Journal articles on the topic 'Hypothetical lecture design'

This study aims to develop an Interdisciplinary Hypothetical Inquiry (IHI) learning model that is (1) feasible and practical, and (2) determine the effectiveness of this model in improving undergraduate students' higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) and computational thinking skills (CTS) in solving social problems in social science (IPS) education study programs. This research uses a design and development research approach which includes six stages: (1) problem identification, (2) goal description, (3) product design and development, (4) product testing, (5) evaluation of test results, and (6) communication of results. The development of the IHI learning model was tested through (1) feasibility tests by expert lecturers in the field of education, evaluation experts, and social science experts; (2) practicality test through observation of learning implementation and responses from lecturers and student users; and (3) effectiveness test using a quasi-experimental method with a sample of undergraduate students in Social Sciences Education, Yogyakarta State University. The research instruments include expert lecturer review and assessment sheets, HOT and CT test questions, observation sheets on the implementation of the IHI model, and user response questionnaires. The research results show that the IHI learning model (1) is feasible based on the assessment of expert lecturers; (2) practical with an implementation score of 4.54 (very practical), a lecturer response score of 3.9 (very practical), and a student response score of 4.5 (very practical); and (3) potentially effective based on the higher N-Gain HOTS and CTS values in the experimental class (0.63 and 0.56) compared to the control class (0.59 and 0.15), as well as the t-test results with significance value 0.00 (p < 0.05). The student-centered IHI learning model encourages collaboration and democratic learning through the stages: 1) problem orientation, (2) hypothesis brainstorming, (3) hypothesis development, (4) investigation design, (5) investigation data collection, (6) interpretation of investigation data, (7) reporting and communication of results. This research concludes that the IHI learning model is feasible, practical, and effective for increasing HOTS and CTS for students in the social studies education study program.

The determining factors for the success of the learning process are students and the teacher/lecturer as the person most responsible for implementing the learning process. This study aimed to describe the process of learning reflection as the professional development of Elementary School Teacher Education (ESTE) lecturers based on Didactical Design Research (DDR) in learning the Elementary Science Basic Concepts course. The method used in this research is qualitative. The research design used is phenomenology. This research was conducted at the ESTE Study Program, one of the tertiary institutions in Cimahi City. The participants in this study were an ESTE lecturer. Data collection techniques used in this study were participant observation, interviews, and focus group discussions. The data analysis technique used was Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The results showed that there were several learning obstacles in the form of epistemological obstacles, which occurred due to students' lack of knowledge related to the concepts they were learning and caused students to experience misconceptions. Then a hypothetical learning trajectory is compiled as a series of learning paths that students go through to achieve more meaningful learning goals. The limitation in this study is that the analysis of each step in the DDR process has not been fully described, so that for further research each step can be clearly described to see a more real impact from the lecturer professional development process that has been implemented.

There are many factors that influence the less successful learning activity in special needs education study program at UNINUS. Those factors among others lecturer still not maximize students’ creative thinking abilities, lack of attention to students’ capabilities and experiences, less attention to students’ complaints related to learning, less in valuing students’ opinions and less recognizing and strengthen students’ positive actions. Therefore, it is necessary to develop learning model that can improve students’ creative thinking ability. This study is trying to develop the learning model based on collaborative counseling that will be done in three years. The purpose of this first year study is to make draft of a model that has been tested its feasibility. To achieve the objectives,the researcher implement Research and Development design through these following stages:preliminary study, designing hypothetical model, testing the feasibility of hypothetical model, improving the hypothetical model,field testing of hypothetical model, and designing of the final model based on counseling collaborative learning. The subjects of this research were students and lecturers. The data was collected using questionnaire and interview and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.The results shows that most of the student are in the middle category. It also reveals that the process of learning has not optimally develop students creative thinking ability. Based on the result it was recommended for teachers and counselors to develop students’ creative thinking, to build a harmonious relationship, and to build partnership and collaboration with students.

The increasing use of AI among students has transformed learning habits, often shifting from deep conceptual understanding to quick solution retrieval. Mathematics education in aerospace engineering requires innovative approaches to enhance students' conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. This study implemented Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) for Aerospace Engineering Students (AES) using a design research methodology. It is focused only on the development of the hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) in learning integration strategies for the first and second year of AES using artificial intelligence (AI). After working with the HLT during the first and second cycle, this study discovered that the students' high expectations of AI while solving integration approaches did not match. Students still require more assistance to grasp the AI answer, such as lecturer clarification or video explanation on YouTube. Students frequently use AI to solve problems without fully comprehending the actual procedure. Due to the time constraints, they use the AI answer immediately rather than paraphrasing it to their understanding. Consequently, we found that students realise their inability to depend completely on AI for deep understanding. As a result, AI is used to facilitate the recollection of existing knowledge or the confirmation of the final response rather than to understand new material. AI supports teaching but is not a substitute.

Abstract- It is generally predicted that the academic performance of clinical lecturers of the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery residency program of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Diponegoro-Dr.Kariadi General Hospital has met the standards. However, the student's on-time graduation rate is still low. The existence of this gap requires an accurate and informative model of monitoring and evaluation of the clinical lecturers' academic performance. The purpose of this research was (1) analyzing the factual model of monitoring and evaluation of the clinical lecturers' academic performance, (2) analyzing the hypothetical model of monitoring and evaluation of the clinical lecturers' academic performance as needed, and (3) analyzing the feasibility of the developed monitoring and evaluation model of the clinical lecturers' academic performance of the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery residency program of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Diponegoro-Dr Kariadi General Hospital. The research method used was a research and development design with three main steps, namely a preliminary study to find factual model, development study to find hypothetical model, and feasibility study to find the feasibility of the model. Qualitative approach. The sources of the data in this research were informants (lecturers, students, managers), data on the educational process, behaviour and habits regarding specialist medical education, academic monitoring and evaluation, and documents related to learning activity archives. The data collection techniques/tools used in this research were the interviews/interview guidelines, observations/observation sheets, and documents. Data validity checking was done through triangulation techniques of research resources and tools. Data analysis techniques used in this research was interactive techniques through data collection, data reduction, data display and conclusions. The results showed that (1) factual model of the implementation of monitoring and evaluation (planning, implementation, and evaluation) was still limited to the fulfilment of accreditation for institutions and requirements for promotion and position, (2) the development model of monitoring and evaluation was already directed at meeting the accreditation standards, and strengthening the quantity and quality of student graduate, (3) the feasibility of the monitoring and evaluation model was feasible to be used as a model of monitoring and evaluation of the clinical lecturers' academic performance as needed in the Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery residency program of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Diponegoro-Dr Kariadi General Hospital. These results were evidenced by the number of graduates, the on-time graduation rate, and the better quality of the graduates. Suggestions: (1) The need of synergistic collaboration between clinical lecturers and the management of Dr Kariadi General Hospital coordinated by the Education Coordinating Committee of Dr Kariadi General Hospital in implementing the monitoring and evaluation model of the academic performance of clinical lecturers in Dr Kariadi General Hospital, (2) the need of consistency in implementing the monitoring and evaluation guidelines carried out by hospital managers, the Faculty of Medicine of Diponegoro University, clinical lecturers, and students, (3) the need of a legal platform guaranteeing the continuous implementation of monitoring and evaluation.

Biology is one of the fields of study that has a lot of scopes that have the potential to be directed to the entrepreneurship aspect. Currently, there is no report on a particular learning model that prepares prospective teachers to design and implement businesses related to the use of biological principles, processes, and products. This study aims to develop and validate an entrepreneur-oriented learning model of biology in higher education, later known as CAPAB(L)E. CAPAB(L)E, stands for Characterizing, Analyzing, Prototyping, Assessing, Building up, and Exposing, a bioentrepreneurship learning model to promote biology education students’ entrepreneurial skills was successfully designed through this research. This design-based research (DBR) used the ADDIE model, which consisted of five stages, namely: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. The logical validation sheet consisted of six objective items with four Likert scales and an open question regarding recommendations for improving the developed learning model filled by two validators or experts (a lecturer in biology learning design and a lecturer in entrepreneurship). In addition, to obtain an overview of students’ perceptions of the CAPAB(L)E learning model, a questionnaire was used containing six items of Likert Scale 4-level statements and an open question about skills that were most trained during learning. Research data were analyzed descriptively. The results of the logical validation of the hypothetical model of CAPAB(L)E bioentrepreneurship learning model indicate that the learning model is valid and can be implemented, with a score of 81,25%. The students’ perceptions are generally positive on the structure and content of the material. Students suggest using teamwork strategies in planning and implementing student businesses. Based on this research results, it is necessary to carry out further research to determine the effectiveness of CAPAB(L)E bioentrepreneurship learning on students’ skills, knowledge, and attitudes toward entrepreneurship.

