1,721,412 research outputs found
New study helps solve a 30-year-old puzzle: how is climate change affecting El Niño and La Niña?
No full textScaffolding an EFL (English as a foreign language) ‘effective writing’ class in a hybrid learning community
No full textThis study sought to establish and develop innovative instructional procedures, in which scaffolding can be expanded and applied, in order to enhance learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing skills in an effective hybrid learning community (a combination of face-to-face and online modes of learning) at the university where the researcher is working. Many educational experts still believe that technology has not been harnessed to its potential to meet the new online characteristics and trends. There is also an urgency to reconsider the pedagogical perspectives involved in the utilisation of online learning systems in general and the social interactions within online courses in particular that have been neglected to date. An action research design, conducted in two cycles within a duration of four months, was utilised throughout this study. It was intended not only to achieve a paradigm shift from transmission-absorption to socio-constructivist teaching/learning methodologies but also to inform practice in these technology-rich environments. Five major findings emerged from the study. First, the scaffolding theory has been extended. Two new scaffolding types (i.e., quasi-transcendental scaffolding and transcendental scafolding), two scaffolding aspects (i.e., receptive and productive) and some scaffolding actions (e.g., providing a stimulus, awareness, reminder, or remedy) for EFL writing skills in an effective hybrid learning community have been identified and elaborated on. Second, the EFL ‘Effective Writing’ students used the scaffolds implemented in a hybrid environment to enhance and enrich their learning of writing of English essays. The online activities, conducted after the F2F sessions most of the time, gave students greater opportunities to both reinforce and expand the knowledge they had acquired in the F2F mode. Third, a variety of teaching techniques, different online tasks and discussion topics utilised in the two modes bolstered the students’ interests and engagement in their knowledge construction of how to compose English-language essays. Fourth, through the scaffolded activities, the students learned how to scaffold themselves and thus became independent learners in their future endeavours of constructing knowledge. Fifth, the scaffolding-to-scaffold activities provided the students with knowledge on how to effectively engage in transcendental scaffolding actions and facilitate the learning of English writing skills by less able peers within the learning community. Thus, the findings of this current study extended earlier understandings of scaffolding in an EFL hybrid learning environment and will contribute to the advancement of future ICT-mediated courses in terms of their scaffolding pedagogical aspects
The art of scaffolding an EFL writing class in a hybrid\ud environment : a practical experience
No full textMany universities are adopting e-\ud
Learning in their programs. Accordingly,\ud
there is an urgency to reconsider the\ud
pedagogical perspectives, which need to be\ud
refined in order to meet the demands of\ud
learning conducted in these technology-rich\ud
environments.\ud
\ud
The theory of scaffolding, which\ud
aligns with the constructivist theory, is\ud
revisited to teach an EFL writing class and\ud
expanded in order to provide our future\ud
learners in a hybrid environment (both online\ud
and face-to-face) with better pedagogical\ud
strategies. As a result, learning writing within\ud
these scaffolded environments occurs in a\ud
carefully-monitored manner but outside the\ud
scaffolds used, it is intended that learning\ud
may then occur in a natural and disorganized\ud
way without the students being conscious of\ud
having to achieve assessment objectives. This\ud
‘natural and disorganized way’ is referred to\ud
as chaotic creativity.\ud
\ud
An action research design has been\ud
utilized throughout this study to achieve a\ud
paradigm shift as well as to inform practice in\ud
these technology-rich environments so that\ud
teachers continually strive to improve and\ud
rethink their existing pedagogical\ud
perspectives while using a hybrid learning\ud
environment.\ud
\ud
The results have indicated that the\ud
students take the advantages of using the\ud
scaffolds implemented in a hybrid learning\ud
environment to enrich their rich and\ud
meaningful learning journeys. The online\ud
activities, mostly conducted after the F2F\ud
mode, have given them greater opportunities\ud
to both reinforce and expand the knowledge\ud
they have acquired in the F2F mode
Introduction to El Niño Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate
No full textEl Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a naturally occurring fluctuation of the climate system that is generated in the tropical Pacific through interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere. It is the strongest year‐to‐year climate variation on the planet, with environmental and societal consequences felt worldwide. ENSO warm events (El Niño) and cold events (La Niña) are occurring in the context of a global climate system that is rapidly changing through human activities that have raised heat‐trapping greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to historically unprecedented levels. As a result, the planet has warmed, and it will continue to warm at a rate dependent on future greenhouse gas emissions. This raises questions about whether climate change has affected the ENSO cycle already, whether it will in the future, and if so, how. Here, we briefly describe ENSO and its impacts; highlight the history of ideas and events that have shaped our understanding of ENSO; discuss current challenges in ENSO research; and address why ENSO in a changing climate is such an urgent problem in Earth system science today
ENSO Response to Greenhouse Forcing
Get PDFThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Geophysical Union via the DOI in this recordHow ENSO responds to an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has remained an elusive issue for decades. Climate models produce widely diverging results based on the traditional sea surface temperature (SST) metrics of ENSO. Some models project stronger ENSO SST variability, some weaker, some show no clear change. Steering away from these static measures, but more carefully examining the underlying processes and the associated key physical characteristics of ENSO, a clearer picture begins to emerge. Due to the nonlinear response of the atmosphere to SSTs, climate models project an increase in ENSO‐driven precipitation. Such a response tends to be robust across models linked to the relatively strong intermodel agreement in projected changes of the Pacific mean climate, marked by equatorially enhanced warming and weakened Walker Circulation. These mean‐state changes facilitate increased frequency of extreme El Niño events in models that are able to simulate nonlinear properties of ENSO closer to observations. In this ensemble of selected models, the frequency of extreme La Niña events is also projected to increase, as facilitated by faster warming of the Maritime Continent than the surrounding ocean waters. A projected increase in upper‐ocean stratification further favors increased variability and occurrences of Eastern Pacific El Niño. Uncertainties, however, remain due to persistent model biases, highlighting the need to further improve climate models, as well as sustain reliable observations to constrain model projections. Nonetheless, these projections underscore a possible heightened impact of ENSO‐driven changes in a warming climate.National Key R&D Program of ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR)National Environment Science Program (NESP), Australian Governmen
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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