Enterprise Systems: Curriculum design and assessment

We present a curriculum that prepares students for supporting large Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). EIS is best explained through the evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). These systems evolved over the last years driven by (1) changing business requirements and (2) new development capabilities provided by technologies evolution and software vendors’ innovation. These developments led to a new discipline—Enterprise Information Systems, which deals with issues whose focus is on creating and sustaining business benefits through the utilization of corporate IT infrastructure assets. Currently, EIS knowledge is essentially acquired on the job after substantial time of experience building and longer career ladder scale. This paper presents an experience of a curriculum implementation that prepares students for the pervasive EIS landscape in meeting today’s corporate needs. Our IT-based educational approach is evaluated as an alternative to prevailing Business-based approaches to EIS instruction. In this IT-rooted approach, the curriculum is divided into four sections: a Core IT block of courses followed by two progressive-levels of advanced EIS-related specialized subjects, and an industry-oriented field-training experience. Initially, a Core IT background provides a foundation for IT innovation in developing EIS components at sophomore-level. A junior-level of specialized instruction introduces integrated modules which form EIS platforms. Finally, supporting technologies of EIS-related processes and workflows are presented at senior-level of specialized EIS instruction. An assessment case study of the proposed Enterprise System programs is carried out through which we discuss the results of the curriculum performance.     

Real time implementation of indirect rotor flux oriented control of a five-phase induction motor with novel rotor resistance adaption using sliding mode observer

High performance multiphase motor drive requires precise knowledge of the state quantities and the machine parameters. Access to these state quantities is through measurement using sensors whose accuracy is paramount to achieve the performance level required by industrial applications. However, the problems of the parameters variations, inaccessibility to the measurement of some states, no-observability of the machine in some regions, the cost of the sensors and their lack of precision, make this very difficult task. To address these problems, it is necessary to resort to soft sensors through the design of observers and estimators. In multiphase induction motor drive, the observation problem arises especially for rotor flux that is not accessible for measurement. About the parameters variations, the rotor resistance and the stator resistance are the most critical parameters of the machine because their influence is crucial for the control and observation. The change in the resistances can be as large as 40–50% of the rated value, which may affect the control adversely. This paper develops a new structure of an adaptive sliding mode observer based on an online estimation of the rotor resistance value in order to avoid the effect of its variation in the rotor flux oriented control. The results show convergent (the errors in the transient and steady states are 5% and 1%, respectively) behavior of the drive using the proposed control scheme for large rotor resistance variation under loaded condition. The stability of the drive is proved using Lyapunov criteria. The simulation results are validated using real time implementation.     

What is an objective structured practical examination in anatomy?

Assessing teaching‐learning outcomes in anatomical knowledge is a complex task that requires the evaluation of multiple domains: theoretical, practical, and clinical knowledge. In general, theoretical knowledge is tested by a written examination system constituted by multiple choice questions (MCQs) and/or short answer questions (SAQ). The assessment of practical knowledge (three‐dimensional anatomical concepts) involves oral, spot, or objective structured practical examinations (OSPE). Finally, the application of anatomical knowledge to patients is tested mainly through objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE). The major focus of this study is the OSPE. Although many schools challenge students using this tool in practical examinations in the early phase of the curriculum, the true meaning of OSPE is frequently forgotten and it becomes, in reality, a spot examination. This article, for the first time, describes how the concept of the OSPE has evolved and is currently being used to assess the practical domain of anatomical knowledge in a problem‐based curriculum at Alfaisal University College of Medicine. In addition, it describes the main differences from the spot examination, which is normally used in traditional medical curricula. The authors believe that the OSPE remains the most efficient tool to assess the practical aspects of anatomical knowledge in a system where basic knowledge is integrated with the clinical or functional part of anatomy. However, this contention only holds true if the OSPE process revolves around structured objectives. Anat Sci Educ 6: 125–133. © 2012 American Association of Anatomists.     