The lack of diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a significant issue for the sector. Many organisations and educators have identified lack of representation of historically marginalised groups within teaching materials as a potential barrier to students feeling that a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) career is something that they can aspire to. A key barrier to addressing the issue is providing accessible and effective evidence-based approaches for educators to implement. In this study, we explore the potential for adapting presentation slides within lectures to ‘humanise’ the scientists involved, presenting their full names and photographs alongside a Harvard style reference. The intervention stems from an initial assumption that many formal scientific referencing systems are demographic-neutral and exacerbate prevailing perceptions that STEM is not diverse. We adopt a questionnaire based methodology surveying 161 bioscience undergraduates and postgraduates at a UK civic university. We first establish that students project assumptions about the gender, location, and ethnicity of the author of a hypothetical reference, with over 50% of students assuming they are male and Western. We then explore what students think of the humanised slide design, concluding that many students see it as good pedagogical practice with some students positively changing their perceptions about diversity in science. We were unable to compare responses by participant ethnic group, but find preliminary evidence that female and non-binary students are more likely to see this as good pedagogical practice, perhaps reflecting white male fragility in being exposed to initiatives designed to highlight diversity. We conclude that humanised powerpoint slides are a potentially effective tool to highlight diversity of scientists within existing research-led teaching, but highlight that this is only a small intervention that needs to sit alongside more substantive work to address the lack of diversity in STEM.

Due to the poor instruction process during the Covid-19 Pandemic, especially in mathematics, students frequently need help with data literacy. To overcome these obstacles, they must improve their thinking skills. This study aims to enhance the quality of mathematics instruction, especially students' thinking skills, by implementing Lesson Study to develop sharing and jumping tasks. This qualitative descriptive research was conducted at one of the senior high schools and universities in Manokwari, West Papua, with their students as the research subject. The lesson study was implemented in two cycles through instruction at school and lectures at the university. The lesson study consists of three processes: plan, do, and see. The hypothetical learning trajectory was developed at the lesson design stage and then tested at the teaching-learning stage. The open class results were then analyzed during the reflection step to redesign the sharing and jumping tasks. The success of the research was determined through field notes taken from teachers and students. The frequency distribution table is used as the topic matter. The findings revealed that students' thinking skills developed, indicating they were more interested than in the previous teaching and learning process. The learning process was more exciting and enhanced conceptual comprehension. Because learning was communicable, students were more satisfied. They were more engaged and required further thought to comprehend the topic matter. Also, they produce a variety of responses, which is only feasible if they are capable of critical thought.

Hypothetically, a student could attend a class, listen to lectures, and pass the class without knowing or interacting with other students. What happens to the network when the classroom expectations change? For example, there is a coursework expectation that students exchange contact information, or the instructor uses collaborative learning practices. Or what if the principal investigator (PI) of a scientific team goes on a sabbatical? This study uses the framework of classrooms because of their relatability across science. We asked how do different instructor coursework expectations change network structures within a classroom or other learning environments? A social network survey was administered at the start and end of the semester (pre- and post-test) in six university sociology classrooms to explore how expectations impacted the communication and learning networks. We found practical changes in course expectations impact the communication and learning networks, suggesting that instructors, facilitators, and others could be the archintorTM (architect+instructor+facilitator) of the network. Understanding that expectations can impact a network’s structure marks a paradigm shift in educational assessment approaches. If the archintorTM has identified the “optimal” network structure, then their task is to design expectations that result in specific interactions that ultimately improve student achievement and success. This work provides recommendations for classroom archintorsTM to create the most impactful classroom networks. Future research should extend beyond education and classroom networks and identify the best or desired networks in other areas like public policy, urban planning, and more. If these “optimal” networks were identified, an archintorTM could design a social network to solve wicked problems, manage a crisis, and create social change.

The formation of united territorial communities (UTC) in Ukraine creates favourable conditions for the development of territories. UTC is given more authority to manage resources and revenues and create economically viable facilities. One of such economically promising objects may be agricultural complexes because as of 2017, the Lviv region provided itself with greenhouse vegetables by only 30%, and most Ukrainian products are intended for export. Foreign experience in designing agricultural complexes is often represented by objects of mixed-use that also include public use functions. Much of the modern complexes of organic production include the function of agritourism, while in Ukraine typologically similar agro-industrial are ordinary greenhouses or fields. The territories of such agricultural complexes do not have a great variety of functional zones or landscape techniques, in contrast to foreign examples. The most common greenhouse system of cultivation is hydroponics - a method of growing plants without soil, using water with mineral nutrient solutions. The most effective subsystem is aquaponics - a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture. It needs the least additional fertilizers and is the most recirculating and self-sufficient. Based on the results of the analysis of world and Ukrainian experience, a universal functional-planning scheme of the organization of agricultural complexes for the growing of organic products based on aquaponics has been formulated. According to the derived scheme, an architectural project of an agricultural complex for the growing of organic products on a hypothetical site in the Lviv region is proposed. Taking into account modern design experience, in addition to production, public functions are also provided, in particular the possibility of holding conferences, lectures, exhibitions and trade fairs. This will form a tourist magnet in the field of environmental technology, and help in the spread of environmental awareness in society.

Eliminating illiteracy has been one of the Nigerian government’s top priorities since its independence in 1960. The ministries of education and communication in Nigeria believe that “literacy” and “numeracy” are pivotal for economic, academic, and all-round societal development in the new media age. To ensure that literacy and numeracy transcend all borders of Nigeria, the federal and state governments often strategize on providing students with well-designed learning environments, technologies, teachers, and academic resources that facilitate functional education. This, perhaps, explains why the Edo State Basic Education Board (ESBED), the World Bank and Bridge International Academies (BIA) formed a public-private partnership (PPP) to develop the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (Edo-BEST) 1.0 and 2.0 programmes that focus on promoting primary and secondary schools’ education respectively in Edo State, Nigeria. The EdoBEST@Home unimodal mobile-based remote learning programme offers interactive audio lectures, digital self-study activity packages, digital stories, mobile interactive quizzes, learning aids for parents, and virtual classrooms allowing teacher-student interaction. Moored in Marshall McLuhan’s Technological Determinism Theory (TDT), this study probes the effectiveness and degree of attainment of the objectives of the EdoBEST 2.0 programme. Using a survey as a research design and a questionnaire as an instrument of data collection, three secondary schools (Ogbe Boys Grammar School, Idia College and Asoro Grammar School) in Benin City, the capital of Edo State were examined. The study combined this with key person interviews (KPIs) and triangulated the methodology with a historical-analytic technique. The findings of the study showed that the EdoBEST 2.0 programme has not been able to enhance secondary school education via the new media because the purported and widely publicized new media gadgets disbursed by the Edo State government to secondary school students and teachers, are to a large extent, merely hypothetical as the students and teachers have no access to the gadgets. With a population of over 4 million individuals, half of whom are under 30, Edo State lacks the connection and technological access necessary for remote learning. The study, therefore, recommended that the EdoBEST 2.0 programme be revamped and all factors hampering its set goals be addressed to ensure a positive impact on the secondary school educational ecosystem in Edo State. The federal and state governments must also review the academic syllabi to factor in the compulsory utilisation of new media technologies in teaching and learning and gradually phase out old-fashioned traditional teaching and learning methods such as the use of chalk and blackboard and the use of lesson notebooks without any digital backup.

