Search results for: online media
1108 Recycling for Sustainability: Plant Growth Media from Coal Combustion Products, Biosolids and Compost
Authors: Sougata Bardhan, Yona Chen, Warren A. Dick
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Generation of electricity from coal has increased over the years in the United States and around the world. Burning of coal results in annual production of upwards of 100 millions tons (United States only) of coal combustion products (CCPs). Only about a third of these products are being used to create new products while the remainder goes to landfills. Application of CCPs mixed with composted organic materials onto soil can improve the soil-s physico-chemical conditions and provide essential plant nutritients. Our objective was to create plant growth media utilizing CCPs and compost in way which maximizes the use of these products and, at the same time, maintain good plant growth. Media were formulated by adding composted organic matter (COM) to CCPs at ratios ranging from 2:8 to 8:2 (v/v). The quality of these media was evaluated by measuring their physical and chemical properties and their effect on plant growth. We tested the media by 1) measuring their physical and chemical properties and 2) the growth of three plant species in the experimental media: wheat (Triticum sativum), tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum) and marigold (Tagetes patula). We achieved significantly (p < 0.001) higher growth (7-130%) in the experimental media containing CCPs compared to a commercial mix. The experimental media supplied adequate plant nutrition as no fertilization was provided during the experiment. Based on the results, we recommend the use of CCPs and composts for the creation of plant growth media.Keywords: Coal ash, FGD gypsum, organic compost, and plant growth media.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19491107 Managing your Online Reputation: Issues of Ethics, Trust and Privacy in a Wired, “No Place to Hide“ World
Authors: Karen Armstrong
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This paper examines the issues, the dangers and the saving graces of life in a transparent global community where there is truly “no place to hide". In recent years, social networks and online groups have transformed issues of privacy and the ways in which we perceive and interact with others. The idea of reputation is critical to this dynamic. The discussion begins with a brief etymological history of the concept of reputation and moves to an exploration of how and why online communication changes our basic nature, our various selves and the Bakhtin idea of the polyphonic nature of truth. The discussion considers the damaging effects of bullying and gossip, both of which constitute an assault on reputation and the latter of which is not limited to the lifetime of the person. It concludes with guidelines and specific recommendations.Keywords: online reputation, gossip, cyberbullying, privacy
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 33911106 An Open Source Advertisement System
Authors: Pushkar Umaranikar, Chris Pollett
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An online advertisement system and its implementation for the Yioop open source search engine are presented. This system supports both selling advertisements and displaying them within search results. The selling of advertisements is done using a system to auction off daily impressions for keyword searches. This is an open, ascending price auction system in which all accepted bids will receive a fraction of the auctioned day’s impressions. New bids in our system are required to be at least one half of the sum of all previous bids ensuring the number of accepted bids is logarithmic in the total ad spend on a keyword for a day. The mechanics of creating an advertisement, attaching keywords to it, and adding it to an advertisement inventory are described. The algorithm used to go from accepted bids for a keyword to which ads are displayed at search time is also presented. We discuss properties of our system and compare it to existing auction systems and systems for selling online advertisements.Keywords: Online markets, online ad system, online auctions, search engines.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13651105 Business Penetration through Print Media: A Review of Select Enablers
Authors: Prateek Maheshwari, Nitin Seth
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It’s an era of high competition, dynamism and complexities which have forced organizations to change dramatically due to rising customer expectations. Marketers are under constant pressure to deliver finest to their customers. With the advent of technology, marketers have identified latest advertising media options to reach out to target audience. But the conventional ways of print advertisements still holds a deeper penetration and coverage. Various researchers and practitioners have studied the area of print media advertising and have tried to identify and implement advertisement effectiveness enablers. The purpose of this paper is to suggest select enablers for print media in Indian context using an integrated approach of review of literature and investigative interviews with academicians and experts from the area of advertising.
