Search results for: collaborative problem solving

Authors: Ismail El Gayar, Ossama Ismail, Yousri El Gamal

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This paper presented a technique to solve one of the transportation problems that faces us in real life which is the Bus Scheduling Problem. Most of the countries using buses in schools, companies and traveling offices as an example to transfer multiple passengers from many places to specific place and vice versa. This transferring process can cost time and money, so we build a decision support system that can solve this problem. In this paper, a genetic algorithm with the shortest path technique is used to generate a competitive solution to other well-known techniques. It also presents a comparison between our solution and other solutions for this problem.

Keywords: bus scheduling problem, decision support system, genetic algorithm, shortest path

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Authors: O. Bourkoukou, Essaid El Bachari

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The group composing is one of the key issue in collaborative learning to achieve a positive educational experience. The goal of this work is to propose for teachers and tutors a method to create effective collaborative learning groups in e-learning environment based on the learner profile. For this purpose, a new function was defined to rate implicitly learning objects used by the learner during his learning experience. This paper describes the proposed algorithm to build an adequate collaborative learning group. In order to verify the performance of the proposed algorithm, several experiments were conducted in real data set in virtual environment. Results show the effectiveness of the method for which it appears that the proposed approach may be promising to produce better outcomes.

Keywords: building groups, collaborative learning, e-learning, learning objects

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Authors: Zaidatol Akmaliah Lope Pihi, Suhaida Abd. Kadir, Keetanjaly Arivayagan

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Lately in educational organization, voluminous studies accentuate the momentous of leadership in mobilizing creativity. Creativity skill is seen as one of the important skills required for the 21st century leadership, which is also known as the tool for creative leader’s mind in engaging and stimulating ideas to execute outcomes. Hence, leaders should create an opportunity by involving every employee and stakeholders in schools to contribute their ideas towards developing creative solutions to enhance school productivity. The focal point of this article is to offer a conceptual framework on creative leadership practices among school leaders towards collaborative school culture. Intensive reviews of literature will be used in the fields of creative leadership and school culture with the aim to nurture leaders into better leaders and encourage collaborative school culture. The framework contributes a new shed on the implication of creative leadership practices and collaborative school culture. It also will contribute a new theory development and offered suggestions for follow up research.

Keywords: 21st century leadership, creative leadership, collaborative, school culture

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Authors: Vasanthi Muniasamy, Intisar Magboul Ejalani, M.Anandhavalli, K. Gauthaman

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Social Media (SM) are websites increasingly popular and built to allow people to express themselves and to interact socially with others. Most SMT are dominated by youth particularly college students. The proliferation of popular social media tools, which can accessed from any communication devices has become pervasive in the lives of today’s student life. Connecting traditional education to social media tools are a relatively new era and any collaborative tool could be used for learning activities. This study focuses (i) how the social media tools are useful for the learning activities of the students of faculty of medicine in King Khalid University (ii) whether the social media affects the collaborative learning with interaction among students, among course instructor, their engagement, perceived ease of use and perceived ease of usefulness (TAM) (iii) overall, the students satisfy with this collaborative learning through Social media.

Keywords: social media, Web 2.0, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, collaborative Learning

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Authors: Jiao Sun, Li Pan, Shijun Liu

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Recommender systems have been widely used in contemporary industry, and plenty of work has been done in this field to help users to identify items of interest. Collaborative Filtering (CF, for short) algorithm is an important technology in recommender systems. However, less work has been done in automobile recommendation system with the sharp increase of the amount of automobiles. What’s more, the computational speed is a major weakness for collaborative filtering technology. Therefore, using MapReduce framework to optimize the CF algorithm is a vital solution to this performance problem. In this paper, we present a recommendation of the users’ comment on industrial automobiles with various properties based on real world industrial datasets of user-automobile comment data collection, and provide recommendation for automobile providers and help them predict users’ comment on automobiles with new-coming property. Firstly, we solve the sparseness of matrix using previous construction of score matrix. Secondly, we solve the data normalization problem by removing dimensional effects from the raw data of automobiles, where different dimensions of automobile properties bring great error to the calculation of CF. Finally, we use the MapReduce framework to optimize the CF algorithm, and the computational speed has been improved times. UV decomposition used in this paper is an often used matrix factorization technology in CF algorithm, without calculating the interpolation weight of neighbors, which will be more convenient in industry.

