EFFECTS OF WORK ENVIRONMENT ON STAFF TRAINING TRANSFER IN GHANAIAN TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITIES AND POLYTECHNICS

This study sought to determine the effect of post-training work environment on the transfer of middle-level staff competencies from 2 technical universities and 2 polytechnics in the northern sector of Ghana. The mixed study was sequential explanatory research. Respondents were drawn from the Netherlands Programme for Post-Secondary Education and Training Capacity (NPT/GHA) 45 leadership and management capacity building project for the middle-level technical universities and polytechnics staff. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guide were used to gather data from respondents made up of 24 (58.5%) academic staff and 17 (41.5%) administrative staff totaling 41 respondents for the study. The closed-ended items were analysed using statistical product and service solutions version 19 and results reported using means and standard deviations. Open-ended items were thematically analysed to support results from the closed-ended item analysis. The results revealed that respondents found the relevance of staff training, learned new things and noticed an improvement in their competencies for their career prospects. However, the perception of the respondents pointed to the fact that there was little or no support from colleagues in transferring the competencies acquired from training. The study also revealed that respondents had low motivation to transfer training competencies. Since technical universities and polytechnics produce critical human resources for the industry, the post-training work environment was critical for staff training transfer with many implications for the management, leadership, growth and development of the institutions. The study recommended that training programmes should be aligned with the institutional vision, mission and goals. Again, resources committed to staff training should also budget for enhancements of the work environment to accommodate training transfer using modern technologies

A predictive model and socioeconomic and demographic determinants of under-five mortality in Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone is among the countries that recorded high under-five child mortality rate in the world. To design and implement policies that can address this public health challenge, the present study developed a predictive model of factors that explained under-five mortality in Sierra Leone using the 2008 and 2013 Sierra Leone Demographic and Health Survey (SDHS) datasets. LASSO regression technique was used to select the predictors to build the under-five predictive single-level logit and multilevel logit models. Statistical analyses were performed in the R freeware version 3.6.1. About 588 (10.4%) and 1320 (11.1%) children under five were reported dead in 2008 and 2013, respectively. The significant predictors of under-five mortality in Sierra Leone were the total number of children ever born, number of children under five in the household, mother's birth in the last five years, mother's number of living children, and number of household members, household wealth, maternal contraceptive use and intention, number of eligible women in the household, type of toilet facility, sex of the child, and weight of the child at birth. The study identified certain predictors that deserve policy attention and interventions to strengthen the efforts of creating child welfare and survival atmosphere in Sierra Leone

Dynamism of Beauty Pageantry: The Conceptual Frame of Ghana’s Most Beautiful Pageant

In the African continent and for that matter Ghana, little is written or known about beauty pageantry. Viewers for the past 14 years, watch Ghana’s Most Beautiful (GMB) yearly without enough documentation on the relevance of its concept.  This article expounds the main concept of the pageant and its possible significance on the Ghanaian society. Descriptive research design was employed to obtain answers to questions regarding its activities. The Population consisted of participants from contestants’ hometowns while the sample was purposively selected according to various stakeholders involved.  Research instruments employed were observation, interviews and content analyses. The study revealed that the pageant’s concept did not only align with its focus, but also promoted businesses and adoption of cultural values. It is a yearly event full of educative and brilliant scenes geared towards possible live transformations. It is recommended that GMB continues to evaluate its yearly events to avoid deviation from concept into undesired practices. Keywords: Dynamism, Beauty Pageantry, Conceptual Frame, Ghana’s Most Beautiful DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-16-06 Publication date:August 31st 202

Rapid Assessment of Anthropogenic Impacts of Exposed Sandy Beaches in Ghana using Ghost Crabs (Ocypode Spp.) as Ecological Indicators

We applied a rapid assessment methodology to estimate the degree of human impact of exposed sandy beaches in Ghana using ghost crabs as ecological indicators. The use of size ranges of ghost crab burrows and their population density as ecological indicators to assess extent of anthropogenic impacts on beaches was explored in this study. For each site, three transects were laid perpendicular to the shoreline over a 100 meter distance at 50 m intervals, i.e., at reference points 0, 50 and 100 meter points. Sampling locations were randomly selected along the three transects using a 1 m x 1 m quadrat. Measurements were done twice weekly for a period of four weeks. The results showed that even though the moderately disturbed beach had higher burrow density than the disturbed beach on the average, the difference is not statistically significant (T-test; p > 0.01). However, mean burrow diameter at the moderately disturbed site was statistically found to be significantly larger than for the disturbed site (T-test; p < 0.01). We conclude that burrow sizes is a good estimator for verification of human impacts of exposed sandy beaches. It confirms that burrow density even though an important factor, may not necessarily be a significant estimator of the impacts of human activity on beaches. On this basis, it appears that the estimations of the diameter of burrows of crabs of the Ocypode genera provides a rapid tool for impact verification of sandy beaches and for use in environmental quality monitoring of beach programs in coastal areas

