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There is a consensus that case studies in Business English class are helpful to foster critical thinking, but little research has been done to explore how case studies facilitate it. To bridge the gap, the present study uses the revised Bloom's taxonomy as a tool to qualitatively and quantitatively investigate the effect of case studies in Market Leader textbooks on fostering critical thinking based on cognitive load theory. First, the presence of six cognitive levels targeted in the tasks is examined to see how case studies sequence their tasks according to the increase of cognitive complexity. Secondly, the scaffoldings distributed across the sequential tasks are explored to investigate how well they impose appropriate amount of cognitive load on students. Although six cognitive levels are found, there is an inappropriate administration of task scaffolding in a single task or task chain, leading to insufficient or superficial scaffolds and thus inducing high level of cognitive load for students to develop critical thinking. Accordingly, case study writers and teachers are recommended, when designing and adapting sequential tasks, to consider systematic inculcation of cognitive levels among tasks and proper administration of scaffolding with regard to the aspects of task input, conditions, progress and outcome so that a balanced level of cognitive load aligned with the state of working memory capacity of students can be achieved for fostering critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In swarm robotic systems, task allocation is a challenging problem aiming to decompose complex tasks into a series of subtasks. We propose a self-organizing method to allocate a swarm of robots to perform a foraging task consisting of sequentially dependent subtasks. The method regulates the proportion of robots to meet the task demands for given tasks. Our proposed method is based on the response threshold model, mapping the intensity of task demands to the probability of responding to candidate tasks depending on the response threshold. Each robot is suitable for all tasks but some robots have higher probability of taking certain tasks and lower probability of taking others. In our task allocation method, each robot updates its response threshold depending on the associated task demand as well as the number of neighbouring robots performing the task. It relies neither on a centralized mechanism nor on information exchange amongst robots. Repetitive and continuous task allocations lead to the desired task distribution at a swarm level. We also analyzed the mathematical convergence of the task distribution among a swarm of robots. We demonstrate that the method is effective and robust for a foraging task under various conditions on the number of robots, the number of tasks and the size of the arena. Our simulation results may support the hypothesis that social insects use a task allocation method to handle the foraging task required for a colony's survival.

• Propose new BCMS4W-ST model by extending circular multi-state sliding window system • Embed bi-directional rotation mechanism in BCMS4W-ST for finishing sequential tasks • Define spatiotemporal sliding window by consecutive MEs and limited completion time • Use UGF technique incorporated dynamic programming to evaluate system reliability • Investigate element sequencing optimization for BCMS4W-ST to improve reliability In industrial applications, circular systems possess the natural ability to rotate bi-directionally, which essentially provides redundancy to maintain higher system reliability. This paper proposes a new model of bi-directional circular multi-state system with a spatiotemporal sliding window for sequential tasks (BCMS4W-ST). The system contains n mutually independent multi-state elements (MEs) in a circle and can rotate bi-directionally. The system functionality depends on the ability of r consecutive MEs starting from any ME in either counterclockwise or clockwise directions for completing pre-specified sequential tasks within a limited completion time. A universal generating function technique is employed to describe and evaluate the system reliability. The reliability model is built by considering feasible performance assignment schemes of involved consecutive MEs, and a dynamic programming algorithm is introduced to efficiently determine the assignment scheme with the shortest completion time. Numerical experiments have demonstrated the proposed system model and the suggested algorithm. Finally, the element sequencing optimization for BCMS4W-ST is investigated as a viable way to improve system reliability. The proposed model and method support reliability analysis and improvement of circular multi-state sliding window systems with bi-directional rotation mechanism for completing sequential heterogeneous tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measures of scanpath similarity are essential in many domains of eye tracking research. Depending on the question, different calculations are adequate. We (Foerster, Carbone, Koesling, & Schneider, 2011) developed a method with a functional matching procedure suitable for sequential tasks. Here, we report two extensions. We introduced an alignment variant making the method more robust across tasks. We added the possibility to compare scanpaths according to multiple characteristics. The extended method, here called “functionally sequenced scanpath similarity method (FuncSim)” reveals whether gaze characteristics are similar in the same functional units of a task, opposed to when participants are engaged in different functional units. Finally, the advantages of our method are presented and compared to other methods of scanpath similarity calculation.