What is innovation

Many studies into the process of producing and supervising dissertations exist, yet little research into the ‘product’ of the Masters dissertation, or into how Masters supervision changes over time exist. Drawing on 62 semi-structured interviews with 31 Maths and Computer Science supervisors over a two-year period, this paper explores the Masters dissertation ‘product’ and the temporal nature of its supervision. The paper argues that the UK Masters dissertation is, for supervisors, a ‘chameleon’; i.e. perfect for them to modify and adapt to any student within a diverse body in a short completion time. This, coupled with the evolving nature of supervision, means that although the Masters dissertation possesses a number of ‘core’ characteristics, it is difficult to define; an ‘elusive chameleon’. The paper argues that awareness of this will help counter misassumptions and inform supervision, and that further research into the Masters dissertation product will aid our understanding of supervision.

The UK postgraduate Masters dissertation: an ‘elusive chameleon’?

and general for direct application to specific local situations, contexts, and individuals.

Art Education faculty and administrators experiences with and perceptions of distance education: a mixed methods study

Lifelong learning recognizes that learning takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. Papua New Guinea (PNG) education system needs to change its focus on policies related to teaching and learning, curriculum development and assessment and evaluation to develop lifelong learners. PNG Vision 2050 calls for a major transformation of mindsets in its people in the way they think, interact and do business with one another. Lifelong learning principles if taken seriously could actualize the strategic changes aimed in the PNG Vision 2050.

The study aims are first to investigate and analyse the Vision 2050 policy and the University policies to establish whether they inform lifelong learning. Second, to investigate and analyse lecturers' knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour to assess whether they foster a climate of lifelong learning. Third, to determine whether the need for lifelong learning; could be adopted and adapted as a key educational policy change in the PNG context.

The methodology used the mixed method case study approach using both quantitative data (quantifiable) and qualitative data (text). It involved procedures for collecting, analysing and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study. The argument is that the uses and the 'combination' of both methods provide a better understanding of a research problem that one method alone cannot effectively answer.

This study found that the PNG government documents implicitly state lifelong learning but there were no plans in place to do anything about it. For UPNG and PAU, complex issues associated with the teaching of generic skills and their acquisition remains uncertain. The first issue is of definition of the key generic skills. There are differences in terms of how these skills are defined and how a particular skill's significance is interpreted in context. The second issue is the questions raised both theoretically and empirically of the separability of generic and discipline-based skills. The third issue relates to the challenges university lecturers face with the teaching of generic skills within university curricula. Like earlier studies in Australia and the United States of America, this study found that what lecturers claim that they do, does not happen in real practice.

As a way forward, education policy changes are required in the PNG education system to promote lifelong learning. The fostering of lifelong learning skills in staff development training programs could transform attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of both lecturers and students to effect these policy changes.

Attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of lecturers: do they foster a climate of lifelong learning? A case of Papua New Guinea universities

This article details the experiences of undergraduate and master’s-level students (both in the United States and abroad) participating in a cross-cultural, educational, project-based program that w...

Project-Based Learning in Nonprofit Management Education: Results from an Educational Partnership between the United States and Kyrgyzstan

Our paper present the experience we have achieved during the last 15 years in VR, Computer Graphics, and Management classes with 4 th -5 th year and master students. Pedagogical as well as technical aspects are discussed. The main goal, the student motivation for learning and research is presented in an increasing manner, during the full duration of the student studies.

Teaching Through Projects

Our contribution focuses on the behavioral aspects that are currently used in the modeling of the virtual inhabitants of a reconstructed Greek- Roman colony in the framework of the TOMIS project. The project aims at promoting culture by the mean of the reconstruction of historical sites together with their virtual societies based on virtual and/or augmented reality technologies. Our efforts are oriented both on 3D modeling of virtual humans, animation of the virtual humans on every-day human activities and, most important, on the spicing these activities with human emotions. To this end, we iterate the most common agent-based architectures used to produce credible behavior of the virtual agents (humans or animals) in situations inspired from the real world, and emphasize their direct applicability both in humans and animal animations in order to obtain complex behavior based on atomic activities. Finally, the paper presents the technological issues related to the used motion capture technology, as source of high-definition human atomic actions, that participates in complex action plans for virtual agents activities.

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A Behavioral Perspective of Virtual Heritage Reconstruction

Virtual environments constitute the support platform for various teaching and learning activities. Instead of a local application for this purpose, this paper explores the effects of using distributed virtual reality environments in the educational process. The architecture of the presented system is based on the recently developed web-based technology called AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML), implemented on a Linux operating system configured to run Apache with PHP and MySQL support; i.e., LAMP architecture, which contributes to the portability and ease of installation of the application. The platform is designed to support the integration of lesson modules such as the EngView environment which is discussed in more detail in this contribution. Pedagogical, technical, and implementation-related aspects are presented in conjunction with the virtual environment used in the engineering training curriculum. Statistical information resulted from the training shows a significant increase in task completion time when the virtual setup is used.

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3D Virtual Spaces Supporting Engineering Learning Activities

We discuss the effects of using distributed virtual reality environments in the educational process. Pedagogical, technical and implementation aspects are explored in conjunction with a virtual environment used in the engineering training curricula.

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Learning Distributed Activities Inside 3D Virtual Spaces

The influence of debt on macroeconomic stability and the ability to restart growth has been a constant concern since the Second World War period. In recent decades, public debt has increased considerably in most countries. Upward trend of public debt was accompanied by an increase in public spending, in some cases these costs have reached levels difficult to sustain. This is the case of Romania. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part is shown the evolution and structure of public debt in Romania, and the second part aims to test the link between public debt and growth in the Romanian economy. The research aims to verify if the economic theory is respected, whether between these two variables is set a negative relationship.

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Norina Popovici

Papers

Teaching Through Projects

A Behavioral Perspective of Virtual Heritage Reconstruction

3D Virtual Spaces Supporting Engineering Learning Activities

Learning Distributed Activities Inside 3D Virtual Spaces

Use of econometric analysis in the context of determining the effect of public debt on economic growth