The measurement of meaning

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

The culture of education

A wide variety of media can be used in learning, including distance learning, such as print, lectures, conference sections, tutors, pictures, video, sound, and computers. Any one instance of distance learning will make choices among these media, perhaps using several.

Multimedia in Learning

This study assessed the depth of online learning, with a focus on the nature of online interaction in four distance education course designs. The Study Process Questionnaire was used to measure the shift in students' approach to learning from the beginning to the end of the courses. Design had a significant impact on the nature of the interaction and whether students approached learning in a deep and meaningful manner. Structure and leadership were found to be crucial for online learners to take a deep and meaningful approach to learning.

http://www.anitacrawley.net/Resources/Articles/Garrison.pdf

Facilitating Cognitive Presence in Online Learning: Interaction Is Not Enough

Online discussions play an important role in student learning Currently, asynchronous learning courses and some primarily face-to-face courses at New Jersey Institute of Technology require asynchronous online discussions Does this requirement improve the students’ perceived learning? An exploratory study designed to investigate this issue was conducted in Spring 2002 The questionnaire drew responses to a post-course questionnaire from 116 students in two undergraduate courses and one graduate course A set of items designed to measure perceived learning from online discussions formed a reliable, unidimensional index for this construct The results indicate that online discussions do improve students’ perceived learning Variations among instructors or courses are associated with differences in perceptions of student motivation, enjoyment, and learning from online discussion Open-ended questions identified some student concerns about online discussions The concluding section of this paper presents some implications for improving online discussions and for future research plans

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Predicting learning from asynchronous online discussions

The benefits of teamwork and collaboration have long been advocated by many educational theories, such as constructivist and social learning models. Among the various applications of collaborative learning, the iterative team-based learning (TBL) process proposed by Michaelsen, Fink, and Knight (2002) has been successfully used in the classroom without computer support. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation results of a classroom application of the TBL process, which was modified to include computer mediation. We call this process computer-supported team-based learning (CS-TBL). This work extends learning in small teams from the traditional classroom to the hybrid classroom where students meet both face-to-face and online by emphasizing the importance of online team interactions. The outcomes are assessed through an evaluation model that considers the impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes. The study results indicate that motivation influences the relationship between team interactions and perceived learning. Enjoyment is affected by motivation and perceptions of team members' contributions, with the implication that students who perceive that the team interactions are adding value to their education will better enjoy learning and will experience higher-level learning outcomes.

Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes

Mobile collaborative learning

Personalization is a new system development approach for designing information systems that change configurations based on each user's needs and preferences. Although personalization capabilities are present throughout a large number of commercial software packages, they are just beginning to be incorporated into electronic commerce. Most of this personalization has been done in an ad hoc fashion. In this paper, we present a categorization framework for organizing the various types of personalization that have been attempted on Web sites. We develop an algorithm for classifying Web sites into high, medium and low personalization support and apply it to a set of well-known Web sites such as amazon.com. Finally, we discuss why various Web sites have high or low degrees of personalization depending on the organization's goals and product mix and also how personalization might have little or large impact on a Web site's achieving its intended goal (e.g., sales, customer service, information dissemination, etc.) We also present future research that needs to be done to support our theories on how personalization impacts a Web site's success.

/pdf/a-framework-for-classifying-personalization-scheme-used-on-e-1so3ga98bp.pdf

Dezhi Wu

Papers

Predicting learning from asynchronous online discussions

Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes

Mobile collaborative learning

A framework for classifying personalization scheme used on e-commerce Websites

Are your users actively involved? A cognitive absorption perspective in mobile training