Search Results for
"deep learning"

Over the past several years, interest in competency-based education has steadily increased particularly in relation to vocational education, which prepares individuals for careers requiring specific craft, trade, or technical skills. In these cases, competencies are commonly “obtained and demonstrated” through distance learning by watching short videos, completing assignments, and passing online assessments demonstrating student ability to accomplish a series of learning objectives. This approach to competency-based education ensures students are able to master "doing" but provides little emphasis on "thinking." As such, little is known about how to incorporate competency-based education into traditional and professional bachelor degree programs such as engineering, which requires a greater focus on knowledge and skill integration. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a new approach to learning that goes beyond the proverbial "checking boxes" to provide an approach for demonstrating the integration of abilities and reflection. This innovative and experimental approach offers three unique attributes. First, it is competency-based in that students are required to demonstrate mastery of meeting core innovative competencies through submission of an artifact (“transdisciplinary-doing”) and reflection (“transdisciplinary-thinking”). Second, it is transdisciplinary in that learning experiences integrate the humanities into engineering, design, and technology skill sets. Finally, it is scaffold in that instruction of each of the four modules builds on the other, further enhancing and grounding the learning experience. This paper will explain our unique yet standardized approach through a semester-long course introducing engineering and technology students to innovation-related frameworks as an immersive approach to increase deeper transdisciplinary thinking through innovation. This funnel method is intentionally applied to guide students from (a) System's Thinking - big picture, holistic perspective to (b) Design Thinking - human-centered approach to problem solving to (c) Problem-Market Fit Analysis - value proposition identification, connecting customer needs to features of the product bundle to (d) Business Model Development - identifying and evaluating key abilities required to support bringing a new product to market. This funnel down innovation approach assists students in narrowing their scope and, at the same time, offers them a continuous push towards transdisciplinary doing and thinking. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2019

Experience shows that teaching Power Electronics subjects is not easy, even to undergraduate students. This phenomenon might stem from the fact that Power Electronics is an engineering discipline that closely related to other disciplines. Some experts stipulate that Power Electronics is a multidisciplinary subject while for some other it is an interdisciplinary subject. In students point of view, it does not matter what side Power Electronics reside, they always see it as a difficult subject. Most of the time engineering technology (TVET) student might consider this subject more as a burden. This does not come as a surprise; sampled Indonesian students score lower in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), a periodic student testing conducted by OECD (Economic Co-operation and Development). The score outline the lack of HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) from many Indonesian students. The inadequacy in that skills hampers the future development of many students, especially in a subject such as Power Electronics that require some degree of mathematical prowess and deeper thinking. It gets worse with the influence of technology on student attention span, and they cannot focus on a more extended period as their predecessor was. This kind of deficiency threat the very survival of the nation as we enter The Industrial Revolution 4.0 where many current human jobs will be replaced by network connected automation. We need to address this problem adequately. The massive national interest in robotics may be one of the answers to this problem. However, due to the expensiveness of this solution, it needs to be adapted to the available budget. The literature study that used as a foundation of ongoing effort to incorporate a simple robotic experiment in Power Electronics teaching is presented. The study then followed by a discussion about the current state of the effort. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Researchers investigating learning from primary to higher education have emphasised the crucial role of embodiment in the process of developing knowledge, skills and expertise. In spite of this, the physical or psychomotor aspects of learning are vastly under-researched and undervalued in the literature on vocational education and training (VET). Such a marginalisation of embodiment and the physical is regrettable in that–in addition to its failure to sufficiently acknowledge defining features of much vocational learning–it serves to reinforce the notion that only the cognitive aspects of learning are of interest and value in vocational development. Such a partial and misguided conception contributes to the subordinate and second-class status of vocational studies against liberal/academic pursuits. It will be argued here that a re-examination of the role of the physical in VET can provide–not just a richer and deeper understanding of vocational learning–but also a means of enhancing the status of vocational pursuits within general education systems. © 2018, © 2018 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.

Purpose: Various studies around the globe indicate lack of soft skills in engineering students, graduating from universities, although the bulk of studies in various disciplines indicate an improvement in various skills through implementation of a problem-based learning (PBL) approach. The purpose of this paper is therefore to identify and determine the effects of PBL in improving and developing soft skills, conflict resolution traits and aspects of enhancing group learning in undergraduates. Design/methodology/approach: A study with mixed methods was used, involving questionnaire, observation and document analysis. A total of 57 students from different faculties participated in the semester-long study. Pre-tests and post-tests were administered at the beginning and end of the study. The researcher attended all the classes to observe systematically the teaching-learning process and its outcomes. Findings: The findings revealed that PBL has a significant effect on improving students’ soft skills and enhancing group learning, including overcoming communication conflicts. Practical implications: Practical implications of the study involve the enhancement of generic skills of the engineering graduates with the student-centered and interactive methodologies like PBL and e-learning applications. Originality/value: This research endeavor stands unique due to its usage of e-learning tools in the PBL classroom learning such as Schoology, Padlet, videos, internet surfing. Another unique feature of this research is the holistic nature of the study, i.e. the measurement of a number of soft skills, traits and group learning skills that are not focused in other studies of engineering. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