Several years ago, my colleagues and I developed a project-based assignment where students create a fictional animal and predict its ability to thrive in a hypothetical environment by examining the interactions between different combinations of designs for selected body systems. This assignment, which was implemented at different types of institutions and for different levels of students, can be readily adapted to either lecture-based or laboratory courses. Here I describe how students design a fictional animal as a semester-long collaborative group project in an interactive lecture course on comparative animal physiology of vertebrates. The fictional animal project aligns with several course learning goals including 1) Acquire a fundamental knowledge of “how animals work” and 2) Exercise responsibility and teamwork. Students learn integration of body systems as they choose a random fictional animal, consider if this animal can survive in a specific environment, and create the animal. Creation of the animal, which cannot closely resemble an extant animal, is scaffolded throughout the semester as students complete question sets where they describe the structure and function of the systems and consider potential trade-offs and physiological constraints. At the end of the semester, we hold a fictional animal showcase where students share highlights about their animal and its environment. Student learning is assessed through the questions sets, which are submitted as homework, and the class presentation; this group project contributes to 25% of the overall course grade and replaces more traditional assessments such as exams. Examples of fictional animals demonstrate how students must consider interactions and functions between different systems in their design; in addition, they must think about the metabolic requirements of their animal as they decide its lifestyle. Reflection data from students strongly supports that designing a fictional animal helps them understand how physiological systems function together; students gain a new or deeper awareness and appreciation of trade-offs in function as well as constraints on physiological processes. As this project continues to evolve, students will have the freedom to choose a creative format for the fictional animal showcase, such as a recorded or live oral presentation, a podcast, a tri-fold brochure, a poster, an educational game, or an illustrated story. All protocols were approved by Rice University IRB (Protocol FY2017-294). Rice University Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (OURI). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Background: Education Development Center (EDC) of the IRAN Ministry of Health conducted a national webinar and evaluated it to know what it achieved, compared to an in-person conference.
 Methods: The evaluation was arranged with mixed method design in two quantitative and qualitative parts. In quantitative part, the data was collected through an electronic survey with census sampling. The number and distribution of participants was calculated, the quality of each lecture was rated on a 5-point Likert scale and the cost-effectiveness was estimated by calculating the actual cost. Data collection was done in the qualitative part with formal and informal interviews based on convenience sampling and content analyzed.
 Results: High accessibility, synchronous communication, and wide coverage with convenient diversity indicate proper publicity and well acceptance of the seminar. Increasing awareness, inspiring a new attitude, resolving some ambiguities and 82% satisfaction rate show the overall success of the seminar. Temporal constraints, limited interaction, delay in communication or disconnection and ambiguity of sound were things that aroused dissatisfaction of audience. 0.8% cost of the webinar compare with a hypothetical in-person conference shows acceptable cost -effectiveness.
 Conclusion: Both in the corona virus pandemic or the post-pandemic era, if the purpose of the educational program is to inform, increasing awareness and motivate the audience, conducting such a national webinar is optimal and recommended and increase equitable access to national experts

Integrating Basic Translation Skills and Twenty-first Century Skills with collaborative i-tools Moodle and SmartCAT is one of the greatest challenges in Translation courses. Product validation is carried out by translation, Flipped Learning, instructional design and Learning Management System experts. To obtain expert consensus regarding the validity of the developed hypothetical model, the Delphi technique is used, namely the conclusion of the results of various expert opinions that are collected, searched for points of similarity, and summarized so that it becomes a common consensus. The consensus of experts includes the following aspects: (1) identification of problems through needs analysis- (2) priority determination, namely determining the type and manufacture of the product- (3) determining program objectives, and (4) determining solutions to solve problems. The next stage is to try it out on 10 lecturers and 60 students in the Translation course in the English Education Study Program. This trial was used to determine the impact of Flipped Learning and the subject’s perception of the application of the product in a lecture activity. The conclusion of the consensus results of the validity of the experts and the perception of the subject in this study were analyzed by the percentage method, while the determination of the impact of learning with the average difference test of the subject’s value. This research is expected to have a positive impact on Moodle-based Flipped Learning through the developed product, which can significantly improve students’ Basic Translation Skills and Twenty-First Century Skills.

This study aims to analyze tourism education activities, especially regarding the management of practical learning at vocational tertiary institutions in the field of tourism. The research method uses a qualitative approach with a case study type approach, mixed methods sequential exploratory design. Resource persons or research informants consist of. Directors, Heads of Study Programs, Lecturers, Practical Instructors, Heads of Internal Quality Assurance, and students at the two institutions that are the locus of research. The results of the study show that practical learning activities at vocational tourism colleges have not been managed optimally. Furthermore, this study offers a competency-based practical learning quality management hypothetical model that is integrated with industry as an alternative solution in managing practical learning activities to improve the quality of learning outcomes and produce graduates who have skills and competencies that meet industry standards and needs. This model carries university collaboration. tourism with the hospitality industry in organizing practical learning activities. This form of collaboration is realized by involving industrial practitioners in a number of learning activities, including 1) Curriculum development and alignment; 2) Formation of a Steering Committee; 3) Teaching practitioner program; 4) Implementation of fieldwork practice programs; 5) Sending students to work part-time (daily workers); and 6) Guest lectures from industry practitioners. Recommendations and implications of this research are the need to build good collaboration between universities and industry in managing practical learning activities that link and match.

Over the past decade psychology researchers have begun adopting practices that promote openness and transparency. While these practices are increasingly reflected in undergraduate psychology curricula, pedagogical research has not systematically examined whether instruction on open science practices improves students’ conceptual understanding of research methods. We developed the Open Science Concept Inventory (OSCI) to evaluate the impact of integrating open science practices into research methods courses. First, we created a set of hypothetical dilemmas related to a range of open science concepts and elicited open-ended responses from undergraduates (N = 64, Study 1). Based on the responses, we created a 40-item multiple-choice questionnaire, which we administered to a new group of participants (N = 262, Study 2) and used item response theory to select 33 items for the final OSCI. Finally, in two implementation rounds across two semesters (Study 3, total N = 37), we evaluated students’ learning gains with the OSCI in a pre-test/post-test design. The implementation rounds involved new materials on open science for a psychology research methods course, including video lectures that situated questionable research practices in the current norms of science and introduced emerging solutions. After excluding extremely fast survey responders, an exploratory analysis showed learning gains among students who expended appropriate effort when completing the OSCI. By systematically evaluating a tool that is easily integrated into existing curricula, we aim to facilitate the adoption of open science practices in undergraduate instruction and the assessment of students’ conceptual foundations for conducting robust and transparent research.

