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This paper proposes a scaffolded concept mapping strategy, which considers a student's (high or low) prior knowledge, and provides flexible learning aids (scaffolding and fading) for reading and drawing a concept map. The goal is that the whole class should progress in synchronized fashion through this strategy, with each student achieving meaningful learning. The scaffolding is tailored to the student's needs, with various levels of support. The increasing demand for scaffolding, and its constant evolution, means that software aids are needed. The authors adopted a systematic instructional design, with associated software, to create a learning environment that supports the execution of the strategy. The paper also investigates whether this strategy improved student learning for 54 undergraduates in a database management system course. The results indicate that the students who used the strategy had better learning achievements than those who only experienced traditional lectures. Moreover, the implementation of the strategy received positive student feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past several years, a team in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE), National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, has been establishing a pedagogical approach to embody embedded systems in the context of robotics. To alleviate the burden on students in the robotics curriculum in their junior and senior years, a training platform on embedded systems with co-design in hardware and software has been developed and fabricated as a supplement for these students. This general-purpose platform has several advantages over commercial training kits for embedded systems. For instance, the programming layer has been brought onto an open-source platform ported by Linux and \muC/OS-II such that it is mostly hardware-independent. Meanwhile, in addition to linking to fundamental library functions provided for robotics, users can program the codes not only in C language, but also through visual programming by means of a graphic interface developed along with the platform, allowing users to concentrate on higher-level robot function design. In other words, the platform facilitates rapid prototyping in robotics design. Meanwhile, a tailored laboratory manual associated with the platform has been designed and used in classes. Based on assessments and evaluation on the students who have completed this course, the curricular training is satisfactory and largely meets the requirements established at the design stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A joint design of source coding and channel coding is proposed to transmit images over error-prone wireless channels. First, the importance of each source output bit is quantified in bit error sensitivity (BES). Next, clustered set partitioning in hierarchical trees (C-SPIHT) is adopted to cluster SPIHT output bits so that the resultant bit-clusters have distinct BES. Then, we prove that equalizing the mean BES of bit-clusters provides the optimal assignment of channel coding rates for the unequal error protection. Besides, to achieve the best PSNR performance under a transmission rate, we use a heuristic method to allocate the source coding rate and channel coding rate. Simulation results show that, under different channel bit error rates, our design not only improves the mean PSNR performance, but also reduces the variations of PSNR performance, i.e. the robustness of PSNR to the channel noise interference is improved. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]