In the digital age, information problem solving (IPS) competence is essential for professionals to use online information effectively. Despite its importance, starting professionals often struggle with processing and presenting information, which are critical phases during authentic IPS tasks. Therefore, higher education institutions are tasked with preparing students to navigate these complex phases of IPS after graduation. However, most previous studies have focused on the “search” and “select” phases of simple, short-duration IPS tasks, which do not reflect the complex information challenges faced in professional settings. To address this gap, this study aimed to identify and categorize the strategies higher education students currently use to process and present information for a semester-long authentic professional task. A thematic analysis of cued retrospective reporting sessions was conducted with 24 senior students while they created a website for professional practice. Students demonstrated 49 IPS strategies, which were categorized into twelve IPS activities across three generic activity phases: “process,” “synthesize,” and “create.” Within these phases, three patterns of co-occurring strategies were observed: reproductive, arranging, and elaborative. Based on these findings, existing IPS process models were empirically refined. The observed variation in strategies highlights the importance of building on students’ strengths when teaching IPS. Teaching them to adapt the strategies to various authentic task contexts could help enhance students’ IPS competence and strategic flexibility in real-world settings. Future research should explore the applicability of the updated IPS model across different authentic task contexts to refine instructional approaches further.
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Collaborative learning tasks may represent an effective way to stimulate higher-order processes among high-ability students in regular classrooms. This study investigatedthe effects of task structure and group composition on the elaboration and metacognitive activities of 11th grade preuniversity students during a collaborative learning task: 102 students worked in small groups. On an ill-structured or moderately structured task. Differential effects forcognitive ability were investigated using a continuous measure. Likewise, the effects of group composition were examined using a continuous measure of the cognitiveheterogeneity of the group. The group dialogues were transcribed and coded. Analysis revealed an interaction effect between task structure and cognitive abilityon students’ elaboration and metacognitive activities. Task structure had a negative effect on the elaborative contributions of high-ability students. For students with lower abilities, task structure had a positive effect onelaboration and metacognitive activities. No effects were found of the cognitive heterogeneity of the group. Group composition seemed not to be related to group interactionamong 11th grade pre-university students. The results indicate that open-ended collaborative tasks with little guidance and directions on how to handle them, canstimulate higher-order processes among high-ability students and may offer them the challenge they need.
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Market competition and global financial uncertainty have been the principal drivers that impel aviation companies to proceed to budget cuts, including decreases in salary and work force levels, in order to ensure viability and sustainability. Under the concepts of Maslow and Herzberg’s motivation theories, the current paper unfolds the influence of employment cost fluctuations on an aviation organization’s accidents attributed to human error. This study exploited financial and accident data over a period of 13 years, and explored if rates of accidents attributed to human errors of flight, maintenance and ramp crews, correlate with the average employment expenditures (N=13). In addition, the study took into account the relationship between average task load (ratio of flying hours per employee) and accident rates related to human error since task load, as part of total workload, is a constraint of modern complex systems. The results revealed strong correlations amongst accident rates linked to human error with the average employment costs and task load. The use of more specific data per aviation organizational department and professional group may further validate the results of this study. Organizations that seek to explore the 2 association between human error and employment budget and task load might appropriately adapt the approach proposed.
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This article reports on a post hoc study using a randomised controlled trial with 31,842 students in the Netherlands and an instrument consisting of 21 paired problems. The trial showed a variability in the differences of students’ results in solving contextual mathematical problems with either a descriptive or a depictive representation of the problem situation. In this study the relation between this variability and two task characteristics is investigated: (1) complexity of the task representation; and (2) the content domain of the task. We found indications that differences in performance on descriptive and depictive representations of the problem situation are related to the content domain of the problems. One of the tentative conclusions is that for depicted problems in the domain of measurement and geometry the inferential step from representation of the problem situation to the mathematical problem to be solved is smaller than for word problems.
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Although creativity is often seen as requiring spontaneity and flexibility, recent work suggests that there is creative potential in a structured and systematic approach as well. In a series of four experiments, we show that when Personal Need for Structure (PNS) is high, either chronic (Study 1) or situationally induced (Study 2), creative performance benefits from high task structure. Further, in line with earlier work on cognitive fixation effects, we show that when high task structure contains an example of noncreative task execution, creative performance is impaired, regardless of individuals' PNS. Nevertheless, participants high in PNS react relatively favorably to high task structure (Study 3) and are more likely to adopt a structured task approach when given the choice (Study 4). In sum, our results show that task structure can both stimulate and inhibit creative performance, particularly for people high in need for structure. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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The chapter discusses the effect of hierarchically staging common entrepreneurship pedagogies (from passive, instructor-led to active self-steering) in an undergraduate level venture creation programme on its participants perceived ‘readiness’ to take ownership over their learning. Education literature argues that existentially transforming pedagogy, much like that of student venture creation programmes (VCP), is not fit for all students, hence leading some to thrive, and others to fear failure. Data collected from a purposive homogeneous sample of 185 undergraduate students at a Dutch university, using reliable measures for self-efficacy and readiness for self-directed learning were analysed. The results of the mixed-methods study suggest that students gain self-efficacy (readiness) to independently take ownership of their learning process through a pedagogical approach that facilitates gradual competence development in each phase of the VCP. A teaching / learning framework is discussed that may help educators foster perceived task-readiness for the radically new learning activities that characterise VCP education.
