HOTS-Link Mobile Learning Application: Enabling Biology Pre-service Teachers to Devise HOTS-Based Lesson Plans

Journal of Science Education and Technology - The ICT-based learning model has been a catalyst in the field of modern education to teach higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). However, a few studies...     

An assessment of the academic and social integration as perceived by the students in the University of Papua New Guinea

This study assesses the current and ideal levelsof academic and social integration within the University of PapuaNew Guinea as perceived by the students. In order to reducestudent attrition through developing an appropriate attritionpolicy and improving services, a comprehensive picture of thecurrent and ideal academic and social integration climate in theUniversity of Papua New Guinea was necessary. Previousattrition/retention research has not adequately described thevarying degrees of group differences in students' integrationprocess. Using the Tinto model and research instruments thatoperationalised the model, an institutional academic and socialintegration assessment instrument was developed for measuring theperceived current and ideal integration climate. Respondent'sperceived ideal ratings for 24 items representing five dimensionsof academic and social integration were higher than for thecurrent ratings. Significant differences were found between thecurrent and ideal perceptions of student groups in respect of a)students' informal contact with faculty; b) faculty concern forstudents' development and teaching and c) extra curricularactivities. Differences were found between the perceived ratingsof student groups on the basis of year of studies. Implicationsfor policy directives and discriminatory service delivery arealso discussed.     

Measuring Effectiveness and Efficiency of an Academic Library's Collection and Services of the Central Library,Allahabad University: Users’ Point of View

The main purpose of this study is to know the users opinion regarding the adequacy of the library's collection and to analyze the level of users’ satisfaction about the library collection, organization, facilities, and services. A well-structured survey was administered to the faculty members, research scholars, and students of the Allahabad University Library to collect data. Data show that the majority of the respondents believess that not only does the library possess an average collection, but the overall library's function, i.e., library collection, organization of collection, attitude of library staff, services, and IT-based services, is also rated average.     

A joint learning approach with knowledge injection for zero-shot cross-lingual hate speech detection

Hate speech is an increasingly important societal issue in the era of digital communication. Hateful expressions often make use of figurative language and, although they represent, in some sense, the dark side of language, they are also often prime examples of creative use of language. While hate speech is a global phenomenon, current studies on automatic hate speech detection are typically framed in a monolingual setting. In this work, we explore hate speech detection in low-resource languages by transferring knowledge from a resource-rich language, English, in a zero-shot learning fashion. We experiment with traditional and recent neural architectures, and propose two joint-learning models, using different multilingual language representations to transfer knowledge between pairs of languages. We also evaluate the impact of additional knowledge in our experiment, by incorporating information from a multilingual lexicon of abusive words. The results show that our joint-learning models achieve the best performance on most languages. However, a simple approach that uses machine translation and a pre-trained English language model achieves a robust performance. In contrast, Multilingual BERT fails to obtain a good performance in cross-lingual hate speech detection. We also experimentally found that the external knowledge from a multilingual abusive lexicon is able to improve the models’ performance, specifically in detecting the positive class. The results of our experimental evaluation highlight a number of challenges and issues in this particular task. One of the main challenges is related to the issue of current benchmarks for hate speech detection, in particular how bias related to the topical focus in the datasets influences the classification performance. The insufficient ability of current multilingual language models to transfer knowledge between languages in the specific hate speech detection task also remain an open problem. However, our experimental evaluation and our qualitative analysis show how the explicit integration of linguistic knowledge from a structured abusive language lexicon helps to alleviate this issue.     

Student attrition and academic and social integration: Application of Tinto’s model at the University of Papua New Guinea

This study explores the compensatory relationship between academic and social integration, and also assesses the differences of group specific academic and social integration in a small university in the Pacific as perceived by the students. In order to reduce attrition through developing a relevant retention policy, a comprehensive group specific assessment of academic and social integration was necessary. Using the Tinto model and research instruments, an institutional academic and social integration assessment instrument was developed for measuring perceived integration climate for specific subject and year of studies groups. An important outcome of this study was the existence of a compensatory relationship between academic and social integration. Differences were found between perceived ratings of student groups for both academic and social integration.     

