Search results for: student community service

Authors: Leigh Ann Wilson, Melanie Borrego

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The purpose of institutional learning outcomes (ILOs) is to assess what students across the university know and what they do not. The issue is gathering this information in a systematic and usable way. This presentation will explain how one institution has engineered this process for both student success and maximum faculty curriculum and course design input. At Brandman University, there are three levels of learning outcomes: course, program, and institutional. Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) are mapped to specific courses. Faculty course developers write the signature assignments (SAs) in alignment with the Institutional Learning Outcomes for each course. These SAs use a specific rubric that is applied consistently by every section and every instructor. Each year, the 12-member General Education Team (GET), as a part of their work, conducts the calibration and assessment of the university-wide SAs and the related rubrics for one or two of the five ILOs. GET members, who are senior faculty and administrators who represent each of the university's schools, lead the calibration meetings. Specifically, calibration is a process designed to ensure the accuracy and reliability of evaluating signature assignments by working with peer faculty to interpret rubrics and compare scoring. These calibration meetings include the full time and adjunct faculty members who teach the course to ensure consensus on the application of the rubric. Each calibration session is chaired by a GET representative as well as the course custodian/contact where the ILO signature assignment resides. The overall calibration process GET follows includes multiple steps, such as: contacting and inviting relevant faculty members to participate; organizing and hosting calibration sessions; and reviewing and discussing at least 10 samples of student work from class sections during the previous academic year, for each applicable signature assignment. Conversely, the commitment for calibration teams consist of attending two virtual meetings lasting up to three hours in duration. The first meeting focuses on interpreting the rubric, and the second meeting involves comparing scores for sample work and sharing feedback about the rubric and assignment. Next, participants are expected to follow all directions provided and participate actively, and respond to scheduling requests and other emails within 72 hours. The virtual meetings are recorded for future institutional use. Adjunct faculty are paid a small stipend after participating in both calibration meetings. Full time faculty can use this work on their annual faculty report for "internal service" credit.

Keywords: assessment, assurance of learning, course design, institutional learning outcomes, rubrics, signature assignments

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Authors: Modupe Beatrice Adeyinka

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French, as a foreign language in Nigeria, is pronounced to be the second official language and a compulsory subject in the primary school level; hence, colleges of education across the nation are saddled with the responsibility of training teachers for the subject. However, it has been observed that this policy has not been fully implemented, for French teachers in training, do face many challenges, of which translation is chief. In a bid to investigate the major cause of the perceived translation problem, this study examined French translation problems of pre-service teachers in selected colleges of education in the southwest, Nigeria. This study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The simple random sampling technique was used to select four colleges of education in the southwest, where 100 French students were randomly selected by selecting 25 from each school. The pre-service teachers’ French translation problems’ questionnaire (PTFTPQ) was used as an instrument while four research questions were answered and three null hypotheses were tested. Among others, the findings revealed that students do have problems with false friends, though mainly with its interpretation when attempting French-English translation and vice versa; majority of the students make use of French dictionary as a way out and found the material very useful for their understanding of false friends. Teachers were, therefore, urged to attend in-service training where they would be exposed to new and emerging strategies, approaches and methodologies of French language teaching that will make students overcome the challenge of translation in learning French.

Keywords: false friends, French language, pre-service teachers, source language, target language, translation

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Authors: Marcelus U. Ajonina, Deodata B. Ngonga, Kenric B. Ware, Carine K. Nfor

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Background: Lack of knowledge of rational use of antimalarial drugs among dispensers is a serious problem, especially in areas of intense transmission, thus increasing the risk of resistance and adverse drug reactions. This study was aimed at assessing the knowledge of malaria as well as perception and dispensing practices of antimalarials among vendors in Buea community. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional survey of a random sample of 140 drug vendors living within the Buea community was conducted between March and June 2017. A questionnaire was designed to obtain information from drug vendors on the general knowledge of malaria as well as dispensing practices. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 20.0 and were considered significant at p ≤ 0.05. Results: Knowledge of malaria symptoms, transmission, and prevention was reasonable among 55.8% (77) of the respondents. Only 33.6% (47) of the respondents could attribute the cause of malaria to protozoan of genus Plasmodium species. Of the 140 vendors, 115 (82.7%) prescribe antimalarial drugs. The knowledge of the national protocol was malaria case management among dispensers was 35.0%. Vendors in hospital/community pharmacies were 2.4 times (OR = 3.14, 95% CI: 4.14 - 8.74, p < 0.001) more knowledgeable about malaria treatment protocol than those of in drugstores. The prevalence of self-prescription of antimalarials was 39.3%. Self-prescription was significantly higher in drugstores than hospital/community pharmacies (p=0.004). In all, 56 (40.6%) of vendors showed good practices regarding antimalarial drug dispensing with the majority (51.7%) from community pharmacies (OR=2.27,95% CI: 1.13-4.56). Conclusion: Findings reveal moderate knowledge of malaria but poor prescription and dispensing practices of antimalarial drugs among vendors, thus indicating a need for routine monitoring and evaluation to prevent the emergence of resistant strains to current efficacious antimalarials.