Keywords: Advertising, Advertisement Effectiveness, Competition, Print Media.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 25311104 Students’ Perception and Patterns of Listening Behavior in an Online Forum Discussion
Authors: K. L. Wong, I. N. Umar
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Online forum is part of a Learning Management System (LMS) environment in which students share their opinions. This study attempts to investigate the perceptions of students towards online forum and their patterns of listening behavior during the forum interaction. The students’ perceptions were measured using a questionnaire, in which seven dimensions were used involving online experience, benefits of forum participation, cost of participation, perceived ease of use, usefulness, attitude, and intention. Meanwhile, their patterns of listening behaviors were obtained using the log file extracted from the LMS. A total of 25 postgraduate students undertaking a course were involved in this study, and their activities in the forum session were recorded by the LMS and used as a log file. The results from the questionnaire analysis indicated that the students perceived that the forum is easy to use, useful, and bring benefits to them. Also, they showed positive attitude towards online forum, and they have the intention to use it in future. Based on the log data, the participants were also divided into six clusters of listening behavior, in which they are different in terms of temporality, breadth, depth and speaking level. The findings were compared to previous clusters grouping and future recommendations are also discussed.
Keywords: e-learning, learning management system, listening behavior, online forum.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24211103 Authenticity Issues of Social Media: Credibility, Quality and Reality
Authors: Shahrinaz Ismail, Roslina Abdul Latif
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Social media has led to paradigm shifts in ways people work and do business, interact and socialize, learn and obtain knowledge. So much so that social media has established itself as an important spatial extension of this nation-s historicity and challenges. Regardless of the enabling reputation and recommendation features through social networks embedded in the social media system, the overflow of broadcasted and publicized media contents turns the table around from engendering trust to doubting the trust system. When the trust is at doubt, the effects include deactivation of accounts and creation of multiple profiles, which lead to the overflow of 'ghost' contents (i.e. “the abundance of abandoned ships"). In most literature, the study of trust can be related to culture; hence the difference between Western-s “openness" and Eastern-s “blue-chip" concepts in networking and relationships. From a survey on issues and challenges among Malaysian social media users, 'authenticity' emerges as one of the main factors that causes and is caused by other factors. The other issue that has surfaced is credibility either in terms of message/content and source. Another is the quality of the knowledge that is shared. This paper explores the terrains of this critical space which in recent years has been dominated increasingly by, arguably, social networks embedded in the social media system, the overflow of broadcasted and publicized media content.Keywords: Authenticity, credibility, knowledge quality and social media.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 45591102 The Documentary Analysis of Meta-Analysis Research in Violence of Media
Authors: Proud Arunrangsiwed
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The part of “future direction” in the findings of meta-analysis could provide the great direction to conduct the future studies. This study, “The Documentary Analysis of Meta-Analysis Research in Violence of Media” would conclude “future directions” out of 10 meta-analysis papers. The purposes of this research are to find an appropriate research design or an appropriate methodology for the future research related to the topic, “violence of media”. Further research needs to explore by longitudinal and experimental design, and also needs to have a careful consideration about age effects, time spent effects, enjoyment effects and ordinary lifestyle of each media consumer.
Keywords: Aggressive, future direction, meta-analysis, media, violence.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27071101 Peer Assessment in the Context of Project-Based Learning Online
Authors: Y. Benjelloun Touimi, N. Faddouli, S. Bennani, M. Khalidi Idrissi
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The pedagogy project has been proven as an active learning method, which is used to develop learner-s skills and knowledge.The use of technology in the learning world, has filed several gaps in the implementation of teaching methods, and online evaluation of learners. However, the project methodology presents challenges in the assessment of learners online. Indeed, interoperability between E-learning platforms (LMS) is one of the major challenges of project-based learning assessment. Firstly, we have reviewed the characteristics of online assessment in the context of project-based teaching. We addressed the constraints encountered during the peer evaluation process. Our approach is to propose a meta-model, which will describe a language dedicated to the conception of peer assessment scenario in project-based learning. Then we illustrate our proposal by an instantiation of the meta-model through a business process in a scenario of collaborative assessment on line.Keywords: Online project based learning, meta-model, peer assessment process.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23771100 Analysis of Attention to the Confucius Institute from Domestic and Foreign Mainstream Media
Authors: Wei Yang, Xiaohui Cui, Weiping Zhu, Liqun Liu
