How do different background variables predict learning outcomes?

This article is a part of a research project aimed to find out how different background variables are related to learning outcomes in school subject Sloyd as found in the national evaluation of the Finnish National Board of Education. Results from this larger research project were previously published in this journal, where pupils’ readiness for Self-Regulated Learning were reported. Since then, pupils’ experiences of classroom techniques, attitudes towards the subject, leisure time interests and learning within the two domains of the subject (Technical Domain and Textile Domain, as the subject is usually divided in Finland) have been studied and results have been published in different journals. In this article, a new Structural Equation Model concludes the previous results. The new model highlights two paths of how the use of different learning orientations can predict successful learning outcomes. These paths can be followed using two pedagogical models: the Exploratory Production Approach and the Domain Specific Approach. Experiencing Learner-Centred Learning predicts positive attitudes and success in Exploratory Production activities. Experiencing Collaborative Learning predicts success in domain specific learning outcomes. Success in Exploratory Production predicts successful learning outcomes in both domains. The conclusion is that regulatory knowledge, “why”, is related to production activities and it is processed prior to domain specific knowledge, “what” and “how”. To develop the subject and pedagogy for schools and teacher training, it is not important to follow an approach defined by the domains (technical or textile). It is more important to teach pupils how to manage in the modern technological world and to understand why they need to be able to improve their life-world through Exploratory Production activities.     

Student learning profiles in two innovative honours degree engineering programmes

This paper reports a study of innovative and traditional engineering programmes at the University of Salford, UK Attention is given to student entry, and to course evaluation and improvement. Using the Myers-Brigg Type Inventory (MBTI) and the Technical Students' Learning Environment Preferences questionnaire (TSLEP), data were obtained about personality type and student developmental level. In addition, a selected group of the students were interviewed to measure their cognitive levels as defined by Perry's model of intellectual and ethical development, and to assist in the validation of the TSLEP questionnaire. Application of the TSLEP and the MBTI instruments to engineering students at North Carolina State University and the State University of New York at Brighamton generated further data which are used to make US/UK comparisons and to suggest ways in which the scope of engineering education might be expanded to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.     

IEA天然气安全供应应急经验与启示

文章详细分析了国际能源署(IEA)成员国应对天然气供应中断的主要政策和应急措施。大部分IEA成员国都发展了天然气商业库存,并将其作为解决供应和峰值需求的主要途径。此外,实现与周边国家管网互连、形成供应多元化的格局,也是IEA成员国增强本国天然气供应能力的重要手段。作为未来天然气需求大国,我国应向IEA成员国汲取经验,运用公司化运营模式,发展覆盖西北、华北、东北、长江中下游地区、珠江三角洲地区的地下储气库群;将连结国内外的管道天然气、液化天然气形成有机的库存网络体系,并与主要天然气消费省、市、县的天然气管网建设规划进行有机衔接;同时加紧制定不同气源、不同质量类型的天然气联网技术标准和规范。     

国际交流合作课程新形式探讨——服装产品开发项目教学实录

中美两所院校的"服装产品开发课程",以六组不同种类的服装产品设计课题通过用远程网络视频教学与互访教学相结合的形式进行,通过网络沟通、调研与设计制作以及最后的中美互访,打破了传统的服装教学界限,这种"低成本高互动"的交流方式,拓宽了国际课程交流渠道,发展了学生的学习空间,增强了服装教学的实践应用能力,为设计教学院校的国际课程交流提供了一种参考模式。     

基于骨干度与网络编码的链路预测模型研究

为了研究网络表示学习在社交网络中链路预测方面的应用,提出了一种基于骨干度与网络编码的链路预测模型(BDLINE)。在网络表示学习算法LINE的基础上融入骨干度算法,通过给一阶相似度和二阶相似度中增添骨干权重,将网络编码到多维向量空间中,调试到最优参数。实验采用2个真实数据的数据集,分别在不同的算法模型上进行多次实验。实验结果表明:在链路预测方面,BDLINE均比其他网络表示学习算法的性能有所提升,AUC评测值更高,预测效果表现得更好。因此,所提出的方法可以方便地提取网络特征信息,更好地处理社交网络在链路预测中的随机性,对社交网络中预测网络节点的关联性和有效性具有一定的参考。     

