Search results for: conceptual learning
1329 Efficacy of Anti-phishing Measures and Strategies - A Research Analysis
Authors: Gundeep Singh Bindra
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Statistics indicate that more than 1000 phishing attacks are launched every month. With 57 million people hit by the fraud so far in America alone, how do we combat phishing?This publication aims to discuss strategies in the war against Phishing. This study is an examination of the analysis and critique found in the ways adopted at various levels to counter the crescendo of phishing attacks and new techniques being adopted for the same. An analysis of the measures taken up by the varied popular Mail servers and popular browsers is done under this study. This work intends to increase the understanding and awareness of the internet user across the globe and even discusses plausible countermeasures at the users as well as the developers end. This conceptual paper will contribute to future research on similar topics.
Keywords: Anti-phishing, countermeasures, effectiveness, fake pages, security analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27661328 Communication Engineering Curriculum (Past, Present and the Future)
Authors: Abdurazzag Ali Aburas, Indira Rustempasic, Indira Muhic, Busra Gheith Yildiz
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At present time, competition, unpredictable fluctuations have made communication engineering education in the global sphere really difficult. Confront with new situation in the engineering education sector. Communication engineering education has to be reformed and ready to use more advanced technologies. We realized that one of the general problems of student`s education is that after graduating from their universities, they are not prepared to face the real life challenges and full skilled to work in industry. They are prepared only to think like engineers and professionals but they also need to possess some others non-technical skills. In today-s environment, technical competence alone is not sufficient for career success. Employers want employees (graduate engineers) who have good oral and written communication (soft) skills. It does require for team work, business awareness, organization, management skills, responsibility, initiative, problem solving and IT competency. This proposed curriculum brings interactive, creative, interesting, effective learning methods, which includes online education, virtual labs, practical work, problem-based learning (PBL), and lectures given by industry experts. Giving short assignments, presentations, reports, research papers and projects students can significantly improve their non-technical skills. Also, we noticed the importance of using ICT technologies in engineering education which used by students and teachers, and included that into proposed teaching and learning methods. We added collaborative learning between students through team work which builds theirs skills besides course materials. The prospective on this research that we intent to update communication engineering curriculum in order to get fully constructed engineer students to ready for real industry work.
Keywords: communication engineering, curriculum education, ICT, industry
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18971327 Extraction of Significant Phrases from Text
Authors: Yuan J. Lui
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Prospective readers can quickly determine whether a document is relevant to their information need if the significant phrases (or keyphrases) in this document are provided. Although keyphrases are useful, not many documents have keyphrases assigned to them, and manually assigning keyphrases to existing documents is costly. Therefore, there is a need for automatic keyphrase extraction. This paper introduces a new domain independent keyphrase extraction algorithm. The algorithm approaches the problem of keyphrase extraction as a classification task, and uses a combination of statistical and computational linguistics techniques, a new set of attributes, and a new machine learning method to distinguish keyphrases from non-keyphrases. The experiments indicate that this algorithm performs better than other keyphrase extraction tools and that it significantly outperforms Microsoft Word 2000-s AutoSummarize feature. The domain independence of this algorithm has also been confirmed in our experiments.
Keywords: classification, keyphrase extraction, machine learning, summarization
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20491326 End-to-End Spanish-English Sequence Learning Translation Model
Authors: Vidhu Mitha Goutham, Ruma Mukherjee
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The low availability of well-trained, unlimited, dynamic-access models for specific languages makes it hard for corporate users to adopt quick translation techniques and incorporate them into product solutions. As translation tasks increasingly require a dynamic sequence learning curve; stable, cost-free opensource models are scarce. We survey and compare current translation techniques and propose a modified sequence to sequence model repurposed with attention techniques. Sequence learning using an encoder-decoder model is now paving the path for higher precision levels in translation. Using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) encoder and a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) decoder background, we use Fairseq tools to produce an end-to-end bilingually trained Spanish-English machine translation model including source language detection. We acquire competitive results using a duo-lingo-corpus trained model to provide for prospective, ready-made plug-in use for compound sentences and document translations. Our model serves a decent system for large, organizational data translation needs. While acknowledging its shortcomings and future scope, it also identifies itself as a well-optimized deep neural network model and solution.
