Fostering parents-professional collaboration for facilitating the school inclusion of students with ASD: design of the “ToGather” web-based prototype

Educational technology research and development - In recent years, many psycho-educational technologies were studied to address the school-related difficulties encountered by students with autism...     

Technologies in the education of children and teenagers with autism: evaluation and classification of apps by work areas

Education and Information Technologies - Mobile apps represent a resource with great potential for encouraging the development of many skills, given the high number of apps available and the quick...     

Research results of two personal learning environments experiments in a higher education institution

This paper focuses on institutionally powered personal learning environments (iPLEs). The concept of the iPLE can be seen as a way universities can incorporate learner-centred approach into the architecture of their technology-enhanced learning environments. The aim of this paper is to pose that there are other ways to learn complementary to virtual learning environments, such as using distributed Web 2.0 tools from personal learning environments (PLEs). With that aim in mind, this paper presents an exploratory study with two different iPLE configurations, analyses how they modify the learning–teaching process, and reports their perceived usefulness from the students' point of view. These two case studies were carried out by a research group of educational technology from a Spanish university in graduate and postgraduate courses. As reported by other case studies, the results revealed that students use the environment basically in the academic context and this usage is conceived as another time and effort requiring task. This fact can be observed in the low level iPLEs customization. The overall conclusions we can extract are, on the one hand, that the new environment to integrate informal and formal learning should be flexible and adaptable to the student's needs and preferences and, on the other hand, that academic tools might someday become personal tools.     

Quality Audits as a Tool for Quality Improvement in Selected European Higher Education Libraries

From the beginning of the 1990s, different types of quality management and evaluation systems have become integrated into higher education institutes throughout Europe due to the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This has meant that the university libraries have had to learn how to evaluate their services and improve their quality. Quality audits are one tool that can be used in quality management approaches to assess how well an organization is being managed. This paper describes and benchmarks the use of external and internal auditing in three European academic libraries, i.e. the Medical Library of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Library (Spain) and the University of Eastern Finland Library (Finland). The results reveal the best practices of auditing in these institutions; and recommendations are provided for the further development of library auditing and ways to improve co-operation between libraries.     

The effects of service convenience and perceived quality on perceived value,satisfaction and loyalty in low-cost fitness centers

Due to its importance in fitness centers, a number of authors have explored and analyzed loyalty. However, two characteristics not yet examined are service convenience in fitness center chains and low-cost fitness centers (an emerging business model). In the present study, the authors sought to understand the relationship among perceived quality and service convenience on perceived value, satisfaction, and client loyalty in low-cost fitness centers. Clients (N = 763; 381 women and 382 men) from three low-cost Spanish fitness centers were surveyed, revealing a positive relationship among the variables studied. Findings demonstrate the importance of proper management of non-monetary sacrifices and perceived quality by the managers of these sport organizations, since client loyalty could depend on factors of these emerging sport models.     

An investigation of the Gregorian chronology of early Islamic history : A Pilot Study

This pilot study presents a lunar and Gregorian chronology of the Sira, that is the biography of the prophet Muhammad. The paper discusses the problems surrounding the chronology of very early Islamic history, namely, the pre‐Hijra era. This history is not covered by the Hijra calendar, and therefore, historians dated its events using other primitive dating systems, resulting in considerable difficulties and inaccuracies when comparing Gregorian dates of this early Islamic history. In order to overcome this problem and establish an accurate chronology of the early Islamic history, the introduction of a new lunar calendar (the Muhammadi calendar) which starts with the birth month and year of the prophet Muhammad, and covers all Islamic history including the pre‐Hijra era, is suggested. The Muhammadi calendar was used to study the earliest three versions of the Sira. All dated events of the Sira were compiled from these sources and presented, for the first time, according to their historical order. The Muhammadi dates of these events were then calculated. For the first time, a computer program was designed to convert the Muliammadi dates to their Christian equivalent. The program was then used to compute the Gregorian dates of the events of the Sira.     

The planarity of the stickface motion in the field hockey hit

The field hockey hit is an important but poorly understood stroke. In this study, we investigated the planarity of the stickface motion during the downswing to better characterize the kinematics and to assess the suitability of planar pendulum models for simulating the hit. Thirteen experienced female field hockey players were filmed executing hits with a single approach step, and the kinematics of the centre of the stickface were measured. A method was developed for identifying how far back from impact the stickface motion was planar. Orthogonal regression was used to fit least-squares planes to the stickface path during sections of the downswing of varying length, with each section ending at impact. A section was considered planar if the root mean square residual between the stickface path and the fitted plane was less than 0.25% of the distance travelled by the stickface during that period. On average, the stickface motion was planar for the last 83 ± 12% of its downswing path, with the length of the planar section ranging from 1.85 m to 2.70 m. The suitability of a planar model for the stickface motion was supported, but further investigation of the stick and arm kinematics is warranted.     

Generation of virtual models of cultural heritage

Different techniques and tools currently exist to generate three-dimensional models of small elements, buildings and cities. Apart from being easier to interpret than two-dimensional drawings, these models facilitate data necessary for reconstruction projects, preservation or rehabilitation of the architectural or archaeological heritage. Traditional surveying only enables us to obtain discrete information of the characteristic lines that define each surface, edge, slope change etc. whereas work with massive capture techniques allows us to obtain continuous points of the surfaces. Photogrammetry or laser scanning combined with conventional photography provides information of the building in addition to its geometry. We carried out a review of the different techniques showing the advantages and disadvantages of each technique as well as the information that can be obtained by applying these techniques to the survey of the great Gate of Antioch in the town of Aleppo, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, in Syria.