Keywords: antimalarials, drug retail outlets, dispensing, drug resistance, prescription

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Authors: Wei Zhao

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The pandemic crisis disrupted normal classroom practices so that the constraints of the traditional practice became apparent. This turns out to be new opportunities for technology-based learning and teaching. However, how the technology supports the preschool teachers go through this sudden crisis and how preschool teachers conceived of the use of technology, appropriate and design technological artifacts as a mediator of knowledge construction in order to suit young children’s literacy level are rarely explored. This study addresses these issues by looking at the influence of a web-supported teacher community on changes/shifts in preschool teachers’ epistemological beliefs and practices. This teachers’ professional development community was formulated before the pandemic time and developed virtually throughout the home-based learning caused by Covid-19. It served as a virtual and asynchronous community for those teachers to collaboratively plan for and conduct online lessons using the knowledge-building approach for the purpose of sustaining children’s learning curiosity and opening up new learning opportunities during the lock-down period. The knowledge-building approach helps to increase teachers’ collective responsibility to collaboratively work on shared educational goals in the teacher community and awareness of noticing new ideas or innovations in their classroom. Based on the data collected across five months during and after the lock-down period and the activity theory, results show a dynamic interplay between the evolution of the community culture, the growth of teacher community and teachers’ identity transformation and professional development. Technology is useful in this regard not only because it transforms the geographical distance and new gathering guidelines after the outbreak of pandemic into new ways of communal communication and collaboration. More importantly, while teachers selected, monitored and adapted the technology, it acts as a catalyst for changes in teachers’ old teaching practices and epistemological dispositions.

Keywords: activity theory, changes in epistemology and practice, knowledge building, web-based teachers’ professional development community

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Authors: Firdaous Zair, Zoubir Elfelsoufi, Mohammed Fourka

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The allocation of resources is an issue that is needed on the tactical and operational strategic plan. This work considers the allocation of resources in the case of pure players, manufacturers and Click & Mortars that have launched online sales. The aim is to improve the level of customer satisfaction and maintaining the benefits of e-retailer and of its cooperators and reducing costs and risks. Our contribution is a decision support system and tool for improving the allocation of resources in logistics chains e-commerce B2C context. We first modeled the B2C chain with all operations that integrates and possible scenarios since online retailers offer a wide selection of personalized service. The personalized services that online shopping companies offer to the clients can be embodied in many aspects, such as the customizations of payment, the distribution methods, and after-sales service choices. In addition, every aspect of customized service has several modes. At that time, we analyzed the optimization problems of supply chain resource allocation in customized online shopping service mode, which is different from the supply chain resource allocation under traditional manufacturing or service circumstances. Then we realized an optimization model and algorithm for the development based on the analysis of the allocation of the B2C supply chain resources. It is a multi-objective optimization that considers the collaboration of resources in operations, time and costs but also the risks and the quality of services as well as dynamic and uncertain characters related to the request.

Keywords: e-commerce, supply chain, B2C, optimisation, resource allocation

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Authors: Sisaye Tamrat Ayalew

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The study focuses on the nature of community relationships in Ethiopia, specifically the I-Thou and I-It relationships, and how they contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. It highlights the importance of genuine dialogue and mutual understanding in creating a unified and peaceful society. It analyzes the nature of community relationships in Ethiopia and evaluate how these relationships either contribute to conflict resolution or exacerbate conflicts. It aims to understand the role of genuine dialogue (I-Thou relationship) versus monologue (I-It relationship) in building lasting peace in the country. The study adopts a qualitative approach, specifically hermeneutics, to explore and understand the nature of community relationships in Ethiopia. It involves analyzing the characteristics of both I-Thou and I-It relationships and examining how the political elites shape these relationships within the community. The findings of the study indicate that the predominant type of relationship in Ethiopian society is the I-It relationship, referred to as "com-animation". This relationship is characterized by mutual mistrust, prejudice, hostility, and misunderstanding. As a result, conflicts, mass killings, displacement, and human rights violations have occurred. The study emphasizes the importance of shifting from com-animation to communication (I-Thou relationship) in order to address conflicts and establish lasting peace.

Keywords: dialogue, I-thou relationship, peace building, I-It relationship

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Authors: Denise F. Brown, Melina McConatha

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African Americans utilizing the art of vocal expressions, particularly for self-expression, has been a historical avenue of advocating for social justice and human rights. Vocal expressions can take many forms, such as singing, poetry, storytelling, and acting. Many well-known artists, politicians, leaders, and teachers used their voices to promote the causes and concerns of the African American community as well as the expression of their own experiences of being 'black' in America. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the perceptions of African American students in utilizing their voices for self-awareness, interview skills, and social change after attending a three-part workshop on vocal advocacy. This research utilized the framework of black feminism to understand empowerment in advocacy and self-expression. Students participated in learning about the power of their voices, and what purpose presence, and passion they discovered through the Immersive Voice workshop. There were three areas covered in the workshop. The first area was the power of the voice, the second area was the application of vocal passion, and the third area was applying the vocal power to express personal interest, interests of advocating for others, and confidence and speaking to others to further careers, i.e., using vocal power for job interviewing skills. The students were instructed to prepare for the workshops by completing a pre-workshop open-ended survey. There were a total of 15 students that participated. After the workshop ended, the students were instructed to complete a post-workshop survey. The surveys were assessed by evaluating both themes and codes from student's written feedback. From the pre-workshop survey, students were given a survey for them to provide feedback regarding the power of voice prior to participating in the workshops. From the student's responses, the theme (advocating for self and others) emerged as it related to student's feedback on what it means to advocate. There were three codes that led to the theme, having knowledge about advocating for self and others, gaining knowledge to advocate for self and others, and using that knowledge to advocate for self and others. After the students completed participation in the workshops, a post workshop- survey was given to the students. Students' feedback was assessed, and the same theme emerged, 'advocating for self and others.' The codes related to the theme, however, were different and included using vocal power (a term students learned during the workshop) to represent self, represent others, and obtain a job/career. In conclusion, the results of the survey showed that students still perceived advocating as speaking up for themselves and other people. After the workshop, students still continued to associate advocacy with helping themselves and helping others but were able to be more specific about how the sound of their voice could help in advocating, and how they could use their voice to represent themselves in getting a job or starting a career.

