Simulating Light-Weight Personalised Recommender Systems in Learning Networks: A Case for Pedagogy-Oriented and Rating-Based Hybrid Recommendation Strategies

Recommender systems for e-learning demand specific pedagogy-oriented and hybrid recommendation strategies. Current systems are often based on time-consuming, top down information provisioning combined with intensive data-mining collaborative filtering approaches. However, such systems do not seem appropriate for Learning Networks where distributed information can often not be identified beforehand. Providing sound way-finding support for lifelong learners in Learning Networks requires dedicated personalised recommender systems (PRS), that offer the learners customised advise on which learning actions or programs to study next. Such systems should also be practically feasible and be developed with minimized effort. Currently, such so called light-weight PRS systems are scarcely available. This study shows that simulation studies can support the analysis and optimisation of PRS requirements prior to starting the costly process of their development, and practical implementation (including testing and revision) during field experiments in real-life learning situations. This simulation study confirms that providing recommendations leads towards more effective, more satisfied, and faster goal achievement. Furthermore, this study reveals that a light-weight hybrid PRS-system based on ratings is a good alternative for an ontology-based system, in particular for low-level goal achievement. Finally, it is found that rating-based light-weight hybrid PRS-systems enable more effective, more satisfied, and faster goal attainment than peer-based light-weight hybrid PRS-systems (incorporating collaborative techniques without rating).Recommendation Strategy; Simulation Study; Way-Finding; Collaborative Filtering; Rating

Why do Swedes cooperate with the police? A SEM analysis of Tyler's procedural justice model

The present article examines why Swedes cooperate with the police using the framework of the procedural justice theory. This theory assumes that trust in procedural justice and in the effectiveness of the police are important issues in shaping citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy. Additionally, perceived legitimacy is necessary for the recognition of police authority. When citizens recognize the right of the police to exercise authority, they are assumed to feel an obligation to obey the police, and ultimately they will have a greater tendency to cooperate with them. Because of the ongoing discussion about the meaning and conceptualization of the concept of ‘legitimacy’, some additional ideas are described and are also taken into account in the model that we tested. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) to do the analysis, which was conducted on data available from the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 5. The results indicate that trust in the procedural justice of the police plays an important role in the explanation of citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police through perceptions of moral alignment and feelings of obligation to obey the police. However, there is still a high percentage of individual variance in willingness to cooperate with the police that cannot be explained by the model we tested. The implications of the findings are discussed

A Contemporary Theology of the Vows

This article is entitled a theology of the vows in order to call attention at the outset to the difference between the Gospel reality of religious life and the human effort, called theology, by which we seek to understand and articulate that reality. There will never be a totally adequate theology of religious life (or of the vows), but the inadequacy, and at times even the falsity, of our understanding and articulation can not destroy or diminish religious life as a gift of Jesus Christ to the Church. Nevertheless, the efforts we make to understand religious life and to make it understandable to our contemporaries profoundly affect the human experience and expression of this gift in the Church and in the world. The glory of theology is its ministerial relationship to the ultimate truth of Revelation; and poverty of theology is its never to be overcome inadequacy and relativity in relation to the truth which it seeks to serve. The present theological effort, therefore, is nothing more than an effort to re-articulate the meaning of the vows for our own time

The Evaluation of Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) Implementation for TB in Hospital X

This research discusses about implementation of DOTS strategy in implementing TB services in health service units that organize TB control programs in Indonesia. DOTS is a TB treatment strategy with drug ingestion control. This program focuses on finding cases as early as possible and patient healing. This research uses qualitative methods, using in-depth interview techniques, observation, and document review. The total number of respondents in this study is 9 people. Results input: Human Resources is a lot of officers in the DOTS team who have not attended the training. Facilities and infrastucture are sufficient just does not yet have a specail ply TB patient. Policies, both hospitals and the government are good enough. Process: inadequate political commitment to which internal and external networks are running is not maximized, microscopic examination not yet optimal because many patients who do not perform the examination at the beginning of the diagnosis, in the treatment of many patients who did not perform sputum checks and radiological examination for evaluation of treatment progress, non-standard OAT management, and incomplete records. This ultimately affects the output component where the healing rate is low only reached 21,1% and conversion rate 32,7%. The conclusion is from the result that the implementation of DOTS strategy in PKU Muhammadiyah hospital Gamping Yogyakarta has not optimally

Perspectives Note: The Enabling Environment for Capacity Development

The context matters for capacity development (CD). It sets the stage on which actors pursue their interests and agendas -- both of which are affected by change processes. And CD is change, in most cases producing winners and losers and reconfiguring the balance of influence and power in and between individuals, organizations and groups of organizations.This perspective paper -- one of five in a series prepared by the OECD/DAC as an input to preparation of the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011 -- collects evidence about how the environment can be more or less enabling for CD, how actors can adapt to or influence the context they operate in, and what the implications are when country and development partners promote CD