On Cognitive Style in English Web-based Autonomous Learning

Since Henry Holec first put forward the term‘Autonomy'in 1980's, autonomous learning has been drawing the universal attention of scholars both at home and abroad. Promoting learners' ability of self-regulated learning has been taken as one of the important goals of modern education. College English autonomous learning based on network environment does not mean free study without any restraints or monitoring, but rather involves the self-monitoring and external monitoring. Meanwhile, different learners may have different cognitive styles in their learning processes, which may have an influence on the improvement of the learners' efficiency in the autonomous language learning. Proper monitoring models coordinating with the students' different field cognitive styles.

A Survey into Teachers＇ Roles in Web-based College English Autonomous Learning

The paper, with the backdrop of web-based autonomous learning put forward by the recent college English teaching reform, aims to explore teachers＇ roles in this learning process in students＇ perception through the means of questionnaires and interviews. It further analyzes the possible reasons why students perceive their teachers＇ roles in such a way, in the hope of providing some implications for web-based college English autonomous learning.

Incorporation of Learning Strategies into Web-based Autonomous Listening

The thesis introduces a comparative study of students'autonomous listening practice in a web-based autonomous learning center and the traditional teacher-dominated listening practice in a traditional language lab.The purpose of the study is to find how students'listening strategies differ in these two approaches and thereby to find which one better facilitates students'listening proficiency.

A Review of the Effectiveness of Web-based Course with College English Learners' Autonomous Learning

The paper is a literature review, aiming to examine the effectiveness of web-based college English learning which mainly focuses on learners' autonomous learning. Previous studies indicate that the web-based learning can improve learners' autonomous learning, as well as some problems found in their findings. Therefore, this paper first gives a summary and critique of research studies on the web-based autonomous learning and some factors influencing learners' autonomous learning ability;then, areas that deserve further study are also indicated.

Toward Trustworthy Decision-Making for Autonomous Vehicles:A Robust Reinforcement Learning Approach with Safety Guarantees

While autonomous vehicles are vital components of intelligent transportation systems,ensuring the trustworthiness of decision-making remains a substantial challenge in realizing autonomous driving.Therefore,we present a novel robust reinforcement learning approach with safety guarantees to attain trustworthy decision-making for autonomous vehicles.The proposed technique ensures decision trustworthiness in terms of policy robustness and collision safety.Specifically,an adversary model is learned online to simulate the worst-case uncertainty by approximating the optimal adversarial perturbations on the observed states and environmental dynamics.In addition,an adversarial robust actor-critic algorithm is developed to enable the agent to learn robust policies against perturbations in observations and dynamics.Moreover,we devise a safety mask to guarantee the collision safety of the autonomous driving agent during both the training and testing processes using an interpretable knowledge model known as the Responsibility-Sensitive Safety Model.Finally,the proposed approach is evaluated through both simulations and experiments.These results indicate that the autonomous driving agent can make trustworthy decisions and drastically reduce the number of collisions through robust safety policies.

Results of the virtual simulation teaching method on autonomous learning competencies of undergraduate nursing students

Background:With the continuous development of information technology,most universities use mobile teaching platforms for classroom teaching.With the help of the national virtual simulation experimental teaching project sharing platform,students can enhance self-directed learning through the virtual simulation operations of the project.Purpose:To explore the application of virtual simulation experiment in teaching the fundamentals of nursing practice based on the Platform of the National Virtual Simulation Experiment Teaching Project during the COVID-19 pandemic analyze the impact of this teaching method on the autonomous learning ability of undergraduate nursing students.Methods:Convenience sampling was used to select 121 nursing undergraduates from Y University’s School of Nursing;the online teaching of fundamentals of nursing practice was conducted to the students.After taking the course,questionnaires were distributed to the undergraduate nursing students to collect their perceptions regarding the use of the virtual simulation experiment platform and autonomous learning competencies.Results:Most students expressed their preference for the virtual simulation teaching platform,and their satisfaction with the project evaluation was high 83.05%.They hoped to promote the application in future experimental teaching.Undergraduate nursing students believed that the virtual simulation teaching platform was conducive to cultivating clinical thinking ability,could stimulate learning interest,enhanced autonomous learning competencies.Conclusion:During the pandemic,the virtual simulation teaching platform for a lecture on in nursing education has achieved good results in both the aspects of teaching and student learning.Teachers efficiently used their training time and reduced their teaching burden.Moreover,the laboratory cost was also reduced.For undergraduate nursing students,the system was conducive to cultivating clinical thinking ability,stimulating their interest in learning,enhancing their learning and comprehension abilities and learning initiative.

