Content Of Knowledge Base Research Articles

2376 Efficacy of a 4-part program on brain development

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: (1) Provide basic brain knowledge about development and resiliency. (2) Develop an understanding of how a mother can impact a child’s brain development. (3) Foster a sense of agency to increase the likelihood that a mother will enact positive changes. (4) Develop the ability to recognize a connection between one’s own behaviors and a child’s development and behaviors. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Tested the efficacy of a 4-week intervention program on neurodevelopment for homeless mothers. Mothers (n=4) residing at the Center for the Homeless in South Bend, IN were recruited. Used community partner feedback, weekly surveys, and pre/post tests to look at changes in basic content knowledge, behavioral change, and self-efficacy. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Preliminary results indicate an increase in knowledge about neurodevelopment, although results on behavioral changes are inconclusive. The program is anticipated to run a second time with a new group of parents residing in the Center for the Homeless to increase sample size. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Anticipated that the results will add to the existing literature concerning effective interventions in strengthening parenting and neuroscience knowledge in vulnerable populations.

Assessing coaches’ professional knowledge

Professional competency of sport and exercise coaches has been conceptualised differently depending on the theoretical and methodical approach taken. To date, no model of professional coaching competency has been agreed upon. The aim of this study was to develop a competency model for sport coaches drawing on well-known competency models developed in the context of teacher education and to empirically assess parts of the model. We developed an initial pool of 295 multiple choice items and administered them to a sample of 531 youths (mean age: 16.2 years) directly after they had completed the German Football Association’s (Deutscher Fusball-Bund) “Junior Coach in Schule und Verein” (Junior Coach for Schools and Clubs) training programme. Results of analyses of one-, two-, five-, and six-dimensional models by means of Rasch scaling indicate that the data are best represented by either a two- or a five-dimensional model depending on the fit criteria chosen. While content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge are presented in the two-dimensional model, the five-dimensional model allows discrimination among football-specific content knowledge, basic content knowledge of training science, basic content knowledge of first aid and pedagogical content knowledge of planning training sessions and instructional/methodological pedagogical knowledge. Further investigation should be made into the suitability of competency models developed in the context of teacher evaluation for modelling the competency of sport coaches and into the extent to which such models can be extrapolated to various sports.

Improve Mobile Agent Performance by using Knowledge-Based Content

Mobile agent technology is one of the mobile computing areas. This technology could be used in several types of applications, such as cloud computing, e-commerce, databases, distributed systems management, network management, etc. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new model for increasing the mobile agent systems performance. The performance is considered as one of the important factors that makes the system reliable. This paper suggests a knowledge-based content to be used to improve the mobile agent systems performance. In the beginning, this work started by conducting intensive survey about related models and mechanisms to investigate the gaps in the performance. A comparative discussion has been conducted between some researches issued and the proposed model. The proposed model has been described in full details based on the components. A scenario-based approach has been used to implement the proposed model by using .Net framework and C# language. The model has been tested and evaluated based on different scenarios. As findings, the overall performance has been improved by 83% when the knowledge-based content is used. In addition, the system performance will improve automatically by the time because the content of the knowledge is increased. The proposed model is suitable to be used in any type of mobile agent applications. The originality of the model is based on conducted survey and own knowledge.

Content and structure of knowledge base used for virtual control of android arm motion in specified environment

The paper presents the configuration of knowledge base necessary for intelligent control of android arm mechanism motion with different positions of certain forbidden regions taken into account. The present structure of the knowledge base characterizes the past experience of arm motion synthesis in the vector of velocities with due regard for the known obstacles. This structure also specifies its intrinsic properties. Knowledge base generation is based on the study of the arm mechanism instantaneous states implementations. Computational experiments connected with the virtual control of android arm motion with known forbidden regions using the developed knowledge base are introduced. Using the developed knowledge base to control virtually the arm motion reduces the time of test assignments calculation. The results of the research can be used in developing control systems of autonomous android robots in the known in advance environment.

