Group Of Graduate Students Research Articles

Combining electron microscopy with atomic-scale calculations—A personal perspective

Abstract I had the privilege and the pleasure to work closely with Stephen J. Pennycook for about twenty years, having a group of post-docs and Vanderbilt-University graduate students embedded in his electron microscopy group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, spending on average a day per week there. We combined atomic-resolution imaging of materials, electron-energy-loss spectroscopy, and density-functional-theory calculations to explore and elucidate diverse materials phenomena, often resolving long-standing issues. This paper is a personal perspective of that journey, highlighting a few examples to illustrate the power of combining theory and microscopy, closing with an assessment of future prospects.

Classification of Arabic User Requirements: A Semi-Automated Approach using NLP Tools

In this paper, we present a new Semi-Automated classification approach of Arabic user requirements into functional and non-functional requirements using natural language processing (NLP) tools, namely CAMeL Tools. We proposed a set of heuristics based on basic constructs of Arabic sentences in order to extract information from software requirements written in Arabic to classify the requirements into functional and non-functional requirements. CAMeL tools are used to generate tokens, PoS tags, and lemmas of the parsed user requirements, then a set of proposed heuristic rules are applied to CAMeL outputs to determine the closest tagging class for each statement. We implemented the proposed approach using Python code with using CAMeL Tools 1.3.1, under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. The proposed approach is validated using a set of experiments involving a set of real cases evaluated by a group of experts, graduate, and undergraduate students who are familiar with software requirements. The results showed that the proposed approach achieved better results in the classification of Arabic software requirements than classifications by students with an accuracy of 90%.

Snapshots of sameness: Characterizations of mathematical sameness across student groups

Sameness is foundational to mathematics but has only recently become an area of focus in mathematics education research. In this paper, we describe characterizations of sameness generated by four student groups: discrete mathematics students, linear algebra students, abstract algebra students, and graduate students. Based on qualitative analysis of open response surveys, we compare these groups’ characterizations of sameness; note the subcomponents discussed and variation within each dimension; and highlight experiences influential to students’ perceptions of sameness. Findings include interpretability of sameness as a big idea, nascent development of thematic connections across courses, emphases on current course material rather than connections to prior courses for students solicited from a particular course, greater reflectiveness from the graduate student group, and abstract algebra as an impactful course. Implications include a need for thoughtful examinations of how “big ideas” develop among students and what experiences might support such development.

Black Informational Past: History, Data, and Archives of Chicago's ‘New Negro’ Wonder books

ABSTRACTIn 1927, an organized group of Black college and graduate students from the Washington Intercollegiate Club of Chicago compiled a rich informational reference text reflecting the mosaic of Black life in Chicago, IL, USA. This effort resulted in the publication of two editions of the Intercollegian Wonder Book in 1927 and 1929. These books are reflective of the New Negro movement and cultural renaissance of the Black urban population in the early 20th Century. Our project examines the influence of the Wonder Books through methods that express the layered informational context of a Black community. The poster reflects the iterative development of a phased descriptive, archival, data and visual analysis of an historic Black Community. such as citation tracking, genealogical research of individual members, and analysis of data usage by the club's active students.

Cross-gender hijacking of high achievers by translation students: English to Polish

ABSTRACT In Polish, where different inflectional paradigms apply to female and male names, attributing male gender to female referents such as eminent scientists and authors that pass unnoticed in English becomes visible in scholarly as well as popular scientific texts, exposing the society’s gender bias. While gender bias in machine translation has been widely observed and criticised, it is believed that human translation would eliminate factual mistakes of this type. Yet false attributions of male gender to eminent female linguists found in Polish scholarly texts suggest the contrary. A translation experiment conducted with a group of graduate students of translation was conducted in order to test the presence and strength of the bias, differences between male and female student translators, and the impact of earlier teaching on assigning gender in translation from English to Polish. Both male and female students frequently attributed the male gender to linguistic scholars even in the presence of strong evidence to the contrary, and after prior learning. Male students’ choices were slightly but significantly more biased. The conclusions pertain to the social consequences of the bias and the need to include this topic in translation training while attending more strongly to students’ research and sociocultural competence.

