Comparative classification of student's academic failure through Social Network Mining and Hierarchical Clustering

Student academic failure are caused by several factors such as: family relationship, study time, absence, parent education, travel time and etc. This study observe several factors which are related to student academic failure by calculating the centrality degree between students to find the correlation between failure factors for each students. Furthermore, each student will be measured by measuring the geodesic distance for each factors for hierarchical clustering. The flow betwenness measure and hierarchical clustering show the promising result, where students who has similar factors value are tends to be grouped together in the same cluster. The student with high value of flow betwenness is considered as broker of network and play vital character inside network. The result of study is believed can bring important and useful information toward the student performance analysis for future better education

Fairness and Trust in Virtual Environments: The Effects of Reputation

Reputation supports pro-social behaviors in a variety of social settings and across different ages. When re-encounters are possible, developing a positive reputation can be a valuable asset that will result in better outcomes. However, in real life, cooperative acts are ambiguous and happen in noisy environments in which individuals can have multiple goals, visibility is reduced, and reputation systems may differ. This study examined how reputation within a virtual environment affects fairness in material allocations and trust in information exchange, in a three-actors interaction game in which each player had an incentive to deceive the others. We compared the results of two experimental conditions, one in which informers could be evaluated, and one without reputational opportunities. A reputational system appeared to enhance both trust and fairness even within a virtual environment under anonymous condition. We tested adolescents and adults finding that they were consistently more generous when visibility was increased, but they showed significantly different patterns in resources allocation and information exchange. Male and female participants, across ages, showed other interesting differences. These findings suggest that reputational effects increase fairness and trust even in a noisy, ambiguous and uncertain environment, but this effect is modulated by age and gender

An evaluation of the implementation of e-learning: selected high schools in the Eden central Karoo education district

One of the post-1994 democratic government’s foremost tasks has been to transform education into a more responsive tool in building communities in order to drive economic and social development. Thus, today a number of legislation and policy changes were made. Throughout the country, today emergence of technology in education paradigm is at the center of education development, terms such as e-Education and e-Learning are popular. The Western Cape Education Department in particular is bound to align its policies and programmes to ensure that they speak the language of the fourth industrial revolution. The Western Cape Government’s (WCG) vision on e-Learning as informed by the White Paper 7, policy document on e-Education and further supported by the National Development Plan (Operations Phakisa), has adopted various policies and projects on education. This includes the game changer initiative of the WCG that gave birth to the e-Learning project. As part of this project the WCG has invested hundreds of millions to implement the project throughout the schools in the Western Cape province. The aim of this study is to enhance ICT solutions in schools, educator professional development, learner upskilling and infrastructure development, in order to achieve social and economic inclusion of the people of the Western Cape. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the implementation of the project, while identifying the challenges experienced and further record corrective measures that should be taken into cognisant in order to achieve the successful completion of the project. The literature review was undertaken to provide an in-depth understanding of the existing subject body of knowledge. This review covers various subtopics on the subject, comprehensive analysis of the phenomena under investigation and furthermore, look at theoretical perspective of project evaluation. Since the challenges were identified and outlined during the course of evaluation, therefore, corrective measures are thus explicitly taken with cognisant in ensuring completion of the project. Thus, this treatise provides an insight on the emergence of e-Learning, further explain various key concepts and venture to a number of recommendations in improving e-Learning project in the Eden and Central Karoo (Karoo) District of the Western Cape Education Department

Motivation in Student Retention: A Phenomenology of Non-traditional Undergraduate Students in Online Learning

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenology study was to understand the experiences of non-traditional undergraduate students taking online courses at a public or a private university in Virginia. The self-determination theory, which guided this study, explained the motivated behaviors of intrinsic and extrinsic needs that affect the determination in non-traditional students completing a task. Self-determination theory provided the theoretical framework to answer the central research question for this study as well as the sub-questions: (1) What are the lived experiences of non-traditional students while taking online courses at a public or private university in Virginia? (2) What influences non-traditional students at a public or private university in Virginia to persist in online learning? (3) What motivates non-traditional students at a public or private university in Virginia to attend online education? (4) What strategies would help drive non-traditional students at a public or private university in Virgnia to complete their online education? This study used a qualitative transcendental phenomenological design where two public universities and one private university were contacted, but due to the lack of participants from the public universities, all 13 participants came from a private university in Virginia. The data was collected through a screening questionnaire, questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and a journal prompt. The interviews were transcribed. The results provided four themes: self, online experiences, motivation, and strategies of non-traditional student’s experiences with taking online classes at a public or private university in Virginia. The study’s findings showed that there is a need for administrators and faculty to improve non-traditional students’ online retention

Smart library model based on big data technologies

Предмет истраживања докторске дисертације је развој модела памет не библиотеке заснованог на big data технологијама и сервисима. Централни истраживачки проблем разматран у раду је развој big data инфраструктуре и сервиса паметне библиотеке који омогућавају интелигентну претрагу и препоруку библиотечког садржаја. Посебан циљ рада је да испита могућност интеграције развијеног модела са паметним образовним окружењима у циљу унапређе ња квалитета образовног процеса. У докторској дисертацији је представљен модел паметне библиотеке као интегралног дела образовног система који може да побољша квалитет и свеобухватност наставних ресурса и повећа мотивацију у процесу учења препоручивањем садржаја од интереса. Модел описан у раду омогућава примену big data система за анализу, обраду и визуализацију података прикупљених из различитих извора и обухвата њихову интеграцију у паметну библиотеку. Циљ развоја паметних библиотека је да се унапреде библиотечки пословни процеси и да се корисницима пруже иновативни сервиси за претрагу и коришћење садржаја. У дисертацији се разматрају различите перспективе имплементације big data решења за паметне библиотеке као део континуираног образовног процеса, са посебним фокусом на интеграцију традиционалних система и big data технологија. Поред наведених компонената система, модел обухвата инфраструктуру и интеграцију система препоруке колаборативног филтрирања извора различитих података са big data технологијама. Модел је евалуиран кроз тестирање и мерење релевантних параметара перформанси који утичу на ефикасност предложеног модела.The subject of this doctoral dissertation research is the development of a smart library model based on big data technologies and services . The central research problem discussed in the thesis is the development of big data infrastr ucture and smart library services that enable intelligent searches and recommendations from the library content. A particular focus of the paper is an examination of the possibility of integrating the developed model into a smart educational environment in order to improve the quality of the educational process. The thesis presents a model of the smart library as an integral part of the educational system that would improve quality level and comprehesivness of learning resources and increase the motivation of its users through content aware recommendations. The model described in the thesis considers the possibilities of applying a big data system for the collection, analysis, processing and visualization of data from multiple sources, and the integration of data into the smart library . The goal of developing a smart library is to improve the library’s business process and to offer users innovative metho ds to search and content use. The thesis discusses the perspective of the implementation of a big data solu tion for smart libraries as a part of a continuous learning process with the aim of improving the results of library operations by integrating traditional systems with big data technology. In addition to the above system components, the model includes the infrastructure and integration of a recommender system for collaborative filtering by incorporating multiple sources of differential data with big data technologies. Within the evaluation of the model, testing and measurement of the relevant performance p arameters which influence the efficiency of the proposed model were carried out