Keywords: collaborative filtering, recommendation, data normalization, mapreduce

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Authors: Fan Chih-Wen

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The Ministry of Education (2014) released the 12-year National Basic Education Curriculum Syllabus. Curriculum implementation has evolved from a loose connection of cooperation to a closely structured relationship of coordination and collaboration. Collaboration opens the door to teachers' culture of isolation and classrooms and allows them to discuss educational issues from multiple perspectives and achieve shared goals. The purpose of study is to investigate facilitating factors of collaborative school culture and implications for principal curriculum leadership. The development and implementation of the new curriculum involves collaborative governance across systems and levels, including cooperation between central governments and schools. First, it analyzes the connotation of the 12-year National Basic Education Curriculum; Second, it analyzes the meaning of collaborative culture； Third, it analyzes the motivating factors of collaborative culture. Finally, based on this, it puts forward relevant suggestions for principal curriculum leadership.

Keywords: curriculum leadership, collaboration culture, tracher culture, school improvement

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Authors: Karla Hrbackova, Irena Balaban Cakirpaloglu

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This paper is a report on self-regulation in socially rejected pupils. A certain form of social rejection can be found in almost every class within the school environment. Research shows that due to social rejection mechanisms supporting the individual´s effort of reintegration into the group are not triggered. Paradoxically the opposite tendency arises, i.e., an increase in selfish and defeating behaviour. The link between peer exposure and self-regulation is likely to vary as a function of a type and quality of peer interaction (e.g., rejection or acceptance). The paper aims to clarify the level of self-regulation related to interpersonal cognitive problem-solving within the process of social rejection in a school class. The research was done on a sample of 1,133 upper-primary school pupils using the Means-Ends Problem Solving technique (MEPS) and peer sociometric nomination. The results showed that the level of self-regulated skills is related to the status of social rejection. Socially rejected pupils achieve lower levels of self-regulation than other classmates. We found deficiency in the regulation of behaviour, emotions and the regulation of will in the peer rejected pupils with the exception of cognitive regulation in which no differences were detected between socially rejected pupils and other classmates. The results have implications for early prevention and intervention efforts to foster adaptive self-regulation and reduce the risk of later social rejection.

Keywords: interpersonal cognitive problem-solving, self-regulation, socially rejected pupils, upper-primary school pupils

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Authors: C. Schneider, M. M. Seizmeir, T. Suchanek, M. Hutter-Mironovova, M. Bdiwi, M. Putz

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In this paper, a suitable measurement setup is presented to conduct force and pressure measurements for transient contact cases at the example of lathe machine tending. Empirical measurements were executed on a selected collaborative robot’s behavior regarding allowable operating speeds under consideration of sensor- and workpiece-specific factors. Comparisons between the theoretic calculations proposed in ISO/TS 15066 and the practical measurement results reveal a basis for future research. With the created database, preliminary risk assessment and economic assessment procedures of collaborative machine tending cells can be facilitated.

Keywords: biomechanical thresholds, collaborative robots, force and pressure measurements, machine tending, transient contact

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Authors: Thierno Diop, Michel Fortin, Jean Deteix

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Since the precise formulation of the elastic part is irrelevant for the description of the algorithm, we shall consider a generic case. In practice, however, we will have to deal with a non linear material (for instance a Mooney-Rivlin model). We are interested in solving a finite element approximation of the problem, leading to large-scale non linear discrete problems and, after linearization, to large linear systems and ultimately to calculations needing iterative methods. This also implies that penalty method, and therefore augmented Lagrangian method, are to be banned because of their negative effect on the condition number of the underlying discrete systems and thus on the convergence of iterative methods. This is in rupture to the mainstream of methods for contact in which augmented Lagrangian is the principal tool. We shall first present the problem and its discretization; this will lead us to describe a general solution algorithm relying on a preconditioner for saddle-point problems which we shall describe in some detail as it is not entirely standard. We will propose an iterative approach for solving three-dimensional frictional contact problems between elastic bodies, including contact with a rigid body, contact between two or more bodies and also self-contact.

