Development of a web-enabled learning platform for geospatial laboratories: improving the undergraduate learning experience

This paper describes a web-enabled learning platform providing remote access to geospatial software that extends the learning experience outside of the laboratory setting. The platform was piloted in two undergraduate courses, and includes a software server, a data server, and remote student users. The platform was designed to improve the quality of the learning experience and to increase student confidence and proficiency with software-based geospatial skills. Laboratory grades of students using the platform were significantly higher than those of students who did not use the platform, and survey responses reported that students overwhelmingly liked the convenience of the platform, which allowed them to work from any location.     

个体差异对大学英语学习影响的研究

从20世纪70年代开始,研究二语习得的学者越来越多,这方面的著作也是硕果累累。作为从事大学英语教育工作的一份子。我充分感受到了研究大学英语学习的重要性。关于大学英语学习的研究能够帮助学生更好的习得英语,并且也能够帮助他们提高英语实际操作和应用的能力。关于大学英语学习的研究有很多的方面,本文主要是针对学习者的个体差异方面。例如语言潜能、认知风格和学习策略等,来谈大学英语学习。期望本文对大学英语学习者能有些许启示,以便更好地进行大学英语学习。     

The Neurosciences Research Program at MIT and the Beginning of the Modern Field of Neuroscience

The interdisciplinary field, “neuroscience,” began at MIT in 1962 with the founding of the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP) by Francis O. Schmitt and a group of US and international scientists — physical, biological, medical, and behavioral — interested in understanding the brain basis of behavior and mind. They organized and held specialist meetings of basic topics in neuroscience, and the journal and book publications over the next 20 years, based on these meetings, helped establish the new field.     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

Immigrants in a segmented and often undeclared labour market

This article develops a systematic analysis of available data on foreign workers in the Italian economy. Their presence reflects the fragmented character of Italian labour markets and the particular importance in Italy of the ‘hidden economy’. These factors alone explain why Italy experiences simultaneously a shortage of labour and high labour costs, from which the demand for foreign labour has resulted. The study uses both official data and the findings of a number of secondary studies in the field to show how foreign workers participate in all the lower branches of employment and in some sectors have become the predominant group. However, the presence of foreign workers varies considerably by sector and by region, in turn reflecting certain structural features of the Italian economy. The study concludes by arguing that the presence of these foreign workers in the Italian labour market serves to perpetuate its flexibility, in some cases by complementing and in others by substituting for the indigenous labour force.     

Enlivened Geographies of Volunteering: Situated,Embodied and Emotional Practices of Voluntary Action

Abstract

Examining the everyday practices and feelings of volunteering, in particular their situated, emotional and embodied nature, serves to place the experiences of volunteers centrally in accounts of what matters in the doing of volunteering and goes beyond service provision or active citizenship. Using qualitative evidence from three collaborative research projects, we present enlivened geographies of volunteering which focus on: the situatedness of formal volunteering in place and the negotiation of local ‘moral economies’ of norms and expectations surrounding access to volunteering opportunities and the practices of volunteering; complex positionings of informal volunteering in biographies of social participation; and intersections of embodiment and emotions in experiences among environmental volunteers. We contribute to the development of social geographies which are ‘more-than-representational’ and argue that connecting insights on everyday practices of volunteering with wider policy and practice agendas requires a focus on the enduring, but also emergent and excessive nature of the spaces of doing volunteering, on the relational nature of volunteering, and on opening up debates in the networks of research-policy-practice which understand spaces of volunteering as entailing more than volunteering.     

流动商贩的分布特征及营业空间界面影响分析——以广州中山大道西路段为例

流动商贩的空间分布有较大的临时性和变化性,但在各种不同因素的影响下,也具有一定的特征性。研究其分布特征和影响因素对从空间上引导该非正规经济的发展具有积极意义,而已有从空间角度出发的非正规经济研究成果较少。本文主要采用实证研究的方法,选取广州中山大道西路段的流动商贩为典型案例,从空间的角度对流动商贩这种非正规经济来进行研究。研究发现,流动商贩的空间分布具有时间、空间和类型构成三个特征。影响其分布特征的空间界面因素包括界面用地性质、权属以及界面空间特征等,揭示流动摊贩空间集聚的根源,为城市的规划管理和建设提供一定参考。     

城市流动摊贩的微区位选择机制——基于广州市200个摊贩访谈的实证研究

流动摊贩对缓解城市失业和贫困问题发挥了重要作用。以广州为例,运用GIS空间分析和半结构式访谈的方法,研究了摊贩的空间分布特征与摊贩区位因子的微观作用机制。摊贩在不同空间尺度呈现集聚分布,在不同时间尺度呈现有规律的数量变化。摊贩的区位选择主要受市场因素作用,但同时受到住地与摆卖地之间的距离、政府管制、外部相关利益主体(商户、公共场所管理者、居民)的干预以及摊贩之间的竞争与合作的微妙影响,结果不是市场最大化原则下的最优区位,而是合理的区位。强调市场因素的内涵不仅包括人流量,还包括消费者的消费能力和需求。摊贩区位选择没有偏离现代区位论的思想,其区位决策是经济与非经济因素共同作用的结果。     

行动学习法是公务员培训模式创新的有益尝试——行动学习法在我国西部地区公务员培训中的实践

行动学习是一个以完成预定的工作为目的、在同事的支持下持续不断地反思与学习的过程。行动学习法以小组合作为主、以解决工作中遇到的实际问题作为学习和研究的载体和平台,以达到学员间相互学习和提高并完成预定的工作为目的。实践证明,行动学习法对改进和创新我国公务员培训工作意义重大。