Effect of blended learning and learners’ characteristics on students’ competence: An empirical evidence in learning oriental music

Blended learning emerged as the most popular instructional design strategy in the field of education since last decade to present date. In fact, it is well acknowledged that blended learning approach significantly elevate students’ engagement and competency in learning process. Despite immense potentiality, many countries are still lag behind adopting this instructional design, such as Sri Lanka. Therefore, the primary aims of this study are two fold, (a) to investigate the effect of blended learning and learners’ characteristics on students’ competence and (b) to investigate the effectiveness of blended learning in teaching Oriental Music. This study mainly carried out among the senior secondary schools students at Colombo, Sri Lanka. A mixed methods, experimental and survey, were carried out to test the effectiveness of blended learning and identifying the important factors for enhancing students’ competence in learning Oriental Music. Results of independent sample t-test confirmed that blended learning is effective in terms of improving students’ performance in learning Oriental Music. Similarly, regression analysis confirmed that attitude and motivation are the two most important determinants for improving students’ competence. This study fulfilled an existing research gap by utilizing blended learning to teach highly traditional abstract art. Results of the study contributes to the curriculum designing field with novel ideas to adapt in hybrid instructions to teach secondary level students effectively. The curriculum designers will make use of these findings during innovation and future researcher would be benefitted to overlook more possible platforms to deliver music instructions. It will help them to understand how their set objectives have been achieved in technology integrations and seek for improvement where necessary.     

A dynamic decision model for portfolio investment and assets management

This paper addresses a dynamic portfolio investment problem. It discusses how we can dynamically choose candidate assets, achieve the possible maximum revenue and reduce the risk to the minimum level. The paper generalizes Markowitz's portfolio selection theory and Sharpe's rule for investment decision. An analytical solution is presented to show how an institutional or individual investor can combine Markowitz's portfolio selection theory, generalized Sharpe's rule and Value-at-Risk(VaR) to find candidate assets and optimal level of position sizes for investment (dis-investment). The result shows that the generalized Markowitz's portfolio selection theory and generalized Sharpe's rule improve decision making for investment.     

Making values education everyone's business

Adults are typically required to make values‐based decisions multiple times each day.Why, then, should a discussion of values not be explicit across the college curriculum and intentionally integrated into the cocurriculum? The authors describe a place where the work of values education is widely shared.     

Breaking the tyranny of office hours: Overcoming professor avoidance

ABSTRACT

Studies have found that Faculty–Student Interaction (FSI) has many positive benefits for students including academic support, professional development, mentoring, and career planning. Research-intensive universities exhibit the lowest levels of faculty–student interaction within higher education. This article utilises qualitative methods to explore faculty, student, and staff perceptions of faculty–student interactions, particularly those that take place out of the classroom, at a research-intensive public U.S. university. We identify social distance between faculty and students based on unequal status within a rigid, hierarchically-organised culture as a key barrier to FSI. We then discuss methods that some of the faculty in our study used to mitigate their social distance with students in an effort to increase FSI.     

A comparison of the dimensions used by Iranian and American students in rating instruction

This study investigated the dimensions of teacher behavior and classroom characteristics used by Iranian high school students (N=880) in evaluating their classroom experience. Secondly, it compared these dimensions to those used by American high school students (N=599). During January, 1978, both groups of students completed the Classroom Behavior Survey (CBS). Principal components analysis with varimax rotation yielded a 12 factor solution for Iranian data and 14 for the American data. Comparison of the factors suggest that the dimensions on which Iranian and American students evaluate their teachers are substantially different, though the dimensions they use to evaluate characteristics of the course and content are similar.

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Zusammenfassung Diese Studie untersucht die Dimensionen von Lehrerverhalten und Unterrichtsweisen, die iranische Studenten zur Evaluation ihrer Klassenerfahrungen angewandt haben. Ferner vergleicht sie diese Dimensionen mit den von amerikanischen Sekundarschülern benutzten. Beide Schülergruppen beendeten ihre Untersuchungen über Unterrichtsverhalten im Januar 1978. Eine Analyse der Hauptkomponenten, mit Varimax Rotation, ergab eine 12-Faktorenlösung für die iranischen Daten gegenüber 14 Faktoren für die amerikanischen. Ein Vergleich dieser Faktoren deutet darauf hin, daß die Dimensionen, aufgrund derer die iranischen und amerikanischen Schüler ihre Lehrer bewerten, stark voneinander abweichen, während sich die für die Beurteilung der Kurse und Inhalte gebrauchten gleichen.

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Résumé Cette étude porte sur les cotes du comportement de l'enseignant et des caractéristiques de la classe utilisées par les élèves iraniens de l'enseignement secondaire. (N=880) dans leur évaluation de leur expérience scolaire. Elle compare ensuite ces cotes à celles utilisées par les élèves américains du secondaire. Les deux groupes d'élèves ont terminé leur enquête sur le comportement de la classe (CBS ECC) en janvier 1978. L'analyse des principales composantes avec rotation varimax a donné une solution à 12 facteurs pour les données iraniennes et à 14 facteurs pour les données américaines. La comparaison des facteurs suggère que les cotes selon lesquelles les élèves iraniens et américains évaluent leurs enseignants sont notablement différentes, bien que celles qu'ils utilisent pour évaluer les caractéristiques du cours et de son contenu soient similaires.

     

Interference and auditory short-term memory in the bottlenosed dolphin

Interference in auditory short-term memory in the bottlenosed dolphin,Tursiops truncatus (Montagu), was studied using a delayed matching-to-sample task. At each trial, one of two sample sounds, chosen randomly, was projected underwater for 4 sec and then, after a variable delay interval, both sounds were presented. A response to the sound matching the initial sample was reinforced. Correct matching was significantly reduced following short intervals between trials in combination with long delays after the sample (proactive interference), or when a near continuous irrelevant sound was inserted into the delay interval (retroactive interference). There was rapid habituation to interference if the irrelevant sound was short in duration relative to the delay interval. For both proactive and retroactive interference, the errors were predominantly responses to the sample sound appropriate to the prior trial rather than to the current trial, indicating that memory for the relative recency of events (temporal memory) was degraded by interference. When interference was deleted or minimized, temporal memory remained nearly perfect over 30-sec delay intervals, the longest tested. The importance of distinguishing between temporal memory and nontemporal, or event, memory in different forms of the delayed matching task was emphasized.