Keywords: frictional contact, three-dimensional, large-scale, iterative method

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Authors: S. H. Borghei, E. Teymourian, M. Mobin, G. M. Komaki, S. Sheikh

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Imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is a recent meta-heuristic method that is inspired by the social evolutions for solving NP-Hard problems. The ICA is a population based algorithm which has achieved a great performance in comparison to other meta-heuristics. This study is about developing enhanced ICA approach to solve the cell formation problem (CFP) using sequence data. In addition to the conventional ICA, an enhanced version of ICA, namely EICA, applies local search techniques to add more intensification aptitude and embed the features of exploration and intensification more successfully. Suitable performance measures are used to compare the proposed algorithms with some other powerful solution approaches in the literature. In the same way, for checking the proficiency of algorithms, forty test problems are presented. Five benchmark problems have sequence data, and other ones are based on 0-1 matrices modified to sequence based problems. Computational results elucidate the efficiency of the EICA in solving CFP problems.

Keywords: cell formation problem, group technology, imperialist competitive algorithm, sequence data

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Authors: Lizmol Mathew, Divya Thomas, Shiney Rajan

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Educational paradigm all over the globe is undergoing significant reform today. Because of this, so-called flipped classroom model is becoming increasingly popular in higher education. Flipped classroom has proved to be more effective than traditional lecture based model as flipped classroom model promotes active learning by encouraging students to work on in collaborative tasks and peer-led learning during the class-time. However, success of flipped classrooms relies on students’ ability and their attitudes towards collaboration and group work. This paper examines: 1) Students’ attitudes towards collaborative learning; 2) Main challenges to successful collaboration from students’ experience and 3) Students’ perception of criteria for successful team work. 4) Recommendations for enhancing collaborative learning. This study’s methodology involves quantitative analysis of surveys collected from students enrolled in undergraduate Architecture program at Qatar University. Analysis indicates that in general students enrolled in the program do not have positive perceptions or experiences associated with group work. Positive and negative factors that influence collaborative learning in higher education have been identified. Recommendations for improving collaborative work experience have been proposed.

Keywords: architecture, collaborative learning, female, group work, higher education, Middle East, Qatar, student experience

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Authors: William Chung

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This paper is to study the use of multiple subproblems in Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition of linear programming (DW-LP). Traditionally, the decomposed LP consists of one LP master problem and one LP subproblem. The master problem and the subproblem is solved alternatively by exchanging the dual prices of the master problem and the proposals of the subproblem until the LP is solved. It is well known that convergence is slow with a long tail of near-optimal solutions (asymptotic convergence). Hence, the performance of DW-LP highly depends upon the number of decomposition steps. If the decomposition steps can be greatly reduced, the performance of DW-LP can be improved significantly. To reduce the number of decomposition steps, one of the methods is to increase the number of proposals from the subproblem to the master problem. To do so, we propose to add a quadratic approximation function to the LP subproblem in order to develop a set of approximate-LP subproblems (multiple subproblems). Consequently, in each decomposition step, multiple subproblems are solved for providing multiple proposals to the master problem. The number of decomposition steps can be reduced greatly. Note that each approximate-LP subproblem is nonlinear programming, and solving the LP subproblem must faster than solving the nonlinear multiple subproblems. Hence, using multiple subproblems in DW-LP is the tradeoff between the number of approximate-LP subproblems being formed and the decomposition steps. In this paper, we derive the corresponding algorithms and provide some simple computational results. Some properties of the resulting algorithms are also given.

Keywords: approximate subproblem, Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition, large-scale models, multiple subproblems

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Authors: Igone Guerra, Xabier Barandiaran

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The deep crisis (economic, social and cultural) in which Europe and Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country (Spain), have been immersed in since 2008 forces governments to face a necessary transformation. These challenges demand different solutions and answers to meet the needs of the citizens. Adapting to continuous and sometimes abrupt changes in the social and political landscape requires an undeniable will to reinvent the way in which governments practice politics. This reinvention of government should help us build different organizations that, first, develop challenging public services, second, respond effectively to the needs of the citizens, and third, manage scarce resources, ultimately offering a contemporary concept of public value. In this context, the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative was designed to face the future challenges of the territory in a collaborative way. The aim of the initiative is to promote an alternative form of governance to generate common good and greater public value. In Etorkizuna Eraikiz democratic values, such as collaboration, participation, and accountability are prominent. This government approach is based on several features such as the creation of relational spaces to design and deliberate about the public politics or the promotion of a team-working approach, breaking down the silos between and within organizations, as an exercise in defining a shared vision regarding the Future of the Territory. A future in which the citizens are becoming actors in the problem-solving process and in the construction of a culture of participation and collective learning. In this paper, the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative will be presented (vision and methodology) as a model of a local approach to public policy innovation resulting in a way of governance that is more open and collaborative. Based on this case study, this paper explores the way in which collaborative governance leads to better decisions, better leadership, and better citizenry. Finally, the paper also describes some preliminary findings of this local approach, such as the level of knowledge of the citizenry about the projects promoted within Etorkizuna Eraikiz as well as the link between the challenges of the territory, as identified by the citizenry, and the political agenda promoted by the provincial government. Regarding the former, the Survey on the socio-political situation of Gipuzkoa showed that 27.9% of the respondents confirmed that they knew about the projects promoted within the initiative and gave it a mark of 5.71. In connection with the latter, over the last three years, 65 millions of euros have been allocated for a total of 73 projects that have covered socio-economic and political challenges such as aging, climate change, mobility, participation in democratic life, and so on. This governance approach of Etorkizuna Eraikiz has allowed the local government to match the needs of citizens to the political agenda fostering in this way a shared vision about the public value.