The things that belong: a grounded theory study of student categorizations of complex technical artifacts

Technical artifacts play a central role in teaching and learning about technology. The artifact exemplars used in the classroom to illustrate and discuss various technological concepts should therefore be carefully chosen in order to actually support the abstraction and successful transfer of these concepts. Research from the learning and cognitive sciences strongly suggests that this requires an understanding of how students actually perceive and conceptualize various technical artifacts, what similarities, differences and features are most salient and meaningful in their eyes. In this paper, we propose a grounded theory of how students differentiate and relate various complex technical artifacts. The core of our theory is formed by four hierarchically ordered juxtapositions: (1) technology versus non-technology, (2) everyday versus specialized, (3) private versus public, and (4) luxury versus necessity, which divide the realm of technical artifacts into five broad categories: high technology, household technology, public technology, real technology, and no/low technology. Our claim is that these differentiations and categories are generally salient and meaningful for students. Based on the theory of variation, we outline how they might help educators make more informed and systematic selections of exemplar artifacts to use in the classroom.     

Metrics for strategic alliance control

The paper develops a feedback control model of product development alliance management. The model allows us to place alliance review, and the metrics for this review, in the context of the control problems facing the alliance manager. We then specify a set of alliance review metrics, and outline the characteristics which they must have. Managers have a pressing need for such metrics, given the management challenges of alliances and the difficulties companies face in making them work effectively. The control model is then expanded to allow for changes in the nature of the alliance itself and inter-project learning. The development of the models and of the metrics is guided by the experiences of a large electronic systems manufacturer in alliances with a number of smaller strategic technology suppliers.     

Health information and consumer learning in the bottled water market

This paper examines the impact of health information in different media outlets on bottled water consumption through consumer learning. We develop a random coefficient discrete choice model with Bayesian learning process to capture consumers’ learning of health information and changes in their beverage choices over time. Consumers are assumed to have initial prior beliefs about the health effect of different beverages and to update their beliefs using health information received from different media types. Empirical results show that consumers’ perceived quality of bottled water kept increasing during our sample period, and this learning process accounted for 24.44% of the industry’s revenue, which is about 4.8 billion dollars per year. Comparing the effectiveness of different media outlets, we find that the sales impact of traditional media (TV and radio) is greater than online sources. Our findings highlight the contribution of health information to the bottled water industry and provide policy makers with a new direction to reduce high-calorie food consumption and improve public health.     

Price discrimination on booking time

Even if consumers are forward looking and free to choose when to purchase, a firm can price discriminate on booking time if consumers learn their valuations at different times and consumers who learn later have higher valuations. The model is related to our work on optimal screening with returns contracts Akan, Ata, and Dana [1], but here we consider a simpler binary-valuation distribution and consider more realistic consumer learning assumptions. The main contribution is to show that the profitability of screening on time is robust to relaxing the assumption that consumers learn instantaneously. In addition to analyzing a bad-news model in which information arrives gradually, we characterize a general bound on consumer optimism that guarantees that the instantaneous learning results are robust.     

Increasing Learning and Time Efficiency in Interorganizational New Product Development Teams*

Despite the growing popularity of new product development across organizational boundaries, the processes, mechanisms, or dynamics that leverage performance in interorganizational (I‐O) product development teams are not well understood. Such teams are staffed with individuals drawn from the partnering firms and are relied on to develop successful new products while at the same time enhancing mutual learning and reducing development time. However, these collaborations can encounter difficulties when partners from different corporate cultures and thought worlds must coordinate and depend on one another and often lead to disappointing performance. To facilitate collaboration, the creation of a safe, supportive, challenging, and engaging environment is particularly important for enabling productive collaborative I‐O teamwork and is essential for learning and time efficient product development. This research develops and tests a model of proposed factors to increase both learning and time efficiency on I‐O new product teams. It is argued that specific behaviors (caring), beliefs (psychological safety), task‐related processes (shared problem solving), and governance mechanisms (clear management direction) create a positive climate that increases learning and time efficiency on I‐O teams. Results of an empirical study of 50 collaborative new product development projects indicate that (1) shared problem solving and caring behavior support both learning and time efficiency on I‐O teams, (2) team psychological safety is positively related to learning, (3) management direction is positively associated with time efficiency, and (4) shared problem solving is more strongly related to both performance dimensions than are the other factors. The factors supporting time efficiency are slightly different from those that foster learning. The relative importance of these factors also differs considerably for both performance aspects. Overall, this study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that facilitate a favorable environment for productive collaboration on I‐O teams, which go beyond contracts or top‐management supervision. Establishing such an environment can help to balance management concerns and promote the success of I‐O teams. The significance of the results is elevated by the fragility of collaborative ventures and their potential for failure, when firms with different organizational cultures, thought worlds, objectives, and intentions increasingly decide to work across organizational boundaries for the development of new products.     

