Empowering and Motivating Language Students in an Online Environment

This chapter explores pandemic-driven innovations in world language (WL) curriculum design and content delivery that encouraged student communication during remote learning. The study focused on questionnaire data from 49 WL instructors who identified specific pedagogical techniques acquired and honed during the COVID-19 pandemic, even amidst unprecedented hardships. Results indicated that WL instructors found most successful the types of activities which allowed for more timely feedback and student choice and built communicative skills for real-life situations. Furthermore, the instructors shared post-pandemic plans to employ more of these technological tools that fostered student collaboration and engagement, with a focus on building community and supporting social and emotional learning. Educators also emphasized deepened awareness regarding the myriad inequities among learners, the importance of establishing rapport with students, and the value of their own professional networks.

Don't Assess a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree

The heterogeneity of students in today's classrooms present many obstacles when it comes to formatively assessing learning. The formative assessment cycle affords teachers numerous opportunities to measure student progress towards objectives, provide timely feedback, and make necessary adjustments to instruction. Formative assessments also provide considerable value to students, in the form of learning engagement, and tracking their own progress and planning of future steps. Due to the value of formative assessments in making decisions and supporting students, it is necessary that educators plan and utilize equitable assessment practices to eliminate unnecessary barriers students may face. The chapter will therefore discuss the obstacles that variable learners may experience that impede their inclusion in classrooms, the importance of the universal design for learning in ensuring engagement and multiple means of action and expression, and finally, bring awareness to students with disabilities and the importance of accommodations and modifications in their success.

Using Gamification Strategies to Cultivate and Measure Professional Educator Dispositions

One of the most important outcomes of pre-service teacher education is the transition from assignment-oriented students to service-oriented education professionals. Faculty can assist in this process by cultivating professional educator dispositions within their courses. Gamification strategies can be an effective way to provide students with timely feedback regarding their progress toward professional educator dispositions. This study investigated the effectiveness of points, timely feedback, and leaderboards on cultivating and measuring specific professional educator dispositions among pre-service teachers. Data was collected in four domains - personal responsibility, intellectual engagement, professional ethics and stewardship, and supportive interactions- where gamification strategies were additively implemented over five semesters. Results from this study indicate gamification strategies, when bundled together to leverage motivating factors such as competition and personalization led to increased gains in the four domains of professional educator dispositions.

Automated Paraphrase Quality Assessment Using Language Models and Transfer Learning

Learning to paraphrase supports both writing ability and reading comprehension, particularly for less skilled learners. As such, educational tools that integrate automated evaluations of paraphrases can be used to provide timely feedback to enhance learner paraphrasing skills more efficiently and effectively. Paraphrase identification is a popular NLP classification task that involves establishing whether two sentences share a similar meaning. Paraphrase quality assessment is a slightly more complex task, in which pairs of sentences are evaluated in-depth across multiple dimensions. In this study, we focus on four dimensions: lexical, syntactical, semantic, and overall quality. Our study introduces and evaluates various machine learning models using handcrafted features combined with Extra Trees, Siamese neural networks using BiLSTM RNNs, and pretrained BERT-based models, together with transfer learning from a larger general paraphrase corpus, to estimate the quality of paraphrases across the four dimensions. Two datasets are considered for the tasks involving paraphrase quality: ULPC (User Language Paraphrase Corpus) containing 1998 paraphrases and a smaller dataset with 115 paraphrases based on children’s inputs. The paraphrase identification dataset used for the transfer learning task is the MSRP dataset (Microsoft Research Paraphrase Corpus) containing 5801 paraphrases. On the ULPC dataset, our BERT model improves upon the previous baseline by at least 0.1 in F1-score across the four dimensions. When using fine-tuning from ULPC for the children dataset, both the BERT and Siamese neural network models improve upon their original scores by at least 0.11 F1-score. The results of these experiments suggest that transfer learning using generic paraphrase identification datasets can be successful, while at the same time obtaining comparable results in fewer epochs.

Research on the Implementation of Flipped Classroom in the World Economy Course

In the context by which the World Economy course is restricted by the traditional teaching model, the flipped classroom model can solve the issues in the teaching process. The flipped classroom can systematically strengthen teacher-student interaction during and after classes, optimize students’ learning habits, improve students’ learning effect, and effectively provide timely feedback on the teaching effect. Therefore, the World Economy course should implement flipped classrooms and put forward corresponding safeguard measures, including actively changing the role of teachers, effectively guiding students to participate in flipped classrooms, equipped with sufficient and high-quality software and hardware equipment, as well as promoting the scientific evaluation of flipped classroom teaching effect.