College English autonomous teaching and learning research and practice

This paper intends to promote a college English autonomous teaching and learning approach by introducing the whole process of its implementation and feedback from the learners. The theoretical and practical framework of this approach is： with multiple autonomous learning research and practice models as its core, with process syllabus as its guidance, with task-based teaching as its essential principle, with group cooperation and reciprocal learning as its means, with extracurricular activities, online learning and self-access center as its learning environment, with formative assessment system as its guarantee and with cultivation of learners＇ comprehensive English practical skills and autonomy as its goal. Through this approach, we provide the learners with a favorable learning environment where they can learn by themselves and learn by reflection and practice so that they can learn how to learn and how to behave and how to survive.

Using TED to Enhance Student Autonomous Learning

Based on the literature review about autonomous learning,the study put forward four steps for using TED to enhance student autonomous learning,which are preparation,activity design,presentation and evaluation. By doing so,both teachers and students can achieve their teaching and learning objectives.

Autonomous Learning and Improving Communicative Competence

Nowadays, English as a world language becomes more and more important. Consequently, English learning becomes more and more popular. As we know, an important object for English learners is to improve their communicative competence. So autonomous learning is a good way to improve communicative competence. In this paper, two terms, autonomous learning and communicative competence, and their relationship will be introduced from the perspective of English learning. Autonomous learning is self-managed learning, which is contrary to passive learning and mechanical learning, according to intrinsic property of language learning. Communicative competence is a concept introduced by Dell Hymes and is discussed and refined by many other linguists. According to Hymes, communicative competence is the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. Communicative competence includes 4 aspects: Possibility, feasibility, appropriateness and performance. Improving communicative competence is the result of autonomous learning, autonomous learning is the motivation of improving communicative competence. English, of course, is a bridge connecting China to the world, and fostering students'communicative competence through autonomous learning is the vital element of improving English learning in China.

On fostering the autonomous learning ability in college English teaching

Autonomous learning is one of the objectives of multi-media college English teaching. On basis of the test of students＇ autonomous learning ability and the analysis of the results, this paper attempts to explore the feasibility of fostering the autonomous learning ability in college English teaching.

On Affective Strategies use in College Students' Autonomous English Learning

Autonomous study emphasizes the learner's initiative,enthusiasm and creativity.In all fields of education,there is growing emphasis on "learner-centered" teaching methods and the ability of learner autonomy.Many experts and scholars have found that learning strategies plays an important role in English language learning,but the importance of affective strategy use in English learning is often ignored by people.Therefore,this paper focuses on the frequencies of affective strategies use in English learning and their relationships so as to enable college students to use positive affective strategies effectively to improve their autonomous learning ability.

Research into college students＇ English autonomous learning capability and the necessity of cultivating metacognitive strategies

Through the research into college students＇ English autonomous learning ability of the non-English major students. That the cause why university students＇ English autonomous learning ability is weak is proved to be that they do not value the use of learning strategies. The use of learning strategies can promote the formation and enhancement of autonomous learning ability of the learners. Metacognitive strategy is a high-level management skill which can enable the learners to plan, regulate, monitor and evaluate actively their own learning process. Massive researches have proved whether metacognitive strategy is used successfully or not can directly affect the student learning result. So, it is necessary for teachers to cultivate and train the students to use metacogitive strategy in the university English teaching.