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The rapid development of the Confucius Institute is attracting more and more attention from mainstream media around the world. Mainstream media plays a large role in public information dissemination and public opinion. This study presents efforts to analyze the correlation and functional relationship between domestic and foreign mainstream media by analyzing the amount of reports on the Confucius Institute. Three kinds of correlation calculation methods, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), the Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC), and the Kendall rank correlation coefficient (KCC), were applied to analyze the correlations among mainstream media from three regions: mainland of China; Hong Kong and Macao (the two special administration regions of China denoted as SARs); and overseas countries excluding China, such as the United States, England, and Canada. Further, the paper measures the functional relationships among the regions using a regression model. The experimental analyses found high correlations among mainstream media from the different regions. Additionally, we found that there is a linear relationship between the mainstream media of overseas countries and those of the SARs by analyzing the amount of reports on the Confucius Institute based on a data set obtained by crawling the websites of 106 mainstream media during the years 2004 to 2014.Keywords: Confucius Institute, correlation analysis, mainstream media, regression model.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13691099 A Context-Sensitive Algorithm for Media Similarity Search
Authors: Guang-Ho Cha
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This paper presents a context-sensitive media similarity search algorithm. One of the central problems regarding media search is the semantic gap between the low-level features computed automatically from media data and the human interpretation of them. This is because the notion of similarity is usually based on high-level abstraction but the low-level features do not sometimes reflect the human perception. Many media search algorithms have used the Minkowski metric to measure similarity between image pairs. However those functions cannot adequately capture the aspects of the characteristics of the human visual system as well as the nonlinear relationships in contextual information given by images in a collection. Our search algorithm tackles this problem by employing a similarity measure and a ranking strategy that reflect the nonlinearity of human perception and contextual information in a dataset. Similarity search in an image database based on this contextual information shows encouraging experimental results.
Keywords: Context-sensitive search, image search, media search, similarity ranking, similarity search.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6441098 Online Graduate Students’ Perspective on Engagement in Active Learning in the United States
Authors: Ehi E. Aimiuwu
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As of 2017, many researchers in educational journals are still wondering if students are effectively and efficiently engaged in active learning in the online learning environment. The goal of this qualitative single case study and narrative research is to explore if students are actively engaged in their online learning. Seven online students in the United States from LinkedIn and residencies were interviewed for this study. Eleven online learning techniques from research were used as a framework. Data collection tools were used for the study that included a digital audiotape, observation sheet, interview protocol, transcription, and NVivo 12 Plus qualitative software. Data analysis process, member checking, and key themes were used to reach saturation. About 85.7% of students preferred individual grading. About 71.4% of students valued professor’s interacting 2-3 times weekly, participating through posts and responses, having good internet access, and using email. Also, about 57.1% said students log in 2-3 times weekly to daily, professor’s social presence helps, regular punctuality in work submission, and prefer assessments style of research, essay, and case study. About 42.9% appreciated syllabus usefulness and professor’s expertise.Keywords: Class facilitation, course management, online teaching, online education, student engagement.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6941097 Analysis of Suitability of Online Assessment by Maintaining Critical Thinking
Authors: Mohamed Chabi, Mohammad Shahid Jamil, Mahmoud I Syam
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The purpose of this study is to determine whether paper assessment especially in the subject mathematics will ever be completely replaced by online assessment using Learning Management System and Content Management System such as blackboard. Testing students has moved from the traditional scribbling and sketching on paper towards working online on a screen and keyboard. It is found that online assessment by using selective types of questions like multiple choices, true or false and final answer questions don’t reflect the actual understanding of students in solving the problems and teachers can’t determine the weakness points of students. In addition, it is showed that OBMCQs are a very good tool for self-assessment and when teachers are testing for knowledge and facts. But when it comes to the skills, OBMCQs are poor tools for measuring the ability to apply knowledge to complex math problem.
Keywords: Paper assessment, online assessment, learning management system, content management system.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20391096 Ontologies for Social Media Digital Evidence
Authors: Edlira Kalemi, Sule Yildirim-Yayilgan
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Online Social Networks (OSNs) are nowadays being used widely and intensively for crime investigation and prevention activities. As they provide a lot of information they are used by the law enforcement and intelligence. An extensive review on existing solutions and models for collecting intelligence from this source of information and making use of it for solving crimes has been presented in this article. The main focus is on smart solutions and models where ontologies have been used as the main approach for representing criminal domain knowledge. A framework for a prototype ontology named SC-Ont will be described. This defines terms of the criminal domain ontology and the relations between them. The terms and the relations are extracted during both this review and the discussions carried out with domain experts. The development of SC-Ont is still ongoing work, where in this paper, we report mainly on the motivation for using smart ontology models and the possible benefits of using them for solving crimes.