Keywords: advocacy, command, self-expression, voice

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Authors: Ji Young Lee, Jong Woon Kim

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It is essential to secure high availability of railway vehicles to realize high quality and efficiency of railway service. Once the availability decreased, planned railway service could not be provided or more cars need to be reserved. additional cars need to be purchased or the frequency of railway service could be decreased. Such situation would be a big loss in terms of quality and cost related to railway service. Therefore, we make various efforts to get high availability of railway vehicles. Because it is a big loss to operators, we make various efforts to get high availability of railway vehicles. To secure high availability, the idle time of the vehicle needs to be reduced and the following methods are applied to railway vehicles. First, through modularization design, exchange time for line replaceable units is reduced which makes railway vehicles could be put into the service quickly. Second, to reduce periodic preventive maintenance time, preventive maintenance with short period would be proceeded test oriented to minimize the maintenance time, and reliability is secured through overhauls for each main component. With such design changes for railway vehicles, modularized components are exchanged first at the time of vehicle failure or overhaul so that vehicles could be put into the service quickly and exchanged components are repaired or overhauled. Therefore, spare components are required for any future failures or overhauls. And, as components are modularized and costs for components are high, it is considerably important to get reasonable quantities of spare components. Especially, when a number of railway vehicles were put into the service simultaneously, the time of overhauls come almost at the same time. Thus, for some vehicles, components need to be exchanged and overhauled before appointed overhaul period so that these components could be secured as spare parts for the next vehicle’s component overhaul. For this reason, components overhaul time and spare parts quantities should be decided at the same time. This study deals with the time of overhauls for repairable components of railway vehicles and the calculation of spare parts quantities in consideration of future failure/overhauls. However, as railway vehicles are used according to the service schedule, maintenance work cannot be proceeded after the service was closed thus it is quite difficult to resolve this situation mathematically. In this study, Simulation software system is used in this study for analyzing the time of overhauls for repairable components of railway vehicles and the spare parts for the railway systems.

Keywords: overhaul time, rolling stocks, simulation, spare parts

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Authors: M. Velasco, D. While, P. Raju, J. Krasniewicz, A. Amini, L. Hernandez-Munoz

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Web service adaptation involves the creation of adapters that solve Web services incompatibilities known as mismatches. Since the importance of Web services adaptation is increasing because of the frequent implementation and use of online Web services, this paper presents a literature review of web services to investigate the main methods of adaptation, their theoretical underpinnings and the metrics used to measure adapters performance. Eighteen publications were reviewed independently by two researchers. We found that adaptation techniques are needed to solve different types of problems that may arise due to incompatibilities in Web service interfaces, including protocols, messages, data and semantics that affect the interoperability of the services. Although adapters are non-invasive methods that can improve Web services interoperability and there are current approaches for service adaptation; there is, however, not yet one solution that fits all types of mismatches. Our results also show that only a few research projects incorporate theoretical frameworks and that metrics to measure adapters’ performance are very limited. We conclude that further research on software adaptation should improve current adaptation methods in different layers of the service interoperability and that an adaptation theoretical framework that incorporates a theoretical underpinning and measures of qualitative and quantitative performance needs to be created.

Keywords: Web Services Adapters, software adaptation, web services mismatches, web services interoperability

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Authors: Moon-Tak Oh, Kyung-Min Park, Tae-Eun Yoon, Hoon Choi, Chil-Woo Lee

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This paper is about middle-ware which enables group-user applications on mobile devices in physical proximity to interact with other devices without intervention of a central server. Requirements of the middle-ware are identified from service usage scenarios, and the functional architecture of the middle-ware is specified. These requirements include group management, synchronization, and resource management. Group Management needs to provide various capabilities to such applications with respect to managing multiple users (e.g., creation of groups, discovery of group or individual users, member join/leave, election of a group manager and service-group association) using D2D communication technology. We designed the middle-ware for the above requirements on the Android platform.

Keywords: group user, middleware, mobile service, physical proximity

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Authors: Sepdiana W. Rahmawati, Santi A. P. Anggraini

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The world of education has made progress with the various new technologies with help of computer. No exception physics education, especially virtual physics practical work. By doing practical work, memory of physics concept will be more advantageous for student and they will understand the essence of actual physics, not only spiked formula. With help of computers, created a variety of applications that can be used by students to perform virtual practical work and students will start thinking systematically to be able find its own concepts and understand the application of physics.