Under the gaze of the state: policing literature and the case of Taslima Nasrin

Abstract

This article situates Taslima Nasrin, the controversial writer from Bangladesh, in a particular political and religious moment in the history of Bangladesh, to analyse the difficult relationship the postcolonial state shares with a writer whose work deliberately unsettles the issues of minority and of women and/in religion. The complex mosaic of Nasrin’s work, comprising as varied genres as newspaper columns, poetry and popular novels, has engendered, in the last ten years, unprecedented responses both for and against her writing. This has brought the issue of literature and its uneasy negotiation with state politics to the forefront of national debate. Despised by Islamists and fundamentalists, equally loved and loathed by the reading public, considered with caution by secular intelligentsia and fellow feminists, and ultimately banned by the state, Nasrin is a unique case in point. Her work, written under the gaze of the state defying the fundamentalist fatwa demanding her death, hence invites discussions on state censorship invoked using religious sensibility as a marker of literary judgement and the associated perils of women writing on women in a postcolony like Bangladesh.     

Learning Objects Based Framework for Self-Adaptive Learning

How learners can build their own knowledge, which is precisely tailored to their needs and background? This is precisely the question to which this paper attempts to answer by providing a framework for a flexible object-based e-learning environment. The paper recognizes that the general learner modeling alternative is an intractable problem. However, it suggests learning objects construct used as building blocks to root out individual learning deficiencies. The paper also provides an algorithm to construct individual learning routes that are adjusted to learners' profile as well as an open implementation to accommodate the integration of various learning sources.     

Tensions in Teacher Training for School Effectiveness: The Case of Pakistan∗

While research on school effectiveness is growing internationally, its impact on the training of teachers is not clear. Taking Pakistan as a case study, this paper reports an investigation of how far trainees, tutors and practising teachers felt that training matched the researched ‘factors’ linked to successful schools. Fewer than half the practising teachers felt well prepared; but there was not always agreement within or between the three groups about what elements of ‘effectiveness’ should be included, except that the training should be more ‘practical’. The hidden curriculum of the training institution was found to be based on authoritarian transmission methods and on rote learning of traditional syllabi, so that trainees were neither exposed to newer ideas about effective teaching, nor experienced for themselves the self‐direction and critical analysis essential for future organisational development. The culture and conditions surrounding teaching also militated against the notion of ‘the reflective practitioner’.     

Non-occupational lead exposure and hypertension in Pakistani adults

INTRODUCTION Blood-Pb levels are taken as representative of dose/exposure, as all clinical symptoms resulting from the toxic effects of Pb are manifested mainly in blood. Lead exposure of children correlates with de- creased IQ, symptoms of hyper kinesis or minima brain dysfunction, poor learning, or defects in specific neuromotor tasks (Landgrin et al., 1980). Large number of observations over the years has associated lead exposure with human diseases (McMichael and Johnson, 1982). Ca…     

Somatic embryogenesis in wild relatives of cotton （Gossypium Spp.）

Wild cotton species can contribute a valuable gene pool for agronomically desirable cultivated tetraploid cultivars. In order to exploit diploid cotton a regeneration system is required to achieve transformation based goals. The present studies aimed at optimizing the conditions for regeneration of local varieties as well as wild species of cotton. Different callus induction media were tested with varying concentrations of hormones in which sucrose was used as nutritional source. Different explants （hypocotyls, cotyledon, root） were used to check the regeneration of both local cotton plants and wild relatives using T ＆ G medium, BAP medium, CIM medium, EMMS medium, and cell suspension medium. Different stages of embryogenicity such as early torpedo stage, late torpedo stage, heart stage, globular stage and cotyledonary stage were observed in wild relatives of cotton. The results of this study pave the way for establishing future transformation methods.     

Social anxiety in E-Learning: Scale validation and socio-demographic correlation study

Education and Information Technologies - During the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, over 1.5 billion students worldwide have been deprived of access to traditional learning....