A proficiency-based learning algorithm applied to e-learning system for knowledge-oriented course

In the cognitive psychology domain, the memorization of knowledge is one kind of representation of memory capability. Humans often get the knowledge with knowledge-oriented courses. These courses are composed of the question banks with the fixed knowledge-based content. Learners can obtain the required cognitive knowledge through the repeated memory process. This study proposed a proficiency-based learning algorithm to simulate this kind of learning behavior and then implement an instruction-assisted system called proficiency-based adaptive and guided e-learning system (PAGE system), in which learners can study independently through a guided mechanism. The PAGE system is quite suitable for the knowledge-oriented courses, which are designed by several items with standard answers. Obviously the study indicated the PAGE system is validated in the learning process of memorization. The experimental result proved that the PAGE system can help learners to remember efficiently. All participants got positive progress and 80% of them achieved their criterion for cognitive knowledge growth. In addition, the experiment also showed that the learning attitude and active performance are crucial factors that affect learners' learning growth.

Using mathematical analyses activities to improve manipulative discrimination in early childhood teacher education

ABSTRACTThis article reports on the findings of manipulative analyses performed by preservice and in-service teachers in an early childhood teacher education program mathematics methods course. The activities are intended to model and promote mathematical analyses for better discrimination between mathematics manipulatives by early childhood teachers. Findings suggest that these activities elicit varied analyses by the teachers related to practical and pedagogical issues, but are initially lacking in mathematical considerations. Through modeling and practice, they do include mathematical considerations, possibly shifting their beliefs regarding manipulatives away from the common assumption that manipulatives will result in automatic learning. The depth of these analyses, though, suggests that greater focus is required in building a stronger content knowledge base.

Analyzing the Role of Science Practices in ACS Exam Items

Recent efforts to reform K–12 science curricula, embedded within the NRC Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards, have focused on unifying core disciplinary content with crosscutting concepts that span across science disciplines and scientific practices. With these reforms comes the challenge of creating “three-dimensional” assessments that measure beyond basic content knowledge mastery to incorporate measures of science practices and crosscutting concepts. Adding measures of science practices to traditional forms of assessments may prove to be challenging. The work herein investigates how science practices have been inherently incorporated into previously released ACS exams through analysis and classification of ACS general chemistry exam items with a developed rubric. The findings may help to inform the creation of new assessment items that are more explicit in their incorporation of science practices by building upon the implicit incorporation of science practices...

Primary mathematics teacher education in Australia and China: What might we learn from each other?

The preparation of teachers to teach mathematics to primary school children differs across nations and cultures. This study used mixed methods to examine the basic content knowledge of trainee teachers in Australia and China. A simple test (30 questions) of content based on an international comparative study in mathematics teacher training found that many of the Australian trainee teachers struggled with material that they might be expected to teach, while the Chinese teachers largely demonstrated mastery. The significance of this finding is examined in the context of the teacher preparation programs in two teacher training institutions. Cultural commentary is added by leading academics in each institution. It was found that in the Australian teacher training institution there was a focus on generic skills and relatively limited opportunity to develop trainee teachers’ content knowledge or specific pedagogy. The relevance of the findings is discussed through the framework of different beliefs in the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching that have been reported to dominate the different educational systems in China and Australia.

Assessment of scientific literacy: Development and validation of the Quantitative Assessment of Socio-Scientific Reasoning (QuASSR)

We describe the development and validation of the Quantitative Assessment of Socio-scientific Reasoning (QuASSR) in a college context. The QuASSR contains 10 polytomous, two-tiered items crossed between two scenarios, and is based on theory suggesting a four-pronged structure for SSR (complexity, perspective taking, inquiry, and skepticism). In the context of pre-post measurement within a 1-week SSI-based unit on fracking, we found that the four sub-constructs represent a one-dimensional progression of ideas, and that SSR is largely independent of declarative knowledge. In the validation process, we discovered small inconsistencies in item functioning between scenarios in the areas of complexity and perspective-taking, but determined that resulting biases sat well within the uncertainty in students’ measures. In light of future development and use of the QuASSR, we determined that use of a single scenario is sufficient to produce a measurement reliability of 0.7. Given the time it takes for students to complete a scenario, we consider a 3-scenario QuASSR, and its accompanying measurement precision of 0.85, to be the practical upper precision limit of the QuASSR when used in experimental contexts. Finally, we found no significant change in SSR due to the SSI-based intervention. This mirrors prior reports of short-duration interventions targeting SSR. Our data suggest that as a cognitive construct underpinned by political, moral, and ethical ideologies around SSI, successful efforts to facilitate growth must target SSR as a central focus upon which more basic content knowledge is contextualized, so that sufficient instructional duration can be given to this important construct. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 54: 274–295, 2017

