Index-50 (SRI-50), a valid and reliable index of disease activity improvement. Also, to determine whether the SRI-50 will enhance the ability of SRI in detecting responders.Methods.Our study was conducted on patients who attended the Lupus Clinic from September 2009 to September 2010. SLEDAI-2K, SRI-50, the British Isles Lupus Assessment Group measure, and the Physician’s Global Assessment were determined initially and at followup. SRI was determined at the followup visit according to its original definition using the SLEDAI-2K score and by substituting SLEDAI-2K with SRI-50.Results.A total of 117 patients with SLEDAI-2K ≥ 4 at baseline were studied. Patients had 1 followup visit over a 3-month period. Twenty-nine percent of patients met the original definition of SRI and 35% of patients met the definition of SRI when SLEDAI-2K was substituted with SRI-50. The use of SRI-50 allowed determination of significant improvement in 7 additional patients. This improvement could not be discerned with the use of SLEDAI-2K as a component of SRI. At followup visits that showed improvement, SRI-50 scores decreased to a greater extent than SLEDAI-2K scores (p < 0.0001).Conclusion.SRI-50 enhances the ability of SRI to identify patients with clinically important improvement in disease activity. SRI-50 was superior to SLEDAI-2K in detecting partial clinical improvement, ≥ 50%, between visits. These properties of the SRI-50 enable it to be used as an independent outcome measure of improvement or as a component of SRI in clinical trials.


Author(s):  
Larisa V. Abdalina ◽  
Natalia I. Plaksina

Based on the analysis of current scientific literature on the issues of improving the corporate culture of a university lecturer, the author’s definition of the concept of “corporate culture of a university lecturer” is formulated. The methodological basis of the study is represented by the following approaches. The ideas of systematic approach were the basis for considering the phenomenon under study as an integral, orderly, complexly organized education and building the process of its improvement. A culturological approach enriched the cultural foundations of considering and understanding the essence of the corporate culture of the lecturer, the process of its improvement by relying on value constructs of interaction, the presentation of cultural forms of self-development. The ideas of personal approach formed the basis for considering the personality of the lecturer with their value orientations, individuality, and subjective position as the main criterion and result of the productive transformation of corporate culture. An activity-based approach has determined the targeted, procedural, and effective components of the activity and interaction of lecturers, the special organization of which is the most important condition for the development of the lecturer’s personality and his corporate culture. The provisions of acmeological approach presented the essence of the development of the corporate culture of the lecturer by taking into account the individual nature of development, as a movement towards maturity, through its contradictions resolved by the lecturer-subject. We note the principles of consistency, humanization, unity of objective and subjective, joint activity, cultural conformity of the development of corporate culture of a university lecturer.


2001 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 105-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Garrett Millikan

‘According to informational semantics, if it's necessary that a creature can't distinguish Xs from Ys, it follows that the creature can't have a concept that applies to Xs but not Ys.’ (Fodor, 1994, p. 32)There is, indeed, a form of informational semantics that has this verificationist implication. The original definition of information given in Dretske'sKnowledge and the Flow of Information(1981, hereafter KFI), when employed as a base for a theory of intentional representation or ‘content,’ has this implication. I will argue that, in fact, most of what an animal needs to know about its environment is not available as natural information of this kind. It is true, I believe, that there is one fundamental kind of perception that depends on this kind of natural information, but more sophisticated forms of inner representation do not. It is unclear, however, exactly what ‘natural information’ is supposed to mean, certainly in Fodor's, and even in Dretske's writing. In many places, Dretske seems to employ a softer notion than the one he originally defines. I will propose a softer view of natural information that is, I believe, at least hinted at by Dretske, and show that it does not have verificationist consequences. According to this soft informational semantics, a creature can perfectly well have a representation of Xs without being able to discriminate Xs from Ys.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Venini

An innovative approach to topology optimization of dynamic system is introduced that is based on the system transfer-function H∞-norm. As for the structure, the proposed strategy allows to determine the optimal material distribution that ensures the minimization of a suitable goal function, such as (an original definition of) the dynamic compliance. Load uncertainty is accounted for by means of a nonprobabilistic convex-set approach (Ben-Haim and Elishakoff, 1990, Convex Models of Uncertainty in Applied Mechanics, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam). At each iteration, the worst load is determined as the one that maximizes the current dynamic compliance so that the proposed strategy fits the so-called worst case scenario (WCS) approach. The overall approach consists of the repeated solution of the two steps (minimization of the dynamic compliance with respect to structural parameters and maximization of the dynamic compliance with respect to the acting load) until convergence is achieved. Results from representative numerical studies are eventually presented along with extensions to the proposed approach that are currently under development.


2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (02) ◽  
pp. 577-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yana Volkovich ◽  
Nelly Litvak

PageRank with personalization is used in Web search as an importance measure for Web documents. The goal of this paper is to characterize the tail behavior of the PageRank distribution in the Web and other complex networks characterized by power laws. To this end, we model the PageRank as a solution of a stochastic equationwhere theRis are distributed asR. This equation is inspired by the original definition of the PageRank. In particular,Nmodels the number of incoming links to a page, andBstays for the user preference. Assuming thatNorBare heavy tailed, we employ the theory of regular variation to obtain the asymptotic behavior ofRunder quite general assumptions on the involved random variables. Our theoretical predictions show good agreement with experimental data.


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