Опросник академической компетентности студентов

<p>The results of the development and standardization of an academic competence questionnaire are presented. The method is based on the understanding of academic competence as a complex of independently developed personal qualities, abilities and skills that ensure the success of educational activities in conditions of its variability during higher education. The theoretical model includes 6 structural and content components (academic motivation, self-organization of educational activities, emotional self-regulation, skills and abilities to work with information, proficiency in oral and written language, communication skills), presented at 3 levels of generality and freedom of transformation (reproductive, reflective, functional). Based on the results of Study 1 (N=199), the preliminary version of the questionnaire was reduced from 144 to 69 items. Comparing the results of successful and unsuccessful students confirmed predictive validity. External criterion validity using the contrast group method is based on comparison of groups of undergraduate and graduate students, correlations with self-organization and academic motivation questionnaires (AMS). Study 2 (N=355) demonstrated a relatively acceptable fit of the data to the theoretical model based on confirmatory factor analysis, consistency with educational experience questionnaire scales. The internal consistency of the scales was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha indicators based on data from studies 1 and 2. Descriptive statistics for Study 2 are provided. Standardization is proposed based on percentile values, because the distributions of values for most scales differ significantly from normal.</p>

299 Building and maintaining an engaged undergraduate equine research team

Abstract An objective of the equine science program at Penn State is to provide the training and knowledge students need to solve problems in their lives and careers. The Equine Research Team at Penn State (PSERT) is a novel approach to meeting this objective, inspired by Dr. Max Kleiber’s “Tracer Team”, a group of faculty and graduate students that successfully studied kinetics of phosphorus and calcium metabolism in dairy cows at the University of California, Davis in the 1950s and 60s. The team allows us to address several objectives that are not easily approached using more traditional teaching environments found in the classroom or laboratory. These include 1) satisfying the demand for research experience from a large number of students, who come to research with an enormous range of ability and enthusiasm, 2) providing the hand on practice utilizing the scientific method to solve problems in the equine industry, 3) building a sense of personal responsibility and simultaneously cooperation by approaching research as a team, 4) creating an environment of academic and creative achievement outside the traditional grading system, and 5) blurring the lines that traditionally separate academic and social life at a university to create an environment much closer to what students will experience as graduates. In spring 2008, 10 undergraduate students sought formal research experience opportunities in the area of equine science. Students were organized into a team that met biweekly. Project leaders registered for independent study course credits and conducted 3 research studies in yr 1, while the rest of the team participated as volunteers. Fourteen years later, the team is still an important student organization with between 40 to 60 members on an annual basis. Over the years, the team has traveled to universities and important equine industry locations throughout the United States. Members have conceived, conducted, analyzed and presented research studies on a wide range of topics within the sphere of equine science. The team has two faculty advisors, an executive committee analogous to most student organizations, a group of research project leaders, and approximately 60 dues paying student members. The biweekly meeting is organized and led by the executive committee and generally contains the following components: update of activities, seminar provided by an outside speaker from industry or academia who has expertise in the area of equine research, presentation by one of the research project leaders, and group discussion of the project, planning of future research projects. This Equine Research Team has been and continues to be a model that can be utilized by others to successfully facilitate undergraduate student engagement in research.

Exploring the REIT architecture for requirements elicitation interview training with robotic and virtual tutors

Requirements elicitation interviews are a widely adopted technique where the interview success depends on the interviewer’s preparedness and communication skills. Students can enhance these skills through practice interviews. However, organizing practice interviews for many students presents scalability challenges, given the time and effort required to involve stakeholders in each session. To address this, we propose REIT, an extensible architecture for Requirements Elicitation Interview Training system leveraging technologies such as robots and voice systems. REIT has components to support both the interview phase, wherein students act as interviewers while the system assumes the role of an interviewee, and the feedback phase, during which the system assesses students’ performance and offers contextual and behavioral feedback to enhance their interviewing skills. We demonstrate the applicability of REIT through two implementations: RoREIT with a physical robotic agent and VoREIT with a virtual voice-only agent. We empirically evaluated both instances with a group of graduate students. The participants appreciated both systems. They demonstrated higher learning gain when trained with RoREIT, but they found VoREIT more engaging and easier to use. These findings indicate that each system has distinct benefits and drawbacks, suggesting that educators can customize REIT for various settings, considering preferences and available resources.