Keywords: essence of physics, formation concept, physics concept, virtual practical work

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Authors: Mahta Eskandarnejad

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The aim of this paper was to compare physical activity and mental toughness in the staff and students of the University of Tabriz. 615 people participated in this study and filled demographic questionnaire, mental thoughness48 (MTQ48) questionnaire and habitual physical activity questionnaire (Baecke physical activity questionnaire). The research sample included 355 students and 260 staff (615 questionnaires). For analyzing hypotheses MANOVA, correlation and independent t-test were used. Based on the result; some subscales of mental toughness and physical activity were significantly related. The result showed the significant correlation between mental toughness and physical activity in student and no significant correlation in staff. Students were significantly physically more active than staff, and mental toughness was higher in staff. There was no difference in mental toughness variable between active participants (active staff and student). The results of this study showed that mental toughness could influence the way a person cope with living conditions. It is expected that mental toughness changes can lead to changing in levels of physical activity. It should be noted that the other variables should not be ignored.

Keywords: Baecke physical activity questionnaire, mental toughness, physical activity, university staff, university student

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Authors: Yurike, Yonariza, Rudi Febriamansyah, Syafruddin Karimi

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Forest is a natural resource that has an important function as a supporting element of human life. Forest degradation enormous impact on global warming is a reality we have experienced together, that disruption of ecosystems, extreme weather conditions, disruption of water management system watersheds and the threat of natural disasters as floods, landslides and droughts, even disruption food security. Dharmasraya is a district in the province of West Sumatra, which has an area of 92.150 ha of forest, which is largely a former production forest concessions (Forest Management Rights) which is supposed to be a secondary forest. This study answers about the impact of land use in the former concession area Dharmasraya on the environment. The methodology used is the household survey, key informants, and satellite data / GIS. From the results of the study, the former concession area in Dharmasraya experienced a reduction of forest cover over time significantly. Forest concessions should be secondary forests in Dharmasraya, now turned conversion to oil palm plantations. Population pressures and growing economic pressures, resulting in more intensive harvesting. As a result of these forest disturbances caused changes in forest functions. These changes put more emphasis towards economic function by ignoring social functions or ecological function. Society prefers to maximize their benefits today and pay less attention to the protection of natural resources. This causes global warming is increasing and this is not only felt by people around Dharmasraya but also the world. Land clearing by the community through a process in slash and burn. This fire was observed by NOAA satellites and recorded by the Forest Service of West Sumatra. This demonstrates the ability of trees felled trees to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) to be lost, even with forest fires accounted for carbon dioxide emitted into the air, and this has an impact on global warming. In addition to the change of control of land into oil palm plantations water service has been poor, people began to trouble the water and oil palm plantations are located in the watershed caused the river dried up. Through the findings of this study is expected to contribute ideas to the policy makers to pay more attention to the former concession forest management as the prevention or reduction of global warming.

Keywords: climate change, community, concession forests, environment

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Authors: Javad Sadidi, Ehsan Babaei, Hani Rezayan

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The advent of web 2.0 gives a possibility to scale down the costs of data collection and mapping, specifically if the process is done by volunteers. Every volunteer can be thought of as a free and ubiquitous sensor to collect spatial, descriptive as well as multimedia data for tourist services. The lack of large-scale information, such as real-time climate and weather conditions, population density, and other related data, can be considered one of the important challenges in developing countries for tourists to make the best decision in terms of time and place of travel. The current research aims to design and implement a spatiotemporal web map service using volunteer-submitted data. The service acts as a tourist-guide service in which tourists can search interested places based on their requested time for travel. To design the service, three tiers of architecture, including data, logical processing, and presentation tiers, have been utilized. For implementing the service, open-source software programs, client and server-side programming languages (such as OpenLayers2, AJAX, and PHP), Geoserver as a map server, and Web Feature Service (WFS) standards have been used. The result is two distinct browser-based services, one for sending spatial, descriptive, and multimedia volunteer data and another one for tourists and local officials. Local official confirms the veracity of the volunteer-submitted information. In the tourist interface, a spatiotemporal search engine has been designed to enable tourists to find a tourist place based on province, city, and location at a specific time of interest. Implementing the tourist-guide service by this methodology causes the following: the current tourists participate in a free data collection and sharing process for future tourists, a real-time data sharing and accessing for all, avoiding a blind selection of travel destination and significantly, decreases the cost of providing such services.

Keywords: VGI, tourism, spatiotemporal, browser-based, web mapping

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Authors: Sandra Baßler, Peter Dünow, Mathias Marquardt

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A Fourier series based learning control (FSBLC) algorithm for tracking trajectories of mechanical systems with unknown nonlinearities is presented. Two processes are introduced to which the FSBLC with PD controller is applied. One is a simplified service robot capable of climbing stairs due to special wheels and the other is a propeller driven pendulum with nearly the same requirements on control. Additionally to the investigation of learning the feed forward for the desired trajectories some considerations on the implementation of such an algorithm on low cost microcontroller hardware are made. Simulations of the service robot as well as practical experiments on the pendulum show the capability of the used FSBLC algorithm to perform the task of improving control behavior for repetitive task of such mechanical systems.