Digitalization of Demonstration Method of Teaching and Effective Vocational Skills Delivery in Ghana Tertiary Institutions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties tutors face when using the traditional demonstration method of teaching for vocational skills delivery especially in large class sizes. The study also aimed to modernise the demonstration method for effective vocational skills delivery in Ghana tertiary institutions. The study employed Solomon four quasi-experimental research design. The study targeted tutors and students offering textiles related (fabric and leather decoration) component of vocational skills programme in Ghana Colleges of Education. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used. The sample size for the study was 322 (320 students &amp; tutors). The instruments used for data collection were interview guide, observation and skills achievement tests. The study revealed that tutors faced a lot of difficulties when using the traditional demonstration method of teaching for skills delivery in large vocational skills classes. The study also found that the students in experimental groups that were taught using the digital demonstration approach had higher scores on the skills achievement test conducted than those in the control groups that were taught using the traditional demonstration method of teaching. The study recommended that tutors should use digital demonstration method of teaching when vocational skills class size is large. Devices for effective use of the digital demonstration method should be provided to reduce the difficulties tutors faced when using the traditional demonstration method for skills delivery in large class sizes. Keywords: Traditional demonstration method of teaching, digital demonstration method of teaching, effective, large class sizes. DOI: 10.7176/ADS/84-05 Publication date:August 31st 202

Using Proximity Sensors To Automate The tollbooths In Ghana

Motorists come across tollbooths all over the country when they are moving from one place to the other. Tollbooths has become an important part of generating funds in Ghana to help maintain and construct other roads. Inasmuch as these tollbooths help generate funds, they also create traffic jams because of the number of cars they have to process. Since the tollbooths are manned, it becomes difficult to serve each vehicle expeditiously. Some commercial drivers use that avenue to change their high denomination notes into small ones, so that they can get change for their respective passengers. It has also become a worrying trend nowadays for the tollbooth personnel to give motorists fake receipts after the toll fees have been paid, which means that there is no record of the sort of the transaction, and hence, the toll does not go into the coffers of the state but to that of the tollbooth attendant. The overall objective of this thesis is to design a userfriendly interface in the form of a mobile app which motorists are going to use to pay for the toll fees. To better understand the user requirements, interviews and questionnaires were used. A prototype of the proposed app was designed and tested with motorist as they are the main target group of this thesis

Entrepreneurship, young people and Ghana's development: A case study of the ICT sector

Thesis submitted to the Department of Business Administration, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, April 2010The underdevelopment of the Ghanaian economy can conceivably account for the socio-economic and other challenges confronting Ghana’s youthful population. Ghana hopes to use the ICT4AD policy to create a conducive environment to take advantage of enormous benefits that come from the usage of Information and Communications Technology. Using the ICT sector as a case study, this paper discusses how entrepreneurial traits were promoted and or undermined as Ghana’s young entrepreneurs’ setup and run their businesses. The central finding for this work was that entrepreneurial capacity was undermined by the general corporate and cultural environment in Ghana. For economic development to take place there is the need to put in place institutions and mechanisms to cater for the entrepreneurial potentials of young people within the country. In other words, institutions must be created and an enabling environment constructed to nurture, support and develop the entrepreneurial capacity of the youth.Ashesi University Colleg

An Assessment of the Potential for Mapping Fishing Zones off the Coast of Ghana using Ocean Forecast Data and Vessel Movement

This research assessed the feasibility of mapping potential fishing grounds off the coast of Ghana using vessel trajectories and speeds as proxies for identifying migration patterns and fishing behaviour of inshore trawling vessels. The methods involved the extraction of data from Satellite Automatic Identification System comprising position and speed of the vessel from exactEarth Shipview. Daily oceanographic parameters i.e. sea surface temperature, sea surface height, sea surface salinity, and the current velocity between August 2015- January2016 were obtained from Copernicus (www.marine.copernius.eu). Speed ranges and trajectories indicate that, the vessels steamed between 6.9 to 7.5 knots and fish aggregation mostly occurred closer to the shore predicated on favourable environmental ocean conditions. It was observed that the vessel depicted steaming behaviour in this study, characteristic of a recreational vessel with high speed, moving in straight paths rather than a trawling vessel whose movement occurs in slower and erratic trajectory patterns. The findings strongly suggest that the fishermen operating this trawl vessel have good knowledge of productive fishing grounds. The months with highest probability of catch aggregation were from October 2015 to December 2015, within the geographical locations oflongitude -4o 2 ʹ E and latitude 3.5o 6 ʹ N. The highest probability of catch aggregation was observed in October 2015, probably due to upwelling that occurred during that month. It is concluded that, fishing efficiency of inshore trawling vessels in Ghana could be enhanced with maps indicative of probability of fish aggregation in the ocean

