767 research outputs found

    Investigating the Use of M-Health for Learning and Clinical Training by Medical Students in Ghana

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    There is a challenge with healthcare access in most developing countries. With the high rate of mobile technology penetration in these countries, there is a strong belief that mobile technology can help address this and other health system and education challenges. This study investigated how clinical year medical students in Ghana used m-health and with what outcomes. This was a mixed-methods study to assess what technologies students used, what the impact of use was, what enablers and barriers they encountered, what factors explained m-health adoption and what the attitudes of students, staff and faculty members were towards m-health use. The study was conducted in four out of five medical schools in Ghana with clinical year students, namely, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Medical Sciences (KNUST-SMS), University of Cape Coast School of Medical Sciences (UCC-SMS), University of Development Studies School of Medicine and Health Sciences (UDS-SMHS) and University of Ghana School of Medicine and Dentistry (UG-SMD). Online and paper questionnaires were distributed to 828 students and 291 questionnaires were returned. Questionnaires from dental students at UG-SMD (n = 5) were excluded from the analysis.Two focus group discussions were held involving seven students while three students, seven faculty members and five staff were interviewed. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Only one student did not own a mobile device. About 78% of students reported using m-health at some point during their medical education. The most popular devices used by students were laptop computers (90.8%), smartphones (66.2%), cellular phones (46.6%) and tablets (44.1%). Over 84% of the students owned Android devices, while 21% owned iPhones and iPads. Majority of students owned three devices or less. Students used mobile technologies in ways that suited their learning needs and contexts. M-health helped students to participate better in lessons and improve their knowledge, skills and efficiency in various contexts. The main drawbacks of m-health use were distraction and time wasting, difficulty in determining credibility of some online information and the risk of using these technologies inappropriately around patients and during assessments. The main facilitating conditions for m-health use were availability, quality and reliability of technological services, technical support, security, price value, technology competence and training, portability, task and goal fit, social influence and organizational factors. Habit and Hedonic Motivation were the only significant factors that explained intention to use m-health and actual m-health use respectively in the UTAUT2 model, in the presence of age, gender and experience. Students, staff and faculty members were open to using m-health in teaching and learning, although they recommended regulation of use through policies and guidelines to ensure effective teaching and learning and ethical m-health use. Considering the benefits offered by m-health, the study encourages medical schools in Ghana to explore mobile learning with the possibility of incorporating it into their curricula. This should be accompanied by development of policies and guidelines to spell out how mobile technologies should be used in order to mitigate most of the drawbacks identified. This study contributed empirical evidence from the Ghanaian context regarding m-health adoption and use in medical education. This evidence will contribute to theory regarding benefits, drawbacks, facilitating conditions and factors that influence m-health adoption among medical students in a developing country context. Understanding how medical students use mobile technology in learning will be useful in planning how m-health can be incorporated into their curricula. It will also help in informing development and deployment of m-health in healthcare in contexts similar to Ghana

    CGAMES'2009

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    Utilizing Chromebook in Ontario Elementary Schools: Teachers’ Perspectives

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    In-service teachers’ voices must be heard in order to understand the status of technology integration in Canadian elementary schools. In this qualitative case study, two Ontario private school teachers were invited to share their experiences and perspectives about their daily instruction with Chromebook through the lens of the TPACK theoretical framework. The study’s objectives were twofold: (a) to identify participating teachers’ attitudes, perceptions, and experiences teaching with Chromebook in a convincing narrative manner; and (b) to provide recommendations concerning the use of this type of digital technology device to other teachers and educators in practice. This research study once again affirmed the advantages of using Chromebook in the elementary classrooms in across three categories: saving funds, granting stable and durable hardware, and offering seamless and continuous learning. Additionally, the study attempted to add two new benefits: using Chromebook in teaching enables educators to keep their students on task and helps educators differentiate their teaching by providing more options and accommodating students’ different learning styles and abilities. Participants in the study also found it difficult to make sure students stayed on task and were not lured by the out-of-class digital world. The study also found that a better filtering system of apps working on Chromebook can benefit students’ and teachers’ experience alike. The study concludes with a discussion and implications for future research

    The impact of social network applications on societies of the MENA region (Egypt as a case study)

