EXAMINING THE JOINT PREDICTIVE EFFECTS OF PERCEIVED TEACHER ENJOYMENT, ANXIETY, BOREDOM ON STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES: A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL APPROACH

The current study sought to investigate the link between student-perceived teacher enjoyment (PTE), anxiety (PTA), and boredom (PTB) and students’ attitudes towards the teacher (ATT). Furthermore, how the three teachers’ emotions jointly predict ATT was also examined. A sample of 760 Moroccan university students aged 17–50 years was involved in the study. Statistical analyses showed that PTE and PTB were found to be the significant predictors of students ATT. They contributed uniquely and significantly to the overall model, which explained 21% (R2 = .21) of the variance in the outcome variable (ATT). As such, PTA, unexpectedly, offered nothing uniquely in terms of predicting students’ ATT. Students were found to show a strong preference for teachers who feel a sense of enjoyment over those who experience anxiety and boredom. Theoretical and practical implications for future research and educational practice are discussed.  Article visualizations

Development of alternative teaching materials for Life and Earth Sciences: Immunology as an example

The school textbook is an essential element in the teaching-learning process. It represents a pedagogical support for the teacher as well as for the student. However, a survey conducted by our team among a sample of students in the third year of secondary school showed that the majority do not use the textbook as a pedagogical support for the acquisition of knowledge in Life and Earth Sciences (LES). An analytical study of the LES textbooks of the third year of Moroccan secondary school showed that these materials suffer from several shortcomings: cognitive errors, ambiguous vocabulary, and a mosaic of content that makes them difficult to use. In order to enhance the value of the textbook and facilitate its use by students, this article proposes an alternative document that will present a life and health sciences course designed according to a rethought pedagogical scenario, with a dominant participative style, guides for the exploitation of documents, functional diagrams, summary conclusions, etc. In order to evaluate the relevance of this project, the present work proposes, as a pilot sequence, the one relating to the mechanisms of specific immunity in the chapter "Immune responses". This article attempts to evaluate the acquisition of knowledge related to this theme, in an autonomous work session, by two groups of baccalaureate laureates of the Physical Sciences option who have the textbooks, "Al jadid fi SVT" or "Fi rihab SVT", as pedagogical supports. In a second phase, each group was divided into two sub-groups. The first was asked to use a different textbook. The second subgroup was asked to use the new personal production, relating to the same chapter, consisting of a document presenting the restructured course, illustrated by synthetic diagrams, cognitive assessments and summaries. The results of the evaluation carried out at the end of this experiment showed that the grades of the students in the second subgroups improved significantly, compared to the control subgroups. These promising results, demonstrated here, represent a motivation to continue the work on this project of revaluing school textbooks so that they can regain their privileged place in the Moroccan educational system

Implementing Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) in out-patient nursing department: A case from UAE

The UAE diversification strategy of the economy focuses on reducing the dependence of country GDP on oil. As a result, the healthcare sector has significantly transformed from total dependence on government health facilities and support to the involvement of the private sector as an essential partner in covering the health needs of the UAE population. In this emerging competitive market, the leaders of both public and private healthcare sectors work on several strategies to improve the effectiveness and the competitiveness of their organizations. Literature shows that nearly 50% of the hospital's expenses are directed to cover employees' salaries. On the other hands, skilled employees' salaries are increasing day by day. Thus, we believe that hospitals should deal smartly with this debate by ensuring using maximum manpower resources. In this study, we present a nursing project that adopted Fredrick Taylor concepts and used the Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) methodology to calculate costs and compare its outcome to the currently imple-mented Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) system in the outpatient unit at Tawam Hospital. The study findings have confirmed that TDABC can be implemented successfully and make a difference in human resources management of nurses at the unit level. The authors have recommended rolling out the study to inpatient nursing units

Pion-proton scattering and isospin breaking in the Δ0−Δ++\Delta^0-\Delta^{++} system

We determine the mass and width of the $\Delta^{++}\ (\Delta^0)$ resonance from data on $\pi^+ p\ (\pi^- p)$ scattering both, in the pole of the $S$-matrix and conventional Breit-Wigner approaches to the scattering amplitude. We provide a simple formula that relates the two definitions for the parameters of the $\Delta$. Isospin symmetry breaking in the \d0-\dm system depends on the definition of the resonant properties: we find $M_0-M_{++} = 0.40 \pm 0.57\ {\rm MeV},\ \Gamma_0 -\Gamma_{++} = 6.89 \pm 0.95\ {\rm MeV}$ in the pole approach while $\wt{M}_0-\wt{M}_{++} = 2.25 \pm 0.68\ {\rm MeV},\ \wt{\Gamma}_0 - \wt{\Gamma}_{++} = 8.45 \pm 1.11\ {\rm MeV}$ in the conventional approach.Comment: Latex, 23 pages, two figures upon reques

The Bedrock of Byzantine Fault Tolerance: A Unified Platform for BFT Protocol Design and Implementation

Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) protocols have recently been extensively used by decentralized data management systems with non-trustworthy infrastructures, e.g., permissioned blockchains. BFT protocols cover a broad spectrum of design dimensions from infrastructure settings such as the communication topology, to more technical features such as commitment strategy and even fundamental social choice properties like order-fairness. The proliferation of different BFT protocols has rendered it difficult to navigate the BFT landscape, let alone determine the protocol that best meets application needs. This paper presents Bedrock, a unified platform for BFT protocols design, analysis, implementation, and experiments. Bedrock proposes a design space consisting of a set of design choices capturing the trade-offs between different design space dimensions and providing fundamentally new insights into the strengths and weaknesses of BFT protocols. Bedrock enables users to analyze and experiment with BFT protocols within the space of plausible choices, evolve current protocols to design new ones, and even uncover previously unknown protocols. Our experimental results demonstrate the capability of Bedrock to uniformly evaluate BFT protocols in new ways that were not possible before due to the diverse assumptions made by these protocols. The results validate Bedrock's ability to analyze and derive BFT protocols