Digital Humanitarians

Eyewitness user-generated content has dominated the study of citizen journalism in crisis and conflict zones. However, the convergence of online networked technologies, like social media, collaborative mapping and real-time information management, gives ordinary people the capacity to commit acts of journalism from afar. Networks of virtual volunteers act as digital humanitarians who rapidly assemble situational awareness at the onset of natural and human-caused disasters through crowdsourcing, data analysis and crisis mapping to aid on-the-ground emergency response. While they have been studied through the multi-disciplinary lens of information science, computation, geography and emergency management, digital humanitarians have received little attention in the journalism literature. This exploratory study contends that the knowledge-based content produced by these groups is citizen journalism akin to data-driven investigative news. Two case studies and a cross-case analysis consider this argument through digital humanitarian work of the Standby Task Force on the 2015 European refugee crisis and the 2016 earthquake in Ecuador. These and other emerging crisis/conflict zone examples suggest a broader perspective is needed on citizen journalism not bounded by eyewitness user-generated content. Future research directions to explore digital humanitarianism as a form of citizen journalism are also offered.

An EFL In-service Training Program for Developing EFL Teachers’ Perofrmance

This study aimed to investigate the preparation of Saudi high school English language teachers and determine whether they needed in-service training programs or not. A 28-item questionnaire was distributed to all 49 English language teachers in Al-Kharj Province 27 schools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The results revealed that 64% of the English teachers were not will prepared by their undergraduate programs to be good English language teachers. The results also revealed that the teachers did not revive enough methodology courses and thus lack content-based knowledge about how to teach language. The study also investigated teachers do not attend in-service programs or workshops for many reasons. Finally, the study presented some suggestions and implications for the development of Saudi English language teachers’ skills. Also, it provided some suggestions to the Ministry of Education to review the procedures and requirements for hiring English language teachers.

The influential role of consensual knowledge in international environmental agreements: negotiating the implementing measures of the Mediterranean Land-Based Sources Protocol (1980)

The generation of consensual scientific knowledge significantly influences the development, evolution and outcome of international environmental negotiations. The impact of consensual science on global environmental policy-making is determined, inter alia, by a number of multidimensional factors. Some of these factors are closely associated with the nature and content of the usable scientific knowledge base. This article introduces the concept of gradated scientific validity and demonstrates how different types and aspects of consensual scientific information affect variously the negotiation process of international environmental agreements. Drawing on the negotiation of the Protocol for the Protection of the Mediterranean against Pollution from Land-Based Sources (1980), it shows that the thorough examination and in-depth analysis of the content and basic characteristics of the available scientific knowledge play a pivotal role in the elaboration and formulation of effective implementing measures of an environmental agreement. It is argued that the prominence of consensual science and subsequently its influence on environmental negotiations are substantially determined by the dynamic role of two interrelated variables of gradated scientific validity: the high or low degree of consensus in relation to the significance and value of the provided scientific information (degree of consensus), and the expanding or narrow scientific consensus on distinct underlying aspects of a negotiating problem, including its causes, extent and consequences (content of consensus). This article indicates that the extensive analysis of the nature, content and distinct characteristics of a consensual knowledge base lays the groundwork for comprehensively understanding the role of consensual science in the negotiation and implementation of an international environmental agreement.

Teacher/Family Partnerships for Student Learning: Lessons from Indian Education for All in Montana

The article reports learning outcomes from a program aimed at creating partnerships among middle-school teachers and Native families in a western Montana urban school district involved in implementing the Indian Education for All Act. Student-learning outcomes are analyzed according to attendance in classes taught by teachers divided into three groups based on the extent to which their teacher participated in the program intervention. Six hundred fifteen students that could be matched for program-influenced learning completed preprogram and postprogram surveys conducted in 30 classes. Study findings indicate that the innovative parent-teacher partnership program had a varied impact in terms of net shifts in student knowledge and attitudes. Parent-teacher partnership initiatives are more likely to generate positive attitudinal outcomes than they are to produce content-based knowledge gains. These findings suggest that extensive involvement of Native parents in curricular partnerships with teachers can improve both Indian and non-Indian students' attitudes toward cultural others and Indian students' self-image and attitudes toward public school.