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    Despite the importance of promoting socially responsible citizenship in Internet age with the global massive spread of IT consumption, there is a paucity of research for scrutinizing the impact of ICT tools such as Social Networking Sites on citizens of the Middle East and North Africa region and/or investigating their tendency toward digital transformation. In the information age, Internet and its applications are creating a ‘network state’ due to the continuous interaction of SNS by people on their daily personal and professional lives; which made it a rich data bank for researchers to analyze and predict people’s behavioral, cultural and societal change. This research focused on the digital impact of SNS on various aspects of life in the society of Egypt and the forecast of its subsequent normal progression over time. The research questions were; what are the factors affecting the usage of SNS and its impact on the society of Egypt? In addition to, How SNS usage and IT developments are likely to affect future changes in Egypt’s culture and societal behaviors in the arena of human computer interaction and information communication technology? Hence, the research investigated those questions on recent years where there is still not enough complete specialized analysis nor mature socio-technological researches have been developed about the online society of Egypt. In specific, it concerned with studying the interaction of human practices with information network applications and the latter role in changing human cultures and societal behaviors from personal, governmental and business perspectives. This study is an example of interdisciplinary research, linking cultural theories and social networking phenomena with human-mediated informational technology and communication studies contributing to the emerging field of Internet studies. Therefore, this research’s best matching philosophy is interpretivism, the research approach is inductive and the utilized research strategy was grounded theory and surveys through four employed quantitative and qualitative research methods over two phases. Phase one implemented observational study, survey questionnaire and focus group sessions; while interviews were accomplished in phase two. Outcomes are reached through applying descriptive statistics of structural equation modeling via using SPSS 20.0, AMOS 20.0.0, Tableau 10.4, and MS 2010 Excel; in addition to, qualitative content analysis using NVivo 11. Findings of interweaved data collection methods supported in investigating the research questions and testing the hypotheses of the research proposed SDR model. Consequently, these research findings deduced that the Egyptian online society is affected by SNS forming a pre-digitalization stage. In addition to the research’s major offering of the SDR model, there were four others emerged contributions to knowledge base. One of the main challenges of research in this domain is the dynamic pace of both technological developments and users’ preferences. Hence, this research study impacts the growing knowledge repository with five contributions about the significant role of SNS in transforming people’s daily activities which can shed lights of more novel questions for other neighboring countries as well as regarding other ICT tools for future studies

    What is the net worth? Young people, civil justice and the Internet

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    Over the last decade the Internet has played a growing role in the resolution strategies of many of those who face ‘civil justice problems’. While many who use the Internet do so in order to locate offline sources of advice, as access to traditional forms of legal advice diminishes, the Internet is likely to play an increasingly important role in legal self-help. This thesis explores how and when young people in England and Wales use the Internet to resolve housing and employment law problems, as well as the quality of the main information resources available to them. In exploring this, the study draws on: existing publicly available data from the Civil and Social Justice Survey (CSJS) and Civil and Social Justice Panel Survey (CSJPS); new data obtained from 208 young people aged 15-26 who participated in a novel experiment designed to test how they acquired information from the Internet when faced with a housing/employment law dilemma; and, new data collected from a website review which assessed the overall quality of the main English and Welsh legal information websites. The study finds that while the Internet holds potential as a legal self-help tool, online legal information does not directly equate to improved individual legal capability. The potential the Internet holds, continues to be constrained by the quality of information provided online and the public’s capacity to use it and apply it in a meaningful way. Findings encourage ongoing investment in online resources, but suggest that investment in public legal services must remain diversely distributed across a range of mode-types (online, telephone and face-to-face). Results are contextualised within the history of online legal services, recent policy developments, as well as the existing literature relating to access to justice, human-computer interaction, problem-solving behaviour and adolescent development

    “Access denied”? Barriers for staff accessing, using and sharing published information online within the National Health Service (NHS) in England: technology, risk, culture, policy and practice

