1,720,961 research outputs found
Factors Influencing the Completion of Dissertations by Students of Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) by Distance Learning in South-western Nigeria
Full text linkThis paper reports the outcome of a primary quantitative investigation into the factors responsible for the completion or otherwise of dissertation reports by postgraduate distance learning students in Nigeria. The study set out to determine the reasons why many postgraduate distance learners fail to complete their dissertations after the course work. Using a structured questionnaire designed on a five-Point Likert-type scale, the researchers captured the opinions of some postgraduate distance learners about the factors affecting their completion of their research work.The analysis of the study was done using simple percentages and it was found that many of the respondents had difficulty with statistical analysis; some others had problems identifying suitable research topics and supervisor problem, among others, constituted the major challenges facing many of the respondents. The study concluded with some recommendations on how theadministration of research work or dissertation writing by distance learners can be improved.Keywords: dissertation, statistical analysis; research, postgraduate distance learnersThis paper reports the outcome of a primary quantitative investigation into the factors responsible for the completion or otherwise of dissertation reports by postgraduate distance learning students in Nigeria. The study set out to determine the reasons why many postgraduate distance learners fail to complete their dissertations after the course work. Using a structured questionnaire designed on a five-Point Likert-type scale, the researchers captured the opinions of some postgraduate distance learners about the factors affecting their completion of their research work. The analysis of the study was done using simple percentages and it was found that many of the respondents had difficulty with statistical analysis; some others had problems identifying suitable research topics and supervisor problem, among others, constituted the major challenges facing many of the respondents. The study concluded with some recommendations on how the administration of research work or dissertation writing by distance learners can be improved.Keywords: dissertation, statistical analysis; research, postgraduate distance learner
Africa Dreams of Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Analysis of its Limits in Open and Distance Learning
Full text linkArtificial intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as a transformative force in teaching and learning practices, with profound implications for open and distance learning (ODL), which relies heavily on technology. Despite its global impact, the extent of African societies’ engagement with AI remains trivial. This paper critically reflects on the ethical, legal, social, pedagogical and technological implications of AI in ODL in sub-Saharan Africa, drawing insights from the Nigerian experience. Adopting the scoping review methodology, the paper explores and synthesises existing literature to foreground a critical analysis of the implications of AI in the African context
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Widening access through openness in higher education in the developing world: A Bourdieusian field analysis of experiences from the National Open University of Nigeria
Full text linkBourdieu has argued that higher education is a field that reproduces social inequality, thus complicating how openness widens access to higher education in the developing world. Drawing on the experiences of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), this paper critically analyses and evaluates the rationale, approach, difficulties, opportunities, outcomes and benefits of NOUN’s experience in widening access to higher education in Nigeria using Bourdieu’s field theory. We argue that the success of efforts for openness in higher education in a developing world context involves steering the contradictory tensions of openness and access across competing policy and practice fields. We offer this theorisation as a future social theoretical agenda for reflexive research for improving the effectiveness of praxis to widen access through openness in higher education in the developing world.</p
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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