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The Gamification of Code: Programming Through Play in Blended Classrooms
No full textTeaching an introductory web design course is already a blended environment. Students meet face-to-face, yet have access to a myriad of online resources, YouTube videos, blogs, and forums to support their learning. However, the challenges of learning to understand code can inhibit students and diminish their motivation to look for resources. The authors have attempted to address this issue by focusing on the use and design of games for learning to code, as well as providing video lecture material in combination with the traditional face-to-face learning environment. By using games and gamification in the course design, the authors have found that students are able not only to bridge their knowledge between modalities more smoothly, but that they understand that there are multiple ways to solve a problem and feel empowered to search for solutions in innovative ways
Symbiosis Between Pastoralists and Agriculturalists Corralling Contract and Interethnic Relationship of Fulani and Nupe in Central Nigeria
No full text“Corralling contract” is the indigenous fertilization system commonly practiced in the African Sahel and its southern periphery. In this article, the practice of the corralling contract between Fulani pastoralists and Nupe agriculturalists in the Bida region of Niger State of central Nigeria is examined. The attempt is to find out how the farmers and herders arrange the corralling contract, how they utilize this instrument and how it influences their social relationship. Findings suggest that pastoral Fulani groups have different strategies to maintain socioeconomic relations with specific villages through the adoption of corralling contract in order to ensure resources entitlement. While some groups can well manipulate the relationships with various villages through the adoption of the corralling contract, some groups prefer a more stable situation and just got the minimum advantages. Higher social status, larger herd size and longer history of interaction which allowed trust to be built are the factors contributing to the popularity and bargaining power of a pastoral group
Mixed Reality Environments in Teaching and Learning English
No full textThe purpose of this chapter is to familiarize readers with various forms of mixed reality environments that are used in different countries in the field of education including teaching and learning English. MiRTLE, The MARVEL Project, TIWE Linguistico, SMALLab, Virtual Touch Toolkit, SimSchool®, Second Life, and TLE TeachLivE™ are some of these technological advances that will be discussed in detail. Further explanation about the current and future use of TLE TeachLivE™ as well as other possible forms of mixed reality environments is also provided. The chapter concludes with current limitations of mixed reality environments and potential future research and applications
Modeling Historically mHealth Care Environments
No full textThis article describes how mobile health (mHealth) has grown from infancy stage to toddler stage due to advances in the technology. It has the potential for further growth as it is low-cost health care. For its further growth, it is necessary to widen its scope. In this article, a proposal is presented to develop a new and advanced mHealth care system, and its first step that is modelling is reported. In modelling, historically, a model of a temporal object system (TOS) is used. The model empowers users of the proposed mHealth care system to define, retrieve and manipulate all objects historically, in a uniform fashion, and also to keep historically the changes that occur to the objects. Later, these historically stored objects can be consulted during making essential and crucial decisions about the patients (objects) and other objects of the system, and it can save both lives and money. Also, the stored objects can be used in the future planning and research
GISwaps: A New Method for Decision Making in Continuous Choice Models Based on Even Swaps
No full textThis article describes how continuous GIS-MCDM problems are commonly managed by combining some weighting method based on pairwise comparisons of criteria with an aggregation method. The reliability of this approach may be questioned, though. First, assigning weights to criteria, without taking into consideration the actual consequences or values of the alternatives, is in itself controversial. Second, the value functions obtained by this approach are in most cases linear, which is seldom the case in reality. The authors present a new method for GIS-MCDM in continuous choice models based on Even Swaps. The method is intuitive and easy to use, based on value trade-offs, and thus not relying on criteria weighting. Value functions obtained when using the method may be linear or non-linear, and thereby are more sensitive to the characteristics of the decision space. The performed case study showed promising results regarding the reliability of the method in GIS-MCDM context
Effect of User Sessions on the Heuristic Usability Method
No full textHeuristic evaluation (HE) is a widely used method for assessing software systems. Several studies have sought to improve the effectiveness of HE by developing its heuristics and procedures. However, few studies have involved the end-user, and to the best of the authors' knowledge, no HE studies involving end-users with non-expert evaluators have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the impact of end-users on the results obtained by a non-expert evaluator within the HE process, and through that, to explore the number of usability problems and their severity. This article proposes introducing two sessions within the HE process: a user exploration session (UES-HE) and a user review session (URS-HE). The outcomes are compared with two solid benchmarks in the usability-engineering field: the traditional HE and the usability testing (UT) methods. The findings show that the end-user has a significant impact on non-expert evaluator results in both sessions. In the UES-HE method, the results outperformed all usability evaluation methods (UEMs) regarding the usability problems identified, and it tended to identify more major, minor, and cosmetic problems than other methods
Fortifying Parent Partnerships Through the Black Church Space
No full textThis chapter examines the Black Church as a community space for African American families to engage in collaborative activities with schools. The author explores why the Black Church functions as a desirable space for collaborations between schools and African American parents, as well as how schools can make greater use of church space to strengthen their parent partnerships. The author identifies several barriers to successful school-based partnerships including parent work schedules, socioeconomic status, mistrust of mainstream education, busyness of school staff, limited technology access and proficiency, and lack of culturally relevant experiences. The author offers recommendations for expanding outreach efforts with approaches that lean on the social and cultural relevance of the Black Church as well as some of its resources
Network Forensics: Fundamentals
No full textNetwork forensics investigations aim to uncover evidence about criminal or unauthorized activities facilitated by, or targeted to, a given networking technology. Understanding the fundamental investigative principles is equally important as understanding each of the modern networking technologies for every forensics scientist or practitioner. This chapter provides an overview of the network forensic fundamentals from a contemporary perspective, accenting the formalization of network investigation, various investigative techniques, and how the network forensics support the legal system
Online Self-Identities, Social Norms, and the Performance of Self in Real-Life
No full textSocial networking sites (SNSs) first emerged as online public spaces where individuals could share user-generated content, communicate, and connect. As individuals became more and more invested in online sociality, SNSs diverged into niche platforms that largely govern online sociality, shape social norms, and control user agency. SNSs' impact on individuals' self-identity and performance in both online and real-life settings has been researched and contested. However, this research reveals the affordances of SNSs, which allow users to both experiment with different self-representations and learn the social norms of real-life social situations by being able to mimic the actions and behaviors performed in corresponding SNSs. Because online networking is pervasive in society today, the advantages for connectivity and engagement must be revealed. This research aims to begin this conversation by analyzing two popular SNSs: Facebook and LinkedIn
Understanding Cross-Level Interactions of Firm-Level Information Technology and Industry Environment: A Multilevel Model of Business Value
No full textThis article contends that although much research on the business value of IT focuses on firm-level impacts, studies have begun incorporating industry-level variables as explanatory factors of interest to offer better contextualized explanations for the differences in value firms obtained from their IT across different industries. The authors present a multi-level model of IT value where industry-level and firm-level factors jointly determine the value a firm obtains from its IT. By using a nested model to examine industry to firm interactions, they are able to control for problematic violations of statistical assumptions that are likely to bias estimates from conventional methods. Their analysis shows that all of the industry factors we examined had significant interaction effects. Specifically, industry concentration, industry growth, industry capital intensity, industry outsourcing, and presence in service sector significantly impact firm-level IT value. More interestingly, the authors find these impacts manifest not as mean differences between industries, but rather as interactions with firm-level effects