Keywords: Attention, encoder-decoder, Fairseq, Seq2Seq, Spanish, translation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4741325 Collaborative Team Work in Higher Education: A Case Study
Authors: Swapna Bhargavi Gantasala
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If teamwork is the key to organizational learning, productivity and growth, then, why do some teams succeed in achieving these, while others falter at different stages? Building teams in higher education institutions has been a challenge and an open-ended constructivist approach was considered on an experimental basis for this study to address this challenge. For this research, teams of students from the MBA program were chosen to study the effect of teamwork in learning, the motivation levels among student team members, and the effect of collaboration in achieving team goals. The teams were built on shared vision and goals, cohesion was ensured, positive induction in the form of faculty mentoring was provided for each participating team and the results have been presented with conclusions and suggestions.
Keywords: Collaboration, Leadership, Motivation, Reinforcement Teamwork.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 30211324 ECG-Based Heartbeat Classification Using Convolutional Neural Networks
Authors: Jacqueline R. T. Alipo-on, Francesca I. F. Escobar, Myles J. T. Tan, Hezerul Abdul Karim, Nouar AlDahoul
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Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal analysis and processing are crucial in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases which are considered as one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. However, the traditional rule-based analysis of large volumes of ECG data is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to human errors. With the advancement of the programming paradigm, algorithms such as machine learning have been increasingly used to perform an analysis on the ECG signals. In this paper, various deep learning algorithms were adapted to classify five classes of heart beat types. The dataset used in this work is the synthetic MIT-Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) Arrhythmia dataset produced from generative adversarial networks (GANs). Various deep learning models such as ResNet-50 convolutional neural network (CNN), 1-D CNN, and long short-term memory (LSTM) were evaluated and compared. ResNet-50 was found to outperform other models in terms of recall and F1 score using a five-fold average score of 98.88% and 98.87%, respectively. 1-D CNN, on the other hand, was found to have the highest average precision of 98.93%.
Keywords: Heartbeat classification, convolutional neural network, electrocardiogram signals, ECG signals, generative adversarial networks, long short-term memory, LSTM, ResNet-50.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1871323 Port Governance in Santos, Brazil: A Qualitative Approach
Authors: Guilherme B. B. Vieira, Rafael M. da Silva, Eliana T. P. Senna, Luiz A. S. Senna, Francisco J. Kliemann Neto
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Given the importance of ports as links in the global supply chains and because they are key elements to induce competitiveness in their hinterlands, the number of studies devoted to port governance, management and operations has increased in the last decades. Some of these studies address the port governance model as an element to improve coordination among the actors of the portlogistics chain and to generate a better port performance. In this context, the present study analyzes the governance of Port of Santos through individual interviews with port managers, based on a conceptual model that considers the key dimensions associated with port governance. The results reinforce the usefulness of the applied model and highlight some existing improvement opportunities in the port studied.
Keywords: Port Governance, Model, Port of Santos, Managers’ Perception.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 26971322 The Correlation of Economic Variables on Domestic Investment
Authors: Amirreza Attarzadeh
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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between economic variables, e.g., inflation rate, interest rate, trade openness and the growth rate of GDP, with domestic investment. The present study also draws on conceptual economy related theories to verify the negative effect of interest rates on domestic investment. However, trade openness and growth rate had a positive correlation, and the inflation rate may have a positive or negative impact on domestic investment.