Cultivation of Autonomous Learning Ability and Intercultural Communication Competence in Foreign Language Teaching

Learner Autonomy has been a hot topic in foreign language learning and teaching since 1960s,especially in relation to life-long skills.As the globalization develops,intercultural communication becomes more and more significant for college students.This essay attempts to explore main approaches to cultivate and improve students' autonomous learning ability and intercultural communication competence in foreign language teaching.

Reinforcement Learning Based Obstacle Avoidance for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Obstacle avoidance becomes a very challenging task for an autonomous underwater vehicle(AUV)in an unknown underwater environment during exploration process.Successful control in such case may be achieved using the model-based classical control techniques like PID and MPC but it required an accurate mathematical model of AUV and may fail due to parametric uncertainties,disturbance,or plant model mismatch.On the other hand,model-free reinforcement learning(RL)algorithm can be designed using actual behavior of AUV plant in an unknown environment and the learned control may not get affected by model uncertainties like a classical control approach.Unlike model-based control model-free RL based controller does not require to manually tune controller with the changing environment.A standard RL based one-step Q-learning based control can be utilized for obstacle avoidance but it has tendency to explore all possible actions at given state which may increase number of collision.Hence a modified Q-learning based control approach is proposed to deal with these problems in unknown environment.Furthermore,function approximation is utilized using neural network(NN)to overcome the continuous states and large statespace problems which arise in RL-based controller design.The proposed modified Q-learning algorithm is validated using MATLAB simulations by comparing it with standard Q-learning algorithm for single obstacle avoidance.Also,the same algorithm is utilized to deal with multiple obstacle avoidance problems.

Deep Imitation Learning for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Convolutional Neural Networks

Providing autonomous systems with an effective quantity and quality of information from a desired task is challenging. In particular, autonomous vehicles, must have a reliable vision of their workspace to robustly accomplish driving functions. Speaking of machine vision, deep learning techniques, and specifically convolutional neural networks, have been proven to be the state of the art technology in the field. As these networks typically involve millions of parameters and elements, designing an optimal architecture for deep learning structures is a difficult task which is globally under investigation by researchers. This study experimentally evaluates the impact of three major architectural properties of convolutional networks, including the number of layers, filters, and filter size on their performance. In this study, several models with different properties are developed,equally trained, and then applied to an autonomous car in a realistic simulation environment. A new ensemble approach is also proposed to calculate and update weights for the models regarding their mean squared error values. Based on design properties,performance results are reported and compared for further investigations. Surprisingly, the number of filters itself does not largely affect the performance efficiency. As a result, proper allocation of filters with different kernel sizes through the layers introduces a considerable improvement in the performance.Achievements of this study will provide the researchers with a clear clue and direction in designing optimal network architectures for deep learning purposes.

Autonomous Maneuver Decisions via Transfer Learning Pigeon-Inspired Optimization for UCAVs in Dogfight Engagements

This paper proposes an autonomous maneuver decision method using transfer learning pigeon-inspired optimization(TLPIO)for unmanned combat aerial vehicles(UCAVs)in dogfight engagements.Firstly,a nonlinear F-16 aircraft model and automatic control system are constructed by a MATLAB/Simulink platform.Secondly,a 3-degrees-of-freedom(3-DOF)aircraft model is used as a maneuvering command generator,and the expanded elemental maneuver library is designed,so that the aircraft state reachable set can be obtained.Then,the game matrix is composed with the air combat situation evaluation function calculated according to the angle and range threats.Finally,a key point is that the objective function to be optimized is designed using the game mixed strategy,and the optimal mixed strategy is obtained by TLPIO.Significantly,the proposed TLPIO does not initialize the population randomly,but adopts the transfer learning method based on Kullback-Leibler(KL)divergence to initialize the population,which improves the search accuracy of the optimization algorithm.Besides,the convergence and time complexity of TLPIO are discussed.Comparison analysis with other classical optimization algorithms highlights the advantage of TLPIO.In the simulation of air combat,three initial scenarios are set,namely,opposite,offensive and defensive conditions.The effectiveness performance of the proposed autonomous maneuver decision method is verified by simulation results.