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Little is known about the effect of diverging pedagogies on the development of interactional oral skills in a foreign language. In a controlled study, we evaluated three newly developed instructional programmes that were situated in the same training context, but that differed in instructional focus and type of task. These were compared to the effects of business-as-usual instruction. Multilevel analysis revealed that all experimental groups outperformed the ‘business-as-usual’ control group on oral interaction skills (N = 199), with similar results for the programmes. Positive effects were found on interaction skills for trained contexts of use only. No transfer was found to tasks in other contexts of use. We conclude that receiving contextualised oral interaction instruction is beneficial to the development of pre-vocational learners’ interaction skills.
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In the digital age, information problem solving (IPS) competence is essential for professionals to use online information effectively. Despite its importance, starting professionals often struggle with processing and presenting information, which are critical phases during authentic IPS tasks. Therefore, higher education institutions are tasked with preparing students to navigate these complex phases of IPS after graduation. However, most previous studies have focused on the “search” and “select” phases of simple, short-duration IPS tasks, which do not reflect the complex information challenges faced in professional settings. To address this gap, this study aimed to identify and categorize the strategies higher education students currently use to process and present information for a semester-long authentic professional task. A thematic analysis of cued retrospective reporting sessions was conducted with 24 senior students while they created a website for professional practice. Students demonstrated 49 IPS strategies, which were categorized into twelve IPS activities across three generic activity phases: “process,” “synthesize,” and “create.” Within these phases, three patterns of co-occurring strategies were observed: reproductive, arranging, and elaborative. Based on these findings, existing IPS process models were empirically refined. The observed variation in strategies highlights the importance of building on students’ strengths when teaching IPS. Teaching them to adapt the strategies to various authentic task contexts could help enhance students’ IPS competence and strategic flexibility in real-world settings. Future research should explore the applicability of the updated IPS model across different authentic task contexts to refine instructional approaches further.
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This paper is a report of a review conducted to provide an overview of the evidence in the literature on task-oriented training of stroke survivors and its relevance in daily nursing practice. Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death and one of the leading causes of adult disability in the Western world. The use of neurodevelopmental treatment in the daily nursing care of stroke survivors does not improve clinical outcomes. Nurses are therefore exploring other forms of rehabilitation intervention, including task-oriented rehabilitation. Despite the growing number of studies showing evidence on task-oriented interventions, recommendations for daily nursing practice are lacking. A range of databases was searched to identify papers addressing taskoriented training in stroke rehabilitation, including Medline, CINAHL, Embase and the Cochrane Library of systematic reviews. Papers published in English between January 1996 and September 2007 were included. There were 42 papers in the final dataset, including nine systematic reviews. Review methods: The selected randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews were assessed for quality. Important characteristics and outcomes were extracted and summarized. Results: Studies of task-related training showed benefits for functional outcome compared with traditional therapies. Active use of task-oriented training with stroke survivors will lead to improvements in functional outcomes and overall healthrelated quality of life. Conclusion. Generally, task-oriented rehabilitation proved to be more effective. Many interventions are feasible for nurses and can be performed in a ward or at home. Nurses can and should play an important role in creating opportunities to practise meaningful functional tasks outside of regular therapy sessions.
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Learning teams in higher education executing a collaborative assignment are not always effective. To remedy this, there is a need to determine and understand the variables that influence team effectiveness. This study aimed at developing a conceptual framework, based on research in various contexts on team effectiveness and specifically team and task awareness. Core aspects of the framework were tested to establish its value for future experiments on influencing team effectiveness. Results confirmed the importance of shared mental models, and to some extent mutual performance monitoring for learning teams to become effective, but also of interpersonal trust as being conditional for building adequate shared mental models. Apart from the importance of team and task awareness for team effectiveness it showed that learning teams in higher education tend to be pragmatic by focusing primarily on task aspects of performance and not team aspects. Further steps have to be taken to validate this conceptual framework on team effectiveness.
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