Teaching Writing Skills in English for Tourism by Employing Travel Writing

This chapter examines teaching writing skills in English for Tourism by employing travel writing, which is not only a tool for teaching linguistic skills, but also encourages students to develop research interests and storytelling techniques. When travel writing was introduced to undergraduate and MA students during the English lessons the role of languages in Tourism, Tourism Discourse and Literary Tourism was also discussed with them. As part of the English assignment, students were asked to produce their own travel writing texts, which were discussed, reviewed by their teacher, re-written and – in the case of Master students – at the final stage, also published as an example of a teaching and learning experiment. Thus, this chapter presents travel writing as a successful method of developing travel writing skills inside the English for Specific Purposes classes.

Same or Different? Perceptual Learning for Connected Speech Induced by Brief and Longer Experiences

Perceptual learning, defined as long-lasting changes in the ability to extract information from the environment, occurs following either brief exposure or prolonged practice. Whether these two types of experience yield qualitatively distinct patterns of learning is not clear. We used a time-compressed speech task to assess perceptual learning following either rapid exposure or additional training. We report that both experiences yielded robust and long-lasting learning. Individual differences in rapid learning explained unique variance in performance in independent speech tasks (natural-fast speech and speech-in-noise) with no additional contribution for training-induced learning (Experiment 1). Finally, it seems that similar factors influence the specificity of the two types of learning (Experiment 1 and 2). We suggest that rapid learning is key for understanding the role of perceptual learning in speech recognition under adverse conditions while longer learning could serve to strengthen and stabilize learning.

Learning and motor inhibitory control in crows and domestic chickens

Cognitive abilities allow animals to navigate through complex, fluctuating environments. In the present study, we tested the performance of a captive group of eight crows, Corvus corone and 10 domestic chickens, Gallus gallus domesticus , in the cylinder task, as a test of motor inhibitory control and reversal learning as a measure of learning ability and behavioural flexibility. Four crows and nine chickens completed the cylinder task, eight crows and six chickens completed the reversal learning experiment. Crows performed better in the cylinder task compared with chickens. In the reversal learning experiment, species did not significantly differ in the number of trials until the learning criterion was reached. The performance in the reversal learning experiment did not correlate with performance in the cylinder task in chickens. Our results suggest crows to possess better motor inhibitory control compared with chickens. By contrast, learning performance in a reversal learning task did not differ between the species, indicating similar levels of behavioural flexibility. Interestingly, we describe notable individual differences in performance. We stress the importance not only to compare cognitive performance between species but also between individuals of the same species when investigating the evolution of cognitive skills.

Evaluating The Effectiveness of Gastroenterology e-Module for Undergraduate Medical Students, A Pilot Study From Syria

BackgroundE-learning is an aspect of the practical application of pedagogy. Most students find it an entertaining and effective learning method. Also, case-based learning is related to pedagogy and is an interactive and enjoyable experiment for students. In Syrian medical schools, Gastroenterology teaching is depending on traditional teacher-centered style, passively affecting learning outcomes and imposing the search for other up-to-date alternatives. The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a case-based, E-Module of gastroenterology in fulfilling desired outcomes, and to evaluate students' satisfaction with the e-learning experiment, their self-confidence improvement, and their perception of the experiment's obstacles. Methods13 undergraduate medical students were enrolled. A pretest was conducted, then they participated in 6 synchronous online lectures, and 6 asynchronous lectures which were subjects to the discussion. Students then took a posttest and answered a questionnaire composed of 15 questions measuring their satisfaction with the experiment, self-confidence improvement, and obstacles they faced. ResultsThe mean students' degrees in the pretest was 41.5%, while it was 66.8% in the posttest with a statistically significant difference. There was no statistical difference in posttest between students' answers regarding synchronous lectures compared with asynchronous ones. The best results were related to students' perception of self-confidence improvement after the e-learning experiment.ConclusionsE-learning plays an important role regarding students' level of knowledge improvement. Most of the participants show satisfaction with their knowledge and self-confidence improvement after the E-learning experiment.

APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGICAL STAGES SIMULATION IN ACADEMIC MEDIA PLATFORM ENVIRONMENT OF LEARNING EXPERIMENT

The methodology of a virtual laboratory workshop organizing on the example of research of technological stages lamination of a printing order in the production process of post-press processing of printed products in the training of qualified specialists in engineering specialties is presented. Despite the extensive coverage in open sources a features application of commercial complexes of simulation modeling in the educational process, the performed analysis showed the need to design an original client-server virtual platform for learning experiment and further development of industry-oriented structural components as pedagogical toolkit for it. Therefore, a software engine is proposed with the support of relevant program libraries and up-to-date information from the corporate database of the enterprise for operational computation and dynamic management of the active education environment based on requests and subsequent decision-making, when the student independently builds a strategy to achieve the goal by means of the most adequate simulation models. The applied architecture of the software engine presupposes the presence of interdisciplinary skills allows the academic media platform of the learning experiment to work in three educationally oriented modes and provides work experience close to the production one.

Information Redundancy Neglect versus Overconfidence: A Social Learning Experiment

We study social learning in a continuous action space experiment. Subjects, acting in sequence, state their beliefs about the value of a good after observing their predecessors’ statements and a private signal. We compare the behavior in the laboratory with the Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium prediction and the predictions of bounded rationality models of decision-making: the redundancy of information neglect model and the overconfidence model. The results of our experiment are in line with the predictions of the overconfidence model and at odds with the others’. (JEL C91, D12, D82, D83)