Background
Problem‐oriented project work, also known as problem and project‐based learning (PBL), is a popular educational approach in engineering education. However, the focus of the literature on ...the implementation of PBL has been at the course and institutional levels. Scant attention has been paid to the student experience, especially regarding student conceptions of PBL.
Purpose
This is a phenomenographic study of student conceptions of PBL in a Danish engineering program that uses a systemic PBL model.
Design/method
This study follows a phenomenographic qualitative design. Sixteen participants from four different engineering disciplines were asked to share their views and experiences with PBL. The interview transcripts were analyzed to identify emerging variations in the student conceptions of PBL.
Results
The outcome space suggests three levels of students' conceptions of PBL: individual, group and society levels. Within the categories of description, sublevel variations appear: PBL as an unsupportive process and environment, PBL as a supportive process and environment, and PBL as a structured education method. These conceptions were organized hierarchically from a narrow individual to a broader society level.
Conclusions
Student conceptions of PBL as a structured education method echo the literature on the intended learning outcomes of PBL. However, our study shows that conceptions of PBL as personal and social processes fall outside of the scope of current scholarly discussions on PBL. Issues of societal relevance, while prominent in the literature on PBL, do not feature in students' thinking about PBL at this stage. Introducing broader reflection practices informed by exemplarity could address some of these discrepancies.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The effect of H+ implantation and annealing of diamond (100) monocrystalline substrates has been studied by ToF-SIMS, cathodoluminescence, transmission spectroscopy and TEM. Blistering conditions ...suitable for the Smart Cut™ technology have been identified in monocrystalline diamond, using two sets of hydrogen implantation and annealing. A first hydrogen implantation followed by a first annealing leads to amorphization of a buried layer without hydrogen exodiffusion. Blisters and exfoliations appear at the surface of the diamond samples, after a second hydrogen implantation inside the pre-amorphized diamond layer and a final annealing, as evidenced by TEM and optical microscopy. Demonstration of hydrogen-induced blistering is a major step to adapt the Smart Cut™ process on diamond material. This process is compatible with wafer bonding before the second annealing and therefore open the way for thin diamond layer transfer on a bonded receiver wafer, still not achieved to date.
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•A reliable blistering process of diamond is proposed.•Ion induced pre-amorphization is key to reliably achieve blistering of diamond•Thanks to pre-amorphization, diamond blistering is achieved at 1000 °C•The impact of the hydrogen dose is characterized by optical methods
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper sheds light on an intellectual dispute on the purpose of problem-based learning that took place in the 1970s between two major figures in the history of PBL: Howard S Barrows from McMaster ...University and Henk Schmidt from Maastricht University. Using historical evidence from archive materials, oral history accounts and contemporary publications, the paper shows that at the core of the dispute was their divergent understanding of cognitive psychology. On the one hand, Barrows espoused hypothetico-deduction, and on the other, Henk Schmidt was a proponent of constructivism. The paper shows how the dispute played out both in the scientific literature and in the divergent practice of PBL at McMaster and Maastricht and continues to affect the way PBL is done today.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
ProDom contains all protein domain families automatically generated from the SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL sequence databases (http://www. toulouse.inra.fr/prodom.html ). ProDom-CG results from a similar ...domain analysis as applied to completed genomes (http://www.toulouse. inra.fr/prodomCG.html ). Recent improvements to the ProDom database and its server include: scaling up to include sequences from TrEMBL, addition of Pfam-A entries to the set of expert validated families, assignment of stable accession numbers, consistency indicators for domain families, domain arrangements of sub-families and links to Pfam-A.
InterPro, an integrated documentation resource of protein families, domains and functional sites, was created in 1999 as a means of amalgamating the major protein signature databases into one ...comprehensive resource. PROSITE, Pfam, PRINTS, ProDom, SMART and TIGRFAMs have been manually integrated and curated and are available in InterPro for text- and sequence-based searching. The results are provided in a single format that rationalises the results that would be obtained by searching the member databases individually. The latest release of InterPro contains 5629 entries describing 4280 families, 1239 domains, 95 repeats and 15 post-translational modifications. Currently, the combined signatures in InterPro cover more than 74% of all proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, an increase of nearly 15% since the inception of InterPro. New features of the database include improved searching capabilities and enhanced graphical user interfaces for visualisation of the data. The database is available via a webserver (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro) and anonymous FTP (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/interpro).
