Search results for: structured and structured training program

Authors: Olusola Abiodun Arinde

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This research work was prompted by the very important role e-commerce plays in every organization, be it private or public. The underlying objective of this study is to have a critical appraisal of the extent to which e-commerce impacts on organizational effectiveness. This research was carried out using Zenith Bank Plc as a case study. Relevant data were collected through structured questionnaire, oral interview, journals, newspapers, and textbooks. The data collected were analyzed and hypotheses were tested. Based on the result of the hypotheses, it was observed that e-commerce is significant to every organization. Through e-commerce, fast services delivery would be guaranteed to customers, this would lead to higher productivity and profit for organizations. E-commerce should be managed in such a way that it does not alienate customers; it should also prevent enormous risks that are associated with e-commerce.

Keywords: e-commerce, fast service, productivity, profit

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Authors: G. H. B. Dilhari, A. A. D. T. Saparamadu

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Sri Lanka is one of the prominent countries for the coir production. The coir is one of the by-products of the coconut and the coir industry is considered to be one of the traditional industries in Sri Lanka. Because of the inherent nature of the coir industry, labourers play a significant role in the coir production process. The study has analyzed the determinants of the income of the household level coir yarn labourers. The study was conducted in the Kumarakanda Grama Niladhari division. Simple random sampling was used to generate a sample of 100 household level coir yarn labourers and structured questionnaire, personal interviews, and discussion were performed to gather the required data. The obtained data were statistically analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test were performed for mean comparison. The findings revealed that the household level coir yarn industry is dominated by the female workers and it was identified that fewer numbers of workers have engaged in this industry as the main occupation. In addition to that, elderly participation in the industry is higher than the younger participation and most of them have engaged in the industry as a source of extra income. Level of education, the methods of engagement, satisfaction, engagement in the industry by the next generation, support from the government, method of government support, working hours per day, employed as a main job, number of completed units per day, suffering from job related diseases and type of the diseases were related with income level of household level coir yarn laboures. The recommendations as to flourish in future includes, technological transformation for coir yarn production, strengthening the raw material base and regulating the raw material supply, introduction of new technologies, markets and training programmes, the establishment of the labourers’ association, the initiation of micro credit schemes and better consideration about the job oriented diseases.

Keywords: coir yarn, determinants, income, Sri Lanka

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Authors: Yangming Zhu, Mingming Guo, Xiaozan Wang

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Introduction: The purpose of this study is to integrate functional training into physical education to test the effectiveness of functional training in improving the physical fitness (PF) and sport skills (SS) of female college students. Methods: A total of 54 female college students from East China Normal University were selected for this study (27 in the experimental group and 27 in the control group), and 13 weeks of the experimental intervention was conducted during the semester. During the experimental period, the experimental group was functionally trained for 1 hour per week. The control group performed one-hour weekly sports (such as basketball, football, etc.) as usual. Before and after the experiment, the national students' physical fitness test was used to test the PF of the experimental group and the control group, and the SS of the experimental group and the control group were tested before and after the intervention. Then using SPSS and Excel to organize and analyze the data. Results: The independent sample T-test showed that there was no significant difference in the PF and SS between the experimental group and the control group before the experiment (T PF=71.86, p PF> 0.05, Tₛₛ=82.41,pₛₛ > 0.05); After the experiment, the PF of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group (T Improve=71.86, p Improve < 0.05); after the experiment, the SS of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group (Tₛₛ = 1.31, pₛₛ <0.01) Conclusions: Integrating functional training into physical education can improve the PF of female college students. At the same time, the integration of functional training into physical education can also effectively improve the SS of female college students. Therefore, it is suggested that functional training be integrated into the daily physical education of female college students so as to improve their PF and SS.

Keywords: functional training, physical fitness, sport skills, female college students

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Authors: Hany Elsaid Fawaz Abdallah

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This study presents a new artificial neural network(ANN) model to predict the Nusselt Number and pressure drop for the turbulent flow in a triangular corrugated plate heat exchanger for forced air and turbulent water flow. An experimental investigation was performed to create a new dataset for the Nusselt Number and pressure drop values in the following range of dimensionless parameters: The plate corrugation angles (from 0° to 60°), the Reynolds number (from 10000 to 40000), pitch to height ratio (from 1 to 4), and Prandtl number (from 0.7 to 200). Based on the ANN performance graph, the three-layer structure with {12-8-6} hidden neurons has been chosen. The training procedure includes back-propagation with the biases and weight adjustment, the evaluation of the loss function for the training and validation dataset and feed-forward propagation of the input parameters. The linear function was used at the output layer as the activation function, while for the hidden layers, the rectified linear unit activation function was utilized. In order to accelerate the ANN training, the loss function minimization may be achieved by the adaptive moment estimation algorithm (ADAM). The ‘‘MinMax’’ normalization approach was utilized to avoid the increase in the training time due to drastic differences in the loss function gradients with respect to the values of weights. Since the test dataset is not being used for the ANN training, a cross-validation technique is applied to the ANN network using the new data. Such procedure was repeated until loss function convergence was achieved or for 4000 epochs with a batch size of 200 points. The program code was written in Python 3.0 using open-source ANN libraries such as Scikit learn, TensorFlow and Keras libraries. The mean average percent error values of 9.4% for the Nusselt number and 8.2% for pressure drop for the ANN model have been achieved. Therefore, higher accuracy compared to the generalized correlations was achieved. The performance validation of the obtained model was based on a comparison of predicted data with the experimental results yielding excellent accuracy.

