The Research of Users’ Continuance Intention in Relationship-Based Virtual Communities from the Perspective of Quality

With the increasing number of virtual communities, it was challenging to retain existing users and encourage their continued participation in recent years. A research framework to investigate virtual community users\u27 continuance intention was proposed from the perspective of quality. Based on the empirical study, it was found that information and system quality directly affected functional benefits and social benefits, which ultimately determined users’ continuance intention to get and to provide information. Furthermore, by modeling information quality and system quality as multifaceted constructs, the results revealed key quality concerns in relationship-based virtual communities. The conclusions had a certain significance on theoretical research and management practice

Effect of Peer assessment on Project Performance of Students at Different Learning Levels

Peer assessment has been increasingly integrated in educational settings as a strategy to foster student learning. Yet little has been studied about how students at different learning levels may benefit from peer assessment. This study examined how peer assessment and students’ learning levels influenced students’ project performance by using a two-way factorial design. One hundred and thirty teacher education students participated in this quasi-experimental study. When working on a technology-integrated lesson plan project, the experimental group completed an online peer assessment process while the control group followed the traditional discussion method. Students’ learning levels were measured and divided into low-, average- and high-achieving according to the quality of their draft lesson plans. Data analysis suggested that the impact of peer assessment on students’ lesson plan project seemed to vary according to students’ learning levels. While low- and average-achieving students showed significantly improved performance right after the integration of a peer assessment model, the model seemed to have had less impact on the performance of high-achieving students. Significance, implications and limitations of findings are discussed

Corpus-based Research to Verify the Hypothesis of Preference for Basic-level Category Vocabulary (BLCV) Acquisition

Many features of basic-level category vocabulary (BLCV) play an important role in international Chinese language teaching, and one of them is preference for BLCV acquisition which has yet remained to be confirmed. In this paper, a written language corpus of Chinese pupils is established, and the usage of the condition and quality BLCV is analyzed. It is found that 212 of 312 those BLCV are used by Chinese pupils in Grade One, the rest 100 are used during the whole primary school years . Besides, learners keep enlarging other vocabularies with their increasing Chinese proficiencies, and thus cause a dilution effect on BLCV. These results show that language learners have grasped most BLCV when they start to use written language, indicating an obvious preference for BLCV acquisition

The Effects of Social Messaging on Students’ Learning and Intrinsic Motivation in Peer Assessment

This study aims to gain a better understanding of how the newly arisen social messaging may impact the practice of peer assessment. Seventy-nine ESL (English as Second Language) students reviewed each other’s English essays in three peer assessment groups: a three-member group using wiki (wiki group), a three-member group using social messaging (small messaging group), and a six-member group using social messaging (big messaging group). Data analysis suggested that peer assessment facilitated by social messaging can be at least of the same effectiveness as wiki-facilitated peer assessment on ESL students’ writing skills and intrinsic motivation. In addition, the findings indicated that students in the small messaging group outperformed students in the big messaging group on essay writing, and reported a significantly higher rating on Perceived Competence, a positive indicator of the behavioral measures of intrinsic motivation, than students in the big messaging group

Nano-black carbon (biochar) released from pyrogenic carbonaceous matter as a super suspending agent in water/soil environments

Nano-black carbon (BC) is one of the most active fractions in the pyrogenic carbonaceous matter continuum. The majority of recent studies mainly focus on the role of nano-BC in the global carbon cycle. However, based on literature and our recent studies, we suggest that nano-BC may also serve as a super suspending agent, carrier, and redox mediator for sorbates during its migration from terrestrial to water bodies due to its unique properties such as high colloidal stability, strong sorption capacity, and high surface reactivity. The full implications of nano-BC in water/soil environments are far more than we expected. Thus, we call for more detailed investigations on the activity and reactivity of nano-BC in water/soil environments

Approximate Solutions of Fractional Riccati Equations Using the Adomian Decomposition Method

The fractional derivative equation has extensively appeared in various applied nonlinear problems and methods for finding the model become a popular topic. Very recently, a novel way was proposed by Duan (2010) to calculate the Adomian series which is a crucial step of the Adomian decomposition method. In this paper, it was used to solve some fractional nonlinear differential equations