Learning from foreign investment by rival firms: Theory and evidence

We offer an alternative explanation for follow-the-leader behavior in foreign investment decisions based on Bayesian learning by rival firms. We test the implications of the model through a panel count data sample of MNEs that have invested in Central and Eastern Europe over the period 1990–1997. Interacting the measure of rivals' investment in country-industry pairs with uncertainty, we are able to identify the channel of Bayesian learning about revenue postulated by the model as the only one consistently generating the detected follow-the-leader behavior of foreign investments. The empirical findings are robust with respect to different model specifications.     

管理体系一体化实践与研究

从“管理体系一体化”的含义及类型出发,根据GB／T19001—2000《质量管理体系要求》、GB／T24001—1996《环境管理体系规范》、GB／T28001《职业健康安全管理体系规范》、GJB9001A-2001《质量管理体系要求》、Q／CNPC104.1—2004《健康、安全与环境管理体系第一部分：规范》（HSE）五类标准的共同点和不同点,对管理体系一体化的可行性、必要性进行了探讨,并以济柴公司实践为例,论述了如何制定出既符合标准要求,又能指导工作实践的一体化文件以及如何提高体系的有效性,并使体系在企业中起到实质性的作用．     

Technical education in Scotland: Fit for purpose?

As Technical education strains to find a niche in the educational market place, are teachers suffering from a crisis of confidence? How comfortable are they with the ever-changing curriculum, with the subjects they are teaching and the reasons why they are teaching them? The broadening of the Technical curriculum in secondary schools to include Practical Craft Skills has proved popular with some teachers, while others perceive a drift back to a purely skills based curriculum along with a further deterioration of the status of Technical departments. This paper explores the present state of Technical Education in Scotland through the analysis of an online survey of 95 practising teachers and an investigation of employers’ entrance requirements for apprenticeships in the engineering and construction industries. The results indicate a degree of conflict among staff regarding the role of Technical education, coupled with limited recognition for Technical subjects among employers.     

The Treatment of Market Power in Korea

Competitive forces have been relatively weak in Korea. Control of the chaebols' diversified expansion and conglomerate power has been a primary object of government policies. Competition law and policy has been expanded to include direct controls on chaebols, but it has been rather ineffective in resolving chaebol-related problems mainly because of insufficient attention having been paid to the problems of market power. Attempts to rein in chaebols by direct controls, without enhancing competitive forces, will be in vain, insofar as chaebol problems are really symptoms of their entrenched market potions in a non-competitive environment.     

Linking learning and knowledge creation to project success in Six Sigma projects: An empirical investigation

This study investigates the impact of two organizational antecedents, (1) Six Sigma resources (technical) and (2) team psychological safety (social), on learning behaviour and knowledge creation and, in turn, on the success of Six Sigma process improvement projects. The paper proposes an integrated model to explain process improvement implementation success through two learning activities undertaken by Six Sigma project teams: Knowing-what and Knowing-how. The conceptualization of these knowledge types in this research is different from usual conceptualization as it represents the knowledge brought into projects through various phases of Six Sigma projects. The three hypotheses proposed in the model were tested using the data collected from 52 Six Sigma project teams from a single organization. Regression analysis showed psychological safety affects project performance through knowing-how. Regression and bootstrapping analyses showed resources influence project performance through the combined mediation of knowing-what and knowing-how.The paper provides an interdisciplinary treatment of knowledge management in process improvement teams, and offers a research model demonstrating how Six Sigma project teams promote deliberate organizational learning. By doing so, this study empirically establishes the notion that technical and social supports jointly impact the success of operations management initiatives such as Six Sigma through learning. The limitations of the study along with the future research directions are highlighted.     