Keywords: artificial neural networks, corrugated channel, heat transfer enhancement, Nusselt number, pressure drop, generalized correlations

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Authors: Hieu Nguyen

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Performance management is the concern of any organizations in the context of increasing demand and fierce competition between education institution. This paper draws together the performance management concepts and focuses specifically to Balance Scorecard in the context of education. The study employs semi-structured in-depth interview to explore the measurement items for each of the sub-objectives in the four perspectives. Each of the perspectives’ explored measurement items will then be discussed the role and influence of them towards the perspective and how to improve the measurements to have improved performance management. Finally, the measurements will be put together as a suggested balanced scorecard framework in the case of International University.

Keywords: performance management, education institution, balance scorecard, measurement items, four perspectives, international univeristy

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Authors: Abbas Rezaei Samarin

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In October 2022, protests began following the death of Mahsa Amini and were followed by the deaths of those arrested by Iran's morality police which Iran's official media and foreign Persian-language satellite channels presented to the audience different narratives of how they were killed. These two types of media produced two different and sometimes conflicting narratives when faced with the news of a certain person's death, and the conflict is found between the narratives in some cases. This study has focused on the semiotics of these narratives, the interpretation of discourses supporting the narratives, and finally, their analysis within the framework of narrative theories. In the present study, the researcher has used a qualitative approach and has concluded that the narrative of both types of media is structured around the functions of the existing and ideal political system.

Keywords: narrative, iran, fake news, protests, manipulation of reality

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Authors: Vincent Andrew Cappellano

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In the early phases of critical infrastructure system design, translating distributed computing requirements to an architecture has risk given the multitude of approaches (e.g., cloud, edge, fog). In many systems, a single requirement for system uptime / availability is used to encompass the system’s intended operations. However, when architected systems may perform to those availability requirements only during normal operations and not during component failure, or during outages caused by adversary attacks on critical infrastructure (e.g., physical, cyber). System designers lack a structured method to evaluate availability requirements against candidate system architectures through deep degradation scenarios (i.e., normal ops all the way down to significant damage of communications or physical nodes). This increases risk of poor selection of a candidate architecture due to the absence of insight into true performance for systems that must operate as a piece of critical infrastructure. This research effort proposes a process to analyze critical infrastructure system availability requirements and a candidate set of systems architectures, producing a metric assessing these architectures over a spectrum of degradations to aid in selecting appropriate resilient architectures. To accomplish this effort, a set of simulation and evaluation efforts are undertaken that will process, in an automated way, a set of sample requirements into a set of potential architectures where system functions and capabilities are distributed across nodes. Nodes and links will have specific characteristics and based on sampled requirements, contribute to the overall system functionality, such that as they are impacted/degraded, the impacted functional availability of a system can be determined. A machine learning reinforcement-based agent will structurally impact the nodes, links, and characteristics (e.g., bandwidth, latency) of a given architecture to provide an assessment of system functional uptime/availability under these scenarios. By varying the intensity of the attack and related aspects, we can create a structured method of evaluating the performance of candidate architectures against each other to create a metric rating its resilience to these attack types/strategies. Through multiple simulation iterations, sufficient data will exist to compare this availability metric, and an architectural recommendation against the baseline requirements, in comparison to existing multi-factor computing architectural selection processes. It is intended that this additional data will create an improvement in the matching of resilient critical infrastructure system requirements to the correct architectures and implementations that will support improved operation during times of system degradation due to failures and infrastructure attacks.

Keywords: architecture, resiliency, availability, cyber-attack

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Authors: Abdullah Bal, Sevdenur Bal

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This paper purposes a new type of hardware application for training of cellular neural networks (CNN) using optical joint transform correlation (JTC) architecture for image feature extraction. CNNs require much more computation during the training stage compare to test process. Since optoelectronic hardware applications offer possibility of parallel high speed processing capability for 2D data processing applications, CNN training algorithm can be realized using Fourier optics technique. JTC employs lens and CCD cameras with laser beam that realize 2D matrix multiplication and summation in the light speed. Therefore, in the each iteration of training, JTC carries more computation burden inherently and the rest of mathematical computation realized digitally. The bipolar data is encoded by phase and summation of correlation operations is realized using multi-object input joint images. Overlapping properties of JTC are then utilized for summation of two cross-correlations which provide less computation possibility for training stage. Phase-only JTC does not require data rearrangement, electronic pre-calculation and strict system alignment. The proposed system can be incorporated simultaneously with various optical image processing or optical pattern recognition techniques just in the same optical system.

Keywords: CNN training, image processing, joint transform correlation, optoelectronic hardware

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Authors: Mahera Abdulrahman

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Objective: Healthcare transformation from traditional to modern in the country recently prompted the need to address career choices, accreditation perception and satisfaction among medical residents. However, a concerted nationwide study to understand and address burnout in the medical residency program has not been conducted in the UAE and the region. Methods: A nationwide, multicenter, cross-sectional study was designed to evaluate professional burnout and depression among medical residents in order to address the gap. Results: Our results indicate that 75.5% (216/286) of UAE medical residents had moderate to high emotional exhaustion, 84% (249/298) had high depersonalization, and 74% (216/291) had a low sense of personal accomplishment. In aggregate, 70% (212/302) of medical residents were considered to be experiencing at least one symptom of burnout based on a high emotional exhaustion score or a high depersonalization score. Depression ranging from 6-22%, depending on the specialty was also striking given the fact the Arab culture lays high emphasis on family bonding. Interestingly 83% (40/48) of medical residents who had high scores for depression also reported burnout. Conclusion: Our data indicate that burnout and depression among medical residents is epidemic. There is an immediate need to address burnout through effective interventions at both the individual and institutional levels. It is imperative to reconfigure the approach to medical training for the well-being of the next generation of physicians in the Arab world.