Keywords: Inflation rate, growth rate of GDP, interest rate, trade openness, domestic investment.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13931321 Learning to Order Terms: Supervised Interestingness Measures in Terminology Extraction
Authors: Jérôme Azé, Mathieu Roche, Yves Kodratoff, Michèle Sebag
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Term Extraction, a key data preparation step in Text Mining, extracts the terms, i.e. relevant collocation of words, attached to specific concepts (e.g. genetic-algorithms and decisiontrees are terms associated to the concept “Machine Learning" ). In this paper, the task of extracting interesting collocations is achieved through a supervised learning algorithm, exploiting a few collocations manually labelled as interesting/not interesting. From these examples, the ROGER algorithm learns a numerical function, inducing some ranking on the collocations. This ranking is optimized using genetic algorithms, maximizing the trade-off between the false positive and true positive rates (Area Under the ROC curve). This approach uses a particular representation for the word collocations, namely the vector of values corresponding to the standard statistical interestingness measures attached to this collocation. As this representation is general (over corpora and natural languages), generality tests were performed by experimenting the ranking function learned from an English corpus in Biology, onto a French corpus of Curriculum Vitae, and vice versa, showing a good robustness of the approaches compared to the state-of-the-art Support Vector Machine (SVM).Keywords: Text-mining, Terminology Extraction, Evolutionary algorithm, ROC Curve.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16581320 Training Undergraduate Engineering Students in Robotics and Automation through Model-Based Design Training: A Case Study at Assumption University of Thailand
Authors: Sajed A. Habib
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Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that originated in the medical field and has also been used extensively in other knowledge disciplines with recognized advantages and limitations. PBL has been used in various undergraduate engineering programs with mixed outcomes. The current fourth industrial revolution (digital era or Industry 4.0) has made it essential for many science and engineering students to receive effective training in advanced courses such as industrial automation and robotics. This paper presents a case study at Assumption University of Thailand, where a PBL-like approach was used to teach some aspects of automation and robotics to selected groups of undergraduate engineering students. These students were given some basic level training in automation prior to participating in a subsequent training session in order to solve technical problems with increased complexity. The participating students’ evaluation of the training sessions in terms of learning effectiveness, skills enhancement, and incremental knowledge following the problem-solving session was captured through a follow-up survey consisting of 14 questions and a 5-point scoring system. From the most recent training event, an overall 70% of the respondents indicated that their skill levels were enhanced to a much greater level than they had had before the training, whereas 60.4% of the respondents from the same event indicated that their incremental knowledge following the session was much greater than what they had prior to the training. The instructor-facilitator involved in the training events suggested that this method of learning was more suitable for senior/advanced level students than those at the freshmen level as certain skills to effectively participate in such problem-solving sessions are acquired over a period of time, and not instantly.
Keywords: Automation, industry 4.0, model-based design training, problem-based learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10971319 SolarSPELL Case Study: Pedagogical Quality Indicators to Evaluate Digital Library Resources
Authors: Lorena Alemán de la Garza, Marcela Georgina Gómez-Zermeño
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This paper presents the SolarSPELL case study that aims to generate information on the use of indicators that help evaluate the pedagogical quality of a digital library resources. SolarSPELL is a solar-powered digital library with WiFi connectivity. It offers a variety of open educational resources selected for their potential for the digital transformation of educational practices and the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States. The case study employed a quantitative methodology and the research instrument was applied to 55 teachers, directors and librarians. The results indicate that it is possible to strengthen the pedagogical quality of open educational resources, through actions focused on improving temporal and technological parameters. They also reveal that users believe that SolarSPELL improves the teaching-learning processes and motivates the teacher to improve his or her development. This study provides valuable information on a tool that supports teaching-learning processes and facilitates connectivity with renewable energies that improves the teacher training in active methodologies for ecosystem learning.Keywords: Educational innovation, digital library, pedagogical quality, solar energy, teacher training, sustainable development.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9421318 Teaching Method in Situational Crisis Communication Theory: A Literature Review
Authors: Proud Arunrangsiwed
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Crisis management strategies could be found in various curriculums, not only in schools of business, but also schools of communication. Young students, such as freshmen and sophomores of undergraduate schools, may not care about learning crisis management strategies. Moreover, crisis management strategies are not a topic art students are familiar with. The current paper discusses a way to adapt entertainment media into a crisis management lesson, and the importance of learning crisis management strategies in the school of animation. Students could learn crisis management strategies by watching movies with content about a crisis and responding to crisis responding. The students should then participate in follow up discussions related to the strategies that were used to address the crisis, as well as their success in solving the crisis.Keywords: Situational crisis communication theory, crisis response strategies, media effect, unintentional effect.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18671317 Ensemble Approach for Predicting Student's Academic Performance
Authors: L. A. Muhammad, M. S. Argungu
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Educational data mining (EDM) has recorded substantial considerations. Techniques of data mining in one way or the other have been proposed to dig out out-of-sight knowledge in educational data. The result of the study got assists academic institutions in further enhancing their process of learning and methods of passing knowledge to students. Consequently, the performance of students boasts and the educational products are by no doubt enhanced. This study adopted a student performance prediction model premised on techniques of data mining with Students' Essential Features (SEF). SEF are linked to the learner's interactivity with the e-learning management system. The performance of the student's predictive model is assessed by a set of classifiers, viz. Bayes Network, Logistic Regression, and Reduce Error Pruning Tree (REP). Consequently, ensemble methods of Bagging, Boosting, and Random Forest (RF) are applied to improve the performance of these single classifiers. The study reveals that the result shows a robust affinity between learners' behaviors and their academic attainment. Result from the study shows that the REP Tree and its ensemble record the highest accuracy of 83.33% using SEF. Hence, in terms of the Receiver Operating Curve (ROC), boosting method of REP Tree records 0.903, which is the best. This result further demonstrates the dependability of the proposed model.