Keywords: Criminal digital evidence, social media, ontologies, reasoning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23801095 Aplication`s Aspects Of Public Relations By Nonprofit Organizations. Case Study Albania
Authors: Xhiliola Agaraj(Shehu), Merita Murati, Valbona Gjini
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The traditional public relations manager is usually responsible for maintaining and enhancing the reputation of the organization among key publics. While the principal focus of this effort is on support publics, it is quite clearly recognized that an organization's image has important effects on its own employees, its donors and volunteers, and its clients. The aim of paper is to define application`s aspects of public relations media and tools by nonprofit organizations in Albanian reality. Actually does used public relations media and tools, like written material, audiovisual material, organizational identity media, news, interviews and speeches, events, web sites by nonprofit organizations to attract donors? If, public relations media and tools are used, does exists a relation between public relation media and fundraising?
Keywords: Donors, Fundraising, Nonprofit Organizations, Public Relations
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14101094 Media Façades in the Wild: Some Lessons
Authors: Hai-Ning Liang, Xiaowei Dai, Nancy Diniz, Charles Fleming, Woon Kian Chong
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Media displays in public areas are becoming increasingly pervasive—they are used in many settings, come in different sizes, serve different purposes, and have varied degrees of interactivity. In this paper, we aim to provide a survey of how these displays, often named media façades, are used in the wild in a city in China which is undergoing a rapid growth. This survey is intended to raise greater awareness and discussion about the use and effect of these displays in public areas. Through this survey, we have been able to distill some lessons of what is good, bad, and ugly about some current examples of media displays used in a city that is transitioning into becoming a modern one and one that is located in one of the fastest growing areas in Asia. With this research, we hope that we can provide technology designers and architects with some general principles that can help them integrate these types of technologies into their architectural creations.
Keywords: Large displays, media façades, interaction design, architectural displays.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 37801093 The Development of Online Lessons in Integration Model
Authors: Chalermpol Tapsai
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The objectives of this research were to develop and find the efficiency of integrated online lessons by investigating the usage of online lessons, the relationship between learners’ background knowledge, and the achievement after learning with online lessons. The sample group in this study consisted of 97 students randomly selected from 121 students registering in 1/2012 at Trimitwittayaram Learning Center. The sample technique employed stratified sample technique of 4 groups according to their proficiency, i.e. high, moderate, low, and non-knowledge. The research instrument included online lessons in integration model on the topic of Java Programming, test after each lesson, the achievement test at the end of the course, and the questionnaires to find learners’ satisfaction. The results showed that the efficiency of online lessons was 90.20/89.18 with the achievement of after learning with the lessons higher than that before the lessons at the statistically significant level of 0.05. Moreover, the background knowledge of the learners on the programming showed the positive relationship with the achievement learning at the statistically significant level at 0.05. Learners with high background knowledge employed less exercises and samples than those with lower background knowledge. While learners with different background in the group of moderate and low did not show the significant difference in employing samples and exercises.
Keywords: Integration model, Online lessons.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14911092 A Development of Creative Instruction Model through Digital Media
Authors: Kathaleeya Chanda, Panupong Chanplin, Suppara Charoenpoom
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This purposes of the development of creative instruction model through digital media are to: 1) enable learners to learn from instruction media application; 2) help learners implementing instruction media correctly and appropriately; and 3) facilitate learners to apply technology for searching information and practicing skills to implement technology creatively. The sample group consists of 130 cases of secondary students studying in Bo Kluea School, Bo Kluea Nuea Sub-district, Bo Kluea District, Nan Province. The probability sampling was selected through the simple random sampling and the statistics used in this research are percentage, mean, standard deviation and one group pretest – posttest design. The findings are summarized as follows: The congruence index of instruction media for occupation and technology subjects is appropriate. By comparing between learning achievements before implementing the instruction media and learning achievements after implementing the instruction media, it is found that the posttest achievements are higher than the pretest achievements with statistical significance at the level of .05. For the learning achievements from instruction media implementation, pretest mean is 16.24 while posttest mean is 26.28. Besides, pretest and posttest results are compared and differences of mean are tested, the test results show that the posttest achievements are higher than the pretest achievements with statistical significance at the level of .05. This can be interpreted that the learners achieve better learning progress.