Keywords: mental health, Gulf, Arab, residency training, burnout, depression

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Authors: Reem Abou Refaie, Christoph Meinel

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The paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the internal as well as external digitalized work practices of public service providers as part of a Public-Private Partnership Model. It focuses on the effect of uncertainty on generating Open Innovation practices. Our inquiry relies on semi-structured interviews (n=14) from a case study of Rwanda’s Public Service Delivery System in the context of research cooperation with IremboGov, the country’s One-Stop-Shop Platform for public services. It presents four propositions on harnessing opportunities for OI in the context of the public sector beyond the pandemic response. Practitioners can find characterizations of OI opportunities and gain insights on fostering OI in Public Sector Organizations.

Keywords: open innovation, digital transformation, public sector, Rwanda

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Authors: Mashael AlSalem

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While research into language assessment has expanded in recent years, few if any studies to date have targeted the nature of thought processes used by teachers when constructing classroom-based assessment. This study reports on teachers’ conceptions of English grammar assessment and their classroom assessment practices in their Saudi higher educational facilities. A mixed-method approach using both qualitative and quantitative research instruments was employed to elicit teachers’ perceptions of English grammar assessment and their relationship to their current practices. Participants of the study included EFL teachers from 4 different educational facilities: King Saudi University, Princess Noura University, Imam Mouhamed Islamic University, and Institute of Public Administration. Data collection involved questionnaire (N=100), semi-structured interviews (N=30), retrospective thinking (N=20), and document analysis (N=20). Activity theory is used as an interpretive framework to explore and investigate the entire system of constructing classroom-based assessment. Preliminary findings reveal several similarities and differences between the participants’ stated beliefs and their current practices of assessing English grammar. Findings also showed that teacher participant’s beliefs about how English grammar should be assessed are influenced mostly by prior learning experience as well as their teaching instruction practices. Their practices, on the other hand, was more guided by educational policies and lack of teacher training in the field of assessment, among other factors. This research makes a significant contribution to knowledge in three different areas: it enriches the literature on language teacher cognition; it builds on the body of research on language classroom assessment, and it expands on the possibilities to use AC to investigate the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices.

Keywords: activity theory, classroom-based assessment, language teacher cognition, mixed method approach

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Authors: Nishimwe Clemence, Mchunu Gugu, Mukamusoni Dariya

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Background: Community health workers and extension workers can play an important role in supporting families to adopt health practices, encourage delivery in a health care facility, and ensure time referral of mothers and newborns if needed. Saving the lives of neonates should, therefore, be a significant health outcome in any maternal and newborn health program that is being implemented. Furthermore, about half of a million mothers die from pregnancy-related causes. Maternal and newborn deaths related to the period of postnatal care are neglected. Some authors emphasized that in developing countries, newborn mortality rates have been reduced much more slowly because of the lack of many necessary facility-based and outreach service. The aim of this review was to critically analyze the implementation and integration process of the maternal and newborn health care program by maternal community health workers, into the health care system, in Africa. Furthermore, it aims to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. We addressed the following review question: (1) what process is involved in the implementation and integration of the maternal and newborn health care program by maternal community health workers during antenatal, delivery and postnatal care into health system care in Africa? Methods: The database searched was from Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition through academic search complete via EBSCO Host. An iterative approach was used to go through Google scholarly papers. The reviewers considered adapted Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidance, and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) was used. Synthesis method in integrative review following elements of noting patterns and themes, seeing plausibility, clustering, counting, making contrasts and comparisons, discerning commons and unusual patterns, subsuming particulars into general, noting relations between variability, finding intervening factors and building a logical chain of evidence, using data–based convergent synthesis design. Results: From the seventeen of studies included, results focused on three dimensions inspired by the literature on antenatal, delivery, and postnatal interventions. From this, further conceptual framework was elaborated. The conceptual framework process of implementation and integration of maternal and newborn health care program by maternal community health workers was elaborated in order to ensure the sustainability of community based intervention. Conclusions: the review revealed that the implementation and integration of maternal and newborn health care program require planning. We call upon governments, non-government organizations, the global health community, all stakeholders including policy makers, program managers, evaluators, educators, and providers to be involved in implementation and integration of maternal and newborn health program in updated policy and community-based intervention. Furthermore, emphasis should be placed on competence, responsibility, and accountability of maternal community health workers, their training and payment, collaboration with health professionals in health facilities, and reinforcement of outreach service. However, the review was limited in focus to the African context, where the process of maternal and newborn health care program has been poorly implemented.

Keywords: Africa, implementation of integration, maternal, newborn

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Authors: Deniss Rozkov, Hendrik Idema

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This paper researches the gender-based differences among US-American institutional investors regarding their preferences for sustainable development goals (SDGs) when investing. After employing a structured questionnaire as well as applying a choice-based conjoint analysis, it is found that female investors place significantly more emphasis on SDGs, especially in the social and ecological domain, exhibiting significantly stronger “other-regarding” characteristics compared to their male counterparts. Further, the results of the survey show that females show significantly higher risk aversion than males by selecting moderately conservative and moderate risk approaches.

