During occupational trainings given to Polish employees, one can quite often observe complaining. The instructor can use it for problem-solving or for purification. Thus, complaining plays an instrumental or cathartic function. This has consequences for the entire training process. The aim of the article is to present the phenomenon of complaining during training courses and to discuss its correlation with different variables such as learning results, participants’ mood and the evaluation of the training course. Questions were therefore posed about which function of complaining would be more conducive to the process of learning the material and result in an improvement of the participants’ mood, as well as how the instructor would be evaluated, at the response level, depending on which function of complaining is activated during the training. In order to answer these questions, the authors designed an experiment in which complaining was induced in members of an organization, performing either an instrumental function or a cathartic function. The results show that the most effective strategy is the use of its object as a point of departure for problem solution.

The paper considers the technique of modeling and formation educational components of the planned training of CDIO Syllabus, realized in the form of the educational adaptive environment of engineering education. The following key concepts of the methodology have been accepted: competence models of the stages of the CDIO initiative, the method of project training, syntax for describing the concepts of the domain, models for mapping support concepts in the form of expressions of knowledge and ontological engineering.

The profile of the Polish foundry engineer in the Industry 4.0 age is presented in the present paper. The presented results were obtained by means of three research methods consisting of: analyses of professional expertise documents, questionnaires filled-up by the executive staff of foundry enterprises and analyses of work offers for the foundry engineer position. The investigations indicated the key competences of the foundry engineer, demanded currently by employers and meeting the requirements of the Polish foundry sector. The obtained results were discussed in relation to the fourth industrial revolution and its requirements with regard to the engineering staff. This concept is based on information technology and robotizing, which means the total automation of industrial production processes as well as the widespread access to data and machines. Such an approach requires changes in applied machines, technologies and employees’ competencies. The competences of employees constitute the element deciding on the company success, aimed at obtaining a competitive advantage. Therefore adjusting the employees’ competencies to continuously changing reality is so essential.

Personality, demographics and art experience proved to play an important role in reactions to visual art. Nevertheless, research attempts that take into account all those factors when determining predictors of aesthetic responses to different artistic styles are quite rare. The study presented here investigates predictors of aesthetic experience across figurative, abstract and contemporary paintings in individuals with varying expertise.

Students enrolled in Sport, Humanities and the Arts programmes (N = 181) declared their art exposure and filled out personality measures (Big Five, alexithymia, need for closure). Next participants evaluated three paintings using a tool constructed by the authors to track various dimensions of aesthetic reactions (i.e. negative/positive affective responses, self-references, explicit knowledge and perceived mastery of the artwork).

Reactions to figurative painting depended mostly on formal knowledge about arts, not personality traits. Aesthetic perception of abstract art rely not only on art exposure, but also on some individual characteristics (openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity and ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source). Reception of contemporary art was predicted mostly by art exposure variables and in the case of negative emotionality by ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source.

Both formal art education and art experience were stronger predictors of aesthetic responses than personality traits, for all art styles and dimensions of aesthetic experience. Personality predictors were significant mostly for abstract art. Personal interest in the arts seems to be as good predictor of aesthetic reactions as formal expertise.

In recent years the application of computer software to the learning process has been found to be an indisputably effective tool supporting the traditional teaching methods. Particular focus has been put on the application of techniques based on speech and language processing to the second language learning. Most of the commercial self-study programs, however, do not allow for introduction of an individualized learning course by the teacher and to concentrate on segmental features only. The paper discusses the use of speech technology in the training of foreign languages' pronunciation and prosody and defines pedagogical requirements for an effective training with CAPT systems. In this context, steps taken in the development of the intelligent tutoring system AzAR3.0 (German ‘Automat for accent reduction’) in the scope of the Euronounce project (Cylwik et al., 2008) are described with the focus on creation of the linguistic content. In response to the European Union's call for promoting less widely spoken languages, the project focuses on German as a target language for native speakers of Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Russian, and vice versa. The paper presents the design of the speech corpus for the purpose of the tutoring system and the analysis of pronunciation errors. The results of the latter provide information which is important for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) training on the one hand, and for automatic error detection and feedback generation on the other hand. In the end, Pitch Line software for implementation in the prosody visualization and training module of AzAR3.0 tutoring system is described.

