AEIOU Analysis on Tools Design Requirement for Visually Impaired

By utilising the AEIOU method, the user behaviour observation of the analysis framework and the behavioural pain points of the visually impaired in the vegetable-cutting process were deduced. This study aims to assist visually impaired users in completing their kitchen activities, avoiding accidents, and improving the experience of simple operation and safer use while intending to create a comfortable kitchen environment and supplement the extended application of visually impaired products. The newer analysis was intended to facilitate the conversion of research, sorting, and study results into design practice in producing future research in a related area

An application of machine learning to explore relationships between factors of organisational silence and culture, with specific focus on predicting silence behaviours

Research indicates that there are many individual reasons why people do not speak up when confronted with situations that may concern them within their working environment. One of the areas that requires more focused research is the role culture plays in why a person may remain silent when such situations arise. The purpose of this study is to use data science techniques to explore the patterns in a data set that would lead a person to engage in organisational silence. The main research question the thesis asks is: Is Machine Learning a tool that Social Scientists can use with respect to Organisational Silence and Culture, that augments commonly used statistical analysis approaches in this domain. This study forms part of a larger study being run by the third supervisor of this thesis. A questionnaire was developed by organisational psychologists within this group to collect data covering six traits of silence as well as cultural and individual attributes that could be used to determine if someone would engage in silence or not. This thesis explores three of those cultures to find main effects and interactions between variables that could influence silence behaviours. Data analysis was carried out on data collected in three European countries, Italy, Germany and Poland (n=774). The data analysis comprised of (1) exploring the characteristics of the data and determining the validity and reliability of the questionnaire; (2) identifying a suitable classification algorithm which displayed good predictive accuracy and modelled the data well based on eight already confirmed hypotheses from the organisational silence literature and (3) investigate newly discovered patterns and interactions within the data, that were previously not documented in the Silence literature on how culture plays a role in predicting silence. It was found that all the silence constructs showed good validity with the exception of Opportunistic Silence and Disengaged Silence. Validation of the cultural dimensions was found to be poor for all constructs when aggregated to individual level with the exception of Humane Orientation Organisational Practices, Power Distance Organisational Practices, Humane Orientation Societal Practices and Power Distance Societal Practices. In addition, not all constructs were invariant across countries. For example, a number of constructs showed invariance across the Poland and Germany samples, but failed for the Italian sample. Ten models were trained to identify predictors of a binary variable, engaged in Organisational Silence. Two of the most accurate models were chosen for further analysis of the main effects and interactions within the dataset, namely Random Forest (AUC = 0.655) and Conditional Inference Forests (AUC = 0.647). Models confirmed 9 out of 16 of the known relationships, and identified three additional potential interactions within the data that were previously not documented in the silence literature on how culture plays a role in predicting silence. For example, Climate for Authenticity was discovered to moderate the effect of both Power Distance Societal Practices and Diffident Silence in reducing the probability of someone engaging in silence. This is the first time this instrument was validated via statistical techniques for suitability to be used across cultures. The techniques of modelling the silence data using classification algorithms with Partial Dependency Plots is a novel and previously unexplored method of exploring organisational silence. In addition, the results identified new information on how culture plays a role in silence behaviours. The results also highlighted that models such as ensembles that identify non-linear relationships without making assumptions about the data, and visualisations depicting interactions identified by such models, can offer new insights over and above the current toolbox of analysis techniques prevalent in social science research

Participants’ Perceptions of MOOCs in Saudi Arabia

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which are typically short courses offered free to anyone with Internet access, provide opportunities for online education regardless of participants’ gender, professional status, qualifications, age or location. Since the international introduction of MOOCs in 2008 in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, they have attracted public attention and online learning researchers have already made headway in investigating their essence. However, although MOOCs were introduced to Saudi Arabia in 2013 and have gained the attention of Saudi government sectors such as the Ministry of Labour, little research has been published on the effects of MOOCs in the country. Therefore, this research, to the best of my knowledge, is the first to explore Saudi participants’ perceptions of MOOCs. As a Saudi teaching assistant at King Saud University in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), I can see a clear trend in Saudi education towards online learning. The use of online learning is perhaps one of the most important current developments in the education system (Algahtani, 2011) and it would be difficult to dispense with this kind of learning now. Therefore, after consulting with several Saudi professors in educational technology, I concluded that investigating Saudi participants’ perceptions of MOOCs could make a significant contribution to the evolution of Saudi education generally and online learning in particular, thus contributing to improving Saudi people’s culture. This study aimed to explore the cultural implications of MOOCs for Saudi participants with the main objective being to identify Saudi participants’ perceptions of MOOCs, specifically the impact of MOOCs on participants’ lives, their pedagogy and learning design, and their social environment. The data was collected using mixed methods through conducting surveys, observation, and interviews with participants. Consequently, participants’ perceptions are linked to the literature review and discussed in detail in relation to the Saudi Arabian context. Furthermore, recommendations are offered on how to maximise the potential of MOOCs alongside suggestions for further research. The conclusion of this study asserts that MOOCs are widely used by Saudi participants, especially women, due to MOOC flexibility and their contribution to the development of educational cultures. MOOCs contributed to improving participants’ knowledge and personalities, as well as developing their educational and professional lives; however, the study revealed that the benefits participants gained from MOOCs varied depending on their positions and aims. In addition, the findings showed that participants’ views regarding the effectiveness of the pedagogy and learning design of MOOCs differed. Moreover, the study highlighted several factors that affected participants’ learning in terms of course design and the rules of participation, and some insights are provided that could address the concerns participants raised. MOOCs can contribute to attaining Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 by providing courses that focus on educating Saudis and imparting the skills required for future employment and for effectively carrying out the jobs recently allocated to citizens