Keywords: sustainable development goals, investing, socially responsible investor, gender, conjoint analysis

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Authors: ShuPei Wang, Yina Patterson

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This article outlines strategies for improving oral expression to advance proficiency in speaking and listening skills through structured argumentation. The objective is to empower students to effectively use the target language to express opinions and construct compelling arguments. This empowerment is achieved by honing learners' debating and questioning skills, which involves increasing their familiarity with vocabulary and phrases relevant to debates and deepening their understanding of the cultural context surrounding pertinent issues. Through this approach, students can enhance their ability to articulate complex concepts and discern critical points, surpassing superficial comprehension and enabling them to engage in the target language actively and competently.

Keywords: debate, teaching and materials design, spoken expression, listening proficiency, critical thinking

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Authors: Feyza Gökce, Jochen Gensichen, Antonius Schneider, Karolina de Valerio, Gabriele Pitschel-Walz

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People with depressive symptoms often first consult a General Practitioner (GP) before making use of other treatment options. The present study shows the adaptation and evaluation of a psychoeducational program for patients with depressive symptoms that are treated by GPs in Bavaria, Germany. The adaptation of an existing psychoeducational program, that is used in inpatient psychiatric settings, was performed in exchange with experts (psychotherapists, general practitioners, and a patient representative). As a result, a program consisting of 4 psychoeducational sessions was developed, which is carried out in individual settings in GP practices by the practitioners themselves. This program will be compared to treatment as usual that patients with depression receive by GPs. Data is collected at 3 measurement points (baseline, 3-months-follow-up, 6-months-follow-up) using different questionnaires (BDI-II, D-Lit-R German, FERUS, PAM13-D, PHQ-9, GAD-7, PHQ-15, PC-PTSD-5). In addition to the change in depressive symptoms, changes in depression knowledge, self-efficacy, and patient activation will be analyzed, and the feasibility of the program and the subjective benefit for GPs and patients will be assessed. By now, 84 patients have been recruited by 20 cluster-randomized GP practices, with 73.5% of the participants being female and 26.5% being males. The average age was M= 50.1 (SD= 14.67) years. The change in depression symptoms over the 3-month period will be compared between the two study conditions by using a linear mixed model by the end of data collection (December 2023). The subjective benefit for the patients and GPs will be assessed via feedback questionnaires. Results will be presentable by the beginning of 2024 and will provide indications for further development and barriers to the implementation of such a program for GP practices.

Keywords: depression, general practice, psychoeducation, primary care

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Authors: Sopio Gogilava, Goga Chakhaia, Levan Tsulukidze, Zurab Laoshvili, Irina Khubulava, Shalva Bosikashvili, Teimuraz Gugushvili

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Geoinformatics systems (GIS) integrated computer program RAMMS is widely used for forecasting debris flows and accordingly for the determination of anticipating risks with 85% accuracy. In view of the above, the work introduces new capabilities of the computer program RAMMS, which evaluates the effectiveness of anti-debris flow engineering construction, namely: the possibility of decreasing the expected velocity, kinetic energy, and output cone volume in the Mletiskhevi River. As a result of research has been determined that the anti-debris flow engineering construction designed to reduce the expected debris flow risk in the Mletiskhevi River is an effective environmental protection technology, that's why its introduction is promising.

Keywords: construction, debris flow, geoinformatics systems, program RAMMS

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Authors: Todd Pennington, Carol Wilkinson, Keven Prusak

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Traditional models of student teaching practices typically involve the placement of a student teacher with an experienced mentor teacher. However, due to the ever-decreasing number of quality placements, an alternative triad approach is the paired placement of student teachers with one mentor teacher in a community of practice. This study examined the paired-placement of student teachers in physical education to determine the benefits and drawbacks after a 14-week student teaching experience. PETE students (N = 22) at a university in the United States were assigned to work in a triad with a student teaching partner and a mentor teacher, making up eleven triads for the semester. The one exception was a pair that worked for seven weeks at an elementary school and then for seven weeks at a junior high school, thus having two mentor teachers and participating in two triads. A total of 12 mentor teachers participated in the study. All student teachers and mentor teachers volunteered and agreed to participate. The student teaching experience was structured so that students engaged in: (a) individual teaching (one teaching the lesson with the other observing), (b) co-planning, and (c) peer coaching. All students and mentor teachers were interviewed at the conclusion of the experience. Using interview data, field notes, and email response data, the qualitative data was analyzed using the constant comparative method. The benefits of the paired placement experience emerged into three categories (a) quality feedback, (b) support, and (c) collaboration. The drawbacks emerged into four categories (a) unrealistic experience, (b) laziness in preparation, (c) lack of quality feedback, and (d) personality mismatch. Recommendations include: providing in-service training prior to student teaching to optimize the triad experience, ongoing seminars throughout the experience specifically designed for triads, and a hybrid model of paired placement for the first half of student teaching followed by solo student teaching for the second half of the experience.

