Facilitating flexible learning by replacing classroom time with an online learning environment: A systematic review of blended learning in higher education

Higher education institutions are trying to provide more flexibility and individualization, which is mainly realized through the use of new technologies and implemented in online or blended learning designs. This systematic review aims to investigate the impact of replacing classroom time with an online learning environment. The meta-analysis (k = 21 effect sizes) applied strict inclusion criteria concerning research design, measurement of learning outcomes and implementation of blended learning. The estimated effect size (Hedge's g) was positive, although not significantly different from zero and the confidence interval [-0.13, 0.25], suggesting that overall differences between blended and conventional classroom learning are small, and, at best, very small negative or moderate positive effects are plausible. This means that despite a reduction in classroom time between 30 and 79 per cent, equivalent learning outcomes were found. Consequently, blended learning with reduced classroom time is not systematically more or less effective than conventional classroom learning.     

The RIX Wiki: the use of multimedia advocacy to support person-centred planning in a special needs secondary school – implications for current policy and practice

The article documents findings from a pilot study undertaken in 2012–2013 in a special needs secondary school in the England, that trialled the use of a multimedia advocacy tool, “The RIX Wiki”. The trial was part of the pathfinder programme, which aimed to reform existing Special Education Needs provision, from the system of statementing to one of developing education health care plans. The reforms became enshrined in the Children and Families Act (2014). The findings were overall positive and helped with person-centred planning processes. The discussion is framed within current and future policy directives. We argue that multimedia advocacy approaches and software tools, like the “RIX Wiki” will have a continued role to play in ensuring the needs, aspirations and choices of children and young people with learning disabilities remain central.     

高职院校学习预警平台的构建及其实证分析

开展信息化、智慧化预警工作是实现全面精准育人的重要途径,而预警应用平台无疑是预警工作的有力工具和实践载体,其设计方案应用效果的好坏直接决定着学习预警信息化愿景的达成度。文章在分析高职院校学习预警工作现状的基础上,从工作流程设计、平台框架设计和平台建设方法等3个方面提出了解决方案,并对平台的应用效果进行了实证分析,结果表明:平台的应用扩展了预警范围、提升了预警的精准度和时效性、提高了工作效率,且干预更为灵活、个性化,可为当前高职院校学习危机的实践改革提供新思路。     

Audience management,online turbulence and lurking in social networking services: A transactional process of stress perspective

In social networking services (SNSs), users’ unclear understanding of the large and invisible audience increases the chances of online turbulence, which is a key source of SNS-induced stress. This growing phenomenon has gained increasing attention in academia and industry due to the undesirable consequences for users and SNS platforms. In this study, we draw from the transactional model of stress to examine how audience management strategies impact online turbulence and lead to neglected unintended audience concern and lurking. We also investigate the role of self-monitoring as a stress inhibitor. We test our model with data collected from 301 SNS users. The results show that the four types of audience management strategies have different effects on online turbulence, which significantly impacts neglected unintended audience concern especially when users have high self-monitoring skills. We believe that this work contributes, both from scientific and practical standpoints, to the understanding of the interventions and stressful responses of online turbulence in SNSs.     

The influence of maltreatment history and out-of-home-care on children’s language and social skills

This study examined the extent to which maltreatment history and the characteristics of out-of-home care correlated with the language and social skills of maltreated children. Participants in this study were 82 maltreated children aged between 5 and 12 years of age. All children were residing with state-designated carers in out-of-home-care. The children were presented with standardised tests assessing language and social skills. Results showed that the sample performed significantly below the normative mean on both tests. Correlation analyses showed social skills, but not language skills were correlated with aspects of maltreatment history. The education level of the state-designated carer/s was correlated with the children's language skills; higher education level was associated with higher language skills. The study provides evidence that at the group level, language and social skills are poor in maltreated children. However, gains in language skills might be made via the out-of-home-care environment. Improvements in the social skills of maltreated children may require additional support.     