Keywords: Ensemble, bagging, Random Forest, boosting, data mining, classifiers, machine learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7581316 Design for Reliability and Manufacturing Yield (Study and Modeling of Defects in Integrated Circuits for their Reliability Analysis)
Authors: G. Ait Abdelmalek, R. Ziani
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In this document, we have proposed a robust conceptual strategy, in order to improve the robustness against the manufacturing defects and thus the reliability of logic CMOS circuits. However, in order to enable the use of future CMOS technology nodes this strategy combines various types of design: DFR (Design for Reliability), techniques of tolerance: hardware redundancy TMR (Triple Modular Redundancy) for hard error tolerance, the DFT (Design for Testability. The Results on largest ISCAS and ITC benchmark circuits show that our approach improves considerably the reliability, by reducing the key factors, the area costs and fault tolerance probability.Keywords: Design for reliability, design for testability, fault tolerance, manufacturing yield.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20611315 Software Model for a Computer Based Training for an HVDC Control Desk Simulator
Authors: José R. G. Braga, Joice B. Mendes, Guilherme H. Caponetto, Alexandre C. B. Ramos
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With major technological advances and to reduce the cost of training apprentices for real-time critical systems, it was necessary the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems for training apprentices in these systems. These systems, in general, have interactive features so that the learning is actually more efficient, making the learner more familiar with the mechanism in question. In the home stage of learning, tests are performed to obtain the student's income, a measure on their use. The aim of this paper is to present a framework to model an Intelligent Tutoring Systems using the UML language. The various steps of the analysis are considered the diagrams required to build a general model, whose purpose is to present the different perspectives of its development.Keywords: Computer based training, Hypermedia, Software modeling.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16061314 Effects of an Educative Model in Socially Responsible Behavior and Other Psychological Variables
Authors: Gracia V. Navarro, Maria V. Gonzalez, Carlos G. Reed
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The eudaimonic perspective in philosophy and psychology suggests that a good life is closely related to developing oneself in order to contribute to the well-being and happiness of other people and of the world as a whole. Educational psychology can help to achieve this through the design and validation of educative models. Since 2004, the University of Concepcion and other Chilean universities apply an educative model to train socially responsible professionals, people that in the exercise of their profession contribute to generate equity for the development and assess the impacts of their decisions, opting for those that serve the common good. The main aim is to identify if a relationship exists between achieved learning, attitudes toward social responsibility, self-attribution of socially responsible behavior, value type, professional behavior observed and, participation in a specific model to train socially responsible (SR) professionals. The Achieved Learning and Attitudes Toward Social Responsibility Questionnaire, interview with employers and Values Questionnaire and Self-attribution of SR Behavior Questionnaire is applied to 394 students and graduates, divided into experimental and control groups (trained and not trained under the educative model), in order to identify the professional behavior of the graduates. The results show that students and graduates perceive cognitive, affective and behavioral learning, with significant differences in attitudes toward social responsibility and self-attribution of SR behavior, between experimental and control. There are also differences in employers' perceptions about the professional practice of those who were trained under the model and those who were not. It is concluded that the educative model has an impact on the learning of social responsibility and educates for a full life. It is also concluded that it is necessary to identify mediating variables of the model effect.