Keywords: climbing stairs, FSBLC, ILC, service robot

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Authors: Paula Linna

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During the recent years interest in inclusive business has increased. Still, research on inclusive business development is at infancy. This study provides empirical evidence on inclusive business development of mini-grid solution for the rural African communities. This study tests how well the insights of creation theory can explain inclusive business development process which often occurs under uncertainty due to demands for developing new technology, new business model and establishing business in new market. These several uncertain elements of business development impact what kind of business strategies the entrepreneur can practice and what kind of decision making tools to use. In addition, community engagement is essential for the successful operative management of a mini-grid solution. This study advances the understanding of inclusive business development and can be used as the foundation for future work to facilitate the process of new business venture creation at the BOP particularly when developing community-operated entrepreneurship model.

Keywords: creation theory, base of the pyramid (BOP), community-operated entrepreneurship, rural African communities

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Authors: Melissa Teo

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It is increasingly important that project managers develop greater capabilities to better manage the social, cultural, political, environmental and economic impacts on proposed construction projects. These challenges are best resolved in consultation with communities rather than in conflict with them. This is particularly important on controversial projects which are projects that have obtained government sanctioned ‘development approval’ but not ‘community approval’. While a rich body of research and intellectual frameworks exist in the fields of urban geography and planning to understand and manage community concerns during the pre-development approval stages of new projects, current theoretical frameworks guiding community engagement in project management are inadequate. A new and innovative research agenda is needed to guide thinking about the role of local communities in the construction process and is an important research gap that needs to be filled. Within this context, this research aims to assess the effectiveness of strategies adopted by project teams to engage with local communities so as to capture lessons learnt to apply to future projects. This paper reports a research methodology which uses Arnstein’s model of participation to better understand how power differentials between the project team and local communities can influence the adoption of community engagement strategies. A case study approach is utilizing interviews and documentary analysis of a large-scale controversial construction project in Queensland, Australia is presented. The findings will result in a number of recommendations to guide community engagement practices on future projects.

Keywords: community engagement, construction, case study, project management

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Authors: Nizar Ahmad

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Peace without community participation will remain a vision, so, this study presents the contribution and efforts made by community base organization in views of local conflict affect population in Pakhtun society. A four conflict affected villages of Malakad Division were selected and a sample size of 278 household respondents were determined through online survey system software out of total 982 households. A Chi-square test was applied to ascertain association between various communication base organizations factors with state of peace in the area. It was found that provision of humanitarian aid, rehabilitation of displaced population, rebuilding of trust in government and peace festivals by communication organization had significant association with state of peace in the area. In contrast provision of training, peace education monitoring and reporting of human rights violation in war zone by local organization was non-significantly related to the state of peace in the area. Community base organization play an active role in building peace in the area but lack capacity, linkages with external actors and outside support. National and international organization actors working in the area of peace and conflict resolution need to focus on the capacity, networking and peace initiatives of local organizations working in fragile context.

Keywords: community base peacebuilding, conflict resolution, terrorism, violence

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Authors: Caroline Selai, Sushrut Jadhav

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Background: University College London (UCL), the first secular university in England to admit students regardless of their religion and gender, has nearly 29,000 students of which approximately 30% are international students. The UCL Cultural Consultation Service (CCS) for staff and students is a unique service that provides assistance to staff and students experiencing challenges in their teaching, enabling, support work or studies which they believe may have a cultural component. The service provides one-to-one and group consultations, lectures, seminars, ‘grand rounds’, interactive workshops and bespoke interventions. Data: This paper presents a content analysis of CCS referrals over the last 36 months. We focus on the experience of international students, many of whom experience not only a challenge to their academic identity but also a profound challenge to their personal cultural identity. We also present 3 vignettes to illustrate how students interpret, accept, contest and resist changes in their cultural and academic identity. Discussion: This paper highlights (i) how students from collectivist cultures attempt to assimilate within an individualistic, highly competitive western university that is bound by its own institutional norms; (ii) problems in negotiating challenges at the interface of culture and gender (iii) the impact of culturally different hierarchies of power, discrimination and authority and (iv) the significance of earlier traumatic and kinship conflicts. Many international students’ social identities are shaped by their cultural and family scripts. A large number have been taught that their teachers are to be revered and their teachings unchallenged. This is at odds with quintessential goal of the western university to encourage healthy scepticism and hone students’ critical thinking skills. Conclusions: Pupil-teacher ‘cultural transference’ and shifts in cultural academic identities of students underscore critical aspects of developmental and learning challenges for students. Staff-student cultural conflict requires a broader, systemic analysis of students, staff and the wider organisation. Our findings challenge Eurocentric psychodynamic concepts such as the nature of parent-child relationship in Western Europe. We argue for a broader, more inclusive approach to develop both effective pedagogic skills in euro-american academic institutions and culturally- appropriate psychodynamic theory to underpin counselling international students.

Keywords: academic identity, cultural transference, cultural consultation in higher education, cultural formulation, cultural identity.