Keywords: collaborative governance, citizen participation, public good, social listening, public innovation

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Authors: Sumaya Saqr

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Although many teachers regard academic research as the inclusive domain of academic researchers, teachers should contribute to the body of research guiding their own practice. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of 20 teachers’ reflection journals and interviews, this case study sheds light on the personal and professional benefits of teachers’ applications of collaborative action research in English language teaching context. The findings reveal that several aspects of teacher identity and classroom practice were changed. The present paper aspires to reveal the way in which collaborative action research process, as a learner-centered approach to staff development, would help teachers to become more independent and professionally autonomous and hence effecting change that is far greater than its initial purpose.

Keywords: change, collaborative action research, personal and professional benefits, professional development

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Authors: Long Chen

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With the proliferation of E-Learning, collaborative learning becomes more and more popular in various teaching and learning occasions. Studies over the years have proved that actively participating in classroom discussion can enhance student's learning experience, consolidating their knowledge and understanding of the class content. Collaborative learning can also allow students to share their resources and knowledge by exchanging, absorbing, and observing one another's opinions and ideas. Community Question Answering (CQA) services are particularly suitable paradigms for collaborative learning, since it is essentially an online collaborative learning platform where one can get information from multiple sources for he/her to choose from. However, current CQA services have only achieved limited success in collaborative learning due to the uncertainty of answers' quality. In this paper, we predict the quality of answers in a CQA service, i.e. Yahoo! Answers, for the use of online education and distance learning, which would enable a student to find relevant answers and potential answerers more effectively and efficiently, and thus greatly increase students' user experience in CQA services. Our experiment reveals that the quality of answers is influenced by a series of factors such as asking time, relations between users, and his/her experience in the past. We also show that by modelling user's profile with our proposed personalized features, student's satisfaction towards the provided answers could be accurately estimated.

Keywords: Community Question Answering, Collaborative Learning, Log File, Co-Training

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Authors: Alaa Sheta

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Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) is one of the vital optimization problems in power system planning. Solving the ELD problems mean finding the best mixture of power unit outputs of all members of the power system network such that the total fuel cost is minimized while sustaining operation requirements limits satisfied across the entire dispatch phases. Many optimization techniques were proposed to solve this problem. A famous one is the Quadratic Programming (QP). QP is a very simple and fast method but it still suffer many problem as gradient methods that might trapped at local minimum solutions and cannot handle complex nonlinear functions. Numbers of metaheuristic algorithms were used to solve this problem such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). In this paper, another meta-heuristic search algorithm named Differential Evolution (DE) is used to solve the ELD problem in power systems planning. The practicality of the proposed DE based algorithm is verified for three and six power generator system test cases. The gained results are compared to existing results based on QP, GAs and PSO. The developed results show that differential evolution is superior in obtaining a combination of power loads that fulfill the problem constraints and minimize the total fuel cost. DE found to be fast in converging to the optimal power generation loads and capable of handling the non-linearity of ELD problem. The proposed DE solution is able to minimize the cost of generated power, minimize the total power loss in the transmission and maximize the reliability of the power provided to the customers.

