Enhancement of ion transport in porous media by the use of a continuously reoriented electric field

Electromigration in porous media is enhanced by a new type of electrokinetic processing. Compared with a single-oriented electric field, a continuously reoriented electric field was proven to sharply enhance mass transport of several heavy metals in kaolin. The initial concentration of the metals was: Cd: 250 mg/kg; Cu: 250 mg/kg; Ni: 250 mg/kg; Zn: 900 mg/kg. Electric field reorientation was obtained by the use of a fixed anode and a cathode that rotated at different frequencies (0, 0.25, 1.00, 1.25, 2.00, 5.00 and 10.00 r/m). Mass transport evidently increased from 0 r/m to 1.25 r/m, and then decreased as the rotation speed reached 10 r/m. From 0 r/m to 1.25 r/m, mass transport increased 2.87 times for Cd, 3.17 times for Cu, 2.11 times for Ni, and 4.13 times for Zn. We suggest that continuous reorientation of the electric field facilitates the advance of ions through kaolin pores, minimizing the retardation effect caused by media tortuosity.     

Addressing institutional potential loss of records and knowledge in Africa: The case of the ECA institutional repository – A knowledge base on African socio-economic development

In its 50 years of existence, the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa (UNECA) has created and holds a vast quantity of information and knowledge in a variety of formats, including printed and electronic. These represent the corporate memory, providing historical evidence of its actions and decisions. The information resources include published materials such as flagship publications, journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, mission reports, annual reports, working papers, policy briefs, speeches and other grey literature, all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social development in Africa. In 2009 the Library was awarded seed funding to implement the ECA Institutional Repository (IR). This paper discusses the various activities that have been undertaken to realize the project including; highly customized Dspace installation to support the MARC21 metadata, digitization, migration of metadata from the Library Integrated Management System (HORIZON) and, customization of the Dspace workflow to enable review of imported records. The paper also highlights lessons learnt, challenges and some of the best practices developed throughout the implementation and roll out of the ECA IR project. The Institutional Repository at http://repository.uneca.org/ is the first of its kind within the United Nations Secretariat and offers unique knowledge and information not available elsewhere pertaining to regional programmes, decisions and resolutions promoting social and economic development of Africa.     

Defining and measuring literacy: Facing the reality

Increasing recognition of a broadened concept of literacy challenges policy-makers and practitioners to re-define literacy operationally, develop and apply appropriate methods of assessing literacy and consider and act upon the consequent policy implications. This task is given a new urgency by the call of the Belém Framework for Action to “recognise literacy as a continuum” in the framework of lifelong learning; and to develop “appropriate assessment methods and instruments” in surveys and collection of data. This paper reviews the evolution of the concept of literacy and the emerging new consensus about it. It examines the initial experience of the Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme (LAMP) of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics as a methodology in assessing literacy and the potential of “simpler” alternatives, taking the Education Watch survey in Bangladesh as an example. The policy implications for literacy programmes of the broadened definition and a new assessment approach are noted.     

The Support Model for interactive assessment

The two most common models for assessment involve measuring how well students perform on a task (the quality model), and how difficult a task students can succeed on (the difficulty model). By exploiting the interactive potential of computers we may be able to use a third model: measuring how much help a student needs to complete a task. We assume that every student can complete it, but some need more support than others. This kind of tailored support will give students a positive experience of assessment, and a learning experience, while allowing us to differentiate them by ability. The computer can offer several kinds of support, such as help with understanding a question, hints on the meanings of key concepts, and examples or analogies. A further type of support has particular importance for test validity: the computer can probe students for a deeper explanation than they have so far given. In subjects like geography or science, markers often would like to ask ‘yes, but why?’, suspecting that students understand more than they have written. We describe a series of studies in which students were given a high level task as an oral interview and then as an interactive computerised assessment with varying types of support. Implications of the support model for future modes of assessment are discussed.     

