Development and Validation of Web-based Courseware for Junior Secondary School Basic Technology Students in Nigeria

This research aimed to develop and validate a web-based courseware for junior secondary school basic technology students in Nigeria. In this study, a mixed method quantitative pilot study design with qualitative components was used to test and ascertain the ease of development and validation of the web-based courseware. Dick and Carey instructional system design model was adopted for developing the courseware. Convenience sampling technique was used in selecting the three content, computer and educational technology experts to validate the web-based courseware. Non-randomized and non-equivalent Junior secondary school students from two schools were used for field trial validation. Four validating instruments were employed in conducting this study: (i) Content Validation Assessment Report (CVAR); (ii) Computer Expert Validation Assessment Report (CEAR); (iii) Educational Technology Experts Validation Assessment Report (ETEVAR); and (iv) Students Validation Questionnaire (SVQ). All the instruments were face and content validated. SVQ was pilot tested and reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha. CVAR, CEAR, ETEVAR were administered on content specialists, computer experts, and educational technology experts, while SVQ was administered on 83 JSS students from two selected secondary schools in Minna. The findings revealed that the process of developing web-based courseware using Dick and Carey Instructional System Design was successful. In addition, the report from the validating team revealed that the web-based courseware is valuable for learning basic technology. It is therefore recommended that web-based courseware should be produced to teach basic technology concepts on large scale

Development and Validation of Web-based Courseware for Junior Secondary School Basic Technology Students in Nigeria

This research aimed to develop and validate a web-based courseware for junior secondary school basic technology students in Nigeria. In this study, a mixed method quantitative pilot study design with qualitative components was used to test and ascertain the ease of development and validation of the web-based courseware. Dick and Carey instructional system design model was adopted for developing the courseware. Convenience sampling technique was used in selecting the three content, computer and educational technology experts to validate the web-based courseware. Non-randomized and non-equivalent Junior secondary school students from two schools were used for field trial validation. Four validating instruments were employed in conducting this study: (i) Content Validation Assessment Report (CVAR); (ii) Computer Expert Validation Assessment Report (CEAR); (iii) Educational Technology Experts Validation Assessment Report (ETEVAR); and (iv) Students Validation Questionnaire (SVQ). All the instruments were face and content validated. SVQ was pilot tested and reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha. CVAR, CEAR, ETEVAR were administered on content specialists, computer experts, and educational technology experts, while SVQ was administered on 83 JSS students from two selected secondary schools in Minna. The findings revealed that the process of developing web-based courseware using Dick and Carey Instructional System Design was successful. In addition, the report from the validating team revealed that the web-based courseware is valuable for learning basic technology. It is therefore recommended that web-based courseware should be produced to teach basic technology concepts on large scale

Internet Versus Mailed Questionnaires: A Randomized Comparison (2)

BACKGROUND Low response rates among surgeons can threaten the validity of surveys. Internet technologies may reduce the time, effort, and financial resources needed to conduct surveys. OBJECTIVE We investigated whether using Web-based technology could increase the response rates to an international survey. METHODS We solicited opinions from the 442 surgeon–members of the Orthopaedic Trauma Association regarding the treatment of femoral neck fractures. We developed a self-administered questionnaire after conducting a literature review, focus groups, and key informant interviews, for which we used sampling to redundancy techniques. We administered an Internet version of the questionnaire on a Web site, as well as a paper version, which looked similar to the Internet version and which had identical content. Only those in our sample could access the Web site. We alternately assigned the participants to receive the survey by mail (n=221) or an email invitation to participate on the Internet (n=221). Non-respondents in the mail arm received up to three additional copies of the survey, while non-respondents in the Internet arm received up to three additional requests, including a final mailed copy. All participants in the Internet arm had an opportunity to request an emailed Portable Document Format (PDF) version. RESULTS The Internet arm demonstrated a lower response rate (99/221, 45%) than the mail questionnaire arm (129/221, 58%) (absolute difference 13%, 95% confidence interval 4%-22%, P<0.01). CONCLUSIONS. Our Internet-based survey to surgeons resulted in a significantly lower response rate than a traditional mailed survey. Researchers should not assume that the widespread availability and potential ease of Internet-based surveys will translate into higher response rates.Department of Surgery, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canad

Assessment of Web Content Accessibility Levels in Spanish Official Online Education Environments

