Using data from the PISA 2006 field trial, Rasch item response models are used to demonstrate that extreme response tendency was exhibited differentially across culturally distinct countries when answering Likert type attitude items. A single attitude scale is examined across eight culturally distinct countries in this paper. Two avenues to ameliorate this tendency are explored: first using dic...

This article explores the applicability of Extreme Programming in a scientific research context. The cultural environment at a government research center differs from the customer-centric business view. The chief theoretical difficulty lies in defining the customer to developer relationship. Specifically, can Extreme Programming be utilized when the developer and customer are the same person? E...

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Extreme Programming (XP) shows several interesting approaches which are very attractive for education. It is centered around early and incremental creation of working software. In the following, the chances XP offers for class are shown – especially for use in a class project, but also for practical phases in all lessons where programming is useful. Finally several common problems which can occ...

Let S be a semigroup. In certain cases we give some characterizations of extreme amenability of S and we show that in these cases extreme left amenability and extreme right amenability of S are equivalent. Also when S is a compact topological semigroup, we characterize extremely left amenable subalgebras of C(S), where C(S) is the space of all continuous bounded real valued functions on S

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Engaging and motivating students is always a challenge particularly when teaching subjects that do not have a high practical content. In this situation it was also necessary to present an overview of the subject to be studied while at the same time introduce new members to the existing class. The XP Game is a simple and interactive set of activities that simulates the eXtreme Programming (XP) d...