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Highlights
• Transparency of design, reference frames and support for action were found to support students' sense-making of LA dashboards.
• The higher the overall SRL score, the more relevant the three factors were perceived by learners.
• Learner goals affect how relevant students find reference frames.
• The SRL effect on the perceived relevance of transparency depends on learner goals.
Abstract
Unequal stakeholder engagement is a common pitfall of adoption approaches of learning analytics in higher education leading to lower buy-in and flawed tools that fail to meet the needs of their target groups. With each design decision, we make assumptions on how learners will make sense of the visualisations, but we know very little about how students make sense of dashboard and which aspects influence their sense-making. We investigated how learner goals and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills influence dashboard sense-making following a mixed-methods research methodology: a qualitative pre-study followed-up with an extensive quantitative study with 247 university students. We uncovered three latent variables for sense-making: transparency of design, reference frames and support for action. SRL skills are predictors for how relevant students find these constructs. Learner goals have a significant effect only on the perceived relevance of reference frames. Knowing which factors influence students' sense-making will lead to more inclusive and flexible designs that will cater to the needs of both novice and expert learners.
Highlights
• Students have limited concerns about privacy in learning analytics (LA).
• Students' privacy concerns in LA vary across countries.
• Culture shapes students' privacy concerns in LA.
• Power distance, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity affect privacy concerns in LA.
• Cultural values should be considered in LA privacy management.
Abstract
Applications of learning analytics (LA) can raise concerns from students about their privacy in higher education contexts. Developing effective privacy-enhancing practices requires a systematic understanding of students’ privacy concerns and how they vary across national and cultural dimensions. We conducted a survey study with established instruments to measure privacy concerns and cultural values for university students in five countries (Germany, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States; N = 762). The results show that students generally trusted institutions with their data and disclosed information as they perceived the risks to be manageable even though they felt somewhat limited in their ability to control their privacy. Across the five countries, German and Swedish students stood out as the most trusting and least concerned, especially compared to US students who reported greater perceived risk and less control. Students in South Korea and Spain responded similarly on all five privacy dimensions (perceived privacy risk, perceived privacy control, privacy concerns, trusting beliefs, and non-self-disclosure behavior), despite their significant cultural differences. Culture measured at the individual level affected the antecedents and outcomes of privacy concerns. Perceived privacy risk and privacy control increase with power distance. Trusting beliefs increase with a desire for uncertainty avoidance and lower masculinity. Non-self-disclosure behaviors rise with power distance and masculinity and decrease with more uncertainty avoidance. Thus, cultural values related to trust in institutions, social equality and risk-taking should be considered when developing privacy-enhancing practices and policies in higher education.
Sleep and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have repeatedly been found to be associated with each other. However, the ecological validity of daily life studies to examine the effect of sleep on ADHD symptoms is rarely made use of. In an ambulatory assessment study with measurement burst design, consisting of three bursts (each 6 months apart) of 18 days each, 70 German schoolchildren aged 10–12 years reported on their sleep quality each morning and on their subjective ADHD symptom levels as well as their sleepiness three times a day. It was hypothesized that nightly sleep quality is negatively associated with ADHD symptoms on the inter- as well as the intraindividual level. Thus, we expected children who sleep better to report higher attention and self-regulation. Additionally, sleepiness during the day was hypothesized to be positively associated with ADHD symptoms on both levels, meaning that when children are sleepier, they experience more ADHD symptoms. No association of sleep quality and ADHD symptoms between or within participants was found in multilevel analyses; also, no connection was found between ADHD symptoms and daytime sleepiness on the interindividual level. Unexpectedly, a negative association was found on the intraindividual level for ADHD symptoms and daytime sleepiness, indicating that in moments when children are sleepier during the day, they experience less ADHD symptoms. Explorative analyses showed differential links of nightly sleep quality and daytime sleepiness, with the core symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, respectively. Therefore, future analyses should take the factor structure of ADHD symptoms into account.