Quality flaw prediction in Spanish Wikipedia: A case of study with verifiability flaws

In this work, we present the first quality flaw prediction study for articles containing the two most frequent verifiability flaws in Spanish Wikipedia: articles which do not cite any references or sources at all (denominated Unreferenced) and articles that need additional citations for verification (so-called Refimprove). Based on the underlying characteristics of each flaw, different state-of-the-art approaches were evaluated. For articles not citing any references, a well-established rule-based approach was evaluated and interesting findings show that some of them suffer from Refimprove flaw instead. Likewise, for articles that need additional citations for verification, the well-known PU learning and one-class classification approaches were evaluated. Besides, new methods were compared and a new feature was also proposed to model this latter flaw. The results showed that new methods such as under-bagged decision trees with sum or majority voting rules, biased-SVM, and centroid-based balanced SVM, perform best in comparison with the ones previously published.     

Identifying the combinations of motivations and emotions for creating satisfied users in SNSs: An fsQCA approach

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) play an important role in our daily lives and the number of their users increases regularly. To understand how users can be satisfied in the complex digital environment of SNSs, this study examines how motivations and emotions combine with each other to explain high satisfaction. Users’ motivations comprise four attributes, entertainment, information, social-psychological, and convenience. Emotions are divided into their two main categories, that is positive and negative emotions. We draw on complexity and configuration theories, present a conceptual model along with propositions and perform a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Through an empirically study with 582 SNSs users, we present eight combinations (configurations) of motivations and emotions that lead to high satisfaction, which highlight the role of high convenience, followed by entertainment and information motivations in being satisfied with SNSs. High satisfaction can be achieved both when positive and negative emotions are high and low, depending on how they combine users’ motivations. None of the factors are indispensable to explain high satisfaction on their own, instead they are insufficient but necessary parts of the causal combinations that explain high satisfaction. This study contributes in SNSs literature by extending current knowledge on how motivations and emotions combine to increase satisfaction, and by identifying specific patterns of users for whom these factors are important and influence greatly their satisfaction.     

Best of both worlds or refusal to comply? The rich kids of Tehran on Instagram

ABSTRACT

This article offers a textual analysis and semiotic reading of the Rich Kids of Tehran's (RKOT’s) Instagram page. Contributing to scholarship on Iranian youth media practices, this article interrogates how the RKOT navigate urban and rural space to engage in everyday processes of resistance against global and local systemic oppression. Grounding their visual representations on Instagram in historical and cultural context, the author questions how and when quotidian actions are transformed into political transgressions when posted on social media. This article emphasizes the RKOT's agency in shaping their brand by analyzing representations of gender performance, intertextuality, and national identity on Instagram.     

记忆场、传统村落与我们的责任——档案部门参与村落记忆场保护的价值与策略

传统村落拥有丰富的自然和文化资源,凝结着历史的记忆,是社会文明的直接见证者。随着城镇化进程的推进,传统村落逐步消融在时代的印迹里。为促进传统村落在新时代的焕发新生,文章借助法国历史学家皮埃尔·诺拉的记忆之场理论,指出传统村落在历史、时间、变迁中凝聚成具有象征意义的记忆场。在此基础上文章剖析了档案部门参与村落记忆场保护的意义,阐释了村落记忆场赓续乡村记忆、留住乡情乡愁、传承文化遗产的功能,并提出了档案部门就如何推动村落记忆场实现功能最大化的策略,以期使档案部门更好地承担起传承、保护、赓续传统村落的主体责任。     

An analysis of review content and reviewer variables that contribute to review helpfulness

Review helpfulness is attracting increasing attention of practitioners and academics. It helps in reducing risks and uncertainty faced by users in online shopping. This study examines uninvestigated variables by looking at not only the review characteristics but also important indicators of reviewers. Several significant review content and two reviewer variables are proposed and an effective review helpfulness prediction model is built using stochastic gradient boosting learning method. This study derived a mechanism to extract novel review content variables from review text. Six popular machine learning models and three real-life Amazon review data sets are used for analysis. Our results are robust to several product categories and along three Amazon review data sets. The results show that review content variables deliver the best performance as compared to the reviewer and state-of-the-art baseline as a standalone model. This study finds that reviewer helpfulness per day and syllables in review text strongly relates to review helpfulness. Moreover, the number of space, aux verb, drives words in review text and productivity score of a reviewer are also effective predictors of review helpfulness. The findings will help customers to write better reviews, help retailers to manage their websites intelligently and aid customers in their product purchasing decisions.