Keywords: community of practice, paired placement, physical education, student teaching

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Authors: Ragy Raafat Gaber Attaalla

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Despite having the greatest rates of mortality and morbidity in the world, low- and middle-income (LMIC) nations trail high-income nations in terms of the number of clinical trials, the number of qualified researchers, and the amount of research information specific to their people. Health inequities and the use of precision medicine may be hampered by a lack of local genomic data, clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics competence, and training opportunities. These issues can be solved by carrying out health care infrastructure development, which includes data gathering and well-designed clinical pharmacology training in LMICs. It will be advantageous if there is international cooperation focused at enhancing education and infrastructure and promoting locally motivated clinical trials and research. This paper outlines various instances where clinical pharmacology knowledge could be put to use, including pharmacogenomic opportunities that could lead to better clinical guideline recommendations. Examples of how clinical pharmacology training can be successfully implemented in LMICs are also provided, including clinical pharmacology and pharmacometrics training programmes in Africa and a Tanzanian researcher's personal experience while on a training sabbatical in the United States. These training initiatives will profit from advocacy for clinical pharmacologists' employment prospects and career development pathways, which are gradually becoming acknowledged and established in LMICs. The advancement of training and research infrastructure to increase clinical pharmacologists' knowledge in LMICs would be extremely beneficial because they have a significant role to play in global health.

Keywords: low- and middle-income, clinical pharmacology, pharmacometrics, career development pathways

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Authors: Adeline Fontvieille, Hugo Parent-Roberge, Marie-France Langlois, Tamas Fulop, Michel Pavic, Eleonor Riesco

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Introduction: Total lean body mass is reduced during cancer treatment. This loss is called cancer cachexia and is accompanied by a progressive loss of fat mass. In older adults, these body composition changes can have a larger impact on metabolic health, physical autonomy, and cancer survival. Although currently untreatable, exercise training could reduce these effects. Hence, the objective of this pilot study is to investigate if 12 weeks of exercise training during cancer treatment can mitigate the loss of muscle mass and fat mass in older adults. Methods: A total of 40 older adults (65-80 years) with an ongoing treatment for a curable cancer are currently recruited and randomised in two groups: 1) Combined training (EX, n=20) and 2) Control group (CON, n=20). All variables are measured before and after 12 weeks of intervention: Anthropometry (weight, height, body mass index), body composition (total fat mass, visceral adipose tissue, total and appendicular muscle mass; DXA), metabolic profile (HDL-C and LDL-C, triglycerides, glucose and insulin levels). Results: Preliminary analyses revealed no impact of exercise training on appendicular muscle mass (p=0,31) and fat mass (p=0,31). Furthermore, total body weight, waist circumference, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, glucose and insulin levels remained unchanged (all p ≥ 0.79) after 12 weeks of training. However, statistical analyses revealed that triglyceride levels slightly increased (p=0.03), irrespective of the group. Conclusion: Preliminary analyses did not reveal any impact of aerobic and resistance exercise training on body composition in oncogeriatric patients. Furthermore, exercise training seems not efficient to prevent the cancer treatment-related triglyceride levels increase.

Keywords: muscle mass, fat mass, metabolic profile, combined training, aging, cancer

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Authors: N. Uaphongsathorn, C. Worawong, S. Thaewpia

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Background and significance: The population is aging in Thai society, the elderly dependent is at great risk of various functional, psychological, and socio-economic problems as well as less access to health care. They may require long term care at home to maximize their functional abilities and activities of daily living and to improve their quality of life during their own age. Therefore, there is a need to develop a home-based long term care to meet the long term care needs of elders dependent. Methods: The research purpose was to develop long term care model among the elderly dependent in Chaiyaphum province in Northeast region of Thailand. Action Research which is composing of planning, action, observation, and reflection phases was used. Research was carried out for 12 months in all sub-districts of 6 districts in Chaiyaphum province. Participants (N = 1,010) participating in the processes of model development were comprised of 3 groups: a) a total of 110 health care professionals, b) a total of 600 health volunteers and family caregivers and c) a total of 300 the elderly dependent with chronically medical illnesses or disabilities. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were used to analyze data. Findings: Results have shown that the most common health problems among elders dependent with physical disabilities to function independently were cardiovascular disease, dementia, and traffic injuries. The development of home-based long term care model among elders dependent in Chaiyaphum province was composed of six key steps. They are: a) initiating policies supporting formal and informal caregivers for the elder dependent in all sub-districts, b) building network and multidisciplinary team, c) developing 3-day care manager training program and 3-day care provider training program d) training case managers and care providers for the elderly dependent through team and action learning, e) assessing, planning and providing care based on care individual’s needs of the elderly dependent, and f) sharing experiences for good practice and innovation for long term care at homes in district urban and rural areas. Among all care managers and care providers, the satisfaction level for training programs was high with a mean score of 3.98 out of 5. The elders dependent and family caregivers addressed that long term care at home could contribute to improving life’s daily activities, family relationship, health status, and quality of life. Family caregivers and volunteers have feeling a sense of personal satisfaction and experiencing providing meaningful care and support for elders dependent. Conclusion: In conclusion, a home-based long term care is important to Thai elders dependent. Care managers and care providers play a large role and responsibility to provide appropriate care to meet the elders’ needs in both urban and rural areas in Thai society. Further research could be rigorously studied with a larger group of populations in similar socio-economic and cultural contexts.

