The development of a LMS decision making model: Evaluating the importance of non-financial measures in LMS decision making at universities

This research examined how managers in universities incorporate non-financial measures in their Learning Management System (LMS) decision-making processes.A LMS decision-making model which includes six multi-dimensional perspectives, incorporating financial and non-financial criteria and indicators, was developed and evaluated.The outcome of this study is a LMS decision-making model developed as a tool to support a more effective evaluation of Information Technology (IT) alternatives.Results also indicate that there was substantial support for using a multi dimensional decision making model among IT decision makers at universities, and that they believed that non-financial measures are important and should be considered in a LMS decision making process

Sexual Harassment In Academia: Economic And Legal Implications

Field of academia has faced allegations made by students, workers and educators with problem of sexual harassment. Most of the time the higher education institution have either ignored the problem or coping with it quietly (privately) or by quieting student victims of such harassment. Definition and attitudes towards sexual harassment is among the problem. Most of the definitions include the act of power over the victims, the unwanted behavior according to the victims, negative harms such as distress or interference with activities and many other different types of specific behavior. Some of the theoretical foundations related to sexual harassment include power relations, gender, environmental, organizational and individual influences. Conflict and role theory also closely related to understanding sexual harassment behavior. The types of sexual harassment commonly identified are; (a) sexist remarks or behavior: (b) inappropriate and offensive, but sanction-free sexual advances: (c) solicitation of sexual activity by promise of rewards: (d) coercion of sexual activity by threat of punishment; and (e) sexual crimes. Sexual harassment may contribute to an undetermined extent to many aspects of women's employment experience, including absenteeism, turnover, productivity rates and work motivation, job dissatisfaction, and unemployment. This paper intends to identify the legal definition, the forms and types of sexual harassment that took place in the academia, some of the coping strategies adopted by the victims, the study and work relate as well as the economic and legal implications that arise out of this victimization practiced by the perpetrators. On this basis, higher education institutions should clearly state their policies on the prohibition of sexual harassment, avenues of complaint, and sanctions for incidents, and suggests comprehensive sexual harassment law to be enacted to deal with sexual harassment that encroach in every sphere of life so that some kind of legal protection can be offered at any time

e-Environment in education: UUM perspective

Many universities around the globe have established e learning, whether as a teaching medium or as one of the courses. To support these initiatives and to fulfill elearning agenda, e-learning required support from other “e” domains which is called eenvironment.Different features are available in the e-environment that can be fulfill wholly or partly, e-learning knowledge requirement. E-learning contents which are traditionally published, as printed materials can be very consuming in term of cost and mobility. Hence, e-publishing which is one of the features in e-environment is vital to support e-learning initiatives. This approach may contribute to the implementation of the total e-environment in education. This paper discusses e-publishing model, which aims to capitalize on the features of the Internet and the web technology. Apart from that it also touches on the experiences of the Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) in adopting the e-environment in its education

Organization support for cloud computing implementation success in education system: scale development and validity in Delphi

Cloud computing (CC) support for learning systems has been viewed as one of the most discussed issues that promise to modernize computing by providing visualized resources as a service over the internet. To be stable in cloud computing acquisition requires an education institution to address many of the same concerns they face in implementing an Information System (IS) service. Currently, there is still lack of CC implementation standard and organizational support that impacted VLE system performance. Previous research has reported that the influence of the CC implementation decision depends on the impact of various factors studied. Nonetheless, organizational support is the least factor mentioned especially studies from Malaysia. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to develop a validated scale of organizational support in implementation decision activities towards CC implementation success. In this paper, the Delphi process adopted to measure consensus among nominal group technique (also known as the expert panel). Key methodological issues in using the methods are discussed, along with the distinct contribution of consensus methods as aids to decision making in education service development. The study has adapted stages of proses flow of scale development and validation of measurement items according to legitimate measures in the Delphi technique. The measurement scales formed are based on literature review and field studies conducted to increase the reliability and validity values. Organizational support constructs were divided into top management support, firm size, awareness, Technology Readiness and cost effectiveness. A total of 5 items have been successfully set up for further validatio

Community social capital in Malaysia: A pilot study

Social capital is a vital concept in identifying resources in the social network, which has the capability to be used to improve life quality and to facilitate the society development process. It emerges in the form of individual asset and needs to be analyzed through collective lifestyle or a community. An initial process has been explored to identify social capital components. The outcome is translated into an instrument comprising of six social capital components based on survey items and past studies namely participation in community activities, proactivity in the social context, neighborhood connections, multi-racial tolerance, a sense of trust and protection, and life values. A pilot study involving 41 respondents was carried out in several neighboring areas in the northern part of Malaysia. The study results show that all six components have a high internal reliability value. These components of social capital are categorized into three levels namely low, moderate and high. The findings demonstrate that the majority of the four components are at the high level. They are participation in community activities, neighborhood connections, multi-racial tolerance, and, a sense of trust and protection whereas majority of the respondents for the components of proactivity in the social context and life values is at the moderate level

Concentration of urine gluorida and incidence of dental fluorosis among pupils at Sekolah Menengah, Pahang, Darul Makmur