The Impact of Digestive and Colon Drugs on the Human Hormones Profile

Hormones play an important role in the digestive system. The main hormones that control digestion are gastrin, secretin, and cholecystokinin. Herein, the current study is concerned with assessing the effect of spasmo canulase and librax drugs on the human hormones profile. Blood samples were withdrawn from adult patients to measure serum FSH, E2, LH, prolactin, progesterone, DHEAS, testosterone, TSH, T₃, T₄, fasting insulin, and cortisol. All hormone concentrations were determined quantitatively using ELISA procedure. Intriguingly, the present study showed putative changes including thyroid and sex hormonal profiles. Eventually, we concluded that the prospective study could be important in drug dose optimization and providing new medical guidelines to avoid side effects that could harm patients.     

Gradient-based iterative identification method for multivariate equation-error autoregressive moving average systems using the decomposition technique

This paper studies the parameter estimation problems of multivariate equation-error autoregressive moving average systems. Firstly, a gradient-based iterative algorithm is presented as a comparison. In order to improve the computational efficiency and the parameter estimation accuracy, a decomposition-based gradient iterative algorithm is presented by using the decomposition technique. The key is to transform an original system into two subsystems and to estimate the parameters of each subsystem, respectively. Compared with the gradient-based iterative algorithm, the decomposition-based algorithm requires less computational efforts, and the simulation results indicate that this algorithm is effective.     

The role of design ethics in maintaining students' privacy: A call to action to learning designers in higher education

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well-being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision-making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Existing codes of ethical standards from well-known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.
• Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.
• Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.
• Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.

What this paper adds

• A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.
• A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision-making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being.
• Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.
• Methods—using a practical ethical decision-making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.
• A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well-being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.
• Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as “dark patterns” in online course design.

     

ECRIMO,an app to train first graders' spelling: Effectiveness and comparison between different designs

The present study assessed the effectiveness of the ECRIMO educational application designed to build first-grade level spelling skills. We tested whether using the app to teach spelling would be as effective as providing the same training using traditional paper exercises. The effect of integrating gamification into mobile learning apps, which has been little studied in the context of young children, is also investigated. A pretest/training/posttest design was implemented with 311 first-graders divided in four groups: no training, paper training, the ECRIMO app with gamification features, and the ECRIMO app without gamification. Spelling, reading and phonological awareness abilities was measured at both pretest and posttest. The training was conducted over a 7-week period (4.40 hours in total). The experimental design allowed us to answer three questions: (1) Is spelling training effective regardless of the medium used? (2) Is training through the app as efficient as paper-based training? (3) Does gamification impact students' learning performance? Mixed-model analyses revealed (1) a positive effect on the training outcome depended on the initial spelling ability of participants, (2) a comparable efficiency between autonomous training using the ECRIMO app on tablets and the same training provided by teachers using paper exercises and (3) a marginally positive effect of gamification that is greater for the weakest students. The present study proposes an original and pertinent experimental design to test the relevance of educational applications. The design features of learning apps can impact students' learning differently depending on their initial level. A critical step should be verifying that using online apps for training is at least as effective as the same training using paper exercises.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• A significant number of children experience difficulties in reading and spelling from the first years of learning.
• The use of new technologies to support classroom teaching is rapidly developing as a topic of interest for educational professionals and researchers.
• Evaluations of new technologies developed to enhance literacy skills suggest that many factors can vary their effectiveness.
• The effectiveness of a digital educational application can be enhanced or undermined by design choices, such as gamification.

What this paper adds

• Spelling training with the app ECRIMO seems effective for first year students, especially those with the lowest and middle level.
• Comparable effects of both the tablet-based and paper equivalent training on participants' spelling were found.
• The use of gamification in ECRIMO could be more suitable for the weakest students.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Educational technologies should be evidence-based and should be evaluated with both a passive and an active control group.
• The design should be carefully considered and tested, as it may be advantageous for some students and disadvantageous for others.
• The use of digital technology in education can be beneficial for classroom practice, when the activity can be carried out in total autonomy, leaving the teacher available for a group of pupils with specific needs.