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    The overall aim of the study was to investigate barriers to online professional information seeking, use and sharing occurring within the NHS in England, their possible effects (upon education, working practices, working lives and clinical and organisational effectiveness), and possible explanatory or causative factors. The investigation adopted a qualitative case study approach, using semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis as its methods, with three NHS Trusts of different types (acute - district general hospital, mental health / community, acute – teaching) as the nested sites of data collection. It aimed to be both exploratory and explanatory. A stratified sample of participants, including representatives of professions whose perspectives were deemed to be relevant, and clinicians with educational or staff development responsibilities, was recruited for each Trust. Three non-Trust specialists (the product manager of a secure web gateway vendor, an academic e-learning specialist, and the senior manager at NICE responsible for the NHS Evidence electronic content and web platform) were also interviewed. Policy documents, statistics, strategies, reports and quality accounts for the Trusts were obtained via public websites, from participants or via Freedom of Information requests. Thematic analysis following the approach of Braun and Clarke (2006) was adopted as the analytic method for both interviews and documents. The key themes of the results that emerged are presented: barriers to accessing and using information, education and training, professional cultures and norms, information governance and security, and communications policy. The findings are discussed under three main headings: power, culture, trust and risk in information security; use and regulation of Web 2.0 and social media, and the system of professions. It became evident that the roots of problems with access to and use of such information lay deep within the culture and organisational characteristics of the NHS and its use of IT. A possible model is presented to explain the interaction of the various technical and organisational factors that were identified as relevant. A number of policy recommendations are put forward to improve access to published information at Trust level, as well as recommendations for further research

    Hedonické nebo pragmatické preference? Komparativní analýza uživatelů platforem Android a iOS z pohledu UX a informačního chování

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    The theoretical part of the thesis presents the evolution of the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX) including hedonic-pragmatic model of user experience. It further presents platforms and ecosystems in general, the evolution of smartphone market and the platforms of Android and iOS, and explains the basic concepts of information and consumer behaviour. A part of the thesis is a qualitative study examining the differences between the preferences towards smartphones of Android and iOS users, and differences in their information behaviour. It was found out that the participants - users of both platforms have mostly pragmatic reasons for their platform preference but describe them differently; that Android users seek more information at the time of smartphone purchase decision and that some iOS users, unlike Android users, started using their platform based on observation of others' good user experience with it.Teoretická část práce představuje vývoj oborů interakce člověk-počítač a uživatelské zkušenosti včetně hedonicko-pragmatického modelu. Dále jsou představeny platformy a ekosystémy obecně, vývoj trhu se smartphony a samotné dvě platformy Android a iOS. Vysvětleny jsou i základní koncepty informačního a zákaznického chování. Součástí práce je kvalitativní výzkum, jenž zkoumá rozdíly v požadavcích uživatelů obou platforem na bázi hedonicko-pragmatického modelu uživatelské zkušenosti a v jejich informačním chování. Bylo zjištěno, že účastníci výzkumu - uživatelé obou platforem mají zejména pragmatické důvody, ale i některé hedonické důvody pro volbu své platformy, ale popisují je jiným způsobem; a zároveň, že uživatelé Androidu zjišťují více informací při kupování nového smartphonu a že uživatelé iOS se v některých případech, na rozdíl od uživatelů Androidu, rozhodli pro svoji platformu na základě pozorování spokojenosti okolí.Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship - New Media StudiesÚstav informačních studií - studia nových médiíFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

    A Quantitative Study Exploring the Perceptions of Body-Worn Camera Use in the Texas Department of Juvenile Justice

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    Social justice issues led to the implementation of body-worn cameras (BWC) in police departments throughout the United States. This widespread implementation provided research results to assist other police agencies in considering implementation; however, no similar criminal justice solution for adult and juvenile corrections has been implemented with the same level of practicality. BWCs have the potential to protect inmates according to the Prison Rape Elimination Act’s (PREA) requirements and represent the most critical social justice issue in corrections: advocating civil rights. The former Texas Youth Commission (TYC) was re-branded as the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) due to a history of sexual assault and civil rights abuse (Cate, 2016; Donnelly, 2018). Applying the findings on BWC implementation by law enforcement agencies and the few existing studies in adult prisons reveals that implementing BWCs in juvenile justice provides an opportunity to thwart the perceptions of a lack of legitimacy and procedural justice. Yet, little research exists on implementing BWCs in a corrections environment. This study aims to examine TJJD facility staff perceptions of BWCs using pre-existing surveys following a non-experimental repeated cross-sectional research design exploring their perceptions of BWCs. Recommendations for further research include what BWC implementation procedures differ in corrections based upon differing usage and compliance procedures, requiring differing decision criteria for corrections environments. Keywords: Body-Worn Cameras, Juvenile Justice, Procedural Justic
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