Analysing the correlation between social network analysis measures and performance of students in social network-based engineering education

Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment, considering two different dimensions: (1) to organize the education process as a social network-based process; and (2) to analyze the students’ interactions in the context of evaluation of the students learning performance. The objective of this paper is to present a new model for students evaluation based on their behavior during the course and its validation in comparison with the traditional model of students’ evaluation. The validation of the new evaluation model is made through an analysis of the correlation between social network analysis measures (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and average tie strength) and the grades obtained by students (grades for quality of work, grades for volume of work, grades for diversity of work, and final grades) in a social network-based engineering education. The main finding is that the obtained correlation results can be used to make the process of the students’ performance evaluation based on students interactions (behavior) analysis, to make the evaluation partially automatic, increasing the objectivity and productivity of teachers and allowing a more scalable process of evaluation. The results also contribute to the behavioural theory of learning performance evaluation. More specific findings related to the correlation analysis are: (1) the more different interactions a student had (degree centrality) and the more frequently the student was between the interaction paths of other students (betweenness centrality), the better was the quality of the work; (2) all five social network measures had a positive and strong correlation with the grade for volume of work and with the final grades; and (3) a student with high average tie strength had a higher grade for diversity of work than those with low ties.     

A consumer-oriented model for analysing the suitability of food classification systems

The main function of food classification systems is to regulate the market and inform it (consumers above all) about the different types of products and their characteristics. However, the reality is that many of these systems give rise to confusion and prevent consumers from obtaining a clear idea of them, making the purchasing process more difficult. The objective of this study was to propose a method that can be used as a basis or reference framework for analysing the suitability of any food classification system, based on maximising consumer comprehension and learning, before introducing it into the market. The model proposed establishes the procedure and the necessary indicators for identifying the advantages and drawbacks of each of the different systems, making it possible to compare their suitability. The model was tested empirically by comparing the current classification of orange juices and Iberian ham with two different proposals, in an experiment conducted with an online consumer panel, and using MANCOVA to analyse the differences between the six indicators related to consumer learning results. It was concluded that the model is suitable for assessing the suitability of the classification systems, as it shows technical viability, ease of introduction in practically any situation and the ability to facilitate and guide the process of drawing up consumer-oriented food classification systems.     

Product Development and Learning in Project Teams: The Challenges Are the Benefits*

The value of teams in new product development (NPD) is undeniable. Both the interdisciplinary nature of the work and industry trends necessitate that professionals from different functions work together on development projects to create the highest‐quality product in the shortest time. Understanding the conditions that facilitate teamwork has been a pursuit of researchers for nearly a half century. The present paper reviews existing literature on teams and team learning in organizational behavior and technology and innovation to offer insights for research on NPD teams. Building on prior work, the organizational benefits of NPD teams are summarized, and five attributes of these teams are identified that hinder attainment of their potential: (1) project complexity; (2) cross‐functionality; (3) temporary membership; (4) fluid team boundaries; and (5) embeddedness in organizational structures. It is argued here that effective management of these five attributes allows not only organization‐level benefits but also team‐level benefits in the form of new capabilities and team member resilience. The critical roles of leadership and of communication and conflict management training are then highlighted as strategies for overcoming the challenges to team effectiveness in NPD as well as for realizing five team benefits: (1) project management skills; (2) broad perspective; (3) teaming skills; (4) expanded social network; and (5) boundary‐spanning skills. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these ideas for conducting future team research.     

Exploratory learning and exploitative learning in different organizational structures

Although the significant performance implications of exploratory learning and exploitative learning have been well documented, the issue of whether they are complementarities or substitutes still remains a puzzle. This study investigates the relationship between exploratory learning and exploitative learning in different organizational structures. Based on a survey of Chinese firms, we find that exploratory learning and exploitative learning are substitutes when the organizational structure is mechanistic, and they are complementarities when the organizational structure is organic. Overall, this study joins the debate on the relationship between exploratory learning and exploitative learning by connecting different perspectives with the characteristics of organizational structure to offer a more comprehensive understanding on such an issue.