Teaching International Students in their Home Country: Challenges and Approaches

The American College of Management and Technology was established in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 1995 as a two-year program in hotel and travel leading to the AAS degree. The Croatian government wanted to develop their long coastline and historical cities to attract Western tourists, and sought an American University to educate the Croatians. A BS program was first offered in 1997. The cultural and physical challenges of teaching students in their home country are described, with emphasis on the challenges of teaching students for whom a culture of ‘helping” each other is the normal pattern. The challenge is to create and encourage situations where helping is a positive (as on projects) and not a negative (as on exams). Classes are large (four sections of 40 – 50 students each), classrooms are small, and facilities are limited or shared with another school. In addition, since many RIT faculty teach their classes partially or completely on line, methods of encouraging communication and learning are described

Mediation Effect of Research Skills Proficiency on the Core Self-Evaluations – Research Engagement Relationship among Master of Education Students in Uganda

This study investigated the mediation effect of research skills proficiency on the relationship between core self-evaluations and research engagement among Master of Education students in Uganda.  Questionnaire surveys including closed ended questions were administered to two cohorts of the students, 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, (N = 102). Results indicated total mediation effect of research skills proficiency on the relationship between core self-evaluations and research engagement.  Implications for educational practice include careful selection and training of adult learners at master’s level on the basis of their core self-evaluations levels; individuals with positive core self-evaluations should be accorded priority entry into the programme. Implications for future research include carrying out intervention studies on how to effectively impart 21st century skills in the adult learners. Keywords: Core self-evaluations, Research skills proficiency, Research engagement, Mediation effect, Master of Education, Uganda, 21st century skill

Figurations of displacement in and beyond Germany: empirical findings and reflections on mobility and translocal connections of refugees living in Germany

This working paper presents the findings of the empirical research on the role of connectivity and mobility for displaced people in Germany in the framework of the TRAFIG project. The findings are based on qualitative fieldwork in Germany, with 73 qualitative interviews with displaced people and experts in the field. This paper uses a figurational perspective; figurations are characterised as dynamic social constellations which emerge in the context of displacement between displaced people and state and other actors at the local, translocal and transnational scale. This working paper discusses the figurations of displacement in which refugees in Germany are embedded. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of family figurations in displacement, among them the "figuration of a transnationally separated family", "figuration of the jointly displaced family", or the "figuration of the transnationally extended family". Family figurations are deeply intertwined with local and transnational bureaucratic figurations, which structure the experiences of refugees. Bureaucratic figurations evolve with respect to German authorities, those of the countries of origin and other local actors. Despite the significance of family figurations, connectivity is not restricted to it. Refugees are also connected within non-kin figurations, such as within an "ethnic network-based" or "volunteer-refugee" figuration. The analytical category of figurations provides valuable insights into how displaced people embedded in certain social constellations can best be supported. It shows that transnational life is a reality for displaced persons and an integral part of their everyday lives. As the German case demonstrates, displaced people use mobility and connectivity as a way out of protracted displacement

Hybrid Representation Learning for Cognitive Diagnosis in Late-Life Depression Over 5 Years with Structural MRI

Late-life depression (LLD) is a highly prevalent mood disorder occurring in older adults and is frequently accompanied by cognitive impairment (CI). Studies have shown that LLD may increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the heterogeneity of presentation of geriatric depression suggests that multiple biological mechanisms may underlie it. Current biological research on LLD progression incorporates machine learning that combines neuroimaging data with clinical observations. There are few studies on incident cognitive diagnostic outcomes in LLD based on structural MRI (sMRI). In this paper, we describe the development of a hybrid representation learning (HRL) framework for predicting cognitive diagnosis over 5 years based on T1-weighted sMRI data. Specifically, we first extract prediction-oriented MRI features via a deep neural network, and then integrate them with handcrafted MRI features via a Transformer encoder for cognitive diagnosis prediction. Two tasks are investigated in this work, including (1) identifying cognitively normal subjects with LLD and never-depressed older healthy subjects, and (2) identifying LLD subjects who developed CI (or even AD) and those who stayed cognitively normal over five years. To the best of our knowledge, this is among the first attempts to study the complex heterogeneous progression of LLD based on task-oriented and handcrafted MRI features. We validate the proposed HRL on 294 subjects with T1-weighted MRIs from two clinically harmonized studies. Experimental results suggest that the HRL outperforms several classical machine learning and state-of-the-art deep learning methods in LLD identification and prediction tasks

A global investigation of music listening practices: the influence of country latitude and seasons on music preferences

Background: Most research on correlates of music preference considers micro-level influences, such as personality and social positional levels (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003; North & Hargreaves, 1996). However, it is important to consider macro-level influences, such as cultural norms and the effects of time and weather, as well. An interesting macro-level influence that is gaining research attention is the consideration of seasonal effects (Helmholz, et al., 2017; Krause & North, 2018; Park, et al., 2019). For example, Krause and North’s (2018, p. 89) research demonstrated that listeners preferred “arousing music for the warmer months, serene music for spring, and melancholy music for the cooler months”. Aims: The present study is a replication-extension study of Krause and North’s (2018) research. The aims of the present study included: 1. Replicating their findings drawing on a larger, global sample (including non-western countries and those with varying weather patterns and at different latitudes). 2. Exploring the extent that proxies for country and seasons (latitude) modulate response patterns. Method: A total of 2,140 participants from 47 countries across 4 continents completed an online questionnaire, which consisted of answering background questions and responding to a series of questions concerning the creation of music playlists. Importantly, as in Krause and North (2018), participants rated how well 24 adjectives (from three factors: Arousing, Serene, and Melancholy) describe preferred music for playlists (for each season); also, they indicated their favourite season, the season they were currently experiencing, and their country of residence. Results: Addressing the first aim, an exploratory factor analyses was conducted on the participants' adjective ratings to replicate that reported in Krause and North (2018). The results indicated that the proposed three factor solution on each of the four seasons from Autumn to Summer does not fit the data well using either the Comparitive Fit Index (0.79, 0.79, 0.81, 0.83) or Tucker Lewis Index (0.83, 0.83, 0.84, 0.86). We posit this model fit incongrunacy is due to initial model specification choices. Nevertheless, we continued our planned analyses and considered the impact of the participants’ country of residence. We tested the hypothesis that preferred arousal levels in music fluctuate according to the ecological environment: could countries with warmer summers prefer higher arousal music for warmer (summer) seasons, and countries with colder winters prefer lower arousal (melancholic) music for cooler (winter) seasons? Using mixed effects models with random effects for country, we found that countries with more extreme latitudes (warmer summers) preferred higher arousal music (b = -0.05, p = .036) for summer. However, no significant effect was observed for latitude and low arousal (melancholic) music (b = -0.03, p = .11). Conclusions: By examining the replicability of Krause and North's (2018) findings on a larger set of participants and countries, the present research contributes to the developing body of psychological research on music preference at the macro-level, focusing on contributing to our understanding of how broader factors play a role in music preference and everyday listening behaviours. Moreover, the findings will be considered relative to research concerning seasonal variations in other behaviours and experiences, which may have additional influences on areas such as financial behaviours, aggression, mental health, and mood