The idea of this special issue was to give space to contributions that essentially included empirical research or development of technologies, such as inclusive virtual reality, and to analyze their influence on learning or its improvement. We were thinking of the metaverse, with the technology that it presents or with hypothetical new platforms that are emerging. The perspective was to improve and expand pedagogical possibilities in specific aspects, where it was more difficult to improve. This is the case with those offered by traditional symbolic systems, whose advantages are obvious and refined by tradition and culture: those related to learning and acquisition of reading and writing, learning and acquisition of abilities to produce computer codes (computational thinking) and, finally, those related to learning and acquisition of mathematical symbolic writing. We briefly analyzed the problems and vicissitudes to deal with the novelty of the approach and possible doubts about the validity of the call for papers. It can be said that, although the monograph has brought together ten works of sufficient quality, most of the objectives set forth have not been achieved. Of the papers published here, four are exclusively about the metaverse. A very interesting one gives us an idea, after some conditions that guarantee its reliability, about the state of what is being done with metaverse in classroom practice in the design and implementation phases. Finally, there has been an aspect in which the objective has not been achieved at all, and this could cause us to reflect on some proposals made in terms of metaverse speculation. There was no contribution among the accepted papers or the many rejected manuscripts on the metaverse as a new code capable of supporting the communication and representation of thought or similar similar to how key codes, the basis of communication and learning, do so: alphabetic writing, writing through numerical codes and program codes, computational thinking. Cuando se convocó, la idea de este número era dar espacio a contribuciones que esencialmente incluyesen alguna investigación empírica, o el desarrollo de tecnologías, como la realidad virtual inclusiva, analizando su influencia en el aprendizaje, o en su mejora. Pensábamos en metaverso, con la tecnología que se nos presenta o con las hipotéticas nuevas plataformas que fuesen surgiendo. La perspectiva era la de mejorar y ampliar posibilidades pedagógicas en aspectos concretos, donde era más difícil obtener mejora, como son las que ofrecen los sistemas simbólicos tradicionales. Cuyas ventajas son obvias y depuradas por la tradición y la cultura: las relacionadas con el aprendizaje y adquisición de la lectura y de la escritura, el aprendizaje y adquisición de habilidades para producir códigos informáticos (pensamiento computacional) y, por último, las relacionadas con el aprendizaje y la adquisición de la escritura simbólica matemática.
 Analizamos sucintamente los problemas y vicisitudes para superar la novedad del planteamiento y posibles dudas sobre la validez de la convocatoria.
 Se puede decir que, si bien el monográfico ha conseguido reunir diez trabajos de calidad suficiente, la mayor parte de los objetivos planteados no han sido conseguidos.
 De los trabajos publicados, cuatro son exclusivamente sobre metaverso. Uno muy interesante que nos da idea, tras unas condiciones que garantizan su fiabilidad, acerca del estado de lo que se hace con metaverso en la práctica de aula en las fases de diseño e implementación.
 Por último, ha habido un aspecto donde el objetivo no ha sido en absoluto conseguido, y eso podría hacernos reflexionar sobre algunas propuestas que en el plano de las especulaciones sobre metaverso se han hecho. No ha habido ninguna aportación, ni entre las contribuciones aceptadas ni entre las numerosas que se han rechazado, de metaverso como un nuevo código capar de soportar la comunicación y la representación del pensamiento y de las ideas similar a como lo hacen los códigos claves, base de la comunicación y del aprendizaje: La escritura alfabética, la escritura a través de códigos numéricos y la de códigos de programas, el pensamiento computacional.

Abstract STUDY QUESTION Does 8 weeks of daily low-dose hCG administration affect androgen or inhibin B levels in serum and/or follicular fluid (FF) during the subsequent IVF/ICSI cycle in women with low ovarian reserve? SUMMARY ANSWER Androgen levels in serum and FF, and inhibin B levels in serum, decreased following 8 weeks of hCG administration. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Recently, we showed that 8 weeks of low-dose hCG priming, in between two IVF/ICSI treatments in women with poor ovarian responder (anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) <6.29 pmol/l), resulted in more follicles of 2–5 mm and less of 6–10-mm diameter at the start of stimulation and more retrieved oocytes at oocyte retrieval. The duration of stimulation and total FSH consumption was increased in the IVF/ICSI cycle after priming. Hypothetically, hCG priming stimulates intraovarian androgen synthesis causing upregulation of FSH receptors (FSHR) on granulosa cells. It was therefore unexpected that antral follicles were smaller and the stimulation time longer after hCG priming. This might indicate a different mechanism of action than previously suggested. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION Blood samples were drawn on stimulation day 1, stimulation days 5–6, trigger day, day of oocyte retrieval, and oocyte retrieval + 5 days in the IVF/ICSI cycles before and after hCG priming (the control and study cycles, respectively). FF was collected from the first aspirated follicle on both sides during oocyte retrieval in both cycles. The study was conducted as a prospective, paired, non-blinded, single-center study conducted between January 2021 and July 2021 at a tertiary care center. The 20 participants underwent two identical IVF/ICSI treatments: a control cycle including elective freezing of all blastocysts and a study cycle with fresh blastocyst transfer. The control and study cycles were separated by 8 weeks (two menstrual cycles) of hCG priming by daily injections of 260 IU recombinant hCG. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS Women aged 18–40 years with cycle lengths of 23–35 days and AMH <6.29 pmol/l were included. Control and study IVF/ICSI cycles were performed in a fixed GnRH-antagonist protocol. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Inhibin B was lower on stimulation day 1 after hCG priming (P = 0.05). Dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) was significantly lower on stimulation day 1 (P = 0.03), and DHEAS and androstenedione were significantly lower on stimulation days 5–6 after priming (P = 0.02 and P = 0.02) The testosterone level in FF was significantly lower in the study cycle (P = 0.008), while the concentrations of inhibin B and androstenedione in the FF did not differ between the study and control cycles. A lower serum inhibin B in the study cycle corresponds with the antral follicles being significantly smaller after priming, and this probably led to a longer stimulation time in the study cycle. This contradicts the theory that hCG priming increases the intraovarian androgen level, which in turn causes more FSHR on developing (antral up to preovulatory) follicles. However, based on this study, we cannot rule out that an increased intra-follicular androgen level was present at initiation of the ovarian stimulation, without elevating the androgen level in serum and that an increased androgen level may have rescued some small antral follicles that would have otherwise undergone atresia by the end of the previous menstrual cycle. We retrieved significantly more oocytes in the Study cycle, and the production of estradiol per follicle ≥10-mm diameter on trigger day was comparable in the study and control cycles, suggesting that the rescued follicles were competent in terms of producing oocytes and steroid hormones. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION The sample size was small, and the study was not randomized. Our study design did not allow for the measurement and comparison of androgen levels or FSHR expression in small antral follicles before and immediately after the hCG-priming period. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS The results make us question the mechanism of action behind hCG priming prior to IVF. It is important to design a study with the puncture of small antral follicles before and immediately after priming to investigate the proposed hypothesis. Improved cycle outcomes, i.e. more retrieved oocytes, must be confirmed in a larger, preferably randomized study. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This study was funded by an unrestricted grant from Gedeon Richter awarded to the institution. A.P. reports personal consulting fees from PregLem SA, Novo Nordisk A/S, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S, Gedeon Richter Nordics AB, Cryos International, and Merck A/S outside the submitted work and payment or honoraria for lectures from Gedeon Richter Nordics AB, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S, Merck A/S, and Theramex and Organon & Co and payment for participation in an advisory board for Preglem. Grants to the institution have been provided by Gedeon Richter Nordics AB, Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S, and Merck A/S, and equipment and travel support has been given to the institution by Gedeon Richter Nordics AB. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04643925.

