How Instructors Engage Students in Online Courses: A Correlational Study From the Perspective of Transformational Leadership

Universally accepted as a long-term critical strategy in higher educational institutions (HEIs) over the past two decades, online courses have recently witnessed a tremendous surge since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic. There is a growing concern among educational stakeholders regarding how to effectively engage students in online courses. Though research efforts have proved significant positive correlations between online instructor transformational leadership (TL) and student satisfaction/learning outcomes, empirical investigations in relation to the correlation between instructor TL and student engagement in college online courses are rare. This paper conducted a quantitative correlational study using two previously well-established survey questionnaires, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (5X-Short) and Online Community and Engagement Scale, to assess students’ perceptions of online instructor TL behaviors and SE. Spearman’s rank correlation analysis demonstrated that there exist significant positive linear correlations between the concerned variables, and multiple linear regression analysis identified two specific TL factors, Idealized Influence (Attribute) and Intellectual Stimulation, as significant predictors of student engagement in online courses. This paper concludes with the implication that HEIs should encourage the training of online instructors as transformational leaders in instructor professional development session. Limitations and corresponding recommendations for future research are also proposed at the end

A Comparative Study of Thinking Quality Between Chinese and American Junior Middle School Students From the Perspective of Key Competences of English Subject

The globalization and information tide in the 21st century have promoted the new demand for talents in social development, and the key competences education came into being under such an era. Subsequently, the “key competences” became the key word of the global educational reform under the background of the new era in the 21st century. The key competences documents promulgated by many countries have obvious consistency and similarity, but they are not completely identical. There may be some problems worthy of reflection behind the differences. As the largest developing country and the largest developed country in the world, the educational views of China and the United States have a profound impact on the world civilization and pattern. As far as English subject is concerned, although English education is foreign language education in China, not native English education or non-native English education in the United States, it is combined with the reality of English education in China. Comparing the similarities and differences in the field of thinking quality between Chinese and American junior middle school English education can promote the reform of domestic English education and improve its quality. Also, many teachers only pay attention to the cultivation of students’ language knowledge and skills in the English classroom at present, neglecting the cultivation of students’ thinking quality, so it is difficult to improve students’ thinking ability and thinking personality traits. Based on this, the paper aims to cultivate and develop thinking quality of junior middle school students from the perspective of key competences of English subject. Through a comparative study of the consistency and difference of thinking quality between Chinese and American junior middle school students by using the methods of literature research and comparative analysis, the paper pays more attention to the problems of thinking quality of junior middle school students in China. As a result, the corresponding solutions are discussed. The paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. The research background, research purposes, research significance, research problems and research methods are briefly described. The second chapter is the literature review. It covers the research status and research trend of thinking quality at home and abroad. The third chapter is comparative study. This part briefly introduces the framework of Chinese and American key competences, discusses in detail the consistency and differences of Chinese and American junior high school students’ thinking quality in the three dimensions of logic, criticism and innovation, and points out the similarities and differences. The fourth chapter explores the essence of differences. From the perspective of English curriculum, this paper explains the reasons for the differences in thinking quality between Chinese and American junior high school students, including classroom teaching, reading and writing. The fifth chapter is a reflection. It discusses the limitations of the cultivation of thinking quality of junior middle school students in China, draws lessons from useful experience, and initially explores the methods of cultivating thinking quality of junior middle school students, in order to enhance the comprehensive strength of the key competences of junior middle school students

Automatic Objects Removal for Scene Completion

With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as 3D scene reconstruction and other big data applications. However, this is not an easy task due to the fact the retrieved photos are neither aligned nor calibrated. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected foreground objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure based image completion algorithm for object removal that produces visually plausible content with consistent structure and scene texture. We use an edge matching technique to infer the potential structure of the unknown region. Driven by the estimated structure, texture synthesis is performed automatically along the estimated curves. We evaluate the proposed method on different types of images: from highly structured indoor environment to the natural scenes. Our experimental results demonstrate satisfactory performance that can be potentially used for subsequent big data processing: 3D scene reconstruction and location recognition.Comment: 6 pages, IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 14), Workshop on Security and Privacy in Big Data, Toronto, Canada, 201

The Regulatory Role of MeAIB in Protein Metabolism and the mTOR Signaling Pathway in Porcine Enterocytes.

Amino acid transporters play an important role in cell growth and metabolism. MeAIB, a transporter-selective substrate, often represses the adaptive regulation of sodium-coupled neutral amino acid transporter 2 (SNAT2), which may act as a receptor and regulate cellular amino acid contents, therefore modulating cellular downstream signaling. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of MeAIB to SNAT2 on cell proliferation, protein turnover, and the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway in porcine enterocytes. Intestinal porcine epithelial cells (IPEC)-J2 cells were cultured in a high-glucose Dulbecco's modified Eagle's (DMEM-H) medium with 0 or 5 mmoL/L System A amino acid analogue (MeAIB) for 48 h. Cells were collected for analysis of proliferation, cell cycle, protein synthesis and degradation, intracellular free amino acids, and the expression of key genes involved in the mTOR signaling pathway. The results showed that SNAT2 inhibition by MeAIB depleted intracellular concentrations of not only SNAT2 amino acid substrates but also of indispensable amino acids (methionine and leucine), and suppressed cell proliferation and impaired protein synthesis. MeAIB inhibited mTOR phosphorylation, which might be involved in three translation regulators, EIF4EBP1, IGFBP3, and DDIT4 from PCR array analysis of the 84 genes related to the mTOR signaling pathway. These results suggest that SNAT2 inhibition treated with MeAIB plays an important role in regulating protein synthesis and mTOR signaling, and provide some information to further clarify its roles in the absorption of amino acids and signal transduction in the porcine small intestine

A Review of Teacher Transformational Leadership in Higher Education: The Fourth Wave of Teacher Leadership

Transformational leadership offers world-wide scholars a new paradigm to leadership research, and it occupies a central place in leadership research and is rendered as a crucial indicator of promoting students’ academic outcomes. This literature review sought to provide a general picture of transformational leadership as well as its application in higher education context, through which its readers can have a better understanding of what has been done about the topic and what remains to be done in the future. It can seen that the examination of the existing literature further confirmed the validity and effectiveness of teacher transformational leadership in higher educational settings

The Relationship Between Teacher Transformational Leadership and Students’ Motivation to Learn in Higher Education

This quantitative study sought to examine whether there existed relationships between teacher transformational leadership and students’ motivation to learn. In aggregate, 171 undergraduates recruited from a public Chinese university participated in the study through a random sampling. The participants were administered two instruments: the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) 5X-short to measure students’ perceptions of the teacher transformational leadership in the educational context and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ) to measure students’ motivation to learn. The data collected were analyzed by Pearson’s correlation and multiple regressions using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results from the multiple regression analyses further verified the findings in the previous literature that teacher transformational leadership could contribute to the students’ increased motivation to learn. It is recommended in the study that professional development be the best practice to facilitate the problems and all the college teachers should attend the professional development about transformational leadership behaviors, and implement the newly-acquired knowledge and skills to elevate students’ motivation to learn