Keywords: Teaching learning model, digital media, creative instruction model, facilitate learners.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6991091 Customer Relations and Use of Online Shopping Sites
Authors: Bahar Urhan Torun, Havva Nur Tarakcı
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At the present time, online marketing has become the common target of small and full-scale organizations. Today’s humanbeing who has to spend most of their time in front of the computer because of his job, prefers to socialize by internet due to the easy access to technology. So online marketing area expands day by day. All business organizations from the smallest to the biggest are in a race in order to get a cut from the virtual market share in an extreme competitive environment. However these organizations which use the internet to reach more consumers cannot determine their target group accurately, so this is the biggest handicap of online marketing sales nowadays. The aim of this study is to determine some significant elements about need for communicating efficiently with the consumer on the internet on online marketing. The strategies that can be used in order to increase sales and the limitations of virtual environment where cannot be communicated with the consumer face to face are argued in this study’s scope. As a consequence it is thought that to study on this subject because of lacking and also being limited efficiency of researches and outputs. Within this scope suggesting some proposals about how to communicate efficiently with the consumer and also offering the consumers’ demands efficiently is the essential objective of this study.
Keywords: Communication, competition, consumer, online marketing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6261090 M-Learning the Next Generation of Education in Cyberspace
Authors: Nasser Alalwan, Ahmed Alzahrani, Mohamed Sarrab
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The technology usages of high speed Internet leads to establish and start new era of online education. With the advancement of the information technology and communication systems new opportunities have been created. This leads universities to have various online education channels to meet the demand of different learners- needs. One of these channels is M-learning, which can be used to improve the online education environment. With using such mobile technology in learning both students and instructors can easily access educational courses anytime from anywhere. The paper first presents literature about mobile learning and to what extent this approach can be utilized to enhance the overall learning system. It provides a comparison between mobile learning and traditional elearning showing the wide array of benefits of the new generation of technology. The possible challenges and potential advantages of Mlearning in the online education system are also discussed.Keywords: Mobile learning, M-learning, eLearning, Educational system.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21131089 Designing a Multilingual Auction Website for Selling Agricultural Products
Authors: Popa Cosmin, Chiran Aurel
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The study aimed to identify the logical structure of data and particularities of developing and testing a website designed for selling farm products through online auctions. The research is based on a short literature review in the field and exploratory trials of some successful models from other industries, in order to identify the advantages of using such tool, as well as the optimal structure and functionality of an auction portal. In the last part, the study focuses on the results of testing the website by the potential beneficiaries. Conclusions of the study underlines that the particularities of some agricultural products could raise difficulties in the process of selling them through online auctions, but the use of such system it is perceived to bring significant improvements in the supply chain. The results of scientific investigations require a more detailed study regarding the importance of using quality standards for agricultural products sold via online auction, the impact that implementation of an online payment system could have on trade with agricultural products and problems which could arise in using the website in different countries.Keywords: E-commerce, online auctions, marketing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 36001088 Using High Performance Computing for Online Flood Monitoring and Prediction
Authors: Stepan Kuchar, Martin Golasowski, Radim Vavrik, Michal Podhoranyi, Boris Sir, Jan Martinovic
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The main goal of this article is to describe the online flood monitoring and prediction system Floreon+ primarily developed for the Moravian-Silesian region in the Czech Republic and the basic process it uses for running automatic rainfall-runoff and hydrodynamic simulations along with their calibration and uncertainty modeling. It takes a long time to execute such process sequentially, which is not acceptable in the online scenario, so the use of a high performance computing environment is proposed for all parts of the process to shorten their duration. Finally, a case study on the Ostravice River catchment is presented that shows actual durations and their gain from the parallel implementation.
Keywords: Flood prediction process, High performance computing, Online flood prediction system, Parallelization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23321087 Tweets to Touchdowns: Predicting National Football League Achievement from Social Media Optimism
Authors: Rohan Erasala, Ian McCulloh
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The National Football League (NFL) Draft is a chance for every NFL team to select their next superstar. As a result, teams heavily invest in scouting, and millions of fans partake in the online discourse surrounding the draft. This paper investigates the potential correlations between positive sentiment in individual draft selection threads from the subreddit r/NFL and if these data can be used to make successful player recommendations. It is hypothesized that there will be limited correlations and nonviable recommendations made from these threads. The hypothesis is tested using sentiment analysis of draft thread comments and analyzing correlation and precision at k of top scores. The results indicate weak correlations between the percentage of positive comments in a draft selection thread and a player’s approximate value, but potentially viable recommendations from looking at players whose draft selection threads have the highest percentage of positive comments.