Highlights
• Pre-service teachershave stereotypes towards pupils with autism, Down syndrome and dyslexia.
• Pupils with Down syndrome, autism and dyslexia are associated with distinctive stereotypes.
• These stereotypes can be classified in three resp. four different dimensions.
Abstract
Stereotypes about pupils with special educational needs are prevalent both in society and among pre- and in-service teachers. However, little is known about the specific stereotypes pre-service teachers associate with autistic pupils, pupils with Down syndrome, and pupils with dyslexia. We explored these in two studies. Study 1 (N=13) involved qualitative interviews to identify potential stereotype content. Study 2 (N=213) used these findings to create a questionnaire to quantify these stereotypes. We found distinct stereotypes associated with all three groups of pupils. For successful inclusion, teachers must recognize the uniqueness of each pupil, including those with different diagnoses.
Older adults show relatively minor age-related decline in memory for single items, while their memory for associations is markedly reduced. Inter-individual differences in memory function in older adults are substantial but the neurobiological underpinnings of such differences are not well understood. In particular, the relative importance of inter-individual differences in the medio-temporal lobe (MTL) and the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) for associative and item recognition in older adults is still ambiguous. We therefore aimed to first establish the distinction between inter-individual differences in associative memory (recollection-based) performance and item memory (familiarity-based) performance in older adults and subsequently link these two constructs to differences in cortical thickness in the MTL and lateral PFC regions, in a latent structural equation modelling framework. To this end, a sample of 160 older adults (65–75 years old) performed three intentional item-associative memory tasks, of which a subsample (n = 72) additionally had cortical thickness measures in MTL and PFC regions of interest available. The results provided support for a distinction between familiarity-based item memory and recollection-based associative memory performance in older adults. Cortical thickness in the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex was positively correlated with associative recognition performance, above and beyond any relationship between item recognition performance and cortical thickness in the same region and between associative recognition performance and brain structure in the MTL (parahippocampus). The findings highlight the relative importance of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in allowing for intentional recollection-based associative memory functioning in older adults.
Experience-dependent alterations in the human brain's white-matter microstructure occur in early adulthood, but it is unknown whether such plasticity extends throughout life. We used cognitive training, diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI), and structural MRI to investigate plasticity of the white-matter tracts that connect the left and right hemisphere of the frontal lobes. Over a period of about 180 days, 20 younger adults and 12 older adults trained for a total of one hundred and one 1-h sessions on a set of three working memory, three episodic memory, and six perceptual speed tasks. Control groups were assessed at pre- and post-test. Training affected several DTI metrics and increased the area of the anterior part of the corpus callosum. These alterations were of similar magnitude in younger and older adults. The findings indicate that experience-dependent plasticity of white-matter microstructure extends into old age and that disruptions of structural interhemispheric connectivity in old age, which are pronounced in aging, are modifiable by experience and amenable to treatment.
The ability to delay gratification, to wait for a larger but delayed reward in the presence of a smaller but constantly available reward, has been shown to be predictive for various aspects of everyday life. For instance, preschool children who were better able to delay gratification achieved better school grades, a higher education, a better ability to cope with stress, as well as a reduced risk for being overweight or consume drugs up to 30 years later (Mischel et al., 2011). However, despite the importance of delay of gratification cognitive factors underlying individual differences are only poorly understood. Wittmann and Paulus (2008) suggested that individuals who overestimate the duration of time intervals experience waiting times as more costly and are, therefore, less likely to delay gratification. Furthermore, a recent study revealed an association between less accurate internal clock speed and a behavioral choice delay task (Corvi, Juergensen, Weaver, & Demaree, 2012). Further evidence for an association between temporal processing and delay of gratification can be derived from studies using clinical samples. For instance, children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) consistently prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards and show impaired temporal processing (Sonuga-Barke, Bitsakou, & Thompson, 2010). However, no study has directly tested an association between a measure of temporal processing and a classical delay of gratification task in children with and without ADHD so far.