In a technologically driven society, math and science students in the United States are falling further and further behind their international counterparts, resulting in an influx of STEM focused, reformed K-12 schools, including schools focused on project-based learning (PBL). This article reports a study of the effectiveness of PBL on high school students' performance on state mandated standardized mathematics and science achievement measures. Manor New Tech High School is a nationally recognized model STEM school, with a diverse student population, where all instruction is delivered through PBL. Although there is ample research suggesting that PBL is advantageous for increasing STEM learning compared to conventional teaching approaches, there is a lack of studies randomly assigning students to receive PBL. Further, some of the effects observed for students attending project-based schools could be due to a self-selection bias for students or parents that choose such an alternative learning environment. This study addresses both of these concerns and found that students taught through PBL, as a group, matched performance of conventionally taught students on all science 11th grade and mathematics 9th, 10th, and 11th grade TAKS achievement measures and exceeded performance by a scale score increase of 133 for the 10th grade science TAKS measure by (B = 133.082, t = 3.102, p <.05). One possible explanation of the differences observed in this study could be the TAKS instrument used to capture student math and science achievement that interprets “real-life applications” of content differently between math and science questions. These results align with literature on the effects of PBL and deepen our understanding of these effects by providing a controlled study with random assignments to the PBL experience. Future research looking at the effect of PBL on achievement on the PISA could be beneficial in identifying benefits of PBL implementation in schools. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This empirically informed report presents two innovative approaches to learning through work and working to learn from a secondary school in Germany, with both the school and its innovative development having received the German School Award. In one approach, the school's leadership team deployed the new “Challenges” school project for students' comprehensive educational development. In the other, the school initiated the possibility for teachers to gain practical experience outside the school by working full-time. In addition to their teaching duties, teachers can now work for a limited period in the private sector, thereby gaining valuable experience by shaping their professional stances and influencing their approaches to their students in everyday school life. This empirically informed report is based on desk research complemented by qualitative data gathered during a site visit. These data shall give a deeper understanding of how innovative actions initiated by the school leadership team can contribute to change within an educational system towards advanced teacher learning and transformative school development to achieve better student success. © 2018 Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts. All rights reserved.

Entrepreneurship is an alternative employment source of women in many nations. It has been shown that entrepreneurship is often a male-dominated sphere. However, women with proper skills, knowledge, learning, and support can flourish in entrepreneurial activities. The aim of this paper is to provide deeper insights on international women entrepreneurship by focusing on the success factors of women entrepreneurs, international opportunity recognition skills, and performance of start-up ventures. Building on the extant literature of human capital, social network relationships, and entrepreneurship literature, this study presents a conceptual model predicting the performance of new start-up ventures of women entrepreneurs. The article concludes with important theoretical and practical research implications, and provides future research avenues. © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

This book offers international readers a comprehensive introduction to higher education in China, and will help readers around the globe make sense of the huge and complex machinery that makes up the university and college sector in China today. It accompanies readers step by step, allowing them to understand the most important aspects of this sector in China - its history and development, its scope and structure, its operational system and management, and its enrollment and employment processes. It also provides an overview of the various levels of higher education in China, namely: specialized higher education, undergraduate education, postgraduate education, research and faculty. In short, the book will tell you what higher education in China is and how it works. While economic globalization and internationalization of higher education have greatly reduced the differences among educational systems in various countries, it cannot be denied that any given country’s higher education system needs to be deeply rooted in its culture and traditions. In this book, we highlight several distinctive characteristics of higher education in China, including: the ancient roots and modern history; massive scale; diversity; and centralized management and pragmatic trends. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. and Higher Education Press 2018.

Research from both academic and industry sources has repeatedly identified a mismatch between theory and practice in film and TV professionals’ education. A recent report for the British Film Institute has concluded that the skills provision for the industry is not fit for purpose. This investigation aims to reconcile the educational expectations of students, educators and employers and is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with British film-makers attending the Cannes Film Festival. The interviews trace their process of updating skills and know-how to meet the requirements of highly dynamic workflows and so provide a deeper understanding of the mental models underlying the film-making process. Preliminary findings lay the foundation for a grounded theory approach to a study of conceptual knowledge in film-making. Interview analysis establishes the core concept ‘learning by doing’ that gains meaning by deep integration with highly personal and diverse skills development strategies. The film-makers demonstrate how ‘doing’ is affected by previously watched films, by collaborator focused forms of ‘critical thinking’, based on constant communication with collaborators. These combined factors enable the production team’s increasingly shared vision of a film in preproduction. The findings are discussed in the context of established reflective practice concepts to enhance student employability. © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The aim of this article is to investigate the learning strategies vocational students use to become part of a work community, and how these strategies are related to the formation of a vocational identity at the workplace. Conducting qualitative interviews, data were collected from 44 industrial programme students from six upper secondary schools. The findings revealed five recurrent strategies used by the students for learning vocational identities as industrial workers. The students took individual responsibility for their own learning, asked questions to gain deeper vocational knowledge, searched for role models in the work community, positioned themselves as a resource to the work community, understood and used humour and jokes in order to become a member of the community. The conclusion is that the students actively develop learning strategies to adapt their behaviour to the norms and ideals of the industrial work community. In the process of develop the vocational identities as industrial workers, the students’ vocational habitus is transformed to better fit the industrial work community. The integration of the notions of agency and habitus demonstrates the dynamic nature of students’ participation in work communities; simultaneously, the students reproduce social structures that promote vocational identities. © 2017 The Vocational Aspect of Education Ltd.