Student Performance in Machine Translation Training: Assessment and Exploration

The present research aims to conduct a process-oriented analysis to measure whether a group of graduate students enrolled in a translation course made steady progress in their performance of identifying machine translation (MT) errors and post-editing MT drafts of company web texts and news texts. A mixed methods approach consisting of quantitative and qualitative analyses was used. The findings show that there was a steady decline in the average number of MT errors that students could not spot or correctly identify in their three assignments. However, there was no significant improvement in student MTPE performance, with only a slight decrease in errors in the final MTPE assignment, which still remained worse than the first one. Finally, student responses in their reflection essays indicated that their reception of MT and MTPE had shifted from negative denial to positive acceptance. Overall, the findings of the present study reveal the need to extend the period of MTPE training for students. Incorporating MT training into the translation course has proven to be worthwhile for students, as it helps to dispel students’ previous misconception about MT and MTPE.

Green Labs: How Scientists Can Help Fight Climate Change

The healthcare industry creates 4.4% of the world’s carbon emissions. To put this into perspective, if the healthcare industry were a country, it would be the fifth-largest carbon emitter on the planet. The goal of the healthcare industry is to create new, life-saving treatments for patients, but it also produces a lot of waste that cannot be recycled, such as plastic and chemicals. Additionally, this industry uses a lot of non-renewable energy. The Green Lab Project is a worldwide, 10-year-old program attempting to reduce the carbon emissions caused by the activities of scientists within the healthcare industry. The Green Lab project arrived at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) in 2020, at the request of a group of postdocs, graduate students, and employees. The BCH Green Labs group is working to sponsor environment-protecting projects and educate BCH scientists to adopt more responsible, informed, and “greener” work practices. This article will describe ways that BCH scientists are trying to reduce lab waste and energy consumption, including sharing equipment and materials to limit waste production, cleaning freezers regularly, and using outlet timers to avoid wasting energy.

Digital Control Education, Engaging and Skill-Oriented

This paper presents the latest results of a methodology applied in 2023 to a group of Control Systems students. This course is included in the Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering. The methodology was initiated with a group of graduate students enrolled in the Discrete Time Systems course in 2019. The methodology includes new learning methods, resources, and new student and educator roles. With emphasis on the academic approach and practical skills, hybrid learning and the creation of spaces for exchange and interaction between lecturer and students. It proposes activities such as virtual laboratory, assignments through mobile applications, self-managed lessons in Moodle and design of a digital controller that exposes students to real processes. The results showed that the methodology helped to integrate basic concepts of control systems and provided opportunities for students to improve their professional profiles.

Remote accessible/fully controllable fiber optic systems laboratory design and implementation

AbstractIn private and expensive experimental laboratory studies, there are problems such as difficulty in accessing measuring devices and materials, space and time problems, and insufficient technical support due to the need for expertise. In this study, a fiber optic laboratory (FOL), which can be used for educational and scientific research purposes, has high installation costs and has difficulty in accessing devices, was designed and realized as a remote accessible/fully controllable. All devices in the proposed laboratory have been virtualized on the MATLAB App Designer platform, and communication protocols have been defined and made remotely accessible and controllable. In the proposed system, the user accessed remotely can perform all device controls, record the measurement results, take the measurement average as much as he wants to increase the measurement accuracy, monitor the experimental setup with a camera, and receive expert support. Afterward, a sample experiment was set up on the system and the results were compared. The proposed laboratory has a high potential to establish international collaborations in remote/flexible work and scientific research. Finally, a scale was applied to FOL undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral student groups. The Cronbach α coefficient showing the reliability of the applied model was found to be .934.