Teacher/Family Partnerships for Student Learning: Lessons from <em>Indian Education for All</em> in Montana

The article reports learning outcomes from a program aimed at creating partnerships among middleschool teachers and Native families in a western Montana urban school district involved in implementing the Indian Education for All Act. Studentlearning outcomes are analyzed according to attendance in classes taught by teachers divided into three groups based on the extent to which their teacher parti cipated in the program intervention. Six hundred fifteen students that could be matched for programinfluenced learning completed preprogram and postprogram surveys conducted in 30 classes. Study findings indicate that the innovative parentteacher partnership program had a varied impact in terms of net shifts in student knowledge and attitudes. Parentteacher partnership initiatives are more likely to generate positive attitudinal outcomes than they are to produce contentbased knowledge gains. These findings suggest that extensive involvement of Native parents in curricular partnerships with teachers can improve both Indian and nonIndian students’ attitudes toward cultural others and Indian students’ selfimage and attitudes toward public school.

Impact of the Medical Faculty on Study Success in Freiburg: Results from Graduate Surveys.

Aim: Using the data from graduate surveys, this study aims to analyze which factors related to teaching and learning at the Freiburg Faculty of Medicine can influence study success.Background: Study success and the factors influencing it have long been the subject of investigation, with study success being measured in terms of easily quantifiable indicators (final grades, student satisfaction, etc.). In recent years, it has also frequently been assessed in terms of graduate competency levels. Graduate surveys are considered suitable instruments for measuring these dimensions of study success.Method: Data from three Freiburg graduate surveys conducted one and a half years after graduation were drawn upon for the analysis.Study success was operationalized using four indicators: results on the written section of the M2 exam, self-assessment of medical expertise and scientific expertise, and student satisfaction. Using multiple regression analyses, the predictive power was calculated for selected variables, also measured by the graduate surveys, for the different study success indicators.Results: It was possible to identify models that contribute slightly or moderately to the prediction of study success. The score earned on the university entrance qualification demonstrated itself to be the strongest predictor for forecasting the M2 written exam: R2 is between 0.08 and 0.22 for the three surveys. Different variables specific to degree program structure and teaching are helpful for predicting medical expertise (R2=0.04-0.32) and student satisfaction (R2=0.12-0.35). The two variables, structure and curricular sequencing of the degree program and combination of theory and practice, show themselves to be significant, sample-invariant predictors (β-weightStructure=0.21-0.58, β-weightCombination=0.27-0.56). For scientific expertise, no sample-independent predictors could be determined.Conclusion: Factors describing teaching hardly provide any assistance when predicting the written M2 exam score, which makes sense to the extent that teaching goes far beyond the heavily knowledge-based content of the written M2 exam. The lack of predictability for scientific expertise is most likely explained in that these have been only rarely included in the curriculum and often inexplicitly so. The variable combination of theory and practice appears to be significant for imparting medical expertise and the development of student satisfaction. The extent to which these relationships are practically relevant needs to be explored in further studies.A specific limitation is that the measurement of expertise and skill is based solely on self-assessments.

Enterprise Content Management Systems as a Knowledge Infrastructure

The rise of the knowledge-based economy has significantly transformed the economies of developed countries from managed economies into entrepreneurial economies, which deal with knowledge as both input and output. Consequently, knowledge has become a key asset for organizations and knowledge management is one of the driving forces of business success. One of the most important challenges faced by enterprises today is to manage both knowledge assets and the e-collaboration process between knowledge workers. Critical business knowledge and information is often contained in mostly unstructured documents in content management systems. Therefore, content management based on knowledge perspectives is crucial for organizations, especially knowledge-intensive organizations. Enterprise Content Management has evolved as an integrated approach to managing documents and content on an enterprise-wide scale. This approach must be enhanced in order to build a robust foundation to support knowledge development and the collaboration process. This paper presents the KBCM (Knowledge-Based Content Management) framework for constructing a knowledge infrastructure based on the perspective of knowledge components that could help enterprises create more business value by classifying content formally and enabling its transformation into valuable knowledge assets.

