THE IMPACT OF PROGRESS FEEDBACK ON SELF REGULATED GOALS AND PERFORMANCE OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH STUDENTS

The demand for a continuous consideration of postgraduate supervision has risen because of the various problems reported in numerous studies, such as the high rate of dissatisfaction and attrition, supervisors’ inadequate knowledge about practical aspects of candidature, and unsatisfactory levels in obtaining feedback about students’ performance and progress. These studies indicated that giving and receiving constructive and ongoing feedback between supervisors and students plays an essential role in identifying both parties concerns. For postgraduate research students, the nature of their task requires them to work more independently. Thus, self-regulating learning becomes important, particularly at the early stages of the study where students start to set their study goals, and the social support of the supervisor becomes in need. Self-regulating learning is the process of setting a goal, employing goal-directed actions, monitoring strategies and adjusting them to ensure success. This paper discusses the effect of supervisor feedback on the student’s self-regulation based on a review of the literature of self-regulation theory, and how receiving positive or negative feedback may affect student’s goal setting and performance during the postgraduate study.  Article visualizations

USING AUGMENTED REALITY TO ENHANCE THE CONVENTIONAL GAMEBOOK

Abstract This paper presents the design of Augmented Reality gamebook to enhance the performance of the conventional gamebook and replace it. Augmented Reality technology that employs animation in real scenes is to bring new digital entertainment experience to the viewers. Traditional gamebooks started to experience bored, become less attractive to gamers and easily obsolete. The conventional way of playing game does not satisfy the players anymore, it is because the interaction between the game and the player is limited to static objects such as text. Augmented Reality with its special characteristics enhancing the display output of real environment and the composition of virtual and reality can bring sense of deeper immersion to the players, thus greatly increasing the interest and attraction of game

The Role of Metamodeling in Systems Development

Software systems developers are encountering different challenges as systems become increasingly complex due to numerous customers' needs that lead to a system with rich functionalities to be delivered within a short schedule. Developers also have to manage a variety of implementation methods, design techniques, and development processes. Researchers proposed “languages” as a solution to these problems. Meta-modeling is a method for defining the abstract syntax of a language. It makes the development of a language simpler allowing the designers to directly map the classes identified in domain analysis to classes in the meta-model. The meta-model expresses what models include such as concepts, relationships between them, and maybe the rules of how these concepts can be interrelated. This article presents an overview of the role and importance of meta-models in system development and their relationship with modeling languages. It highlights different aspects of metamodels standards, categories, and challenges in the research of meta-modeling

Omecamtiv mecarbil in chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, GALACTIC‐HF: baseline characteristics and comparison with contemporary clinical trials

Aims: The safety and efficacy of the novel selective cardiac myosin activator, omecamtiv mecarbil, in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is tested in the Global Approach to Lowering Adverse Cardiac outcomes Through Improving Contractility in Heart Failure (GALACTIC‐HF) trial. Here we describe the baseline characteristics of participants in GALACTIC‐HF and how these compare with other contemporary trials. Methods and Results: Adults with established HFrEF, New York Heart Association functional class (NYHA) ≥ II, EF ≤35%, elevated natriuretic peptides and either current hospitalization for HF or history of hospitalization/ emergency department visit for HF within a year were randomized to either placebo or omecamtiv mecarbil (pharmacokinetic‐guided dosing: 25, 37.5 or 50 mg bid). 8256 patients [male (79%), non‐white (22%), mean age 65 years] were enrolled with a mean EF 27%, ischemic etiology in 54%, NYHA II 53% and III/IV 47%, and median NT‐proBNP 1971 pg/mL. HF therapies at baseline were among the most effectively employed in contemporary HF trials. GALACTIC‐HF randomized patients representative of recent HF registries and trials with substantial numbers of patients also having characteristics understudied in previous trials including more from North America (n = 1386), enrolled as inpatients (n = 2084), systolic blood pressure < 100 mmHg (n = 1127), estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 mL/min/1.73 m2 (n = 528), and treated with sacubitril‐valsartan at baseline (n = 1594). Conclusions: GALACTIC‐HF enrolled a well‐treated, high‐risk population from both inpatient and outpatient settings, which will provide a definitive evaluation of the efficacy and safety of this novel therapy, as well as informing its potential future implementation

The impact of use case format on the understanding of system requirements by novice and experienced users