Sensing Urban Manufacturing: From Conspicuous to Sensible Production

Environmental destruction, social inequalities, geopolitical vulnerability—the limits of the long-time praised paradigm of post-industrial cities and globalised value chains are becoming evident, while calls for (re)localising production in cities are getting increasingly vocal. However, the material implications—i.e., where and in which form manufacturing should concretely take place in cities and the consequences on urban space and relations—are rarely addressed in debates on (re)industrialisation. In this article, we engage with the concept of conspicuous production by combining research on mixed-use zones with sensory methodologies. We focus on the multisensory dimension of urban manufacturing to interrogate the spatial possibilities for production in a small town in Switzerland. Together with a group of graduate students, we apply sensory methods to explore how production shapes urban sensescapes and how these sensescapes affect our relation to production. Our exploratory endeavour provides ideas of how sensory methods can be integrated into urban planning research and practice: we suggest that these methods, which necessarily emphasise subjective experience, can constitute powerful tools if they take into attentive consideration the local political and economic context, including the norms and power relations that shape individual perception. Our study sparks critical questions about conspicuous production and mixed-use zoning and tentatively advances the concept of <em>sensible production</em>: a production that not only is perceptible and can actively be engaged with, but that also shows good sense, makes sense, and focuses on what we need rather than on appearance.

Responding to multiple events in 2020: A qualitative study exploring areas of growth and development among California college students

In 2020, the US was consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests. California was further compounded by a devastating fall wildfire season. Negative effects related to these events have been documented in research. Objective: This study sought to expand the literature by exploring areas of personal growth and development among college students with a lens on the impact of these three events. Methods: A diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a large public university system in California were recruited to participate in one of six focus groups held during the winter of 2020/2021 with 35 students. Findings: Thematic analysis was used to develop three themes: 1) experiencing fluctuation and repetition, 2) understanding myself and the world, and 3) finding hope and wanting action. Conclusions: Findings suggest opportunities for academic institutions to enhance critical thinking about contemporary issues and support students in developing skills to navigate change and transition successfully.

Hegemonic Wellness: A Post-Covid Assault on Teachers and Teaching

This essay considers the meanings, operations, and effects on educational life of hegemonic wellness, a term the author coins to capture a recurring discourse emerging from his recent seminar work with a group of graduate students. Hegemonic wellness refers to a developing school movement aimed at positioning neo-liberal ‘wellness’ discourses as the most socially valued means of making sense of an educator’s workplace health. It constructs notions of healing and care as radically individualist pursuits, deeply anti-communitarian in theory and practice, and best positioned to serve existing power structures rather than to contest them. In naming and contesting hegemonic wellness, the author expects that teachers may find a language of recognition, affirmation, and contestation that can come to bear upon their practices.

Procedural applications of total quality management in university education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic

The current study aimed to establish the basic infrastructure to facilitate the implementation of the procedural applications of total quality management, through the introduction of a fully functional total quality management unit in colleges and scientific departments, in line with internationally recognized standards, by meeting ISO 21001: standards for the requirements of the management system of educational institutions 2018 in light of the coronavirus crisis. A questionnaire was printed including all applications and 40 actions distributed to three categories of volunteers: undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members at the university. The current study involved the calculation of several key metrics, including the average number of volunteers, the average level of satisfaction across all choices, and the proportion of overall satisfaction attributable to the mean values observed across all groups. The results indicate a relatively low rating of 15 and a satisfaction level of 25.125 among the sample of undergraduates who participated in the study. In the context of postgraduate education, the scale reached a numerical value of 12.1, resulting in a satisfaction rate of 48.4. The responses or alternatives provided by respected faculty members at the university indicated a high level of confidence and clarity. The results indicate that a large percentage of the respondents 62.322 expressed their satisfaction unequivocally in the categorical response of “exactly yes” with a similar frequency of 8.725. The rationale behind their selection can be attributed to various factors, such as their proximity to the deanship, their great experience in university work, their active participation in decision-making processes, and the limited impact of the Corona pandemic. The satisfaction rate of university professors reached 80.57% overall. The graduate student group ranked second, peaking at 70.56%. In contrast, the statistical figures related to undergraduate students were relatively lower, as they ranked third with a rate of 55.21%.