Keywords: elderly people, care manager, care provider, long term care

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Authors: Rebecca Keyte, Helen Egan, Michail Mantzios

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It is well acknowledged that ongoing adherence is a major concern within CF. However recently literature has indicated that non-adherence should not be viewed just in terms of medical regimens. There are other damaging behaviours that some chronically ill patients engage in which can be viewed as a form of non-adherence, such as risky behaviours. Risky behaviours are a major concern within CF, as they can have adverse health effects on patients regardless of patients adherence to medical regimens. The risky behaviours this research is predominantly focusing on are smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, illicit drug use and risky sexual behaviour. This research investigates patient’s beliefs about their CF and the impact their CF has upon their life, exploring rationales for why some patients engage in risky behaviours. This research utilises qualitative semi-structured interviews taking an interpretive perspective. Twenty-four adult participants have been recruited (16 male, age range 19–66 yrs) from two UK regional CF centres, with a median FEV1 61.77% predicted. Participants were recruited via clinician guidance, with 13 participants identified by clinicians as partaking in risky behaviours. However, during the interviews 17 participants were identified as partaking in risky behaviours, illustrating that not all patients offer full disclosure of engagement in such behaviours to their clinicians. Preliminary findings illustrate a variety of reasons as to why some CF patients engage in risky behaviours, with many participants stating that one challenge in terms of living with CF is accepting their illness. Disclosure of illness was also an issue, the desire to be seen as ‘normal’ was important to many. It is often possible for CF patients to hide their illness as they do not always appear to be unwell. However, literature indicates a desire for normalcy can be accompanied with the engagement of normalised risky behaviours, enabling patients to retaliate against their illness identity. There was also evidence of a life-orientated perspective amongst participants, with some reporting that their desire for fun and enjoyment was the reason for why they were engaging in risky behaviours. Some participants did not acknowledge the impact their risky behaviours could have upon their CF, and others rationalised their continuation with the behaviours by suggesting that they were in fact beneficial to their health. There was an apparent lack of knowledge around the implications of risky behaviours, with participants indicating that they had not been informed of such potential consequences by their clinicians. Given the adverse health effects of risky behaviours within CF, more effective health promotion measures are needed to both reduce and more importantly prevent these behaviours. Due to the initiation of risky behaviours within the CF population commonly occurring during adolescence, the researcher now proposes to conduct semi-structured interviews with paediatric patients to investigate their awareness and beliefs towards risky behaviours. Overall, this research will highlight reasons why some CF patients engage in risky behaviours, in order to inform interventions aimed to prevent the initiation in risky behaviours by increasing patient awareness.

Keywords: cystic fibrosis, health beliefs, preliminary findings, risky health behaviours

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Authors: Pedro A. S. Bergamo, Emilia S. Streng, Jan Rosenkranz, Yousef Ghorbani

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Within the often-hazardous mineral industry, simulation training has speedily gained appreciation as an important method of increasing site safety and productivity through enhanced operator skill and knowledge. Performance calculations related to froth flotation, one of the most important concentration methods, is probably the hardest topic taught during the training of plant operators. Currently, most training teach those skills by traditional methods like slide presentations and hand-written exercises with a heavy focus on memorization. To optimize certain aspects of these pieces of training, we developed “MinFloat”, which teaches the operation formulas of the froth flotation process with the help of gamification. The simulation core based on a first-principles flotation model was implemented in Unity3D and an instructor tutoring system was developed, which presents didactic content and reviews the selected answers. The game was tested by 25 professionals with extensive experience in the mining industry based on a questionnaire formulated for training evaluations. According to their feedback, the game scored well in terms of quality, didactic efficacy and inspiring character. The feedback of the testers on the main target audience and the outlook of the mentioned solution is presented. This paper aims to provide technical background on the construction of educational games for the mining industry besides showing how feedback from experts can more efficiently be gathered thanks to new technologies such as online forms.

Keywords: training evaluation, simulation based training, modelling, and simulation, froth flotation

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Authors: Vânia Graça, Paula Quadros-Flores, Altina Ramos

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The use of Digital Technologies in teaching and learning processes is currently a reality, namely in initial teacher training. This study aims at knowing the digital reality of students in initial teacher training in order to improve training in the educational use of ICT and to promote digital technology integration strategies in an educational context. It is part of the IFITIC Project "Innovate with ICT in Initial Teacher Training to Promote Methodological Renewal in Pre-school Education and in the 1st and 2nd Basic Education Cycle" which involves the School of Education, Polytechnic of Porto and Institute of Education, University of Minho. The Project aims at rethinking educational practice with ICT in the initial training of future teachers in order to promote methodological innovation in Pre-school Education and in the 1st and 2nd Cycles of Basic Education. A qualitative methodology was used, in which a questionnaire survey was applied to teachers in initial training. For data analysis, the techniques of content analysis with the support of NVivo software were used. The results point to the following aspects: a) future teachers recognize that they have more technical knowledge about ICT than pedagogical knowledge. This result makes sense if we consider the objective of Basic Education, so that the gaps can be filled in the Master's Course by students who wish to follow the teaching; b) the respondents are aware that the integration of digital resources contributes positively to students' learning and to the life of children and young people, which also promotes preparation in life; c) to be a teacher in the digital age there is a need for the development of digital literacy, lifelong learning and the adoption of new ways of teaching how to learn. Thus, this study aims to contribute to a reflection on the teaching profession in the digital age.