Is knowledge best shared or given to individuals? Expanding the Content-based Knowledge Awareness paradigm

In the computer-supported collaborative learning domain the Content-based Knowledge Awareness approach has been established as a reliable way of improving knowledge exchange within transiently collaborating online groups. On this paradigm group members are given insight into the entirety of each other’s task-related knowledge content at the outset of their collaboration. The present study aimed to discern the locus of the observed benefit of Content-based Knowledge Awareness by contrasting performance of groups with insight into their partner’s knowledge against groups without such insight and, novelly, individuals who had access to the entirety of the group’s knowledge but no collaboration partner. Task solving efficiency and long-term retention of the study material were measured. Contrary to expectations, participants in the Individual condition were fastest at solving the study task while retaining the same amount of the studied material as groups who were genuinely collaborating. This finding suggests that when an external representation of a collaborator’s knowledge is available, interaction with the collaborator can hinder the exchange of this knowledge.

ENHANCING RESEARCH COMPETENCES IN HEALTHCARE HIGHER EDUCATION

Background: In evidence-based education, experts are supposed to possess skills and content knowledge. Scientific skills provide the tools and ways of thinking that enable researches to build the robust conceptual frameworks needed to gain expertise. Science education should not only provide broad content knowledge base but also develop analytical thinking, understanding of scientific research processes, and inspire curiosity of researchers.Objectives: This paper discusses the key results of subjective evaluation of attained outcomes of a 2,5-year project focused on enhancing research competences in a faculty of health sciences. Methods: The data was gathered from project members by four consequent semi-structured online questionnaires. Total number of respondents was 78 (N=78) with 75% response rate. The data was analysed by a summative content analysis combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results: The findings present evident progress in personal achievements, team working, and scientific practice in the faculty. Based on identified needs the concrete measures supported learning and lead to enhancement in the target group's research competences.Conclusions: Capacity building approach was successful in laying a robust foundation for consistent development in research-based practice both in academic and professional levels. Further research should be conducted on the long-term impacts of the project in the faculty.

The mediator authorization-security model for heterogeneous semantic knowledge bases

Many organizations often need to share semantic knowledge base content with selected members of other organizations. However, sharing semantic knowledge across different organizations is a critical problem. This is because the differences in the vocabulary utilized by the organizations have to be resolved before knowledge can be shared. Also, if semantic repositories are syntactically and schematically heterogeneous, information interoperation becomes a vital challenge. When a system needs to allow unknown entities to access its resources, mechanisms should be in place in order to provide a secure and trusted information-sharing environment and enable users to interact and share information easily and perfectly. To address these challenges, the Mediator Authorization-Security model is proposed to provide secure interoperation among heterogeneous semantic repositories. This paper addresses the issue of interoperability and how to incorporate trust into semantic interoperability. The evaluation showed that, despite the complexity of the mediator system, it still provides acceptable performance.

Visualization and interaction in the atlas of the human brain, head and neck

Our ultimate objective is to create a holistic and reference atlas of the whole adult human brain along with the head and neck. Several techniques have been employed to create atlases. Here we discuss the atlas design and use from a point of view of two key techniques, visualization and interaction. For visualization, surface rendering of a geometrical model of the brain, head and neck is employed. Geometrical model ensures anatomic parcellability, high (sub-pixel) resolution, editibility, extendibility, structure separability, structure-to-structure conflict detection, and integration a knowledge-based content with the atlas. Interaction allows the user to create and explore any region of interest along with its surroundings just with a few clicks, taking into account that the atlas provides a rich set of functions and the number of atlas components is about 3,000. There are seven types of interaction enabling to: select and deselect tissue classes/groups/individual structures, do real-time manipulation, do virtual dissections, select and scroll the original scans, query a structure to get its label or location, get stereotactic coordinates and measure distances, and support other functionality. This design of visualization and interaction provides a fast and easy to use solution, and allows the atlas to run on desktop and mobile iPad and Android-based platforms.