Establishing the overall service quality of engineering education: fuzzy logic approach

Measuring overall service quality (OSQ) is gaining prominence in higher education due to the increased competition among engineering education institutions (EEIs) and growing awareness about value for money among the public. Determination of OSQ on certain institutional aspects is done by various agencies throughout the world. Each system uses a different set of weighted indicators to measure the overall service quality of institutions. Five service quality factors, namely professionalism, integrated education, facilities, responsiveness and empathy are considered in the study. Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are used to determine the aggregate weights of the factors to handle the vagueness present in the linguistic values of the stakeholders’ subjective opinions. Final weights of the factors are assessed by taking the distances of each factor between Fuzzy Positive Ideal Rating and Fuzzy Negative Ideal Rating. An illustrative study is presented to determine the OSQ of EEIs. The results help to focus on the factors which need immediate attention to enhance the quality of EEIs.     

A result concerning runs when tossing a fair coin

We establish an interesting connection between the number of runs and the length of the first run when tossing a fair coin.     

A new interface for a software complex to provide on-line service to VINITI DB users

Problems that are involved in increasing the quality of a user interface are considered. The authors present the results of the development of a software complex that is used to provide service to VINITI DB users when working with large data volumes and the transformation of the system to a three-tier architecture where xml data are used as a server response.     

Research–practice interactions as reported in recent design studies: still promising, still hazy

This study portrays recent research?Cpractice connections found in 18 design research reports focusing on the creation of instructional solutions. Solutions in different stages of development varied greatly in duration, ranging from one lesson to a whole year curriculum, spanned all levels of education, many subjects (science, math, language, culture, teacher education, etc.). Close collaboration between researchers and practitioners was prominent in all of the 18 projects studied. Participants in primary and secondary education projects have quite distinct roles regarding the teaching and researching, but they design their instruction solutions often collaboratively. Nearly all projects reported on how designed solutions were anchored in research, either from literature or from in-house project data. All articles indicated that research fed (re-)design, but few specified how. Based on our findings, we call for increased research and reporting on the specific strategies employed by design research participants to facilitate the production of new theoretical understanding through design of instructional solutions.     

It takes two to tango: studying how students constitute political subjects in discourses on sustainable development

A great deal of the ongoing discussion about environmental education and education for sustainable development has to do with democracy and deliberation. Here, for example, the normative approach has been challenged. As an alternative, there is sometimes a call for a curriculum and education that is characterized by democracy, participation, and pluralism. According to this call, it is still far from clear what it actually means to create education in terms of democracy. While the debate is lively, it is not always anchored in empirical research. In this study, three students in a classroom situation talk about resources and solidarity. Using analytical tools developed from a pragmatic base, the study tries to find a methodology to reveal how people create political subjects while engaged in such a discourse. This is associated with the discussion about democracy in education, and the consequences these findings may have in respect of how education on environment and sustainable development can be staged in terms of freedom and pluralism.