To gather reproducible measurement results, metrologists need a variety of competences. Yet, also other groups of staff in a manufacturing enterprise need competences in metrology in order to assure the appropriate specification of tolerances or sufficient consideration of inspectional requirements in production processes.

Therefore, the strict focus of metrological qualification on staff preparing or performing the actual measurements is insufficient for the efficient assurance of conformity. Additionally, on the one hand a demand-oriented qualification concept is needed to impart required fundamental knowledge on manufacturing metrology according to the specific needs of each user group. On the other hand, appropriate measures of knowledge management have to be applied in order to assure a proper application of the gathered knowledge and enhance mutual understanding for the requirements of other involved user groups.

Thus, as amendment for user-specific measures of formal qualification, a concept has been developed to enable knowledge transfer among different groups and departments in an enterprise. By this holistic approach, the impact of measures of qualification can be increased and high product quality can be achieved as a common aim of all related groups of staff.

The authors show how to strengthen the educational power of the museum. Emphasize the historical and contextual variability of the main functions performed by museum, indicate that the location of the museum in the community of the city and broaden the scope of its activities to different communities. Characterized by contemporary models of museum education, along with the arguments for taming the different models of learning both by visitors and museum’s staff. & e article presents two practices, which, in the opinion of the authors are conducive to learning in/and by the museum.

The information technologies for assessing the quality of IT-specialties graduates' training of university by means of fuzzy logic and neural networks are developed in the article. It makes possible taking into account a wide set of estimation and output parameters, influence of the external and internal factors and allows to simplify the assessing process by means of modern mathematical apparatuses of artificial intelligence.

O b j e c t i v e s: Patient-centered care (PCC) is associated with better doctor-patient relationships, resulting in a decrease in symptoms, hospitalizations and health costs. However, studies analyzing factors infl uencing patient-centered attitudes show ambiguous results. The purpose was to assess the impact of the Clinical Communication Course (CCC) in Jagiellonian University, Cracow and other factors on Patient-Centered Attitudes (PCA) and Attitude toward Clinical Skills Learning (CSLA).

M e t h o d s: We retrospectively compared Polish-speakers (CCC+, n = 160), English-speakers (CCCen+, n = 55) aft er the CCC and upperclassmen Polish-speakers without it (CCC–, n = 122). Validated questionnaires to measure PCA (Leeds Attitude Toward Concordance II and Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS)) and for CSLA (Communication Skills Attitude Scale with negative subscale (CSAS-N)) were used. The higher the scores, the more PCA, and negative CSLA respectively. Students completed questionnaires and answered questions regarding age, sex, motivation to study (coded as humanitarian — MotHUM, financial — MotFIN, combination — MotMIX) and considered specialization — coded as with more human contact (family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics — SpecHUM) and others (SpecNHUM). Statistics were prepared in R.

R e s u l t s: CCC+ scored higher in PPOS (2.91 vs. 2.74; p = 0.003) than CCC– and higher in CSAS-N than CCCen+ (31.22 vs. 28.32; p = 0.004). In CCC+ SpecHUM scored lower than SpecNHUM in PPOS (2.65 vs. 2.94, p = 0.012). MotFIN scored higher then MotMIX in PPOS (3.01 vs. 2.7, p = 0.036). Correlations were statistically significant.

C o n c l u s i o n: CCC improved PCA in CCC+. Th ey showed more negative CSLA than CCCen+. Among CCC+, surprisingly, SpecNHUM presented more PCA than SpecHUM as well as MotFIN compared to MotMIX.