Keywords: digital technologies, initial teacher training, pedagogical use of ICT, skills

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Authors: G. H. B. Dilhari, A. A. D. T. Saparamadu

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The coir is one of the by-products of the coconut and the coir industry can be identified as one of the traditional industries in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is one of the prominent countries for the coir production. Due to the labour insensitiveness, the labourers are the significant factor in the coir production process. The study has analyzed the determinants and its impact on income of the household level coir yarn labourers. The study was conducted in the Kumarakanda Grama Niladhari division, Galle, Sri Lanka. Simple random sampling was used to generate the sample of 100 household level coir yarn labourers and structured questionnaire, personal interviews and discussion were performed to gather the required data. The obtained data were statistically analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test were carried out. The findings revealed that the household level coir yarn industry is dominated by the female workers and fewer amounts of workers have engaged this industry as the main occupation. In addition to that, elderly participation of the industry is greater than younger participation and most of them engaged as an extra income source. Level of education, the methods of engagement, satisfaction, labour’s children employment in the coir industry, support from the government, method of government support, working hours per day, employed as a main job, no of completed units per day, suffering any job related diseases and type of the diseases were related with income level of household level coir yarn labourers. The recommendations were formulated in respect to these problems including technological transformation for coir yarn production, strengthening of the raw material base and regulating the raw material supply, introduction of new technologies, markets and training programs, the establishment of the labourers association, the initiation of micro credit schemes, better consideration about the job oriented diseases.

Keywords: coir, coir yarn labourers, income, Galle

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Authors: Nour-Elhouda Lecheheb

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Destination image is one of the main factors that influence potential visitors' decision choice. This study aims to explore the pre-visit perception of prior British tourists and compare them to the actual projected images of the Algerian tourism suppliers. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with both prior British tourists to Algeria and the Algerian tourism suppliers in 2019. The findings of this study suggest how the Algerian tourism suppliers might benefit from understanding the perceived image of prior tourists to match tourists' expectations and better plan their projected images.

Keywords: Algeria, destination choice, destination image, perceived image, projected image

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Authors: Ekaterina G. Lipatova

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The developing potential of a video task in teaching foreign languages involves the opportunities to improve four aspects of speech production process: listening, reading, speaking and writing. A video represents the sequence of actions, realized in the pictures logically connected and verbalized speech flow that simplifies and stimulates the process of perception. In this connection listening skills of students are developed effectively as well as their intellectual properties such as synthesizing, analyzing and generalizing the information. In terms of teaching capacity, a video task, in our opinion, is more stimulating than a traditional listening, since it involves the student into the plot of the communicative situation, emotional background and potentially makes them react to the gist in the cognitive and communicative ways. To be an effective method of teaching the video task should be structured in the way of psycho-linguistic characteristics of speech production process, in other words, should include three phases: before-watching, while-watching and after-watching. The system of tasks provided to each phase might involve the situations on reflecting to the video content in the forms of filling-the-gap tasks, multiple choice, True-or-False tasks (reading skills), exercises on expressing the opinion, project fulfilling (writing and speaking skills). In the before-watching phase we offer the students to adjust their perception mechanism to the topic and the problem of the chosen video by such task as “what do you know about such a problem?”, “is it new for you?”, “have you ever faced the situation of…?”. Then we proceed with the lexical and grammatical analysis of language units that form the body of a speech sample to lessen the perception and develop the student’s lexicon. The goal of while-watching phase is to build the student’s awareness about the problem presented in the video and challenge their inner attitude towards what they have seen by identifying the mistakes in the statements about the video content or making the summary, justifying their understanding. Finally, we move on to development of their speech skills within the communicative situation they observed and learnt by stimulating them to search the similar ideas in their backgrounds and represent them orally or in the written form or express their own opinion on the problem. It is compulsory to highlight, that a video task should contain the urgent, valid and interesting event related to the future profession of the student, since it will help to activate cognitive, emotional, verbal and ethic capacity of students. Also, logically structured video tasks are easily integrated into the system of e-learning and can provide the opportunity for the students to work with the foreign language on their own.

Keywords: communicative situation, perception mechanism, speech production process, speech skills

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Authors: Ida Ngurah

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Indonesia is one of the most prone disaster countries, which has earthquake, tsunami or high wave, flood and landslide as well as volcano eruption and drought. Disaster risk reduction has been developing extensively and comprehensively, particularly after tsunami hit in 2004. Yet, saving people live including children and youth from disaster risk is still far from succeed. Poor management of environment, poor development of policy and high level of corruption has become challenges for Indonesia to save its people from disaster impact. Indonesia is struggling to ensure its future best investment, children and youth to have better protection when disaster strike in school hours and have basic knowledge on disaster risk reduction. The program of safe school is being initiated and developed by Plan Indonesia since 2010, yet this effort still needs to be elaborated. This paper is reviewing sporadic safe school programs that have been implemented or currently being implemented Plan Indonesia in few areas of Indonesia, including both rural and urban setting. Methods used are in-depth interview with dedicated person for the program from Plan Indonesia and its implementing patners and analysis of project documents. The review includes program’s goal and objectives, implementation activity, result and achievement as well as its monitoring and evaluation scheme. Moreover, paper will be showing challenges, lesson learned and best practices of the program. Eventually, paper will come up with recommendation for strategy for better implementation of safe school program in Indonesia.