Recent applications require vertical chip stacking to increase the performance of many devices without the need of advanced node components. Image sensors and vision systems will embed more and more ...smart functions, for instance, image processing, object recognition, and movement detection. In this perspective, the combination of Cu-to-Cu direct hybrid bonding technology with Through-Silicon-Via (TSV) will allow 3D interconnection between pixels and the associated computing and memory structures, each function fabricated on a separate wafer. Wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding was achieved with multi-pitch design—1–4 μm—of single levels of Cu damascene patterned on 300 mm silicon substrates. Defect-free bonding, as far as the extreme edge of the wafer, was demonstrated on a stack with three wafers. Middle wafers thinning was done with grinding only and with a thickness uniformity (TTV) <2 μm to an ultimate thinning as low as 3 μm. Alignment performance was characterized by post-bonding for two superposed hybrid bonding interfaces. In our set of wafers, modeling the alignment with translation, rotation, and scaling components enables us to optimize the residuals down to 3σ < 100 nm. A process flow of thin TSV with a fine pitch of 2 μm for high-density vertical interconnect through a three-wafer stack was developed. Via-last TSV architecture was adopted with 1 μm TSV diameter and 10 μm thickness. Lithography, etching solutions, Ti/TiN barrier deposition, and void-free Cu filling solutions were demonstrated. TSV cross sections after CMP and connections with top and bottom Cu damascene lines show good profile control. Process developments are matured and can be reliably used in the fabrication of an electrical test vehicle including vertical interconnects associating multi-wafers stacking with a hybrid bonding process and high-density thin TSV applicable to low pitches (<5 μm).
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The ProDom database is a comprehensive set of protein domain families automatically generated from the SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL sequence databases. An associated database, ProDom-CG, has been derived as ...a restriction of ProDom to completely sequenced genomes. The ProDom construction method is based on iterative PSI-BLAST searches and multiple alignments are generated for each domain family. The ProDom web server provides the user with a set of tools to visualise multiple alignments, phylogenetic trees and domain architectures of proteins, as well as a BLAST-based server to analyse new sequences for homologous domains. The comprehensive nature of ProDom makes it particularly useful to help sustain the growth of InterPro.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Signature databases are vital tools for identifying distant relationships in novel sequences and hence for inferring protein function. InterPro is an integrated documentation resource for protein ...families, domains and functional sites, which amalgamates the efforts of the PROSITE, PRINTS, Pfam and ProDom database projects. Each InterPro entry includes a functional description, annotation, literature references and links back to the relevant member database(s). Release 2.0 of InterPro (October 2000) contains over 3000 entries, representing families, domains, repeats and sites of post-translational modification encoded by a total of 6804 different regular expressions, profiles, fingerprints and Hidden Markov Models. Each InterPro entry lists all the matches against SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL (more than 1,000,000 hits from 462,500 proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL). The database is accessible for text- and sequence-based searches at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/. Questions can be emailed to interhelp@ebi.ac.uk.
That idea that problem-based learning (PBL) is more motivating that traditional education has been prevalent since the inception of PBL at McMaster University in the late 1960s. Evidencing this ...through empirical research, however, has proven to be a lot more problematic. This paper retraces how the discourse on motivation started from a laymen’s conception in the early days of PBL, and slowly evolved into a field of scientific inquiry in the 1980s and 1990s. However, looking at the evolution of motivation theory over the same period, we show that motivation discourse in the burgeoning literature on motivation and PBL remained largely wedded to the laymen’s approach, and failed to catch up with the new achievement-goal theory and self-determination theory approaches. This paper proceeds to analyse the explosion of studies on PBL and motivation after 2000, acknowledging efforts to move away from anecdotal accounts and provide theoretical grounding to the research. However, once again, we show that the majority of the research employed outdated motivational measures that do not fully grasp the complexity of contemporary motivation theory. The paper concludes on the observation that single-course and curriculum-wide research interventions have yielded no conclusive results on the effect of PBL on intrinsic motivation, and that future research should therefore seek to use up-to-date motivational constructs in more targeted interventions.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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