Keywords: National Football League, NFL, NFL Draft, sentiment analysis, Reddit, social media, NLP, sentiment analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 391086 Technology Enhanced Learning: Fostering Cooperative Learning Through the Integration of Online Communication as Part of Teaching and Learning Experience
Authors: R.Ramli
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This paper discusses ways to foster cooperative learning through the integration of online communication technology. While the education experts believe constructivism produces a more positive learning experience, the educators are still facing problems in getting students to participate due to numerous reasons such as shy personality, language and cultural barriers. This paper will look into the factors that lead to lack of participations among students and how technology can be implemented to overcome these issues.
Keywords: cooperative learning, encouraging class participation, education, online discussion
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15261085 Using Technology to Enhance the Student Assessment Experience
Authors: D. J. Smith, M. A. Qayyum
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The use of information tools is a common activity for students of any educational stage when they encounter online learning activities. Finding the relevant information for particular learning tasks is the topic of this paper as it investigates the use of information tools for a group of student participants. The paper describes and discusses the results with particular implications for use in higher education, and the findings suggest that improvement in assessment design and subsequent student learning may be achieved by structuring the purposefulness of information tools usage and online reading behaviors of university students.
Keywords: Information tools, assessment, online learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17241084 The Impact of Recommendation Sources on Online Purchase Intentions: The Moderating Effects of Gender and Perceived Risk
Authors: Chiao-Chen Chang, Yang-Chieh Chin
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This study examines the issue of recommendation sources from the perspectives of gender and consumers- perceived risk, and validates a model for the antecedents of consumer online purchases. The method of obtaining quantitative data was that of the instrument of a survey questionnaire. Data were collected via questionnaires from 396 undergraduate students aged 18-24, and a multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify causal relationships. Empirical findings established the link between recommendation sources (word-of-mouth, advertising, and recommendation systems) and the likelihood of making online purchases and demonstrated the role of gender and perceived risk as moderators in this context. The results showed that the effects of word-of-mouth on online purchase intentions were stronger than those of advertising and recommendation systems. In addition, female consumers have less experience with online purchases, so they may be more likely than males to refer to recommendations during the decision-making process. The findings of the study will help marketers to address the recommendation factor which influences consumers- intention to purchase and to improve firm performances to meet consumer needs.Keywords: Recommendation sources, Online purchaseintentions, Gender differences, Perceived risk.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 30251083 Numerical and Experimental Study of Flow from a Leaking Buried Pipe in an Unsaturated Porous Media
Authors: S.M.Hosseinalipour, H.Aghakhani
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Considering the numerous applications of the study of the flow due to leakage in a buried pipe in unsaturated porous media, finding a proper model to explain the influence of the effective factors is of great importance.There are various important factors involved in this type of flow such as: pipe leakage size and location, burial depth, the degree of the saturation of the surrounding porous medium, characteristics of the porous medium, fluid type and pressure of the upstream.In this study, the flow through unsaturated porous media due to leakage of a buried pipe for up and down leakage location is studied experimentally and numerically and their results are compared. Study results show that Darcy equation together with BCM method (for calculating the relative permeability) have suitable ability for predicting the flow due to leakage of buried pipes in unsaturated porous media.Keywords: Buried, Leaking pipe, Porous media, Unsaturated
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23801082 Tourist Satisfaction and Loyalty toward Service Quality of the Online Tourism Enterprises
Authors: Wanida Suwunniponth
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The objectives of this research paper were to study the expectation and satisfaction of tourists in five tourism service quality dimensions, namely, website quality, service ability, trust ability, customer empathy, and responsiveness to customer and also to study the influences of satisfaction affecting loyalty toward quality service of the online tourism enterprises located in Bangkok Thailand. This research utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used as a tool to collect data from 400 tourists who were using in online travel services. Statistics analysis included descriptive statistics, t-test and Multiple Regression Analysis. In terms of qualitative analysis, an in-depth interview and content analysis were used along with 10 individual management levels of e-commerce enterprises.