Diversity-based designing, or the goal of ensuring that web-based information is accessible to as many diverse users as possible, has received growing international acceptance in recent years, with many countries introducing legislation to enforce it. This paper analyses web content accessibility levels in Spanish education portals according to the international guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Additionally, it suggests the calculation of an inaccessibility rate as a tool for measuring the degree of non-compliance with WAI Guidelines 2.0 as well as illustrating the significant gap that separates people with disabilities from digital education environments (with a 7.77% average). A total of twenty-one educational web portals with two different web depth levels (42 sampling units) were assessed for this purpose using the automated analysis tool Web Accessibility Test 2.0 (TAW, for its initials in Spanish). The present study reveals a general trend towards non-compliance with the technical accessibility recommendations issued by the W3C-WAI group (97.62% of the websites examined present mistakes in Level A conformance). Furthermore, despite the increasingly high number of legal and regulatory measures about accessibility, their practical application still remains unsatisfactory. A greater level of involvement must be assumed in order to raise awareness and enhance training efforts towards accessibility in the context of collective Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), since this represents not only a necessity but also an ethical, social, political and legal commitment to be assumed by society

INVESTIGATION OF SCIENCE TEACHERS' VIEWS ON KAHOOT, SOCRATIVE, QUIZIZZ AND MY QUIZ APPLICATIONS, WHICH ARE WEB 2.0 BASED ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION TOOLS

In this study, it is aimed to examine the views of Science teachers about Kahoot, Socrative, Quizizz and My Quiz applications, which are Web 2.0 based assessment-evaluation tools. The study group of the research consists of 5 science teachers working in public schools in Karapınar district of Konya province in the 2022-2023 academic year. The study group was selected by convenience sampling method, which is one of the purposive sampling methods. The phenomenology design, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. The data were obtained with a semi-structured interview form. The pilot study of the questions in the interview form was carried out with a total of 3 science students who were outside the study group and volunteered for the interview. After the pilot study, it was checked whether the interview form was clear, understandable and suitable for examining the research problem, and the semi-structured interview form was given its final form. After the semi-structured interview form applied to the study group, the data were evaluated by content analysis and the findings obtained in this context; It is gathered under three main themes as Cognitive Competence, Affective Competence and Technological Competence. Each theme is grouped into sub-themes. Science teachers stated that the Web 2.0-based assessment and evaluation tools Socrative, Kahoot, Quizizz, and My Quiz applications mostly attract attention, contribute to meaningful and permanent learning, and help in collecting motivation. In addition, science teachers stated that they carry out technology-supported education activities using Web 2.0-based activities.  Article visualizations

Soundscape Generation Using Web Audio Archives

Os grandes e crescentes acervos de áudio na web têm transformado a prática do design de som. Neste contexto, sampling -- uma ferramenta essencial do design de som -- mudou de gravações mecânicas para os domínios da cópia e reprodução no computador. A navegação eficaz nos grandes acervos e a recuperação de conteúdo tornaram-se um problema bem identificado em Music Information Retrieval, nomeadamente através da adoção de metodologias baseadas no conteúdo do áudio.Apesar da sua robustez e eficácia, as soluções tecnológicas atuais assentam principalmente em métodos (estatísticos) de processamento de sinal, cuja terminologia atinge um nível de adequação centrada no utilizador.Esta dissertação avança uma nova estratégia orientada semanticamente para navegação e recuperação de conteúdo de áudio, em particular, sons ambientais, a partir de grandes acervos de áudio na web. Por fim, pretendemos simplificar a extração de pedidos definidos pelo utilizador para promover uma geração fluida de paisagens sonoras. No nosso trabalho, os pedidos aos acervos de áudio na web são feitos por dimensões afetivas que se relacionam com estados emocionais (exemplo: baixa ativação e baixa valência) e descrições semânticas das fontes de áudio (exemplo: chuva). Para tal, mapeamos as anotações humanas das dimensões afetivas para descrições espectrais de áudio extraídas do conteúdo do sinal. A extração de novos sons dos acervos da web é feita estipulando um pedido que combina um ponto num plano afetivo bidimensional e tags semânticas. A aplicação protótipo, MScaper, implementa o método no ambiente Ableton Live. A avaliação da nossa pesquisa avaliou a confiabilidade perceptual dos descritores espectrais de áudio na captura de dimensões afetivas e a usabilidade da MScaper. Os resultados mostram que as características espectrais do áudio capturam significativamente as dimensões afetivas e que o MScaper foi entendido pelos os utilizadores experientes como tendo excelente usabilidade.The large and growing archives of audio content on the web have been transforming the sound design practice. In this context, sampling -- a fundamental sound design tool -- has shifted from mechanical recording to the realms of the copying and cutting on the computer. To effectively browse these large archives and retrieve content became a well-identified problem in Music Information Retrieval, namely through the adoption of audio content-based methodologies. Despite its robustness and effectiveness, current technological solutions rely mostly on (statistical) signal processing methods, whose terminology do attain a level of user-centered explanatory adequacy.This dissertation advances a novel semantically-oriented strategy for browsing and retrieving audio content, in particular, environmental sounds, from large web audio archives. Ultimately, we aim to streamline the retrieval of user-defined queries to foster a fluid generation of soundscapes. In our work, querying web audio archives is done by affective dimensions that relate to emotional states (e.g., low arousal and low valence) and semantic audio source descriptions (e.g., rain). To this end, we map human annotations of affective dimensions to spectral audio-content descriptions extracted from the signal content. Retrieving new sounds from web archives is then made by specifying a query which combines a point in a 2-dimensional affective plane and semantic tags. A prototype application, MScaper, implements the method in the Ableton Live environment. An evaluation of our research assesses the perceptual soundness of the spectral audio-content descriptors in capturing affective dimensions and the usability of MScaper. The results show that spectral audio features significantly capture affective dimensions and that MScaper has been perceived by expert-users as having excellent usability