Curating content is a key part of a social media user’s profile—and recent reports reveal an upward trend in the curating of video, image, and text based content (Meeker). Through “engagement”—in other words, posting content, liking, sharing, or commenting on another’s content—that content becomes part of the user’s profile and contributes to their “activity.” A user’s understanding of another user in the network depends on curation, on what another user posts and their engagement with the content. It is worth while studying content curation in terms of meaning, which involves clarifying how a user makes themselves meaningful depending on what they curate and their engagement with the curated content, and also how other users gain meaning from someone else’s curatorial work, determining how they position themselves in relation to others. This essay analyses the structure of meaning underpinning an individual’s act of curating content in social media, each time they publish content (“post”) or republish content (like, share, and/or comment) on their social media homepage. C.S. Peirce’s semiotics is the method for clarifying this structure. Based on an application of Peirce’s tripartite structure of semiosis, it becomes clear that curated content is a sign representative of the user who posted the content, the poster, and that, with the range of ways this representation takes place, it is possible to begin a classification of social media signs. Background: Meaning, Self-Documentation, Semiotics The study of meaning is a growing field in the research of social media. Lomborg makes a case for the importance of studying meaning due to social media’s “constant flux” and evolution as an object of study. In this context, structures of meaning are a stabilising component that provides “the key to explaining continuity and change in social media over time” (Lomborg 1). In her study of social media, Langlois defines meaning broadly as something we create and find. “Finding meaning” and “making sense” of the world, people, and objects involves the whole gamut of decoding meaning and applying social and cultural ideas as well as a more Deleuzian pedagogy of “real thinking” which involves creating new concepts (Deleuze Difference; Dillet). An analysis of the structure of meaning underpinning content curation extends existing research on self-documentation online, self-presentation, and personal media assemblages/personal media archives (see Doster; Good; Orkibi; Storsul). As noted by Langlois, “There has been a massive popularisation of self-documentation” (114) and it involves more than publishing reflections on blogging and microblogging platforms. It involves forms that focus on “self-presence” and “self-actualisation,” including sharing pictures, videos, and memes, writing comments, and “the use of buttons such as the Facebook ‘Like’ button” (117). Recent research discusses how Facebook profiles use the platform to collate content in a manner similar to that of diaries and scrapbooks. Good explains how social media users today and users in the print era use “tokens” to communicate taste and build cultural capital. An “interest token” is content that is shared: in the print era these are mainly clippings and in social media these are “digital articles” such as links to video clips as well as liking friends’ posts (568). Crucial to the content in both eras is the latent presence of the user. For example, in Victorian Britain contributors to confession books would hint at their desires through textual quotations. Good describes much the same structure of meaning underlying a user’s publishing of content on Facebook: “Tokens, when analysed as part of a broader media assemblage in a Facebook page or scrapbook page, can essentially speak volumes about a user’s cultural aspirations, dispositions and desires for social distinction” (568). Doster also reiterates this point about how digital technology enables users to associate themselves with digital content in order to represent themselves in complex ways. The structure of meaning analysed in this essay is found in the very phenomena identified above: when a user, by publishing content or republishing another’s content, is using their profile to curate content which is interpreted by other users to say something about them. As noted, current social media research discusses how, on platforms such as Facebook, users collate content as an important strategy of self-documentation and self-presentation. Other research examines in detail the conditions influencing the production of meaning (Langlois), identifying the software algorithms described by Chowdhry that decide what content social media users see on the platform, influencing what they curate in the first place—for example, when a user republishes, by liking, sharing, and/or commenting on, another friend’s post, a social organisation’s post, or even an advertisement. This paper, however, analyses the structure of meaning specifically. Peirce’s semiotics is a conceptual framework that explains how this structure of meaning works. Semiotics has a fruitful history of explaining in detail the problem of meaning. Chuang and Huang are clear about the benefit of Peircian semiotics as a conceptual framework for systematically presenting and processing an object of analysis (341); Metro-Roland is also adamant about the value of Peirce’s theory for offering a “robust heuristic tool” (272); and Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2: The Time-Image famously praises Peirce’s Sign as an alternative to Ferdinand de Saussure’s more restrictive schema in semiology (Dawkins). Semiotics clarifies how an individual act of content curation is a triadic Sign (Representamen, Object, Interpretant). This triadic structure explains how posters are represented by content, and, in turn, how the content is interpreted to be representative of them. Following from semiotics, this paper seeks to “identify signs and describe their functioning” (Culler viii) and beyond its scope is an analysis of the conditions under which the Sign is produced. The Sign, According to C.S. Peirce Peirce’s semiotic, a branch of philosophy, is triadic. He proposes that we can think “only in terms of three”, and, from these “modes of valency,” and based also on his critique of Kant (Deledalle), he claims three phenomenological categories of being: Firstness and the state of possibility; Secondness and the state of existential relations; and Thirdness and the state of certainty, reasoning, and general rules. In relation to these three modes of being he claims that the way we make sense of the world—a process he names semiosis—also has three constituents. The three constituents of semiosis inform the three core elements of Peirce’s triadic Sign. There is the Sign itself, which Peirce calls the Representamen or Sign; there is the Object the Sign represents; and there is the resulting thought that follows, called the Interpretant (CP 1.541). (References to Peirce’s work are based on the customary practice of citing his collected works: CP, Collected Papers, with volume and page numbers.) Given that semiotics is triadic, Peirce defines three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object, and three kinds of Interpretant. For the sake of simplification this paper focuses on Peirce’s Object and Interpretant. They are briefly explained below and noted schematically in the appendix. In terms of Peirce’s Object, there are three kinds of Sign–Object relation. From the category of Thirdness, a Sign represents its Object according to an imagined idea. Peirce describes this relation with the Symbol. From the category of Secondness, a Sign represents its Object by being physically linked to its Object, and in this case it represents an actual object. Peirce describes this relation with the Index. From the category of Firstness, a Sign represents its Object based on qualitative resemblance, and in this case it represents a possible object. Peirce describes this relation with the Icon. In his explication of Peirce, Deledalle reminds us that “Nothing in itself is icon, index or Symbol” (20), meaning, for example, that what is an index in one semiosis could be a symbol in another. Deledalle discusses a symptom as a Sign of an illness, which is the Object, and an example is a symptom such as a person’s shivering. He writes: “If this symptom is referred to in a lecture on medicine as always characterising a certain illness, the symptom is a symbol. If the doctor encounters it while he is examining a patient, the symptom is the index of the illness” (19–20). Expanding Deledalle’s discussion, if the symptom were represented in a graphic of a shivering man, the symptom is an icon. Consider the three ways a Sign is interpreted. From Thirdness, the Sign is associated with the Object based on a conceptual connection imagined by the interpreter. This is an arbitrary connection based on convention. This kind of interpretation is called an Argument. In Secondness, Sign and Object are interpreted to form a physical pair and the interpreting mind simply remarks on this connection. “The Index asserts nothing,” writes Peirce, “it only says ‘There!’” (CP 3.361). This kind of Interpretant is called a Dicent. In Firstness, the qualities of the Sign are interpreted to resemble a possible Object, and those qualities “excite analogous sensations in the mind for which it is a likeness” (CP 2.299). This kind of Interpretant is called a Rhema. The three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Sign–Object relation and three kinds of Interpretant together create 10 principal classes of Sign. It is worth noting that Peirce originally envisaged five categories of being, which would produce further classes of Signs; moreover, in his cinema books Deleuze develops an even more expansive taxonomy of Signs from Peirce’s theoretical framework, and this is based on his subdivision of Peirce’s categories. Crucial is how semiosis depends upon “the set of knowledge and beliefs that will be brought to bear” (Metro-Rowland 274), or what Peirce calls collateral experience. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s first appearance on The Tonight Show explains the importance of collateral experience for meaningfulness (Goldenberg). Seinfeld says he loves a particular sign he saw on the freeway—which is unique to New York—that reads “Left turn OK.” When pronouncing the text on the sign he intentionally adds a pause, so it sounds more like, “Left turn... Okay.” Seinfeld explains that the structure of the text adds a more personal and human tone than is typical of street signs (a tone Seinfeld makes perfectly obvious through his exaggerated pronunciation), and the use of the colloquial and friendly “okay” also contributes to this personal touch. Seinfeld explains how a driver can’t help but to interpret the sign as being more like a piece of advice they could take or leave. Similar, he says, would be signs like “U-turn: enjoy it” and “Right turn: why not?” Seinfeld is making clear that the humour of the example lies with the fact that a driver’s initial response to such as sign is to take it as an instruction; in other words, the driver’s collateral experience tells them that the object of the sign is an instruction. Towards a Classification of Social Media Signs It is fair to say that how one is perceived online is influenced by the content they curate. For example, Storsul cites the following comment from a teenager: “On Facebook, you judge each other’s lives. That’s what you do. I look at pictures, how they are, and I look at interests if we share some interests. If you visit my profile you can find out everything about me” (24). In her discussion of interest tokens, Good makes clear how content online means more than what the content itself is about—it’s also used to portray a person’s cultural aspirations, social capital, and even sexual desire. Similarly, Barash et al. identifies the importance to a user’s social media post of their image projected, noting how these are typically characterised according to scales such as cool–uncool, entertaining–boring, and uplifting–depressing (209). Peirce’s tripartite structure of the Sign is a useful tool for comprehending the relationship between users and content. Consider the following hypothetical example, indicative of a typical example of curated content: a poster publishing on Facebook their holiday photos, together with a brief introductory comment. Using Peirce, this is an individual act of semiosis that can be analysed according to the following general structure: the Sign is made up of the images and the poster’s text; the Object is the poster herself; and the Interpretant is the resulting thought(s) of another user looking at this Sign. The curated content is a Sign of the poster no matter what, and that is because the poster has published this content themselves and it is literally attributed to them, through their name and profile image. But of course the meaningfulness created from this structure also depends on the user’s collateral experience of the poster. The poster of curated content is always present as the Object of the Sign and, insofar as this presence is based on their publication (and/or republication) of content to the platform, the Sign–Object relation is principally indexical. However, and as will become apparent below, there is scope in the structure of meaning for this physical “presence” of the poster to appear otherwise. The poster’s indexical presence is ostensibly more complex as they can also be absently present—for example, if they post without commenting, or simply “Listen to…” or share content. More complex still is how a share involves a different kind of presence to posting and “liking.” It is reasonable to say that each kind of presence has a different effect on the meaningfulness of the Sign. Also, consider the effect of the poster’s comment, should they choose to leave one. Based on Peirce’s phenomenology, a poster could write a comment that makes some conceptual claim (Thirdness); or that simply points to the content, similar to the function of a demonstrative pronoun (Secondness); or that is designed to excite sensations in the mind (Firstness)—for example, poetic text in the manner of a haiku. Analysing another hypothetical example will help clarify the semiotic mixes potential to content curation. Imagine a close-up image of a steak, posted in Facebook. Accompanying the image is the linguistic text “Lunch with the work crew.” The Sign is the image plus the text; the Object is the poster (in this case, “Clinton”); and the Interpretant is the idea created in the mind of the user, scrolling the feed of content on their home page, who perceives this Sign. The most obvious and salient way this Sign works is as a statement of actual fact; that is, the comment states an activity and, in terms of its relation to the image, only has a “pointing” function and provides information about its Object of actual fact only. From Peirce, this class of Sign is (IV), a Dicent Indexical Sinsign. There is also the potential, however, for this particular Sign to motivate a more conceptual or generalised interpretation of the poster. The use of slang in the text would resonate with a certain group and result in a more generalised interpretation of Clinton—for example, “Just smashed this steak after some fun runners down south.” In this text, a certain group would understand “runners” as waves at the beach, and therefore this Sign is representative of its Object as a surfer, and, more complex still, perhaps as a privileged surfer since Clinton clearly enjoys surfing on a weekday—in other words, he’s not a “weekend warrior.” From Peirce, this class of Sign is (X), an Argument Symbolic Legisign. But another user may interpret this Sign in a slightly less complex way, equally valid and important. Perhaps they don’t “get” the surfing slang in Clinton’s comment, but they understand a surfing reference has been made nonetheless. In this case a user might interpret the Sign in the following way: “He’s making some comment about surfing, but I don’t understand it.” From Peirce, this class of Sign is (VII), a Dicent Indexical Legisign. But what if Clinton simply posted this image of the steak with no text? In this case the user interpreting the Sign is directed to the Object (“Clinton”: the profile that posted the content), but the Sign does not describe anything about the Object. Instead, “The sign deals with possible evidence that some relations have been connected, and thus indicates some previous state of affairs” (Chuang and Huang 347). From Peirce, this class of Sign is (III), a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign. As a final example (which by no means concludes the analysis of this Sign), what if Clinton posted this image by way of a like only? The effect of the like is to determine the poster as less “present” than they would be had they only posted the content, or shared it, or left a comment on it. Despite the fact that the like still shows the poster as curator—and, ostensibly, publisher—of the content, determining their indexical presence, the like also allows for an iconic Sign–Object relation. As was mentioned earlier, “Nothing in itself is icon, index or symbol” (Deledalle 20). Given the poster’s iconic representation by the Sign, the poster is interpreted as a possible Object. What happens is that the qualities of the content would be interpreted to resemble some possibility of a person/Object. The user has a vague sense of somebody, but that somebody is present more as a pattern, diagram, or scheme. From Peirce, this class of Sign is (II), a Rhematic Iconic Sinsign. Conclusion This paper aims to identify and describe the structure of meaning underlying the proposition, “We are what we curate online.” Using Peirce’s tripartite Sign, it is clear that the content a user curates is representative of them; in terms of the different ways users engage with content, it is possible to begin to classify curated content into different kinds of Signs. What needs to be emphasised, and what becomes apparent from the preliminary classification undertaken here, is that another user’s interpretation of these Signs—and any Signs, for that matter—depends on the knowledge they bring to semiosis. Finally, while this paper has chosen deliberately to engage with the structure of meaning underpinning an individual act of curation and has made inroads into a classification of Signs produced from this structure, further semiotic research could take into consideration the conditions under which the Signs are created, in terms of software’s role influencing the creation of Signs and a user’s collateral knowledge. Appendix Given the breadth of Peirce’s work and the multiple and often varied definitions of his concepts, it is reasonable to consult a respected secondary synthesis of Peirce’s semiotic. The following tables are from Deledalle (19). Table 1: The Three Trichotomies of Signs 1 2 3 Representamen Object Interpretant Qualisign Icon Rhema Sinsign Index Dicisign Legisign Symbol Argument Table 2: The 10 Classes of Sign “All expressions such as R1, O2, I3, should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen ‘which is’ a First, an Object ‘which is’ a Second, an Interpretant ‘which is’ a Third (8.353)” (Deledalle 19). R O I I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X R1 R2 R2 R2 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 O1 O1 O2 02 01 02 02 03 03 03 I1 I1 I1 I2 I1 I1 I2 I1 I2 I3 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign Rhematic Iconic Sinsign Rhematic Indexical Sinsign Dicent Indexical Sinsign Rhematic Iconic Legisign Rhematic Indexical Legisign Dicent Indexical Legisign Rhematic Symbolic Legisign Dicent Symbolic Legisign Argument Symbolic Legisign References Barash, Vladamir, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ellen Isaacs, and Victoria Bellotti. “Faceplant: Impression (Mis)management in Facebook Status Updates.” Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. May 2015 ‹http://www.aaai.org/›. Chowdhry, Amit. “Facebook Changes Newsfeed Algorithm to Prioritise Content from Friends Over Pages.” Forbes 23 Mar. 2015. 18 June 2015 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/04/23/facebook-changes-news-feed-algorithm-to-prioritize-content-from-friends-over-pages/›. 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Doster, Leigh. “Millenial Teens Design and Redesign Themselves in Online Social Networks.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 12 (2013): 267–79. Goldenberg, Max. Once Upon a Time Seinfeld Was a Little Boy. 19 Mar. 2007. Web video. 5 Apr. 2015 ‹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYJxcFaRpMU›. Good, Katie Day. “From Scrapbook to Facebook: A History of Personal Media Assemblages and Archives.” New Media & Society 15.4 (2012): 559–73. Langlois, Ganaele. Meaning in the Age of Social Media. NY: Palgrave, 2014. Lomborg, Stine. “'Meaning' in Social Media.” Social Media + Society 1.1 (Apr.–June 2015): 1–2. Meeker, Mary. “Internet Trends 2015 – Code Conference.” 2015. 10 Jun. 2015 ‹http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-v1›. Metro-Rowland, Michelle. “Interpreting Meaning: An Application of Peircian Semiotics to Tourism.” Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment 11.2 (2009): 270–79. Orkibi, Eithan. “‘New Politics,’ New Media – New Political Language? A Rhetorical Perspective on Candidates’ Self-Presentation in Electronic Campaigns in the 2013 Israel Elections.” Israeli Affairs 21.2 (2015): 277–92. Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Vols. 1–6. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1932. Storsul, Tanja. “Deliberation or Self-Presentation: Young People, Politics and Social Media.” Nordicom Review 35.2 (2014): 17–28.

