Use of probabilistic and deterministic measures to identify unfavorable earthquake records

This study introduces measures to identify resonant （concentration of energy in a single or a few frequencies） or unfavorable earthquake ground motions. Probabilistic measures based on the entropy rate and the geometric properties of the power spectral density function （PSDF） of the ground acceleration are developed first. Subsequently, deterministic measures for the frequency content of the ground acceleration are also developed. These measures are then used for identifying resonance and criticality in stochastic earthquake models and 110 acceleration records measured at rock, stiff, medium and soft soil sites. The unfavorable earthquake record for a given structure is defined as the record having a narrow frequency content and dominant frequency close to the structure fundamental natural frequency. Accordingly, the measures developed in this study may provide a basis for selecting records that are capable of producing the highest structural response. Numerical verifications are provided on damage caused to structures by identified resonant records.     

Do Junior High School Students Perceive Their Learning Environment as Constructivist?

The purpose of this study is to examine the manner in which the features of a constructivist learning environment, and the mechanisms at its base, are expressed in junior high school students’ conceptions. Our research is based on an integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, deigned to provide a wider ranging and deeper understanding. Eight hundred and forty eighth- and ninth-grade students from over 15 schools participated in the study. Of the 840 students who completed the questionnaire, the explanations of 200 well-written questionnaires were further analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the study are presented in terms of the four scales employed in the CLES, namely the autonomy scale, the prior knowledge scale, the negotiation scale, and the student-centeredness scale. The quantitative results achieved here concur with parallel studies conducted around the world. The findings indicate that a considerable portion of the students perceive their learning environment as a constructivist one and report positive attitudes toward the way they are being taught. In terms of the qualitative results, however, it appears that in some cases, the students’ explanations reveal that in fact, and contrary to the bare quantitative results, some students do not perceive their learning environment as being constructivist. This raises the question of whether the fact that students recognize the factors associated with constructivist teaching is indeed an indication that such teaching exists in practice. This finding emphasizes the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methods for arriving at a balanced view of classroom occurrences.     

Modern standard Arabic speech corpus for implementing and evaluating automatic continuous speech recognition systems

This paper presents our work towards developing a new speech corpus for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which can be used for implementing and evaluating Arabic speaker-independent, large vocabulary, automatic, and continuous speech recognition systems. The speech corpus was recorded by 40 (20 male and 20 female) Arabic native speakers from 11 countries representing three major regions (Levant, Gulf, and Africa). Three development phases were conducted based on the size of training data, Gaussian mixture distributions, and tied states (senones). Based on our third development phase using 11 hours of training speech data, the acoustic model is composed of 16 Gaussian mixture distributions and the state distributions tied to 300 senones. Using three different data sets, the third development phase obtained 94.32% and 8.10% average word recognition correctness rate and average Word Error Rate (WER), respectively, for same speakers with different sentences (testing sentences). For different speakers with same sentences (training sentences), this work obtained 98.10% and 2.67% average word recognition correctness rate and average WER, respectively, whereas for different speakers with different sentences (testing sentences) this work obtained 93.73% and 8.75% average word recognition correctness rate and average WER, respectively.     

Media utilization by faculty at the university of Qatar

Conclusions The findings of this study revealed that the science and education faculties of are more apt to use audiovisual media than the other faculty members. Transparencies, 16 mm films, and video programs are the most frequently used media. In general, the faculty believed that audiovisual media made significant contributions in the teaching/learning process. They also indicated some obstacles to the utilization of audiovisual media such as: lack of time to select and preview materials; the language of materials; and insufficient variety of materials to correlate with the curriculum. The majority of faculty members indicated that educational technology services are very adequate, while one third of the faculty did have problems particularly in the production of audiovisual materials. Almost half of the faculty members cannot operate one or more categories of audiovisual equipment.     

Individual and collaborative technology-mediated learning using question & answer online discussion forums – perceptions of Public Health learners in Dubai,UAE

This case study provides evidence-based suggestions for the use of Question and Answer discussion forums for improving quality and assessment of online learning. General online discussion forums are accessible at any time to all subscribers, making it possible for some learners to update, concur with or paraphrase discussions posted earlier by their peers or the tutors. Consequently, the usefulness of such forums in individual and constructivist learning is compromised, especially when ‘correct’ responses are posted early on by participants. The Question and Answer (Q & A) version of discussion forums significantly addresses such inadequacies by restricting access to forum subscribers until they have made a post. We focus on Public Health learners’ perceptions of Q & A discussion forums implemented at Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, UAE. Analyses of learners’ perception surveys of 25 participating Master of Public Health learners and 8 Bachelor of Health Administration learners reveal that the Q & A discussion forum platform offers distinct advantages over general discussion forums in synergising individual and co-operative learning in Public Health training.