The Digital Transformation of Assessment: Challenges and Opportunities

In the education sector, the digitization of the learning process has been a topical issue for several decades. It includes various components of the learning process, including assessment, which is an integral part of the learning. Innovative educators have been using technology in assessment for several years, but since March 2020, all educators have been forced to use it. Some educators started using technology without sufficient skills and adequate training, so the forced transformation was not always successful. In most cases, educators learn by doing, as well as developing skills and finding the best technologies for assessment. The aim of this research is to identify opportunities and challenges in the application of technologies in assessment. To achieve this goal, the results of a survey of educators (n = 181) and interviews, both individual and group (26 respondents), were evaluated. The main results are related to the findings of new ideas in assessment, and an exploration of the possibility of providing more frequent and timely feedback. At the same time, there is the challenge of developing needed technological skills, as well as coping with an increase in the amount of work and time required to adequately prepare for the assignments. Having knowledge concerning digital assessment can complement an educator’s practice. It gives an insight into a wider study – the post-doctoral research project “Models of Assessment in the Digital Learning Environment (MADLE)”.

A Case Study of Floating Offshore Super-Long Steel Pipeline Combing with Field Monitoring

How to control deformation and avoid resonance is the key to ensuring the safety of the super-long pipeline when it is floating in the sea. Based on the deformation warning value of pipeline prototype composite material obtained from laboratory tests, the raw water pipeline project in Tong’an Xiamen adopts wireless communication equipment to transmit data, supplemented by aerial photography technology to monitor and feedback the strain and vibration during the dynamic construction of long-distance pipeline floating transportation. Combined with dynamic construction, this monitoring method avoids excessive deformation and resonance of the steel pipeline during floating transportation, and prevents the destruction of the anticorrosive coating. The airtightness test after completion shows that the whole pipeline meets the acceptance requirements. The monitoring results show that the strain at the bent position of the pipeline is large in the process of floating transportation, and the jacking speed and position of the tugboats have an important influence on the deformation of the pipeline. The same type of project should focus on these aspects and timely feedback monitoring data. At the same time, the study also provides detailed strain, modal analysis and effective monitoring technology for the safety of offshore steel pipeline floating transportation.

SP2.1.7Navigating surgical training: a game of trust

Introduction One premise of the Improved Surgical Training (IST) pilot is delivery of better quality of early years surgical training. However, the quality of the trainee-trainer relationship can positively or negatively impact trainees’ experiences of the specialty. Trust is a key determinant of the relationship, which is influenced by trainers’ level of risk aversion and trainees’ motivation. Game theory provides a framework to understand cooperation amongst rational ‘players’. This study explores how trainee-trainer relationships impact trainees’ experiences through the IST curricular reform. Methods Using a qualitative case study approach, data were obtained from interviews with core surgical trainees across Scotland. Data coding and inductive thematic analysis were undertaken. Results Forty-six trainees participated. Trainees and trainers regularly interacting in clinical activities demonstrated growing levels of trust, aided by: specialty rotations of 6 months or more duration, working at junior registrar level with structured weekly clinical activities and direct consultant supervision, individual goal-setting and regular progress check, and meaningful and timely feedback. Cooperative relationships led to individual fulfilment, growth, and trainee autonomy. Factors hindering development of trust included: temporal and/or geographical distance between trainee-trainer, poor communication and understanding of expectations and training needs, and lack of interest and enthusiasm from either party. Conclusion Cohesive trainee-trainer relationships demonstrated cooperative equilibrium; both trainees and trainers met each other’s expectations and positively impacted on trainees’ experiences. On the contrary, ‘players’ in relationships deficient in trust achieved the minimum to ensure trainee progression. Addressing factors fostering a cooperative trainee-trainer relationship positively impacts trainees’ experiences.

Badminton stroke identification using wireless inertial sensor and neural network

Objective evaluation is essential in sports to monitor athlete performance, provide relevant and timely feedback, and minimize the risk of injury. Activity recognition is the first step in sport skill and technique performance analysis. This study investigated the use of wearable inertial sensors and a neural network (NN) to identify badminton strokes. The study also explored the effect of different NN configurations and a different number of sensors on the classification. Sensors were placed at the dominant wrist, left ankle, and right ankle. Six different strokes, ranging from soft hitting net shots to smashes, were performed with a total of 3300 repetitions from six well-trained badminton players. An automated window segmentation method was developed to identify the stroke instances. A scaled conjugate gradient training algorithm with two hidden layers and 55 neurons in each layer was found to be the best approach to classify badminton strokes with an accuracy of 97.69%. Even just wearing the inertial sensor on the wrist was sufficient, providing an accuracy of 95.09%. These results demonstrate the viability of using inertial sensors and NN to recognize badminton strokes, which can be applied in training and competitive environments.