Since the late 1990s, W. G. Sebald’s innovative contribution to the genre of prose fiction has been the source of much academic scrutiny. His books Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants and Austerlitz have provoked interest from diverse fields of inquiry: visual communication (Kilbourn; Patt; Zadokerski), trauma studies (Denham and McCulloh; Schmitz), and travel writing (Blackler; Zisselsberger). His work is also claimed to be a bastion for both modernist and postmodernist approaches to literature and history writing (Bere; Fuchs and Long; Long). This is in addition to numerous “guide to” type books, such as Mark McCulloh’s Understanding Sebald, Long and Whitehead’s W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion, and the comprehensive Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Here I have only mentioned works available in English. I should point out that Sebald wrote in German, the country of his birth, and as one would expect much scholarship dealing with his work is confined to this language. In this article I focus on what is perhaps Sebald’s prototypical work, The Rings of Saturn. Of all Sebald’s prose fictional works The Rings of Saturn seems the example that best exhibits his innovative literary forms, including the use of lists. This book is the work of an author who is purposefully and imaginatively concerned with the nature of his vocation: what is it to be a writer? Crucially, he addresses this question not only from the perspective of a subject facing an existential crisis, but from the perspective of the documents created by writers. His works demonstrate a concern with the enabling role documents play in the thinking and writing process; how, for example, pen and paper are looped in with our capacity to reason in certain ways. Despite taking the form of fictional narratives, his books are as much motivated by a historical interest in how ideas and forms of organisation are transmitted, and how they evolve as part of an ecology; how humans become articulate within their surrounds, according to the contingencies of specific epochs and places. The Sebald critic J. J. Long accounts for this in some part in his description “archival consciousness,” which recommends that conscious experience is not simply located in the mind of a knowing, human subject, but is rather distributed between the subject and different technologies (among which writing and archives are exemplary).The most notable peculiarity of Sebald’s books lies in their abundant use of “non-syntactical” kinds of writing or inscription. My use of the term “non-syntactical” has its origins in the anthropological work of Jack Goody, who emphasises the importance of list making and tabulation in pre-literate or barely literate cultures. In Sebald’s texts, kinds of non-syntactical writing include lists, photographic images, tables, signatures, diagrams, maps, stamps, dockets and sketches. As I stress throughout this article, Sebald’s shifts between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing allows him to build up highly complex schemes of internal reference. Massimo Leone identifies something similar, when he notes that Sebald “orchestrates a multiplicity of voices and text-types in order to produce his own coherent discourse” (91). The play between multiplicity and coherence is at once a thematic and poetic concern for Sebald. This is to say, his texts are formal experiments with these contrasting tendencies, in addition to discussing specific historical situations in which they feature. The list is perhaps Sebald’s most widely used and variable form of non-syntactical writing, a key part of his formal and stylistic peculiarity. His lengthy sentences frequently spill over into catalogues and inventories, and the entire structure of his narratives is list-like. Discrete episodes accumulate alongside each other, rather than following a narrative arc where episodes of suspenseful gravity overshadow the significance of minor events. The Rings of Saturn details the travels of Sebald’s trademark, nameless, first person narrator, who recounts his trek along the Suffolk coastline, from Lowestoft to Ditchingham, about two years after the event. From the beginning, the narrative is framed as an effort to organise a period of time that lacks a coherent and durable form, a period of time that is in pieces, fading from the narrator’s memory. However, the movement from the chaos of forgetting to the comparatively distinct and stable details of the remembered present does not follow a continuum. Rather, the past and present are both constituted by the force of memory, which is continually crystallising and dissolving. Each event operates according to its own specific arrangement of emphasis and forgetting. Our experience of memory in the present, or recollective memory, is only one kind of memory. Sebald is concerned with a more pervasive kind of remembering, which includes the vectorial existence of non-conscious, non-human perceptual events; memory as expressed by crystals, tree roots, glaciers, and the nested relationship of fuel, fire, smoke, and ash. The Rings of Saturn is composed of ten chapters, each of which is outlined in table form at the book’s beginning. The first chapter appears as: “In hospital—Obituary—Odyssey of Thomas Browne’s skull—Anatomy lecture—Levitation—Quincunx—Fabled creatures—Urn burial.” The Rings of Saturn is of course hardly exceptional in its use of this device. Rather, it is exemplary concerning the repeated emphasis on the tension between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing, among which this chapter breakdown is included. Sebald continually uses the conventions of bookmaking in subtle though innovative ways. Each of these horizontally linked and divided indices might put the reader in mind of Thomas Browne’s urns, time capsules from the past, the unearthing of which is discussed in the book’s first chapter (25). The chapter outlines (and the urns) are containers that preserve a fragmentary and suggestive history. Each is a perspective on the narrator’s travels that abstracts, arranges, and uniquely refers to the narrative elaborations to come.As I have already stressed, Sebald is a writer concerned with forms of organisation. His works account for a diverse range of organisational forms, some of which instance an overt, chronological, geometric, or metrical manipulation of space and time, such as grids, star shapes, and Greenwich Mean Time. This contrasts with comparatively suggestive, insubstantial, mutable forms, including various meteorological phenomena such as cloudbanks and fog, dust and sand, and as exemplified in narrative form by the haphazard, distracted assemblage of events featured in dreams or dream logic. The relationship between these supposedly opposing tendencies is, however, more complex and paradoxical than might at first glance appear. As Sebald warily reminds us in his essay “A Little Excursion to Ajaccio,” despite our wishes to inhabit periods of complete freedom, where we follow our distractions to the fullest possible extent, we nonetheless “must all have some more or less significant design in view” (Sebald, Campo 4). It is not so much that we must choose, absolutely, between form and formlessness. Rather, the point is to understand that some seemingly inevitable forms are in fact subject to contingencies, which certain uses deliberately or ignorantly mask, and that simplicity and intricacy are often co-dependent. Richard T. Gray is a Sebald critic who has picked up on the element in Sebald’s work that suggests a tension between different forms of organisation. In his article “Writing at the Roche Limit,” Gray notes that Sebald’s tendency to emphasise the decadent aspects of human and natural history “is continually counterbalanced by an insistence on order and by often extremely subtle forms of organization” (40). Rather than advancing the thesis that Sebald is exclusively against the idea of systematisation or order, Gray argues that The Rings of Saturn models in its own textual make-up an alternative approach to the cognitive order(ing) of things, one that seeks to counter the natural tendency toward entropic decline and a fall into chaos by introducing constructive forces that inject a modicum of balance and equilibrium into the system as a whole. (Gray 41)Sebald’s concern with the contrasting energies exemplified by different forms extends to his play with syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing. He uses lists to add contrast to his flowing, syntactically intricate sentences. The achievement of his work is not the exclusive privileging of either the list form or the well-composed sentence, but in providing contexts whereby the reader can appreciate subtle modulations between the two, thus experiencing a more dynamic and complex kind of narrative time. His works exhibit an astute awareness of the fact that different textual devices command different experiences of temporality, and our experience of temporality in good part determines our metaphysics. Here I consider two lists featured in The Rings of Saturn, one from the first chapter, and one from the last. Each shows contrasting tendencies concerning systems of organisation. Both are attributable to the work of Thomas Browne, “who practiced as a doctor in Norwich in the seventeenth century and had left a number of writings that defy all comparison” (Sebald, Rings 9). The Rings of Saturn is in part a dialogue across epochs with the sentiments expressed in Browne’s works, which, according to Bianca Theisen, preserve a kind of reasoning that is lost in “the rationalist and scientific embrace of a devalued world of facts” (Theisen 563).The first list names the varied “animate and inanimate matter” in which Browne identifies the quincuncial structure, a lattice like arrangement of five points and intersecting lines. The following phenomena are enumerated in the text:certain crystalline forms, in starfish and sea urchins, in the vertebrae of mammals and the backbones of birds and fish, in the skins of various species of snake, in the crosswise prints left by quadrupeds, in the physical shapes of caterpillars, butterflies, silkworms and moths, in the root of the water fern, in the seed husks of the sunflower and the Caledonian pine, within young oak shoots or the stem of the horse tail; and in the creations of mankind, in the pyramids of Egypt and the mausoleum of Augustus as in the garden of King Solomon, which was planted with mathematical precision with pomegranate trees and white lilies. (Sebald, Rings 20-21)Ostensibly quoting from Browne, Sebald begins the next sentence, “Examples might be multiplied without end” (21). The compulsion to list, or the compulsiveness expressed by listing, is expressed here in a relationship of dual