Keywords: economic load dispatch, power systems, optimization, differential evolution

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Authors: Dhea Kothari

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There is an extensive amount of research that has examined the positive relationship between creativity and hypomania in terms of creative accomplishments, eminence, behaviors, occupations. Previous research had recruited participants based on creative occupations or stages of hypomania or bipolar disorder. This thesis focused on the relationship between hypomania and creative cognitive potential, such as divergent thinking and insight problem-solving. This was examined at an undergraduate educational level by recruiting students majoring in art, majoring in natural sciences (NSCI) and those double majoring in arts and NSCI. Participants were given a modified Alternate Uses Task (AUT) to measure divergent thinking and a set of rebus puzzles to measure insight problem-solving. Both tasks involved a level of overcoming functional fixedness. A negative association was observed between hypomania and originality of responses on the AUT when an object with low functional fixedness was given to all participants. On the other hand, a positive association was found between hypomania and originality of responses on the AUT when an object with high functional fixedness was given to the participants majoring in NSCI. Therefore, the research suggests that an increased ability to overcome functional fixedness might be central to individuals with hypomania and individuals with higher creative cognitive potential.

Keywords: creative cognition, convergent thinking, creativity, divergent thinking, insight, major type, problem-solving

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Authors: Talha A. Taj, Talha A. Khan, M. Imran Khalid

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Optimization techniques attract researchers to formulate a problem and determine its optimum solution. This paper presents an Enhanced Harmony Search (ENHS) algorithm for solving optimization problems. The proposed algorithm increases the convergence and is more efficient than the standard Harmony Search (HS) algorithm. The paper discusses the novel techniques in detail and also provides the strategy for tuning the decisive parameters that affects the efficiency of the ENHS algorithm. The algorithm is tested on various benchmark functions, a real world optimization problem and a constrained objective function. Also, the results of ENHS are compared to standard HS, and various other optimization algorithms. The ENHS algorithms prove to be significantly better and more efficient than other algorithms. The simulation and testing of the algorithms is performed in MATLAB.

Keywords: optimization, harmony search algorithm, MATLAB, electronic

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Authors: Ching-Shoei Chiang

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The Malfatti’s Problem solves the problem of fitting 3 circles into a right triangle such that these 3 circles are tangent to each other, and each circle is also tangent to a pair of the triangle’s sides. This problem has been extended to any triangle (called general Malfatti’s Problem). Furthermore, the problem has been extended to have 1+2+…+n circles inside the triangle with special tangency properties among circles and triangle sides; we call it extended general Malfatti’s problem. In the extended general Malfatti’s problem, call it Tri(Tn), where Tn is the triangle number, there are closed-form solutions for Tri(T₁) (inscribed circle) problem and Tri(T₂) (3 Malfatti’s circles) problem. These problems become more complex when n is greater than 2. In solving Tri(Tn) problem, n>2, algorithms have been proposed to solve these problems numerically. With a similar idea, this paper proposed an algorithm to find the radii of circles with the same tangency properties. Instead of the boundary of the triangle being a straight line, we use a convex circular arc as the boundary and try to find Tn circles inside this convex circular triangle with the same tangency properties among circles and boundary Carc. We call these problems the Carc(Tn) problems. The CPU time it takes for Carc(T16) problem, which finds 136 circles inside a convex circular triangle with specified tangency properties, is less than one second.

Keywords: circle packing, computer-aided geometric design, geometric constraint solver, Malfatti’s problem

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Authors: Abdul Halim Abdullah, Nur Liyana Zainal Abidin, Mahani Mokhtar

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Problem-solving is an activity which can encourage students to use Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). Learning fractions can be challenging for students since empirical evidence shows that students experience difficulties in solving the fraction problems. However, visual methods can help students to overcome the difficulties since the methods help students to make meaningful visual representations and link abstract concepts in Mathematics. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were any changes in students’ HOTS at the four highest levels when learning the fractions by using Thinking Blocks. 54 students participated in a quasi-experiment using pre-tests and post-tests. Students were divided into two groups. The experimental group (n=32) received a treatment to improve the students’ HOTS and the other group acted as the control group (n=22) which used a traditional method. Data were analysed by using Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that during post-test, students who used Thinking Blocks showed significant improvement in their HOTS level (p=0.000). In addition, the results of post-test also showed that the students’ performance improved significantly at the four highest levels of HOTS; namely, application (p=0.001), analyse (p=0.000), evaluate (p=0.000), and create (p=0.000). Therefore, it can be concluded that Thinking Blocks can effectively encourage students to use the four highest levels of HOTS which consequently enable them to solve fractions problems successfully.