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Authors: Talar Agopian

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Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) is a common practice in many Lebanese schools. However, ESL teaching is done in traditional ways. Methods such as constructivism are seldom used, especially in villages. Here lies the significance of this research which joins constructivism and Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in ESL classes in Lebanese villages. The purpose of the present study is to explore the effects of applying constructivist student-centered strategies in teaching grammar, reading comprehension, and poetry on students in elementary ESL classes in two villages in Lebanon, Zefta in South Lebanon and Boqaata in Mount Lebanon. 20 English teachers participated in a training titled “Teaching English with Fun”, which focused on strategies that create a student-centered class where active learning takes place and there is increased learner engagement and autonomy. The training covered three main areas in teaching English: grammar, reading comprehension, and poetry. After participating in the training, the teachers applied the new strategies and methods in their ESL classes. The methodology comprised two phases: in phase one, practice-based research was conducted as the teachers attended the training and applied the constructivist strategies in their respective ESL classes. Phase two included the reflections of the teachers on the effects of the application of constructivist strategies. The results revealed the educational benefits of constructivist student-centered strategies; the students of teachers who applied these strategies showed improved engagement, positive attitudes towards poetry, increased motivation, and a better sense of autonomy. Future research is required in applying constructivist methods in the areas of writing, spelling, and vocabulary in ESL classrooms of Lebanese villages.

Keywords: active learning, constructivism, learner engagement, student-centered strategies

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Authors: Babak Mohajeri

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In recent years, the conventional business model of ownership has been changed towards accessibility in a variety of markets. Two trends can be observed in the evolution of this rental-like business model. Firstly, the technological development that enables the emergence of new business models. These new business models increasingly become agile and flexible. For example Spotify, an online music stream company provides consumers access to over millions of music tracks, conveniently through the smartphone, tablet or computer. Similarly, Car2Go, the car sharing company accesses its members with flexible and nearby sharing cars. The second trend is the increasing communication and connections via social networks. This trend enables a shift to peer-to-peer accessibility based business models. Conventionally, companies provide access for their customers to own companies products or services. In peer-to-peer model, nonetheless, companies facilitate access and connection across their customers to use other customers owned property or skills, competencies or services .The is so-called the sharing economy business model. The aim of this study is to investigate into a new and emerging type of the sharing economy model in which role of customers and service providers may dramatically change. This new model is called Collaborative Service Networks. We propose a mechanism for Collaborative Service Networks business model. Uber and Airbnb, two successful growing companies, have been selected for our case studies and their business models are analyzed. Finally, we study the emergence of the collaborative service networks in the manufacturing domain. Our finding results to a new manufacturing paradigm called social manufacturing.

Keywords: sharing economy, collaborative service networks, social manufacturing, manufacturing development

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Authors: Nien-Te Kuo, Yi-Sung Cheng, Kuo-Chien Chang

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Cultural festival tourism is now seen by many as an opportunity to facilitate community development because it has significant influences on the economic, social, cultural, and political aspects of local communities. The potential for tourist attraction has been recognized as a useful tool to strengthen local economies from governments. However, most community festivals in Taiwan are short-lived, often only lasting for a few years or occasionally not making it past a one-off event. Researchers suggested that most governments and other stakeholders do not recognize the importance of building a partnership with residents when developing community tourism. Thus, the sustainable community tourism development still remains a key issue in the existing literature. The success of community tourism is related to the attitudes and lifestyles of local residents. In order to maintain sustainable tourism, residents need to be seen as development partners. Residents’ support intention for tourism development not only helps to increase awareness of local culture, history, the natural environment, and infrastructure, but also improves the interactive relationship between the host community and tourists. Furthermore, researchers have identified the social capital theory as the core of sustainable community tourism development. The social capital of residents has been seen as a good way to solve issues of tourism governance, forecast the participation behavior and improve support intention of residents. In addition, previous studies have pointed out the role of community participation and place identity in increasing resident support intention for tourism development. A lack of place identity is one of the main reasons that community tourism has become a mere formality and is not sustainable. It refers to how much residents participate during tourism development and is mainly influenced by individual interest. Scholars believed that the place identity of residents is the soul of community festivals. It shows the community spirit to visitors and has significant impacts on tourism benefits and support intention of residents in community tourism development. Although the importance of community participation and place identity have been confirmed by both governmental and non-governmental organizations, real-life execution still needs to be improved. This study aimed to use social capital theory to investigate the social structure between community residents, participation levels in festival tourism, degrees of place identity, and resident support intention for future community tourism development, and the causal relationship that these factors have with cultural festival tourism. A quantitative research approach was employed to examine the proposed model. Structural equation model was used to test and verify the proposed hypotheses. This was a case study of the Kaohsiung Zuoying Wannian Folklore Festival. The festival was located in the Zuoying District of Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. The target population of this study was residents who attended the festival. The results reveal significant correlations among social capital, community participation, place identity and support intention. The results also confirm that impacts of social capital on support intention were significantly mediated by community participation and place identity. Practical suggestions were provided for tourism operators and policy makers. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, Republic of China, under the grant MOST-105-2410-H-328-013.