Modelling malnutrition among under-five-year-old children in Ghana

Childhood malnutrition is a real-life and a chronic problem and one of the global major public health challenges, especially in developing countries like Ghana. Several attempts from governmental and non-governmental organizations to address the problem have fallen below expectation. It is recognised that the existing studies and nutrition intervention strategies are inadequate and hence not working to expectation. This thesis examines childhood malnutrition in Ghana using appropriate and advanced statistical methods to help improve the understanding of childhood nutrition and to better inform targeted public health nutrition interventions in the country. In this thesis, we provided solutions to five main problems: (1) investigated the major risk factors for malnutrition; (2) investigated household level variations in nutritional outcomes of children; (3) explored, modelled and illustrated spatial variations in the risk of childhood malnutrition over Ghana; (4) explored, modelled, forecasted and illustrated spatio-temporal variations in the risk of childhood malnutrition over Ghana; (5) jointly modelled weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ) and height-for-age Z-score (HAZ) to improve accuracy and reliability in estimates. To answer the first and the second problems, multilevel models were considered. The results showed strong residual household-level variations in under-fives nutritional outcomes and that child’s age, type of birth, child’s experience of diarrhoeal episodes, size of child at birth and months of breast feeding, mother’s education, current age, BMI and national health insurance status, household toilet facility ownership and wealth status were predictive of under-fives nutrition. To answer the third problem, spatial models were employed. The study found substantial spatial variation in the predicted risk of under-fives malnutrition over Ghana and also showed that Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (a marker for vegetation cover), elevation and rural/urban residence status were predictive of under-fives nutritional outcomes. The study considered spatio-temporal models to answer the fourth problem. The results showed substantial spatio-temporal variation in the risk of under-fives chronic malnutrition over Ghana. Our forecasted map of chronic malnutrition showed substantial spatial variation with children from parts of Northern and Western regions being at the highest risk of malnutrition compared to children from other regions of the country. In our forecast maps, the effect of increasing the level of maternal education was shown to reduce the prevalence of malnutrition throughout Ghana. To answer the fifth problem, multivariate response multilevel models were considered. The study found that the residual household effects for WAZ and HAZ are very strongly correlated and that the correlation was stronger for the residual household effects than the residual child effects. This also suggests that after adjusting for risk factors in our model, it is the same as-yet unidentified factors at household level that influence both WAZ and HAZ. The results also showed that there was more accuracy and reliability in estimates from the multivariate response multilevel model over separate multilevel models and showed that the effect of some important risk factors differed substantially across WAZ and HAZ. The findings from this thesis are intended to help policymakers responsible for the health and nutrition of children to design efficient public health policies and targeted nutrition interventions amidst scarce public health resources available in Ghana to better understand, target and to reduce childhood malnutrition prevalence closer to the level expected in a healthy, well-fed population of children under-fives

WHATSAPP USE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC PERIOD: INVESTIGATING THE INITIAL ATTITUDES AND ACCEPTANCE OF STUDENTS

This study explores the acceptance and use of WhatsApp messenger for teaching and learning in senior high school during the COVID-19 pandemic period. This research adapted TAM as its theoretical model. The participants of the study were 62 history students from a senior high school in Ghana. The study also adopted a questionnaire as the research instrument. The data collected from the participants were then analysed using the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation analysis. The results from the study show that ease of use of WhatsApp Messenger, usefulness of WhatsApp Messenger, technological challenges, and student attitude towards WhatsApp Messenger use determines students’ actual WhatsApp Messenger use in teaching and learning. Additionally, the study found that student attitude performed a mediating role between ease of use, usefulness, and technological challenges on the one hand and student actual WhatsApp use on the other hand. It was suggested that future studies consider structural equation modeling using the same conceptual model adapted for this study. Also, high school authorities should consider equipping school libraries with m-learning technologies to facilitate teaching and learning