Keywords: Thinking Blocks, Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS), fractions, problem solving

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Authors: Ho-Dae Chong, Jong-Kil Kim

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Collaborative research has become more prevalent and important across disciplines because it stimulates innovation and interaction between scholars. Seeing as existing studies relatively disregarded the institutional conditions triggering collaborative research, this work aims to analyze the changing trend in collaborative work patterns among Korean social scientists. The focus of this research is the performance of social scientists who received research grants through the government’s Social Science Korea (SSK) program. Using quantitative statistical methods, collaborative research patterns in a total of 2,354 papers published under the umbrella of the SSK program in peer-reviewed scholarly journals from 2013 to 2016 were examined to identify changing trends and triggering factors in collaborative research. A notable finding is that the share of collaborative research is overwhelmingly higher than that of individual research. In particular, levels of collaborative research surpassed 70%, increasing much quicker compared to other research done in the social sciences. Additionally, the most common composition of collaborative research was for two or three researchers to conduct joint research as coauthors, and this proportion has also increased steadily. Finally, a strong association between international journals and co-authorship patterns was found for the papers published by SSK program researchers from 2013 to 2016. The SSK program can be seen as the driving force behind collaboration between social scientists. Its emphasis on competition through a merit-based financial support system along with a rigorous evaluation process seems to have influenced researchers to cooperate with those who have similar research interests.

Keywords: coauthorship, collaboration, competition, cooperation, Social Science Korea, policy

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Authors: Bolatbek Rysbaiuly, Aliya S. Azhibekova

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Problems concerning the interpretation of the well testing results belong to the class of inverse problems of subsurface hydromechanics. The distinctive feature of such problems is that additional information is depending on the capabilities of oilfield experiments. Another factor that should not be overlooked is the existence of errors in the test data. To determine reservoir properties, some inverse problems for parabolic equations were investigated. An approach to solving the inverse problems based on the method of regularization is proposed.

Keywords: iterative approach, inverse problem, parabolic equation, reservoir properties

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Authors: Radoslaw Pytlak, Damian Suski

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The aim of the paper is to provide a computational tool for planning a haemodialysis process. It is shown that optimization methods can be used to obtain the most effective treatment focused on removing both urea and phosphorus during the process. In order to achieve that, the IV–compartment model of phosphorus kinetics is applied. This kinetics model takes into account a rebound phenomenon that can occur during haemodialysis and results in a hybrid model of the process. Furthermore, vector fields associated with the model equations are such that it is very likely that using the most intuitive objective functions in the planning problem could lead to solutions which include sliding motions. Therefore, building computational tools for solving the problem of planning a haemodialysis process has required constructing numerical algorithms for solving optimal control problems with hybrid systems. The paper concentrates on minimum time control of hybrid systems since this control objective is the most suitable for the haemodialysis process considered in the paper. The presented approach to optimal control problems with hybrid systems is different from the others in several aspects. First of all, it is assumed that a hybrid system can exhibit sliding modes. Secondly, the system’s motion on the switching surface is described by index 2 differential–algebraic equations, and that guarantees accurate tracking of the sliding motion surface. Thirdly, the gradients of the problem’s functionals are evaluated with the help of adjoint equations. The adjoint equations presented in the paper take into account sliding motion and exhibit jump conditions at transition times. The optimality conditions in the form of the weak maximum principle for optimal control problems with hybrid systems exhibiting sliding modes and with piecewise constant controls are stated. The presented sensitivity analysis can be used to construct globally convergent algorithms for solving considered problems. The paper presents numerical results of solving the haemodialysis planning problem.

Keywords: haemodialysis planning process, hybrid systems, optimal control, sliding motion

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Authors: Mingyan Hong, Shuozhao Hou

