Variable training: effects on velocity and accuracy in the tennis serve     

Hector Hernández-Davo  Tomás Urbán  Jose Manuel Sarabia  Casto Juan-Recio  Francisco Javier Moreno 《Journal of sports sciences》2013,31(14):1383-1388

Abstract

Variable practice has been shown to be an effective strategy to improve open motor skills. However, the usefulness of this procedure in closed motor skills remains controversial. The following study has the objective of analysing the effects of variability practice in the improvement of a closed skill. The skill studied has been the tennis serve. Thirty young tennis players (13 ± 1.52 years), divided in two groups, took part in this study. One group practiced in variable conditions and the other group in consistency conditions. Both groups performed 12 training sessions (60 serves/session). The variable practice group improved their accuracy significantly compared with the consistency group (F_3.25 = 3.078; P = 0.035). The velocity of serve increased after training in both groups (F_3.25 = 15.890; P = 0.001). The practice in variable conditions seems to be effective in improving the performance of the tennis serve.  相似文献   

Providing metrics and automatic enhancement for hierarchical taxonomies     

Ghassan Beydoun  Francisco García-Sánchez  Cristin M. Vincent-Torres  Antonio A. Lopez-Lorca  Rodrigo Martínez-Béjar 《Information processing & management》2013

Taxonomies enable organising information in a human–machine understandable form, but constructing them for reuse and maintainability remains difficult. The paper presents a formal underpinning to provide quality metrics for a taxonomy under development. It proposes a methodology for semi-automatic building of maintainable taxonomies and outlines key features of the knowledge engineering context where the metrics and methodology are most suitable. The strength of the approach presented is that it is applied during the actual construction of the taxonomy. Users provide terms to describe different domain elements, as well as their attributes, and methodology uses metrics to assess the quality of this input. Changes according to given quality constraints are then proposed during the actual development of the taxonomy.  相似文献   

Becoming a teacher: the thoughts of undergraduates training to work in Primary Education and ideas for their university education     

Francisco Esteban Bara  Teodor Mellén Vinagre 《Educational studies》2019,45(5):633-645

ABSTRACT

What makes a good teacher and what motivates a person to want to teach are timeless questions that concern us all. This study focuses on those who are currently training to become teachers, more specifically undergraduates studying a degree in Primary Education in the universities of Catalonia. It adopts a quantitative methodology based on a self-administered questionnaire conducted with a representative sample. Participants’ open-ended responses are recorded and codified. Three main categories are constructed: personal, authentic teacher; the teacher as story teller; and, the teacher as motivator of learning. Results highlight important differences between these categories, extolling above all the authentic, personal teacher, who leaves a mark thanks to their character and way of being. This, together with other findings, raises various considerations for the university training of future teachers.  相似文献   

Teaching emotion understanding     

Francisco Pons  Paul L. Harris  Pierre-André Doudin 《European Journal of Psychology of Education - EJPE》2002,17(3):293-304

The main goal of this research was to assess whether it is possible to help children develop their general understanding of emotions. Thirty-six nine-year-old children divided in two groups were examined using a pre-test/train/post-test design. The emotion understanding of the two groups was measured in the pre- and post-test phases using the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). The experimental group received a teaching program about emotions during the training phase: School Matters In Lifeskills Education (SMILE). The control group received no special teaching about emotion during this phase. Results showed that the level of emotion understanding in the experimental group improved significantly between the pre- and post-test whereas no such change occurred in the control group. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.  相似文献   

The Sources of Error in Spanish Writing (Research Note)     

Fernando Justicia  Sylvia Defior  Santiago Pelegrina  Francisco J. Martos 《Journal of Research in Reading》1999,22(2):198-202

The main aim of this study was to determine the pattern of errors in Spanish spelling. Specifically, we were interested in discovering if all Spanish words have similar levels of spelling difficulty or whether there are types of words that cause a high percentage of spelling errors. 972 children aged between 8 to 10 years were requested to write a short spontaneous story. Our objective was to analyse and to propose a classification system for the errors made by children in the initial stages of the acquisition of spelling skills. The results indicate (a) that the diverse forms of only 20 Spanish words produce 36 per cent of the spelling errors in Spanish, and (b) that substitution is the most frequent type of error (68 per cent of total errors), which occurs as a consequence of an inadequate knowledge of the rules of phoneme-grapheme correspondence. These findings have relevance for the teaching of writing in Spanish.  相似文献   

The effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems on K-12 students' reading comprehension: A meta-analysis     

Zhihong Xu  Kausalai Wijekumar  Gilbert Ramirez  Xueyan Hu  Robin Irey 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2019,50(6):3119-3137

This meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of improving reading comprehension for students in K-12 classrooms using intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), a computer-based learning environment that provides customizable and immediate feedback to the learner. Nineteen studies from 13 publications incorporating approximately 10 000 students were included in the final analysis; using robust variance estimation to account for statistical dependencies, the 19 studies yielded 88 effect size estimates. The meta-analysis indicated that the overall random effect size of ITSs on reading comprehension was 0.60 (using a mix of standardized and researcher-designed measures) with a 95% confidence interval 0.36 to 0.85 (p < 0.001). This review confirms previous studies comparing ITSs to human tutoring: ITSs produced a small effect size when compared to human tutoring (0.20, 0.02–0.38, p = 0.036, n = 21). All comparisons to human tutoring used standardized measures. This review also found that ITSs produced a larger effect size on reading comprehension when compared to traditional instruction (0.86) for mixed measures and (0.26) for standardized measures. These findings may be of interest to practitioners and policy makers seeking to improve reading comprehension using consistent and accessible ITSs. Recommendations for researchers include conducting studies to understand the difference between traditional and updated versions of ITSs and employing valid and reliable standardized tests and researcher-designed measures.  相似文献   

Which firms want PhDs? An analysis of the determinants of the demand     

Jose Garcia-Quevedo  Francisco Mas-Verdú  Jose Polo-Otero 《Higher Education》2012,63(5):607-620

PhD graduates hold the highest education degree, are trained to conduct research and can be considered a key element in the creation, commercialization and diffusion of innovations. The impact of PhDs on innovation and economic development takes place through several channels such as the accumulation of scientific capital stock, the enhancement of technology transfers and the promotion of cooperation relationships in innovation processes. Although the placement of PhDs in industry provides a very important mechanism for transmitting knowledge from universities to firms, information about the characteristics of the firms that employ PhDs is very scarce. The goal of this paper is to improve understanding of the determinants of the demand for PhDs in the private sector. Three main potential determinants of the demand for PhDs are considered: cooperation between firms and universities, R&D activities of firms and several characteristics of firms, size, sector, productivity and age. The results from the econometric analysis show that cooperation between firms and universities encourages firms to recruit PhDs and point to the existence of accumulative effects in the hiring of PhD graduates.  相似文献   

The incorporation of ICT in higher education. The contribution of ROC curves in the graphic visualization of differences in the analysis of the variables     

Ana García‐Valcárcel Muñoz‐Repiso  Francisco Javier Tejedor Tejedor 《British journal of educational technology : journal of the Council for Educational Technology》2012,43(6):901-919

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Multi-objective optimization design of bridge piers with hybrid heuristic algorithms     

Francisco J. Martinez-Martin  Fernando Gonzalez-Vidosa  Antonio Hospitaler  Víctor Yepes 《浙江大学学报(A卷英文版)》2012,13(6):420-432

This paper describes one approach to the design of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge piers, using a three-hybrid multi-objective simulated annealing (SA) algorithm with a neighborhood move based on the mutation operator from the genetic algorithms (GAs), namely MOSAMO1, MOSAMO2 and MOSAMO3. The procedure is applied to three objective functions: the economic cost, the reinforcing steel congestion and the embedded CO₂ emissions. Additional results for a random walk and a descent local search multi-objective algorithm are presented. The evaluation of solutions follows the Spanish Code for structural concrete. The methodology was applied to a typical bridge pier of 23.97 m in height. This example involved 110 design variables. Results indicate that algorithm MOSAMO2 outperforms other algorithms regarding the definition of Pareto fronts. Further, the proposed procedure will help structural engineers to enhance their bridge pier designs.  相似文献   

Teachers' Spatial Anxiety Relates to 1st‐ and 2nd‐Graders' Spatial Learning     

Elizabeth A. Gunderson  Gerardo Ramirez  Sian L. Beilock  Susan C. Levine 《Mind, Brain, and Education》2013,7(3):196-199

Teachers' anxiety about an academic domain, such as math, can impact students' learning in that domain. We asked whether this relation held in the domain of spatial skill, given the importance of spatial skill for success in math and science and its malleability at a young age. We measured 1st‐ and 2nd‐grade teachers' spatial anxiety (N = 19) and students' spatial skill (N = 132). Teachers' spatial anxiety significantly predicted students' end‐of‐year spatial skill, even after accounting for students' beginning‐of‐year spatial skill, phonological working memory, grade level, and teachers' math anxiety. Since spatial skill is not a stand‐alone part of the curriculum like math or reading, teachers with high levels of spatial anxiety may simply avoid incorporating spatial activities in the classroom. Results suggest that addressing teachers' spatial anxieties may improve spatial learning in early elementary school.  相似文献