The results revealed that the respondents had higher expectations than their level of satisfaction in all five categories. However, the respondents were more satisfied with online travel services than without online service. The demographic factors such as gender and age had no influence on the level of satisfaction whereas the demographic factors of education, occupation, and income had influenced the level of satisfaction. The test results also indicated that the level of satisfaction from responsiveness to customer had the highest influence on the loyalty of tourists who used online travel. The level of satisfaction from customer empathy had the highest influence on the tourists to recommend others to use online travel services. Also, the level of satisfaction from service ability had the highest influence on tourists to take an actual trip.
Keywords: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Service Quality, Online Tourism Enterprises.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 38821081 Towards an Understanding of Social Capital in an Online Community of Filipino Music Artists
Authors: Jerome V. Cleofas
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Cyberspace has become a more viable arena for budding artists to share musical acts through digital forms. The increasing relevance of online communities has attracted scholars from various fields demonstrating its influence on social capital. This paper extends this understanding of social capital among Filipino music artists belonging to the SoundCloud Philippines Facebook Group. The study makes use of various qualitative data obtained from key-informant interviews and participant observation of online and physical encounters, analyzed using the case study approach. Soundcloud Philippines has over seven-hundred members and is composed of Filipino singers, instrumentalists, composers, arrangers, producers, multimedia artists and event managers. Group interactions are a mix of online encounters based on Facebook and SoundCloud and physical encounters through meet-ups and events. Benefits reaped from the community are informational, technical, instrumental, promotional, motivational and social support. Under the guidance of online group administrators, collaborative activities such as music productions, concerts and events transpire. Most conflicts and problems arising are resolved peacefully. Social capital in SoundCloud Philippines is mobilized through recognition, respect and reciprocity.Keywords: Facebook, music artists, online communities, social capital.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17511080 Small Businesses' Decision to have a Website Saudi Arabia Case Study
Authors: M. Al-hawari, H. AL–Yamani, B. Izwawa
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Recognizing the increasing importance of using the Internet to conduct business, this paper looks at some related matters associated with small businesses making a decision of whether or not to have a Website and go online. Small businesses in Saudi Arabia struggle to have this decision. For organizations, to fully go online, conduct business and provide online information services, they need to connect their database to the Web. Some issues related to doing that might be beyond the capabilities of most small businesses in Saudi Arabia, such as Website management, technical issues and security concerns. Here we focus on a small business firm in Saudi Arabia (Case Study), discussing the issues related to going online decision and the firm's options of what to do and how to do it. The paper suggested some valuable solutions of connecting databases to the Web. It also discusses some of the important issues related to online information services and e-commerce, mainly Web hosting options and security issues.Keywords: E-Commerce, Saudi Arabia, Small business, Webdatabase connection, Web hosting, World Wide Web (Web).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19721079 Dynamic Analysis of Porous Media Using Finite Element Method
Authors: M. Pasbani Khiavi, A. R. M. Gharabaghi, K. Abedi
Abstract:
The mechanical behavior of porous media is governed by the interaction between its solid skeleton and the fluid existing inside its pores. The interaction occurs through the interface of gains and fluid. The traditional analysis methods of porous media, based on the effective stress and Darcy's law, are unable to account for these interactions. For an accurate analysis, the porous media is represented in a fluid-filled porous solid on the basis of the Biot theory of wave propagation in poroelastic media. In Biot formulation, the equations of motion of the soil mixture are coupled with the global mass balance equations to describe the realistic behavior of porous media. Because of irregular geometry, the domain is generally treated as an assemblage of fmite elements. In this investigation, the numerical formulation for the field equations governing the dynamic response of fluid-saturated porous media is analyzed and employed for the study of transient wave motion. A finite element model is developed and implemented into a computer code called DYNAPM for dynamic analysis of porous media. The weighted residual method with 8-node elements is used for developing of a finite element model and the analysis is carried out in the time domain considering the dynamic excitation and gravity loading. Newmark time integration scheme is developed to solve the time-discretized equations which are an unconditionally stable implicit method Finally, some numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and capability of developed model for a wide variety of behaviors of porous media.
Keywords: Dynamic analysis, Interaction, Porous media, time domain
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