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Collaborative Strategic Learning (CSL) teaches students to use learning strategies while working cooperatively. Student strategies include the following steps: defining the learning task and purpose; conducting ongoing negotiation of the learning materials by deciding "click" (I get it and I can teach it – green card, I get it –yellow card) or "clunk" (I don't get it – red card) at the end of each learning unit; "getting the gist" of the most important parts of the learning materials; and "wrapping up" key ideas. Find out how to help students of mixed achievement levels apply learning strategies while learning content area in materials in small groups. The design of CSL is based on social-constructivism and Vygotsky’s best-known concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The definition of ZPD is the distance between the actual acquisition level as decided by individual problem solution case and the level of potential acquisition level, similar to Krashen (1980)’s i+1, as decided through the problem-solution case under the facilitator’s guidance, or in group work with other more capable members (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky claimed that learners’ ideal learning environment is in the ZPD. An ideal teacher or more-knowledgable-other (MKO) should be able to recognize a learner’s ZPD and facilitates them to develop beyond it. Then the MKO is able to leave the support step by step until the learner can perform the task without aid. Steven Krashen (1980) proposed Input hypothesis including i+1 hypothesis. The input hypothesis models are the application of ZPD in second language acquisition and have been widely recognized until today. Krashen (2019)’s optimal language learning environment (2019) further developed the application of ZPD and added the component of strategic group learning. The strategic group learning is composed of desirable learning materials learners are motivated to learn and desirable group members who are more capable and are therefore able to offer meaningful input to the learners. Purpose-driven Collaborative Strategic Learning Model is a strategic integration of ZPD, i+1 hypothesis model, and Optimal Language Learning Environment Model. It is purpose driven to ensure group members are motivated. It is collaborative so that an optimal learning environment where meaningful input from meaningful conversation can be generated. It is strategic because facilitators in the model strategically assign each member a meaningful and collaborative role, e.g., team leader, technician, problem solver, appraiser, offer group learning instrument so that the learning process is structured, and integrate group learning and team building making sure holistic development of each participant. Using data collected from college year one and year two students’ English courses, this presentation will demonstrate how purpose-driven collaborative strategic learning model is implemented in the second/foreign language classroom, using the qualitative data from questionnaire and interview. Particular, this presentation will show how second/foreign language learners grow from functioning with facilitator or more capable peer’s aid to performing without aid. The implication of this research is that purpose-driven collaborative strategic learning model can be used not only in language learning, but also in any subject area.

Keywords: collaborative, strategic, optimal input, second language acquisition

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Authors: Shane Theunissen, Rob Grandy

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Historically and we would fairly conventionally within our formal schooling systems, we have convergent testing where all the students are expected to converge on the same answer, and that answer has been determined by an external authority that is reproducing knowledge of the hegemon. Many youths may not embody the cultural capital that's rewarded in formal schooling contexts as they aren't able to converge on the required answer that's being determined by the classroom teacher or the administrators. In this paper, we explore divergent processes that promote creative problem-solving. We embody this divergent process in our measurement of fundamental growth needs. To this end, we utilize the Mosaic Approach as a method for implementing the Outcomes That Matter framework. Outcomes That Matter is the name of the measurement tool built around the Circle of Courage framework, which is a way of identifying fundamental growth needs for young people. The Circle of Courage was developed by Martin-Broken-Leg and colleagues as a way to connect indigenous child-rearing philosophies with contemporary resilience and positive psychology research. The Outcomes that Matter framework puts forward four categories of growth needs for young people. These are: Belonging, which on a macro scale is acceptance into the greater community of practice, Mastery which includes a constellation of concepts including confidence, motivation, self-actualization, and self-determination, Independence refers to a sense of personal power into autonomy within a context where creativity and problem solving, and a personal voice can begin to emerge, and finally Generosity which includes interpersonal things like conflict resolution and teamwork. Outcomes of Matter puts these four domains into a measurement tool that facilitates collaborative assessment between the youth, teachers, and recreation therapists that allows for youth-led narratives pertaining to their fundamental growth outcomes. This application of the Outcomes That Matter framework is unique as it may be the first application of this framework in an educational boatbuilding context.

Keywords: collaboration, empowerment, outcomes that matter, mosaic approach, boat building

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Authors: M. A. Rahman, A. O. Enikuomehin

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Sharing commitment to reach a common goal in research by harnessing available resources from two or more parties can simply be referred to as collaborative research. Asides from avoiding duplication of research, the benefits often accrued from such research alliances include time economy as well as expenses reduction in completing such studies. Likewise, it provides an avenue to produce a wider horizon of scientific knowledge sequel to gathering of skills, knowledge and resources. In institutions of higher learning and research institutes, it often gives scholars an opportunity to strengthen the teaching and research capacity of their various institutions. Between industries and institutions, collaborative research breeds promising relationship that could be geared towards addressing different research problems such as producing and enhancing industrial-based products and services, including technological transfer. For Nigeria to take advantage of this collaboration, different issues like licensing of technology, intellectual property right, confidentiality, and funding among others, which could arise during this collaborative research programme, are identified in this paper. An important tool required to achieve this height in developing economy is the use of appropriate computer model. The paper highlights the costs of the collaborations and likewise stresses the need for evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of such collaborative research activities and proposes an appropriate computer model to assist in this regard.