This is a study of the incidence of dental fluorosis and the urine fluoride concentration among school children. About 84 Malay students with the age range of 16 to 17 years from a National Secondary School in the district of Kuala Lipis, Pahang was selected as respondents. The selection was based on the exposure to fluoride in drinking water supply systems. Fifty two respondents were selected from the fluoridated water supply area while 32 others were selected from the non-fluoridated area (comparative group). The objectives of this study were to determine the relationship between urine fluoride concentrations with the incidence of dental fluorosis and to compare the difference in these two variables between the 2 groups of respondents. The urine fluoride concentration was determined using a fluoride-ion specific electrode. Dental fluorosis was examined through a physical examination using the Tooth Surface Index of Fluorosis (TSIF). There was no significant difference in the mean urine fluoride concentration (mg/L) (t=0.186, p=0.853), mean urine fluoride concentration (mg/g creatinine) (t=0.069, p=0.945) and dental fluorisis (TSIF mean score) (t=0.288, p=0.774) between the two groups. There was a significant direct correlation between the urine fluoride concentrations (mg/L) (r= 0.425, p<0.00l) and the urine fluoride concentra¬tions (mg/g creatinine) (r=0.252, p=0.021) with dental fluorisis (TSIF mean score). Multiple regression statistics, indicated that dental fluorosis was significantly related to urine fluoride concentrations (b=0.0.61, p=0.028) and the number of glass of their favourite drink consumed daily (b=0.071, p=0.003). In conclusion, the urine fluoride concentrations, which represent the degree of exposure to fluoride, were found to be related to dental fluorosis, which is the biological indicator for excessive exposure to fluoride. There is no difference on the degree and the effects of exposure to fluoride between the two groups of respondents although they consumed water from two different water supply systems. Thus, the exposure to fluoride is not only through the drinking water supply, but also by other sources such as the intake of carbonated drinks and fruit juic

Assessing generation y readiness to meet job demand: A case study of internship students at large government invested company

This paper will discuss the survey that was carried out in Large Government Invested Company.Every year, the organization accepted more than 100 internship student placement ranging from various public and private higher learning institutions (HLI) in the country. Those internship students are categorized as generation y.This generation will take over current job position when the baby boomer generation reaches their retirement ages.Survey was conducted to access the readiness of internship students towards job demand.Data were collected through online survey that was developed on the Microsoft SharePoint Portal.The result of the survey will be used to create a profile of future recruitment and developing new working surrounding for generation y in the organization

The importance of human capital perspective in the Learning Management System (LMS) decision making process at universities

This research examined how managers in universities incorporate non-financial measures in their Learning Management Systems decision-making processes and particularly focused on the importance of the Human Capital perspective in LMS decision making processes. A mixed-methods approach to data collection was used involving both interviews and questionnaires. The qualitative data from the interviews were coded and analysed. A descriptive coding method using thematic analysis was used for the data coding. The qualitative data were analysed using an inductive approach where the categories of criteria and indicators were not determined before the interview. The participants in this research were five members of LMS decision-making teams at two different universities in Australia and 24 participants from different universities in Malaysia who were involved in LMS decision- making pro-cesses at their universities. The results of this research indicated that there was substantial support for using a multi-dimensional decision making model among IT decision makers at universities, particu-larly the Human Capital perspective and they believed that Human Capital measures are important and should be considered in a LMS decision making process.The research has both implications for theory and for practitioners where it contributes to the knowledge on LMS decision making in univer-sities and IT decision making in general, and also in improving actual decision making practices

An improved back propagation leaning algorithm using second order methods with gain parameter

Back Propagation (BP) algorithm is one of the oldest learning techniques used by Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). It has successfully been implemented in various practical problems. However, the algorithm still faces some drawbacks such as getting easily stuck at local minima and needs longer time to converge on an acceptable solution. Recently, the introduction of Second Order Methods has shown a significant improvement on the learning in BP but it still has some drawbacks such as slow convergence and complexity. To overcome these limitations, this research proposed a modified approach for BP by introducing the Conjugate Gradient and QuasiNewton which were Second Order methods together with ‘gain’ parameter. The performances of the proposed approach is evaluated in terms of lowest number of epochs, lowest CPU time and highest accuracy on five benchmark classification datasets such as Glass, Horse, 7Bit Parity, Indian Liver Patient and Lung Cancer. The results show that the proposed Second Order methods with ‘gain’ performed better than the BP algorithm

Multiwavelength fiber laser based on bidirectional lyot filter in conjunction with intensity dependent loss mechanism

We experimentally demonstrate a multiwavelength fiber laser (MWFL) based on bidirectional Lyot filter. A semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is used as the gain medium, while its combination with polarization controllers (PCs) and polarization beam combiner (PBC) induces intensity dependent loss (IDL) mechanism. The IDL mechanism acts as an intensity equalizer to flatten the multiwavelength spectrum, which can be obtained at a certain polarization state. Using different ratio of optical splitter has affected to multiwavelength flatness degradation. Subsequently, when we removed a polarizer in the setup, the extinction ratio (ER) is decreased. Ultimately, with two segments of polarization maintaining fiber (PMF), two channel spacings can be achieved due to splicing shift of 0° and 90°