Keywords: Educative model, good life, professional social responsibility (SR), values.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8761313 Adoption of E-Business by Thai SMEs
Authors: Pisit Chanvarasuth
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The use of e-business in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been recently received an enormous attention in information systems research by both academic and practitioners. With the adoption of new and efficient technologies to enhance businesses, Thai SMEs should be able to compete worldwide. Unfortunately, most of the owners are not used to new technologies. It is clear that most Thai SMEs prefer to work manually rather than electronically. This paper aims to provide a fundamental conceptual framework for E-business adoption by Thai SMEs. Rooted in Knowledge transfer model, several factors are identified, which drive and enable e-business adoption. By overlooking the benefits associated with implementing new technologies, it is difficult for Thai SMEs to perform well enough to compete globally. The paper also helps Thai SMEs to understand factors related to E-business adoption.Keywords: E-business, SME, Adoption, Knowledge Transfer, Thailand.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 29611312 A Hybrid Machine Learning System for Stock Market Forecasting
Authors: Rohit Choudhry, Kumkum Garg
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In this paper, we propose a hybrid machine learning system based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) for stock market prediction. A variety of indicators from the technical analysis field of study are used as input features. We also make use of the correlation between stock prices of different companies to forecast the price of a stock, making use of technical indicators of highly correlated stocks, not only the stock to be predicted. The genetic algorithm is used to select the set of most informative input features from among all the technical indicators. The results show that the hybrid GA-SVM system outperforms the stand alone SVM system.Keywords: Genetic Algorithms, Support Vector Machines, Stock Market Forecasting.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 93171311 Usability and Affordances: Examinations of Object-Naming and Object-Task Performance in Haptic Interfaces
Authors: Mia Sorensen
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The introduction of haptic elements in a graphic user interfaces are becoming more widespread. Since haptics are being introduced rapidly into computational tools, investigating how these models affect Human-Computer Interaction would help define how to integrate and model new modes of interaction. The interest of this paper is to discuss and investigate the issues surrounding Haptic and Graphic User Interface designs (GUI) as separate systems, as well as understand how these work in tandem. The development of these systems is explored from a psychological perspective, based on how usability is addressed through learning and affordances, defined by J.J. Gibson. Haptic design can be a powerful tool, aiding in intuitive learning. The problems discussed within the text is how can haptic interfaces be integrated within a GUI without the sense of frivolity. Juxtaposing haptics and Graphic user interfaces has issues of motivation; GUI tends to have a performatory process, while Haptic Interfaces use affordances to learn tool use. In a deeper view, it is noted that two modes of perception, foveal and ambient, dictate perception. These two modes were once thought to work in tandem, however it has been discovered that these processes work independently from each other. Foveal modes interpret orientation is space which provide for posture, locomotion, and motor skills with variations of the sensory information, which instructs perceptions of object-task performance. It is contended, here, that object-task performance is a key element in the use of Haptic Interfaces because exploratory learning uses affordances in order to use an object, without meditating an experience cognitively. It is a direct experience that, through iteration, can lead to skill-sets. It is also indicated that object-task performance will not work as efficiently without the use of exploratory or kinesthetic learning practices. Therefore, object-task performance is not as congruently explored in GUI than it is practiced in Haptic interfaces.
Keywords: Affordances, Graphic User Interface, HapticInterfaces, Tool-Use, Object-Naming, Object-Task Performance
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17501310 Virtual Laboratory for Learning Biology – A Preliminary Investigation
Authors: Murniza Muhamad, Halimah Badioze Zaman, Azlina Ahmad
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This study aims to conduct a preliminary investigation to determine the topic to be focused in developing Virtual Laboratory For Biology (VLab-Bio). Samples involved in answering the questionnaire are form five students (equivalent to A-Level) and biology teachers. Time and economical resources for the setting up and construction of scientific laboratories can be solved with the adaptation of virtual laboratories as an educational tool. Thus, it is hoped that the proposed virtual laboratory will help students to learn the abstract concepts in biology. Findings show that the difficult topic chosen is Cell Division and the learning objective to be focused in developing the virtual lab is “Describe the application of knowledge on mitosis in cloning".