The effective analysis and specification of requirements is critical in software development. Faults in the requirements may later have significant impact on the quality of the software system. Ineffective communication between users and developers is a major cause of failures of software projects. Use case model is a powerful and widely recognized tool for elicitation and specification of functional software requirements in object oriented methodology. It has been advocated as a way to negotiate and communicate requirements between system analysts and stakeholders. However, issues concerning the format, level of details and the communication capability of use cases are still unclear and debatable. This study uses theories from cognitive psychology on human understanding to derive hypotheses on the effect of the format of use case model on user understanding. In this study, comprehension of the functional requirements are compared between experienced and novice users. Particularly, the effect of differences in use case format on novice and experienced users performance in both familiar and unfamiliar domains were explored and if combining the textual description of a use case with diagrams of different levels of detail improves their understanding. Two controlled experiments were conducted; one to assess the performance of novice users, the other to assess more experienced users. The results of both experiments provide evidence that support the propositions that individuals who view text with use case diagram (simple or detailed) will develop higher level of understanding of the system requirements in less time when compared to individuals who view a text only model. The results of both experiments provide no evidence that support the propositions of the benefit of the simple diagram for improving novice users understanding, and the detailed diagram for aiding experienced users when combined with the text description. It is also found that neither the observed level of prior domain knowledge nor the observed level of analysis method knowledge has a significant effect on the level of “understanding” that users developed regarding a system requirements. Finally, our analysis shows no considerable differences in performance in the experiments tasks between novice and experienced users, which mean that the effect of experience on users understanding is still an open issue and needs further research in the futur

Comparing the effect of use case format on end user understanding of system requirements

The effective analysis and specification of requirements is critical in software development. Faults in the requirements may have significant impact on the quality of the software system. Use cases describe and analyze requirements in many current Object Oriented (OO) development methodologies, and can serve as a means for developers to communicate with different stakeholders. However, issues concerning use case format and level of detail are unclear and debatable. This study uses theories from cognitive psychology on how humans understand text and diagrams to investigate the effect of use case model format on end user understanding. An experiment to assess the performance of novices when using different use case formats indicated that for tasks that required only surface understanding of the use case model, the provision of diagrams along with the textual use case descriptions significantly improved comprehension performance in both familiar and unfamiliar application domains. However, the author found no statistically significant difference in performance between simple and detailed diagrams, suggesting that the provision of simple diagrams along with textual use case descriptions might be sufficient to support the negotiation and communication on system requirements between novice end-users and system analysts

Classifying Software Requirements Using Kano's Model to Optimize Customer Satisfaction

Requirements elicitation is a critical and error-prone stage in software development where user requirements should be defined accurately to ensure the success of the software system. In a highly competitive market, businesses are focusing more on satisfying customer needs which largely affect customers decision to buy the software product, providing the potential for the success of the software in the market. This study aims to investigate whether eliciting and thus fulfilling most of the individual software requirements imply a high level of customer satisfaction and what type of requirements that define the perceived product quality and as a result customer satisfaction

Influence of Developing Professional Communication on the Success of Postgraduate Research Supervisory

This paper focuses on the evaluation of graduate supervision and highlights the problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. It aims to understand supervision as pedagogy where effective communication between the student and supervisor would encourage the successful completion of the research project. Current literature on the supervisory feedback emphasis what types of feedback is given rather than how it is given and perceived and how students feel about and react to feedback. This research tries to attend to psychological theories to understand how much a feedback from a supervisor may effect the graduate student attitude and motivation to achieve his study goals

Multi-queue CPU Process Prioritization using a Dynamic Quantum Time Algorithm Compared with Varying Time Quantum and Round-Robin Algorithms

In Round-Robin Scheduling, the quantum time is static and tasks are scheduled such that no process uses CPU time more than one slice time each cycle. If quantum time is too large, the response time of the processes will not be tolerated in an interactive environment. If quantum the time is too small, unnecessary frequent context switch may occur. Consequently, overheads result in fewer throughputs. In this study, we propose a priority multi queues algorithm with dynamic quantum time. The algorithm uses multi queues with different quantum times for the processes. The quantum times for the processes are depending on the priorities which in turn depending on the burst times of the processes. The proposed algorithm has been compared with varying time quantum algorithm which already exist to improve the original round robin algorithm. With proposed algorithm, the simple Round-Robin algorithm has been improved by about 35%. By controlling quantum time, we experience fewer context switches and shorter waiting and turnaround times, thereby obtaining higher throughput

Feedback in Postgraduate Supervisory Communication: An Insight From Educators

Postgraduate supervision is one of the most complex forms of teaching in higher education. Given the high rate of failure to complete postgraduate research, the quality of the research supervision has been questioned and some determinant factors leading to this undesirable outcome have been proposed like student’s expectations of the supervisor, supervisors’ insufficient knowledge, lack of interest in students’ work, and unsatisfactory ways of delivering feedback to the students’ work. Based on our experience as research supervisors and supervisees, we consider feedback significant in creating effective working relationship between the research supervisor and supervisee and supports successful completion of the research program. Different studies have investigated to what extent the supervisor’s feedback can be more effective in improving student’s performance and the type of feedback the students need. However, few studies have looked at how and why feedback is given as a supportive activity for students’ learning and development. This paper specifically focuses on how effective working communication between the research student and the supervisor can be achieved through the way feedback is given to the supervisee and how the student receives the feedback. The study concludes that the supervisors’ ability and the supervisee’s readiness to be open to criticism to provide and receive constructive feedback in a balanced way should lead to desirable academic outcomes in the academic context