Implications of Institutional Repositories on Contributors' Professional and Publishing Practices: A Survey

An institutional repository is a system for dissemination and stewardship of the intellectual life and scholarship of an institution. It has become a new way for the institutions to contribute to the broader world of scholarship (Giesecke, 2011 Giesecke, J. (2011). Institutional repositories: Keys to success. Journal of Library Administration, 51(5–6), 529–542. Retrieved January 3, 2013, from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/255[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). In spite of the global recognition of institutional repositories as an open access scholarly communication channel, institutional repositories are still struggling with the problem of non-participation from contributors in developing countries like India. This study conveys the results of a survey conducted at a minority university of India. The study is an expression of the opinion of 542 faculty members and research scholars pertaining to the possible implications of institutional repositories on their professional and publishing practices. The study is undertaken to: Determine the level of awareness of institutional repository among contributors; identify the reasons for participation and non-participation of contributors; examine the implications of institutional repository on contributors professional and publishing practices; analyze the major obstacles/hindrances in the growth of an institutional repository; and suggest measures for better implementation and development of an institutional repository in future. With the help of the statistical techniques such as chi-square test and weighted mean the study resulted that the majority of the contributors are well aware about the concept of institutional repository, the majority of contributors have not deposited in an institutional repository so far, long term preservation of research materials is the first ranked reason for participation in an institutional repository, copyright and plagiarism concern is the main reason behind contributors’ non-participation in institutional repository, increased accessibility of research output is the major implication of the institutional repository on contributors professional practices, saved cost of publishing in a journal is the biggest implication of institutional repository on contributors publishing practices, and contributors demand more control on ownership, access and security in future for an institutional repository. This article is aimed at the institutions that report low-use and low-deposit repositories. It may be used to convince the contributors about the value of institutional repositories, importance of participating in an institutional repository and possible implications on their professional and publishing practices. The study is also intended at the management of the institutions to take notice of the contributors’ demands for future participation and develop policies accordingly for removing major barriers in the growth of institutional repositories and improving contributions and quality of content in the institutional repositories.     

Use of on-line databases by faculty members and research scholars of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), New Delhi (India): A survey

The study is focused on finding out the level of use of on-line databases by faculty members and research scholars of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Delhi (India). Both are Central Universities and are funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC). A well-structured questionnaire was administered to faculty members and research scholars of the JNU and JMI to collect data regarding the use of on-line database. The survey reveals that all of the faculty members and research scholars are aware of the availability of on-line databases and largely use them for reference purposes in their research work and studies. The degree of usefulness and utilization of on-line databases is high among the universities' faculty members and research scholars. The survey further reveals that the respondents from both universities are aware of the search options for accessing on-line databases. It is also found that a large number of respondents of JNU and JMI are using field searching and Boolean operators to access information from on-line databases.     

Evaluation of the Role of Society-Based Library in Empowering Surabaya City People

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the role of society-based library or Taman Bacaan Masyarakat (TBM) in empowering Surabaya City people. Society-based library will be a place of Surabayans’ live-long learning according to the Law on Even Distribution of and Rights to Education. This research adopts a quantitative approach with qualitative data analysis. The sample of the research is fourteen TBMs that have an empowerment program or is near to a small and medium enterprise. Findings of the research include: (1) that TBM role in community empowerment is beginning to be noticeable in their empowerment programs such as trainings for local community, (2) that empowerment programs at TBM are conducted informally and intermittently, such as trainings of producing aromatherapy candles, beads, flannelette, and waste recycling, and (3) the TBM are constrained by shortage of collection and funding for programs. The research recommends that: community empowerment programs should be increased through TBM programs; TBM personnels should be encouraged to innovate; and collection development should be tailored with local needs.