Keywords: biology education, computer simulation, virtual laboratory, virtual reality
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 34821309 Classroom Teacher Candidates' Definitions and Beliefs about Technology Integration
Authors: Ahmet Baytak, Cenk Akbıyık
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The purpose of this paper is to present teacher candidates- beliefs about technology integration in their field of study, which is classroom teaching in this case. The study was conducted among the first year students in college of education in Turkey. This study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data. For the quantitative data- Likert scale was used and for the qualitative data pattern matching was employed. The primary findings showed that students defined educational technology as technologies that improve learning with their visual, easily accessible, and productive features. They also believe these technologies could affect their future students- learning positively.
Keywords: Educational technology, classroom teacher candidates, technology integration, teacher education.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19241308 A Redesigned Pedagogy in Introductory Programming Reduces Failure and Withdrawal Rates by Half
Authors: Said C. Fares, Mary A. Fares
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It is well documented that introductory computer programming courses are difficult and that failure rates are high. The aim of this project was to reduce the high failure and withdrawal rates in learning to program. This paper presents a number of changes in module organization and instructional delivery system in teaching CS1. Daily out of class help sessions and tutoring services were applied, interactive lectures and laboratories, online resources, and timely feedback were introduced. Five years of data of 563 students in 21 sections was collected and analyzed. The primary results show that the failure and withdrawal rates were cut by more than half. Student surveys indicate a positive evaluation of the modified instructional approach, overall satisfaction with the course and consequently, higher success and retention rates.
Keywords: Failure Rate, Interactive Learning, Student engagement, CS1.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17771307 Teaching Turn-Taking Rules and Pragmatic Principles to Empower EFL Students and Enhance Their Learning in Speaking Modules
Authors: O. F. Elkommos
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Teaching and learning EFL speaking modules is one of the most challenging productive modules for both instructors and learners. In a student-centered interactive communicative language teaching approach, learners and instructors should be aware of the fact that the target language must be taught as/for communication. The student must be empowered by tools that will work on more than one level of their communicative competence. Communicative learning will need a teaching and learning methodology that will address the goal. Teaching turn-taking rules, pragmatic principles and speech acts will enhance students' sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence together with discourse competence. Sociolinguistic competence entails the mastering of speech act conventions and illocutionary acts of refusing, agreeing/disagreeing; emotive acts like, thanking, apologizing, inviting, offering; directives like, ordering, requesting, advising, and hinting, among others. Strategic competence includes enlightening students’ consciousness of the various particular turn-taking systemic rules of organizing techniques of opening and closing conversation, adjacency pairs, interrupting, back-channeling, asking for/giving opinion, agreeing/disagreeing, using natural fillers for pauses, gaps, speaker select, self-select, and silence among others. Students will have the tools to manage a conversation. Students are engaged in opportunities of experiencing the natural language not as a mere extra student talking time but rather an empowerment of knowing and using the strategies. They will have the component items they need to use as well as the opportunity to communicate in the target language using topics of their interest and choice. This enhances students' communicative abilities. Available websites and textbooks now use one or more of these tools of turn-taking or pragmatics. These will be students' support in self-study in their independent learning study hours. This will be their reinforcement practice on e-Learning interactive activities. The students' target is to be able to communicate the intended meaning to an addressee that is in turn able to infer that intended meaning. The combination of these tools will be assertive and encouraging to the student to beat the struggle with what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. Teaching the rules, principles and techniques is an act of awareness raising method engaging students in activities that will lead to their pragmatic discourse competence. The aim of the paper is to show how the suggested pragmatic model will empower students with tools and systems that would support their learning. Supporting students with turn taking rules, speech act theory, applying both to texts and practical analysis and using it in speaking classes empowers students’ pragmatic discourse competence and assists them to understand language and its context. They become more spontaneous and ready to learn the discourse pragmatic dimension of the speaking techniques and suitable content. Students showed a better performance and a good motivation to learn. The model is therefore suggested for speaking modules in EFL classes.