DEVELOPMENT OF PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL INSTRUMENT FOR NURSES BASED ON WEB IN PATIENT UNIT

Performance appraisal instruments would, problematic when it does not representative describing the competency, using the less obvious indicators and incompatibility along with the task of nursing performance standards. The purpose of this study was to develop nurses multisource feedback performance appraisal instrument based on web in patient unit at Samarinda Medika Citra Hospital. This study was done in two phase. First phase was survey explanatory overview of the performance appraisal system using questionnaires completed by 53 respondents of nurses were selected by purposive sampling. The data were analyzed descriptively. Development of instruments based on focus group discussion (FGD) with six participants of decision makers in hospital. Validity test of the instrument’s content used Pearson Product Moment Correlation and reliability tests used Cronbach alpha. The second phase was the socialization and test instruments for assessing the quality of the instrument using a questionnaire by a total of 47 respondents and made recommendations by eight participants FGD. Samples were selected using purposive sampling technique. The data of instrument’s quality were analized descriptively. Performance assessment system rated category fairly by 58.49% of the samples. All questions to measure the performance of nurses proven valid and reliable. Quality of nurse performance appraisal instruments based on web in good categories for all indicators functionality: 81.60; reliability: 78.16; efficiency: 80.85; usability: 81.70 and portability: 81.70. The findings in the study was a web-based assessment format, scoring more clearly with Likert scale, resource assessment by direct supervisor with input from multisource evaluator, the development of performance graph and confidentiality of data on the database server. Recommendations for hospital is to formulate policies based on the final value of the performance appraisal by direct supervisor with input from multisource feedback and there needs a global writing on a form of performance appraisal results. Keywords: appraisal instruments, nurse performance, we

Traditional media in the web

In this paper will be analyzed how the classical media are using the web. Do they consider it as an obstacle or as an opportunity to remain competitors in the market? Based on the possibility of placing converged information on the web, can media transmit this information to a much greater number of their potential audience? Interest in obtaining information from online media is growing. Some of the factors that influence the orientation of the audience towards these forms are: quick opportunity of taking media content, the possibility of interactivity, the possibility of placing converged information, etc. The focus of the analysis will be how traditional media like radio and newspapers approach rapid technological development of the web. For the realization of this work will be used scientific methods of research. For samples were selected both print media and two radios that operate in Kosovo. The sampling can be considered representative for the reason that these media attract huge audience. The paper will also rely on scientific references which deal with issues which concern the corresponding paper

A Comparison of Techniques for Sampling Web Pages

As the World Wide Web is growing rapidly, it is getting increasingly challenging to gather representative information about it. Instead of crawling the web exhaustively one has to resort to other techniques like sampling to determine the properties of the web. A uniform random sample of the web would be useful to determine the percentage of web pages in a specific language, on a topic or in a top level domain. Unfortunately, no approach has been shown to sample the web pages in an unbiased way. Three promising web sampling algorithms are based on random walks. They each have been evaluated individually, but making a comparison on different data sets is not possible. We directly compare these algorithms in this paper. We performed three random walks on the web under the same conditions and analyzed their outcomes in detail. We discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of each algorithm and propose improvements based on experimental results