Keywords: community participation, place identity, social capital, support intention

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Authors: Obaidul Fattah Tanvir, Zinat Ara Afroze

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Community living adjacent to forests and Protected Areas, especially in South Asian countries, have a common practice in extracting resources for their living and livelihoods. This extraction of resources, because the way it is done, destroys the biophysical features of the area. Deforestation, wildlife poaching, illegal logging, unauthorized hill cutting etc. are some of the serious issues of concern for the sustainability of the natural resources that has a direct impact on environment and climate as a whole. To ensure community involvement in conservation initiatives of the state, community based forest management, commonly known as Comanagement, has been in practice in 6 South Asian countries. These are -India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Involving community in forestry management was initiated first in Bangladesh in 1979 and reached as an effective co-management approach through a several paradigm shifts. This idea of Comanagement has been institutionalized through a Government Order (GO) by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of Bangladesh on November 23, 2009. This GO clearly defines the structure and functions of Co-management and its different bodies. Bangladesh Forest Department has been working in association with community to conserve and manage the Forests and Protected areas of Bangladesh following this legal document. Demographically young people constitute the largest segment of population in Bangladesh. This group, if properly sensitized, can produce valuable impacts on the conservation initiatives, both by community and government. This study traced the major factors that motivate community youths to work effectively with different tiers of comanagement organizations in conservation of forests and Protected Areas of Bangladesh. For the purpose of this study, 3 FGDs were conducted with 30 youths from the community living around the Protected Areas of Cox’s bazar, South East corner of Bangladesh, who are actively involved in Co-management organizations. KII were conducted with 5 key officials of Forest Department stationed at Cox’s Bazar. 2 FGDs were conducted with the representatives of 7 Co-management organizations working in Cox’s Bazar region and approaches of different community outreach activities conducted for forest conservation by 3 private organizations and Projects have been reviewed. Also secondary literatures were reviewed for the history and evolution of Co-management in Bangladesh and six South Asian countries. This study found that innovative community outreach activities that are financed by public and private sectors involving youths and community as a whole have played a pivotal role in conservation of forests and Protected Areas of the region. This approach can be replicated in other regions of Bangladesh as well as other countries of South Asia where Co-Management exists in practice.

Keywords: community, co-management, conservation, forests, protected areas, youth

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Authors: A. Robbin

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In a multilingual setting like Nigeria, the success of service encounters is enhanced by the use of a language that ensures the linguistic and persuasive demands of the interlocutors. This study examined motivations for code switching as a negotiation strategy in bank-hall desk service encounters in Ìbàdàn metropolis using Myers-Scotton’s exploration on markedness in language use. The data consisted of transcribed audio recording of bank-hall service encounters, and direct observation of bank interactions in two purposively sampled commercial banks in Ìbàdàn metropolis. The data was subjected to descriptive linguistic analysis using Myers Scotton’s Markedness Model.  Findings reveal that code switching is frequently employed during different stages of service encounter: greeting, transaction and closing to fulfil relational, bargaining and referential functions. Bank staff and customers code switch to make unmarked, marked and explanatory choices. A strategy used to identify with customer’s cultural affiliation, close status gap, and appeal to begrudged customer; or as an explanatory choice with non-literate customers for ease of communication. Bankers select English to maintain customers’ perceptions of prestige which is retained or diverged from depending on their linguistic preference or ability.  Yoruba is seen as an efficient negotiation strategy with both bankers and their customers, making choices within conversation to achieve desired conversational and functional aims.

Keywords: banking, bilingualism, code-switching, markedness, service encounter

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Authors: Alvaro Figueira, Bruno Cabral

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Nowadays, students are used to be assessed through an online platform. Educators have stepped up from a period in which they endured the transition from paper to digital. The use of a diversified set of question types that range from quizzes to open questions is currently common in most university courses. In many courses, today, the evaluation methodology also fosters the students’ online participation in forums, the download, and upload of modified files, or even the participation in group activities. At the same time, new pedagogy theories that promote the active participation of students in the learning process, and the systematic use of problem-based learning, are being adopted using an eLearning system for that purpose. However, although there can be a lot of feedback from these activities to student’s, usually it is restricted to the assessments of online well-defined tasks. In this article, we propose an automatic system that informs students of abnormal deviations of a 'correct' learning path in the course. Our approach is based on the fact that by obtaining this information earlier in the semester, may provide students and educators an opportunity to resolve an eventual problem regarding the student’s current online actions towards the course. Our goal is to prevent situations that have a significant probability to lead to a poor grade and, eventually, to failing. In the major learning management systems (LMS) currently available, the interaction between the students and the system itself is registered in log files in the form of registers that mark beginning of actions performed by the user. Our proposed system uses that logged information to derive new one: the time each student spends on each activity, the time and order of the resources used by the student and, finally, the online resource usage pattern. Then, using the grades assigned to the students in previous years, we built a learning dataset that is used to feed a machine learning meta classifier. The produced classification model is then used to predict the grades a learning path is heading to, in the current year. Not only this approach serves the teacher, but also the student to receive automatic feedback on her current situation, having past years as a perspective. Our system can be applied to online courses that integrate the use of an online platform that stores user actions in a log file, and that has access to other student’s evaluations. The system is based on a data mining process on the log files and on a self-feedback machine learning algorithm that works paired with the Moodle LMS.

Keywords: data mining, e-learning, grade prediction, machine learning, student learning path

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Authors: Jorine T. Ndoro, Marietjie Van Der Merwe

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Rural poverty remains a critical challenge in most developing countries and the participation of farmers in agricultural projects has taken a key role in development initiatives. Farmers’ participation in agricultural initiatives is crucial towards poverty alleviation and food security. Farmers’ involvement directly contributes towards sustainable agricultural development and livelihoods. This study focuses on investigating the perceptions of farmers’ participation in a community garden project. The study involved farmers belonging to community garden project in Imphendhle municipality in Mgungundlvu district of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The study followed a qualitative research design using an interpretive research paradigm. The data was collected through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews and a focus group was conducted with the eight farmers belonging to the community garden project. The findings show that the farmers are not involved in decision makings in the project. The farmers are passive participants. Participation of the farmers was mainly to carry out the activities from the extension officers. The study recommends that farmers be actively involved in projects and programmes introduced in their communities. Farmers’ active participation contributes to the sustainability of the projects through a sense of ownership.