Reinforcement Learning Behavioral Control for Nonlinear Autonomous System

Behavior-based autonomous systems rely on human intelligence to resolve multi-mission conflicts by designing mission priority rules and nonlinear controllers.In this work,a novel twolayer reinforcement learning behavioral control(RLBC)method is proposed to reduce such dependence by trial-and-error learning.Specifically,in the upper layer,a reinforcement learning mission supervisor(RLMS)is designed to learn the optimal mission priority.Compared with existing mission supervisors,the RLMS improves the dynamic performance of mission priority adjustment by maximizing cumulative rewards and reducing hardware storage demand when using neural networks.In the lower layer,a reinforcement learning controller(RLC)is designed to learn the optimal control policy.Compared with existing behavioral controllers,the RLC reduces the control cost of mission priority adjustment by balancing control performance and consumption.All error signals are proved to be semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded(SGUUB).Simulation results show that the number of mission priority adjustment and the control cost are significantly reduced compared to some existing mission supervisors and behavioral controllers,respectively.

A Combined Reinforcement Learning and Model Predictive Control for Car-Following Maneuver of Autonomous Vehicles

Model predictive control is widely used in the design of autonomous driving algorithms.However,its parameters are sensitive to dynamically varying driving conditions,making it difficult to be implemented into practice.As a result,this study presents a self-learning algorithm based on reinforcement learning to tune a model predictive controller.Specifically,the proposed algorithm is used to extract features of dynamic traffic scenes and adjust the weight coefficients of the model predictive controller.In this method,a risk threshold model is proposed to classify the risk level of the scenes based on the scene features,and aid in the design of the reinforcement learning reward function and ultimately improve the adaptability of the model predictive controller to real-world scenarios.The proposed algorithm is compared to a pure model predictive controller in car-following case.According to the results,the proposed method enables autonomous vehicles to adjust the priority of performance indices reasonably in different scenarios according to risk variations,showing a good scenario adaptability with safety guaranteed.

Reflections on English Listening Autonomous Learning in the Independent College

The self-access learning center emphasizes the principle and significance of student-centeredness rather than teacher-centeredness,which is the focus of the reform of college English in the independent college.To implement belief training program and assist students to grow into proper autonomous learners is the suggestion given when students lack beliefs and motivations.

A learning-based flexible autonomous motion control method for UAV in dynamic unknown environments

This paper presents a deep reinforcement learning(DRL)-based motion control method to provide unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)with additional flexibility while flying across dynamic unknown environments autonomously.This method is applicable in both military and civilian fields such as penetration and rescue.The autonomous motion control problem is addressed through motion planning,action interpretation,trajectory tracking,and vehicle movement within the DRL framework.Novel DRL algorithms are presented by combining two difference-amplifying approaches with traditional DRL methods and are used for solving the motion planning problem.An improved Lyapunov guidance vector field(LGVF)method is used to handle the trajectory-tracking problem and provide guidance control commands for the UAV.In contrast to conventional motion-control approaches,the proposed methods directly map the sensorbased detections and measurements into control signals for the inner loop of the UAV,i.e.,an end-to-end control.The training experiment results show that the novel DRL algorithms provide more than a 20%performance improvement over the state-ofthe-art DRL algorithms.The testing experiment results demonstrate that the controller based on the novel DRL and LGVF,which is only trained once in a static environment,enables the UAV to fly autonomously in various dynamic unknown environments.Thus,the proposed technique provides strong flexibility for the controller.