Keywords: disaster impact, safe school, programs, children, youth

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Authors: Su Tezel

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The paper deals with licensed athletes affiliated with the Turkish Underwater Sports Federation to assess the consumption status of street food. The aim of the paper is the frequency of training during competition preparatory training or season periods, the athletes' economic situation, social life, work-life or education situations are the directs them to street food? Also to evaluate the importance that athletes attach to their nutritional status. Data were collected with survey method. 141 underwater sports athletes participated in the survey. Empirical findings on 141 respondents are related to athletes' demographic information, which underwater sports branch they doing (underwater hockey, underwater rugby and free diving), with whom they live, training hours and frequency, street food consumption frequency and preferences, which type drinks they prefer drink with or without street foods and other similar things. Most of the athletes were male (64.5%), female (35.5%) and the most athletes from the sports branches included in the survey belong to underwater hockey (95.7%). 93.7% of athletes have a training time between 08:00 pm to 00:00 am and the frequency of consuming street food after training is 88%. As a remarkable result, 48% of the reasons for consuming street food easy access to street foods after training. Statistical analyzes were made with the data obtained and the status of street food consumption of athletes, whether they were suitable for professional athlete nutrition and their attitudes were evaluated.

Keywords: nutrition, street foods, underwater hockey, underwater sport

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Authors: Jana Tchekalarova, Milena Atanasova, Katerina Georgieva

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Melatonin deficit can cause a disturbance in emotional status and circadian rhythms of the endocrine system in the body. Both pharmacological and alternative approaches are applied for correction of dysfunctions driven by changes in circadian dynamics of many physiological indicators. In the present study, we tested and compare the beneficial effect of agomelatine (40 mg/kg, i.p. for 3 weeks) and endurance training on depressive behavior in two models of melatonin deficit in rat. The role of disturbed circadian rhythms of plasma melatonin and corticosterone secretion in the mechanism of these treatments was also explored. The continuous exercise program attenuated depressive responses associated with disrupted diurnal rhythm of home-cage motor activity, anhedonia in the sucrose preference test, and despair-like behavior in the forced swimming test were attenuated by agomelatine exposed to chronic constant light (CCL) and long-term exercise in pinealectomized rats. Parallel to the observed positive effect on the emotional status, agomelatine restored CCL-induced impairment of circadian patterns of plasma melatonin but not that of corticosterone. In opposite, exercise training diminished total plasma corticosterone levels and corrected its flattened pattern while it was unable to correct melatonin deficit in pinealectomy. These results suggest that the antidepressant-like effect of pharmacological and alternative approach might be mediated via two different mechanism, correction of the disturbed circadian rhythm of melatonin and corticosterone, respectively. Therefore, these treatment approaches might have a potential therapeutic application in different subpopulations of people characterized by a melatonin deficiency. This work was supported by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria (research grant # № DN 03/10; DN# 12/6).

Keywords: agomelatine, exercise training, melatonin deficit, corticosterone

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Authors: Marie Bountrogianni, Leonora Zefi, Krystle Phirangee, Naza Djafarova

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Faculty development is critical for any institution as it impacts students’ learning experiences and faculty performance with regards to course delivery. With that in mind, The Chang School at Ryerson University embarked on an initiative to develop a comprehensive, relevant faculty development program for online faculty and instructors. Teaching Adult Learners Online (TALO) is a professional development program designed to build capacity among online teaching faculty to enhance communication/facilitation skills for online instruction and establish a Community of Practice to allow for opportunities for online faculty to network and exchange ideas and experiences. TALO is comprised of four online modules and each module provides three hours of learning materials. The topics focus on online teaching and learning experience, principles and practices, opportunities and challenges in online assessments as well as course design and development. TALO offers a unique experience for online instructors who are placed in the role of a student and an instructor through interactivities involving discussions, hands-on assignments, peer mentoring while experimenting with technological tools available for their online teaching. Through exchanges and informal peer mentoring, a small interdisciplinary community of practice has started to take shape. Successful participants have to meet four requirements for completion: i) participate actively in online discussions and activities, ii) develop a communication plan for the course they are teaching, iii) design one learning activity/or media component, iv) design one online learning module. This study adopted a mixed methods exploratory sequential design. For the qualitative phase of this study, a thorough literature review was conducted on what constitutes effective faculty development programs. Based on that review, the design team identified desired competencies for online teaching/facilitation and course design. Once the competencies were identified, a focus group interview with The Chang School teaching community was conducted as a needs assessment and to validate the competencies. In the quantitative phase, questionnaires were distributed to instructors and faculty after the program was launched to continue ongoing evaluation and revisions, in hopes of further improving the program to meet the teaching community’s needs. Four faculty members participated in a one-hour focus group interview. Major findings from the focus group interview revealed that for the training program, faculty wanted i) to better engage students online, ii) to enhance their online teaching with specific strategies, iii) to explore different ways to assess students online. 91 faculty members completed the questionnaire in which findings indicated that: i) the majority of faculty stated that they gained the necessary skills to demonstrate instructor presence through communication and use of technological tools provided, ii) increased faculty confidence with course management strategies, iii) learning from peers is most effective – the Community of Practice is strengthened and valued even more as program alumni become facilitators. Although this professional development program is not mandatory for online instructors, since its launch in Fall 2014, over 152 online instructors have successfully completed the program. A Community of Practice emerged as a result of the program and participants continue to exchange thoughts and ideas about online teaching and learning.

Keywords: community of practice, customized, faculty development, inclusive design

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