‘If you wanted to take this model and throw nitrogen at it, it would fit’: synthesis approach to modelling to learn about biogeochemical cycles

ABSTRACT The literature on scientific modelling practices in science education has provided a fruitful discussion on how learners tend to view models vs. how and what they should think about them. One approach is to teach students that models are abstractions so that they do not view them as a copy of phenomena they represent. Although teaching students that models are abstractions is a successful strategy in modelling instruction, we still do not know how students engage in and work towards the process of abstraction while they develop a model to understand scientific ideas. This qualitative study examines how a group of undergraduate and graduate students in an upper-level ecosystem ecology course at a research university in the southeastern part of the United States engage in a task that requires constructing an abstract representation of how biogeochemical cycles work by using a specific approach to modelling, namely synthesis modelling. Data corpus entailed paired interviews with ten students and their artefacts. The findings centred upon four episodes regarding how students engage in abstraction through a synthesis approach to modelling as they make sense of the system of biogeochemical cycles: working with surface similarities, abstracting ideas, abstracting structures, and checking on model-source fit.

Racially Motivated: Navigating Conversations Around Race in Predominantly White Classrooms

ABSTRACT In the fall of 2021, an engaged group of NYU graduate students assembled to discuss Angie Thomas’ YA novel The Hate U Give. The class was composed of one Black student among a group of white students. On the night the group discussed The Hate U Give, the freedom of discourse broke down significantly. The white students became terrified of saying anything that could be perceived as racist, while the Black student felt resentful that she should be expected to ‘teach’ the rest of the group about being Black in America. In this article, the white professor and the single Black student in the class reflect on what factors disrupted the group from having a meaningful conversation about race. The piece aims to help both Black and white students and educators more successfully navigate difficult conversations centred around race.

Transdisciplinarity as a Learning Challenge: Student Experiences and Outcomes in an Innovative Course on Wearable and Collaborative Robotics

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> This study provides evidence for the benefit of short online courses for the transdisciplinary competence development of graduate students. It shows the significant challenges students face while learning, and provides instructional recommendations to improve students’ learning quality and professionalism. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:</i> Developing wearable and collaborative robots require industry collaboration and transdisciplinary competence. Industry’s involvement in long-term programs is becoming infeasible, and the nature of transdisciplinary learning has not been explored to inform instructional practices. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Intended Outcomes:</i> This study aimed to provide instructional recommendations based on an in-depth examination of a diverse group of graduate students’ learning and teamwork experiences as well as outcomes in a 5-day online transdisciplinary course. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Application Design:</i> Thirty-one graduate students of engineering, industrial design, and health fields from four countries participated in online mixed-discipline instructional sessions and teams to address a real industry challenge. A mixed-methods approach was used to examine students’ experiences and learning outcomes based on a competence measure, session participation data, student journal entries, team progress reports, team elaboration visuals, and final team presentations. <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Findings:</i> Students’ knowledge of industrial design, medical considerations, ethics and standards, effective teamwork, and self-regulated learning were increased. Students’ high motivation helped them deal with the challenges involved. Daily student journals, team reports, and visual elaboration tools were found to be beneficial for determining the challenges and learning quality. The observed student progress within five days is promising, making it worthwhile to further explore the benefits of short online courses for increasing graduates’ readiness and establishing university-industry collaborations in <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">education.

Transdisciplinary approaches to graduate student training for food–energy–water challenges

AbstractSystems‐level approaches are required for addressing the world's major challenges at the food–energy–water nexus. Taking on complex issues, such as rising food insecurity, malnutrition, and food waste, concomitant with unprecedented levels of stress on environmental systems, will necessitate that future scholars and decision makers be prepared through transdisciplinary student training. However, in higher education, students tend to be siloed within their discipline. In this study, we present a case for the development of transdisciplinary graduate student training based on an inter‐institutional and fully remote group of graduate students who assembled during the COVID‐19 pandemic to address the issue of food waste. We use our wide‐ranging disciplinary backgrounds, high‐performance transdisciplinary team training, and stakeholder feedback to develop and conduct a weeklong social media campaign to share educational resources for reducing household food waste. This work offers valuable lessons learned through the student's lens to those seeking to create or improve future transdisciplinary training methods for tackling food waste and other global grand challenges. Key insights from this process include the importance of accountability and open communication when conducting collaborative teamwork, the utility of various mobile and online tools for effectively facilitating remote group work, and the vital role of transdisciplinarity in devising creative solutions.