Improving the process of E-Government initiative: An in-depth case study of web-based GIS implementation

Research on E-Government has largely focused on understanding the “outcomes and outputs of the E-Government project” [Yildiz, M. (2007). E-Government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward. Government Information Quarterly, 24(3), 646–665.]. It is argued that the existing research on E-Government tends to oversimplify the phenomenon. To address the call, the current study focuses on the process of an E-Government initiative by loosely drawing on the ‘technology enactment framework,’ in conjunction with the ‘systems development life cycle’ approach. Using a case study orientation, this study describes in detail how a geographic information systems implementation project is conducted at a local government in the United States. Insights into E-Government initiatives are presented and discussed.     

Innovative R&D and optimal investment under uncertainty in high-tech industries: An implication for emerging economies

In order to continue on the path to convergence with advanced countries, emerging countries need to strengthen their research capabilities. Often they try to do this through the development of strategic industries. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the effectiveness of policies aimed at the development of strategic industries in emerging economies. The paper develops a three-phase model for product innovation with capital investment under uncertainty to study the investment decisions of a manufacturer in an industry facing a volatile market demand for new inventions. The findings demonstrate the importance of interactions between market structure, a firm's market power and the associated cost of adjustment. The paper draws out implications for emerging economies with regard to policies striving to develop strategic industries in sectors such as semiconductors and information technology.     

Facilitating Preschoolers’ Scientific Knowledge Construction via Computer Games Regarding Light and Shadow: The Effect of the Prediction-Observation-Explanation (POE) Strategy

Educational researchers have suggested that computer games have a profound influence on students’ motivation, knowledge construction, and learning performance, but little empirical research has targeted preschoolers. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of implementing a computer game that integrates the prediction-observation-explanation (POE) strategy (White and Gunstone in Probing understanding. Routledge, New York, 1992) on facilitating preschoolers’ acquisition of scientific concepts regarding light and shadow. The children’s alternative conceptions were explored as well. Fifty participants were randomly assigned into either an experimental group that played a computer game integrating the POE model or a control group that played a non-POE computer game. By assessing the students’ conceptual understanding through interviews, this study revealed that the students in the experimental group significantly outperformed their counterparts in the concepts regarding “shadow formation in daylight” and “shadow orientation.” However, children in both groups, after playing the games, still expressed some alternative conceptions such as “Shadows always appear behind a person” and “Shadows should be on the same side as the sun.”     

Is Science Me? Exploring Middle School Students’ STE-M Career Aspirations

This study explores middle school students’ aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and medical (STE-M) careers by analyzing survey data during their eighth and ninth grade years from an ethnically and economically diverse sample of Southern California urban and suburban public school students (n = 493). Students were classified based on their responses to questions about their science ability beliefs and subjective task values using latent class analysis (LCA). Four distinct groups of students were identified: Science is Me; I Value Science But Don’t Do It Well; I Can Do Science but I Don’t Value It Highly; and Science is Not Me. Few students (22 %) were classified as having strong science ability beliefs, and only a third as strongly valuing learning/doing science; a majority (57 %) were in the Science is Not Me category, underscoring the scope of the challenge to invite more young people to want to learn science. As predicted, students who believed they could do science and valued science were more likely than others to indicate interest in STE-M careers. This relationship between perceptions and aspirations was true regardless of gender, ethnicity, and type of STE-M field, but varied depending on socioeconomic status. Using LCA to organize information about students’ science self-perceptions may help target specific interventions to student interests and aspirations and better support and encourage their persistence in STE-M careers.     

Undergraduate Science Students’ Scientist–Practitioner Gap: the Role of Epistemic Curiosity and Cognitive Flexibility

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education - The scientist–practitioner gap refers to the phenomenon of individuals with a scientific background exhibiting non-scientific...     

Students’ development of socio-scientific reasoning in a mobile augmented reality learning environment

In this study we investigated how a newly developed learning environment that integrates mobile augmented reality (AR) technology supported students’ socio-scientific reasoning (SSR). Drawing upon the reasoned action theory, we consider the roles of students’ attitudes toward SSR before learning, and their cognitive and emotional engagement during learning in the students’ actual performance of SSR. The implementation results indicate the impact of the learning environment on students’ scientific knowledge and attitude change. Moreover, we identified a significant path of how the students developed their SSR by the interactions among their attitude toward SSR, and their cognitive and emotional engagement in the mobile AR learning environment. On the other hand, the students’ post-learning attitudes toward SSR were dominated by their pre-learning attitudes. Implications and suggestions are discussed.     

The effects of instructional methods on students' learning outcomes requiring different cognitive abilities: context-aware ubiquitous learning versus traditional instruction

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) approach versus traditional instruction on students' ability to answer questions that required different cognitive skills, using the framework of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, including knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, and synthesis. In this study, 230 third- and fourth-grade students in 8 classes were counterbalanced and assigned to the u-learning approach and traditional instruction for learning different topics in two separate plant-observing activities. The results showed that the students who learned with traditional instruction performed better than those who used the u-learning approach in terms of answering questions that required their cognitive abilities of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, and synthesis. Moreover, an in-depth analysis of the students' learning behaviors in the u-learning context revealed that most of their learning behaviors recorded in the u-learning system were not significantly related to their cognitive abilities.