Keywords: collaborative research, developing country, computerization, model

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Authors: Y. H. Wang, C. C. Hsieh

Abstract:

Good service design can increase organization revenue and consumer satisfaction while reducing labor and time costs. The problems facing consumers in the original serve model for eyewear and optical industry includes the following issues: 1. Insufficient information on eyewear products 2. Passively dependent on recommendations, insufficient selection 3. Incomplete records on progression of vision conditions 4. Lack of complete customer records. This study investigates the case of Kobayashi Optical, applying the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) to develop innovative solutions for eyewear and optical industry. Analysis results raise the following conclusions and management implications: In order to provide customers with improved professional information and recommendations, Kobayashi Optical is suggested to establish customer purchasing records. Overall service efficiency can be enhanced by applying data mining techniques to analyze past consumer preferences and purchase histories. Furthermore, Kobayashi Optical should continue to develop a 3D virtual trial service which can allow customers for easy browsing of different frame styles and colors. This 3D virtual trial service will save customer waiting times in during peak service times at stores.

Keywords: theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), service design, augmented reality (AR), eyewear and optical industry

Procedia PDF Downloads 279

Authors: S. Nasri, H. Bouziri

Abstract:

Disasters are quite experienced in our days. They are caused by floods, landslides, and building fires that is the main objective of this study. To cope with these unexpected events, precautions must be taken to protect human lives. The emphasis on disposal work focuses on the resolution of the evacuation problem in case of no-notice disaster. The problem of evacuation is listed as a dynamic network flow problem. Particularly, we model the evacuation problem as an earliest arrival flow problem with load dependent transit time. This problem is classified as NP-Hard. Our challenge here is to propose a metaheuristic solution for solving the evacuation problem. We define our objective as the maximization of evacuees during earliest periods of a time horizon T. The objective provides the evacuation of persons as soon as possible. We performed an experimental study on emergency evacuation from the tunisian children’s hospital. This work prompts us to look for evacuation plans corresponding to several situations where the network dynamically changes.

Keywords: dynamic network flow, load dependent transit time, evacuation strategy, earliest arrival flow problem, tabu search metaheuristic

Procedia PDF Downloads 372

Authors: Zaid Jamal Saeed Almahmoud

Abstract:

Smart grid is emerging as the future power grid, with smart techniques to optimize power consumption and electricity generation. Minimizing peak power consumption under a fixed delay requirement is a significant problem in the smart grid.For this problem, all appliances must be scheduled within a given finite time duration. We consider the problem of minimizing the peak demand under appliances constraints by scheduling power jobs with uniform release dates and deadlines. As the problem is known to be NP-hard, we analyze the performance of a version of the natural greedy heuristic for solving this problem. Our theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed heuristic outperforms existing methods by providing a better approximation to the optimal solution.

Keywords: peak demand scheduling, approximation algorithms, smart grid, heuristics

Procedia PDF Downloads 94

Authors: Eyasu Gemech, Kassa Michael, Mulugeta Atnafu

Abstract:

A non-equivalent group's quasi-experiment research was conducted at Wolkite University to investigate MATLAB supported learning and students' conceptual understanding in learning Applied Mathematics II using four different comparative instructional approaches: MATLAB supported traditional lecture method, MATLAB supported collaborative method, only collaborative method, and only traditional lecture method. Four intact classes of mechanical engineering groups 1 and 2, garment engineering and textile engineering students were randomly selected out of eight departments. The first three departments were considered as treatment groups and the fourth one 'Textile engineering' was assigned as a comparison group. The departments had 30, 29, 35 and 32 students respectively. The results of the study show that there is a significant mean difference in students' conceptual understanding between groups of students learning through MATLAB supported collaborative method and the other learning approaches. Students who were learned through MATLAB technology-supported learning in combination with collaborative method were found to understand concepts of functions of two variables better than students learning through the other methods of learning. These, hence, are informative of the potential approaches universities would follow for a better students’ understanding of concepts.

Keywords: MATLAB supported collaborative method, MATLAB supported learning, collaborative method, conceptual understanding, functions of two variables

Procedia PDF Downloads 278