Keywords: Communicative competence, EFL, empowering learners, enhance learning, speech acts, teaching speaking, turn-taking, learner centered, pragmatics.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14011306 Impact on Course Registration and SGPA of the Students of BSc in EEE Programme due to Online Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Muhibul Haque Bhuyan
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Most educational institutions were compelled to switch over to the online mode of teaching, learning, and assessment due to the lockdown when the corona pandemic started around the globe in the early part of the year 2020. However, they faced a unique set of challenges in delivering knowledge and skills to their students as well as formulating a proper assessment policy. This paper investigates whether there is an impact on the student Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) due to the online mode of teaching and learning assessment at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) of Southeast University (SEU). Details of student assessments are discussed. Then students’ grades were analyzed to find out the impact on SGPA based on the z-test by finding the standard deviation (). It also pointed out the challenges associated with the online classes and assessment strategies to be adopted during the online assessment. The student admission, course advising, and registration statistics were also presented in several tables and analyzed based on the change in percentage to observe the impact on it due to the pandemic. In summary, it was observed that the students’ SGPAs are not affected but student course advising and registration were affected slightly by the pandemic. Finally, the paper provides some recommendations to improve the online teaching, learning, assessment, and evaluation system.
Keywords: electrical and electronic engineering students, impact on course grading and SGPA, online assessment, online teaching, student registration, semester result
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4051305 Second Language Development with an Intercultural Approach: A Pilot Program Applied to Higher Education Students from a Escuela Normal in Atequiza, Mexico
Authors: Frida C. Jaime Franco, C. Paulina Navarro Núñez, R. Jacob Sánchez Nájera
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The importance of developing multi-language abilities in our global society is noteworthy. However, the necessity, interest, and consciousness of the significance that the development of another language represents, apart from the mother tongue, is not always the same in all contexts as it is in multicultural communities, especially in rural higher education institutions immersed in small communities. Leading opportunities for digital interaction among learners from Mexico and abroad partners represents scaffolding towards, not only language skills development but also intercultural communicative competences (ICC). This study leads us to consider what should be the best approach to work while applying a program of ICC integrated into the practice of EFL. While analyzing the roots of the language, it is possible to obtain the main objective of learning another language, to communicate with a functional purpose, as well as attaching social practices to the learning process, giving a result of functionality and significance to the target language. Hence, the collateral impact that collaborative learning leads to, aims to contribute to a better global understanding as well as a means of self and other cultural awareness through intercultural communication. While communicating through the target language by online collaboration among students in platforms of long-distance communication, language is used as a tool of interaction to broaden students’ perspectives reaching a substantial improvement with the help of their differences. This process should consider the application of the target language in the inquiry of sociocultural information, expecting the learners to integrate communicative skills to handle cultural differentiation at the same time they apply the knowledge of their target language in a real scenario of communication, despite being through virtual resources.
Keywords: Collaborative learning, English as a Foreign language, intercultural communication, intercultural communicative competences, virtual partnership.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6721304 The Motivating and Limiting Factors of Learners’ Engagement in an Online Discussion Forum
Authors: K. Durairaj, I. N. Umar
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Lately, asynchronous discussion forum is integrated in higher educational institutions as it may increase learning process, learners’ understanding, achievement and knowledge construction. The asynchronous discussion forum is used to complement the traditional, face-to-face learning session in hybrid learning courses. However, studies have proven that students’ engagement in online forums is still unconvincing. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the motivating factors and obstacles that affect the learners’ engagement in asynchronous discussion forum. This study is carried out in one of the public higher educational institutions in Malaysia with 18 postgraduate students as samples. The authors have developed a 40-items questionnaire based on literature review. The results indicate several factors that have encouraged or limited students’ engagement in asynchronous discussion forum: (a) the practices or behaviors of peers, or instructors, (b) the needs for the discussions, (c) the learners’ personalities, (d) constraints in continuing the discussion forum, (e) lack of ideas, (f) the level of thoughts, (g) the level of knowledge construction, (h) technical problems, (i) time constraints and (j) misunderstanding. This study suggests some recommendations to increase the students’ engagement in online forums. Finally, based upon the findings, some implications are proposed for further research.