Keywords: farmers, participation, agricultural extension, community garden

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Authors: M. Caporale

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French Curricula across the US have recently suffered low enrollment and have experienced difficulties with retention, thus resulting in fewer students minoring and majoring in French and enrolling in upper-level classes. Successful undergraduate programs offer French courses with a strong cultural and interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary component. The World Language Curriculum in liberal arts colleges in America needs to take into account the cultural aspects of the language and encourage students to think critically about the country or countries they are studying. Limiting the critical inquiry to language or literature narrowly defined provides and incomplete and stagnant picture of France and the Francophone world in today's global community. This essay discusses the creation and implementation of a hybrid interdisciplinary L1/L2 course titled "Topics in Francophone Cinema" (subtitle "Francophone Women on Screen and Behind the Camera"). Content-based interdisciplinary courses undoubtedly increase the profile of French and Francophone cultural Studies by introducing students of other disciplines to fundamental questions relating to the French and Francophone cultures (in this case, women's rights in the Francophone world). At the same time, this study determines that through targeted reading and writing assignments, sustained aural exposure to L2 through film,and student participation in a one-credit supplementary weekly practicum (creative film writing workshop), significant advances in L2 competence are achieved with students' oral and written production levels evolving from Advanced Low to Advanced-mid, as defined by the ACFL guidelines. Use of differentiated assessment methods for L1/L2 and student learning outcomes for both groups will also be addressed.

Keywords: interdisciplinary, Francophone cultural studies, language competency, content-based

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Authors: Adam Jenkins

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The Maritime RobotX Challenge provides a platform for postgraduate students conducting research in autonomous robotic systems to participate in an international competition. Although targeted to postgraduate students, the problem domain lends itself to a wide range of different levels of student expertise. In 2022, undergraduate Information Technology students from the University of South Australia undertook the challenge, utilizing a System of the Systems approach to the project's architecture. Each student group produced an independent solution to an identified task, which was then implemented on a Single Board Computer (SBC). A Central Control System then engaged each solution when appropriate, allowing the encapsulated SBC systems to manage each task as it was encountered. This approach facilitated collaboration among the multiple independent student teams over an 18-month period, and the fundamental system-agnostic architecture allowed for both the variance in student solutions and the limitations caused by the global electronics shortage. By adopting this approach, Information Technology teams were able to work independently yet produce an effective solution, leveraging their expertise to develop and construct an autonomous catamaran capable of meeting the competition's demanding requirements while producing a high level of engagement. The System of Systems approach is recommended to other universities interested in competing at this level and engaging students in a real-world problem.

Keywords: case study, robotics, education, programming, system of systems, multi-disciplinary collaboration

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Authors: Tuğçe Yavaş Akış

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In recent years, due to an increased use of radioactive materials, radioactive sources are constantly being transported via air, road and ocean ways for medical, industrial, research etc. purposes throughout the world. The quantity of radioactive materials transported all around the world varies from negligible quantities in shipments of consumer products to very large quantities in shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel. Radioactive materials have been less attractive for social science researchers in literature. In this study, it is aimed to discover desired flow of radioactive materials from logistics service quality (LSQ) perspective. In doing so, case study approach will be employed by using secondary data collected from one of the world’s leading transportation companies’ customer care system reports. Movement of radioactive cargoes containing IR-192 and logistics process will be analyzed with the help of logistics service quality dimensions. Based on the case study that will be conducted, interaction between dimensions, the importance of each dimension in desired flow, and their relevance with desired flow of radioactive materials will be explained. This study will bring out the desired flow of radioactive materials transportation and be a guide for all other companies, employees and researchers.

Keywords: logistics service quality, LSQ dimension , radioactive material, transportation

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Authors: K. Iskandar, N. H. Radzi, R. Aziz, M. S. Kamaruddin, M. N. Abdullah, S. A. Jumaat

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Nowadays many developing countries have been undergoing a restructuring process in the power electricity industry. This process has involved disaggregating former state-owned monopoly utilities both vertically and horizontally and introduced competition. The restructuring process has been implemented by the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) started from 13 December 1998, began operating as a wholesale market for supply of electricity to retailers and end-users in Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and South Australia. In this deregulated market, one of the important issues is the transmission pricing. Transmission pricing is a service that recovers existing and new cost of the transmission system. The regulation of the transmission pricing is important in determining whether the transmission service system is economically beneficial to both side of the users and utilities. Therefore, an efficient transmission pricing methodology plays an important role in the Australian NEM. In this paper, the transmission pricing methodologies that have been implemented by the Australian NEM which are the Cost Reflective Network Pricing (CRNP) and Modified Cost Reflective Network Pricing (MCRNP) methods are investigated for allocating the transmission service charges to the transmission users. A case study using 6-bus system is used in order to identify the best method that reflects a fair and equitable transmission service charge.

Keywords: cost-reflective network pricing method, modified cost-reflective network pricing method, restructuring process, transmission pricing

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