utility with another, dominant or overt, kind of organisational form: the quincunx. It is not the utility or expressiveness of the list itself that is at issue—at least in the version of Browne’s work preserved here by Sebald. In W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, Long notes the historical correspondences and divergences between Sebald and Michel Foucault (2007). Long interprets Browne’s quincunx as exemplifying a “hermeneutics of resemblance,” whereby similarities among diverse phenomena are seen as providing proof of “the universal oneness of all things” (33). This contrasts with the idea of a “pathological nature, autonomous from God,” which, according to Long, informs Sebald’s transformation of Browne into “an avatar of distinctly modern epistemology” (38). Long follows Foucault in noting the distinction between Renaissance and modern epistemology, a distinction in good part due to the experimental, inductive method, the availability of statistical data, and probabilistic reasoning championed in the latter epoch (Whitehead; Hacking). In the book’s final chapter, Sebald includes a list from Browne’s imaginary library, the “Musæum Clausium.” In contrast to the above list, here Sebald seems to deliberately problematise any efforts to suggest an abstract uniting principle. There is no evident reason for the togetherness of the discrete things, beyond the mere fact that they happen to be gathered, hypothetically, in the text (Sebald, Rings 271-273). Among the library’s supposed contents are:an account by the ancient traveller Pytheas of Marseilles, referred to in Strabo, according to which all the air beyond thule is thick, condensed and gellied, looking just like sea lungs […] a dream image showing a prairie or sea meadow at the bottom of the Mediterranean, off the coat of Provence […] and a glass of spirits made of æthereal salt, hermetically sealed up, of so volatile a nature that it will not endure by daylight, and therefore shown only in winter or by the light of a carbuncle or Bononian stone. (Sebald, Rings 272-73)Unlike the previous example attributed to Browne, here the list coheres according to the tensions of its own coincidences. Sebald uses the list to create spontaneous organisations in which history is exhibited as a complex mix of fact and fantasy. More important than the distinction between the imaginary and the real is the effort to account for the way things uniquely incorporate aspects of the world in order to be what they are. Human knowledge is a perspective that is implicated in, rather than excluded from, this process.Lists move us to puzzle over the criteria that their togetherness implies. They might be used inthe service of a specific paradigm, or they might suggest an imaginable but as yet unknown kind of systematisation; a specific kind of relationship, or simply the possibility of a relationship. Take, for example, the list-like accumulation of architectural details in the following description of the decadent Sommerleyton Hall, featured in chapter II: There were drawing rooms and winter gardens, spacious halls and verandas. A corridor might end in a ferny grotto where fountains ceaselessly plashed, and bowered passages criss-crossed beneath the dome of a fantastic mosque. Windows could be lowered to open the interior onto the outside, and inside the landscape was replicated on the mirror walls. Palm houses and orangeries, the lawn like green velvet, the baize on the billiard tables, the bouquets of flowers in the morning and retiring rooms and in the majolica vases on the terrace, the birds of paradise and the golden peasants on the silken tapestries, the goldfinches in the aviaries and the nightingales in the garden, the arabesques in the carpets and the box-edged flower beds—all of it interacted in such a way that one had the illusion of complete harmony between the natural and the manufactured. (Sebald, Rings 33-34)This list shifts emphasis away from preconceived distinctions between the natural and the manufactured through the creation of its own unlikely harmony. It tells us something important about the way perception and knowledge is ordered in Sebald’s prose. Each encounter, or historically specific situation, is considered as though it were its own microworld, its own discrete, synecdochic realisation of history. Rather than starting from the universal or the meta-level and scaling down to the local, Sebald arranges historically peculiar examples that suggest a variable, contrasting and dynamic metaphysics, a motley arrangement of ordering systems that each aspire to but do not command universal applicability. In a comparable sense, Browne’s sepulchral urns of his 1658 work Urn Burial, which feature in chapter I, are time capsules that seem to create their own internally specific kind of organisation:The cremated remains in the urns are examined closely: the ash, the loose teeth, some long roots of quitch, or dog’s grass wreathed about the bones, and the coin intended for the Elysian ferryman. Browne records other objects known to have been placed with the dead, whether as ornament or utensil. His catalogue includes a variety of curiosities: the circumcision knives of Joshua, the ring which belonged to the mistress of Propertius, an ape of agate, a grasshopper, three-hundred golden bees, a blue opal, silver belt buckles and clasps, combs, iron pins, brass plates and brazen nippers to pull away hair, and a brass Jews harp that last sounded on the crossing over black water. (Sebald, Rings 25-26)Regardless of our beliefs concerning the afterlife, these items, preserved across epochs, solicit a sense of wonder as we consider what we might choose for company on our “last journey” (25). In death, the human body is reduced to a condition of an object or thing, while the objects that accompany the corpse seem to acquire a degree of potency as remnants that transcend living time. Life is no longer the paradigm through which to understand purpose. In their very difference from living things these objects command our fascination. Eric Santner coins the term “undeadness” to name the significance of this non-living agency in Sebald’s prose (Santner xx). Santner’s study places Sebald in a linage of German-Jewish writers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, whose understanding of “the human” depends crucially on the concept of “the creature” or “creatureliness” (Santner 38-41). Like the list of items contained within Sommerleyton Hall, the above list accounts for a context in which ornament and utensil, nature and culture, are read according to their differentiated togetherness, rather than opposition. Death, it seems, is a universal leveller, or at least a different dimension in which symbol and function appear to coincide. Perhaps it is the unassuming and convenient nature of lists that make them enduring objects of historical interest. Lists are a form of writing to which we appeal for immediate mnemonic assistance. They lack the artifice of a sentence. While perhaps not as interesting in the present that is contemporary with their usefulness (a trip to the supermarket), with time lists acquire credibility due to the intimacy they share with mundane, diurnal concerns—due to the fact that they were, once upon a time, so useful. The significance of lists arrives anachronistically, when we look back and wonder what people were really up to, or what our own concerns were, relatively free from fanciful, stylistic adornment. Sebald’s democratic approach to different forms of writing means that lists sit alongside the esteemed poetic and literary efforts of Joseph Conrad, Algernon Swinburne, Edward Fitzgerald, and François René de Chateaubriand, all of whom feature in The Rings of Saturn. His books make the exclusive differences between literary and non-literary kinds of writing less important than the sense of dynamism that is elicited through a play of contrasting kinds of syntactical and non-syntactical writing. The book’s closing chapter includes a revealing example that expresses these sentiments. After tracing over a natural history of silk, with a particular focus on human greed and naivety, the narrative arrives at a “pattern book” that features strips of colourful silk kept in “the small museum of Strangers Hall” (Sebald, Rings 283). The narrator notes that the silks arranged in this book “were of a truly fabulous variety, and of an iridescent, quite indescribable beauty as if they had been produced by Nature itself, like the plumage of birds” (283). This effervescent declamation continues after a double page photograph of the pattern book, which is described as a “catalogue of samples” and “leaves from the only true book which none of our textual and pictorial works can even begin to rival” (286). Here we witness Sebald’s inclusive and variable understanding as to the kinds of thing a book, and writing, can be. The fraying strips of silk featured in the photograph are arranged one below the other, in the form of a list. They are surrounded by ornate handwriting that, like the strips of silk, seems to fray at the edges, suggesting the specific gestural event that occasioned the moment of their inscription—something which tends to be excluded in printed prose. Sebald’s remarks here are not without a characteristic irony (“the only true book”). However, in the greatercontext of the narrative, this comment suggests an important inclination. Namely, that there is much scope yet for innovative literary forms that capture the nuances and complexity of collective and individual histories. And that writing always includes, though to varying degrees obscures, contrasting tensions shared among syntactical and non-syntactical elements, including material and gestural contingencies. Sebald’s works remind us of what potentials might lay ahead for books if the question of what writing can be is asked continually as part of a writer’s enterprise.ReferencesBere, Carol. “The Book of Memory: W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants and Austerlitz.” Literary Review, 46.1 (2002): 184-92.Blackler, Deane. Reading W. G. Sebald: Adventure and Disobedience. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2007. Catling Jo, and Richard Hibbitt, eds. Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Oxford: Legenda, 2011.Denham, Scott and Mark McCulloh, eds. W. G. Sebald: History, Memory, Trauma. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Fuchs, Anne and J. J. Long, eds. W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. Goody, Jack. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Gray, Richard T. “Writing at the Roche Limit: Order and Entropy in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn.” The German Quarterly 83.1 (2010): 38-57. Hacking, Ian. 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