Keywords: Asynchronous Discussion Forum, Engagement, Factors, Motivating, Limiting.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19121303 Reflective Thinking and Experiential Learning: A Quasi-Experimental Quanti-Quali Response to Greater Diversification of Activities and Greater Integration of Student Profiles
Authors: P. Bogas
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As a scientific contribution to this discussion, a pedagogical intervention of a quasi-experimental nature was developed, with a mixed methodology, evaluating the intervention within a single curricular unit of Marketing, using cases based on real challenges of brands, business simulation and customer projects. Primary and secondary experiences were incorporated in the intervention: the primary experiences are the experiential activities themselves; the secondary experiences resulted from the primary experience, such as reflection and discussion in work teams. A diversified learning relationship was encouraged through the various connections between the different members of the learning community. The present study concludes that in the same context, the students' response can be described as: students who reinforce the initial deep approach, students who maintain the initial deep approach level and others who change from an emphasis on the deep approach to one closer to superficial. This typology did not always confirm studies reported in the literature, namely, whether the initial level of deep processing would influence the superficial and the opposite. The result of this investigation points to the inclusion of pedagogical and didactic activities that integrate different motivations and initial strategies, leading to a possible adoption of deep approaches to learning, since it revealed statistically significant differences in the difference in the scores of the deep/superficial approach and the experiential level. In the case of real challenges, the categories of “attribution of meaning and meaning of studied” and the possibility of “contact with an aspirational context” for their future professional stand out. In this category, the dimensions of autonomy that will be required of them were also revealed when comparing the classroom context of real cases and the future professional context and the impact they may have on the world. Regarding to the simulated practice, two categories of response stand out: on the one hand, the motivation associated with the possibility of measuring the results of the decisions taken, an awareness of oneself and, on the other hand, the additional effort that this practice required for some of the students.
Keywords: Experiential learning, higher education, marketing, mixed methods, reflective thinking.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3041302 A Convolutional Deep Neural Network Approach for Skin Cancer Detection Using Skin Lesion Images
Authors: Firas Gerges, Frank Y. Shih
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Malignant Melanoma, known simply as Melanoma, is a type of skin cancer that appears as a mole on the skin. It is critical to detect this cancer at an early stage because it can spread across the body and may lead to the patient death. When detected early, Melanoma is curable. In this paper we propose a deep learning model (Convolutional Neural Networks) in order to automatically classify skin lesion images as Malignant or Benign. Images underwent certain pre-processing steps to diminish the effect of the normal skin region on the model. The result of the proposed model showed a significant improvement over previous work, achieving an accuracy of 97%.
Keywords: Deep learning, skin cancer, image processing, melanoma.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15391301 Tourist Satisfaction and Repeat Visitation; Toward a New Comprehensive Model
Authors: Ahmad Puad Mat Som, Mohammad Bader Badarneh
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Tourism researchers have recently focused on repeat visitation as a part of destination loyalty. Different models have also considered satisfaction as the main determinant of revisit intention, while findings in many studies show it as a continuous issue. This conceptual paper attempts at evaluating recent empirical studies on satisfaction and revisit intention. Based on limitations and gaps in recent studies, the current paper suggests a new model that would be more comprehensive than those in previous studies. The new model offers new relationships between antecedents (destination image, perceived value, specific novelty seeking, and distance to destination) and both of satisfaction and revisit intention. Revisit intention in turn is suggested to be measured in a temporal approach.
Keywords: Satisfaction, revisit intention, a new model.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 71161300 Practice, Observation, and Gender Effects on Students’ Entrepreneurial Skills Development When Teaching through Entrepreneurship Is Adopted: Case of University of Tunis El Manar
Authors: H. Chaker, T. Slama, N. Elyétim
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This paper analyzes the effects of gender, affiliation, prior work experience, social work, and vicarious learning through family role models on entrepreneurial skills development by students when they followed the teaching through the entrepreneurship method in Tunisia. We suggest that these variables enhance the development of students’ entrepreneurial skills when combined with teaching through entrepreneurship. The article assesses the impact of these combinations by comparing their effects on the development of thirteen students’ entrepreneurial competencies, namely entrepreneurial mindset, core self-evaluation, entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial knowledge, creativity, financial literacy, managing ambiguity, marshaling of resources, planning, teaching methods, entrepreneurial teachers, innovative employee, and entrepreneurial intention. We use a two-sample independent t-test to make the comparison, and the results indicate that, when combined with teaching through the entrepreneurship method, students with prior work experience developed better six entrepreneurial skills; students with social work developed better three entrepreneurial skills, men developed better four entrepreneurial skills than women. However, all students developed their entrepreneurial skills through this practical method regardless of their affiliation and their vicarious learning through family role models.
Keywords: Affiliation, entrepreneurial skills, gender, role models, social work, teaching through entrepreneurship, vicarious learning, work experience.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 171