As part of a larger study, 64 children (29 with ADHD) aged between 8 to 12 years performed a version of an auditory duration discrimination task and a delay of gratification task. In the duration discrimination task, the children were presented with two unfilled intervals indicated by two brief tones each. The baseline interval lasted for 400 ms, while the comparison interval was always longer and adjusted up or down in 10 ms steps securing an accuracy of 80%. In the delay of gratification task, the children were instructed that they could either opt for one chocolate bar immediately or that they could wait to receive two chocolate bars. Unbeknownst to the children, the waiting time lasted 25 minutes but children were told that they could decide for the immediate chocolate bar at any time by ringing a bell.
Children with ADHD did not differ in their performance from children without ADHD in the duration discrimination task or the delay of gratification task. However, in the whole sample of children with and without ADHD, children who waited for the additional chocolate bar showed a better duration discrimination than children who failed to wait for the additional chocolate bar [t(62) = -2.52, p = .01].
We demonstrated an association between temporal processing ability and the ability to delay gratification. These results need to be replicated in further studies with larger sample sizes. Moreover, different tasks measuring temporal processing and delay of gratification should be used to further clarify the relationship of temporal processing, delay of gratification, and ADHD.
Point-based geometry representations have become widely used in numerous contexts, ranging from particle-based simulations, over stereo image matching, to depth sensing via light detection and ranging. Our application focus is on the reconstruction of curved line structures in noisy 3D point cloud data. Respective algorithms operating on such point clouds often rely on the notion of a local neighborhood. Regarding the latter, our approach employs multi-scale neighborhoods, for which weighted covariance measures of local points are determined. Curved line structures are reconstructed via vector field tracing, using a bidirectional piecewise streamline integration. We also introduce an automatic selection of optimal starting points via multi-scale geometric measures. The pipeline development and choice of parameters was driven by an extensive, automated initial analysis process on over a million prototype test cases. The behavior of our approach is controlled by several parameters — the majority being set automatically, leaving only three to be controlled by a user. In an extensive, automated final evaluation, we cover over one hundred thousand parameter sets, including 3D test geometries with varying curvature, sharp corners, intersections, data holes, and systematically applied varying types of noise. Further, we analyzed different choices for the point of reference in the co-variance computation; using a weighted mean performed best in most cases. In addition, we compared our method to current, publicly available line reconstruction frameworks. Up to thirty times faster execution times were achieved in some cases, at comparable error measures. Finally, we also demonstrate an exemplary application on four real-world 3D light detection and ranging datasets, extracting power line cables.
We tested 6–7-year-olds, 18–22-year-olds, and 67–74-year-olds on an associative memory task that consisted of knowledge-congruent and knowledge-incongruent object–scene pairs that were highly familiar to all age groups. We compared the three age groups on their memory congruency effect (i.e., better memory for knowledge-congruent associations) and on a schema bias score, which measures the participants’ tendency to commit knowledge-congruent memory errors. We found that prior knowledge similarly benefited memory for items encoded in a congruent context in all age groups. However, for associative memory, older adults and, to a lesser extent, children overrelied on their prior knowledge, as indicated by both an enhanced congruency effect and schema bias. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) performed during memory encoding revealed an age-independent memory x congruency interaction in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Furthermore, the magnitude of vmPFC recruitment correlated positively with the schema bias. These findings suggest that older adults are most prone to rely on their prior knowledge for episodic memory decisions, but that children can also rely heavily on prior knowledge that they are well acquainted with. Furthermore, the fMRI results suggest that the vmPFC plays a key role in the assimilation of new information into existing knowledge structures across the entire lifespan. vmPFC recruitment leads to better memory for knowledge-congruent information but also to a heightened susceptibility to commit knowledge-congruent memory errors, in particular in children and older adults.