Online assessments: Exploring perspectives of university students

© 2018, The Author(s). The United Arab Emirates is committed to integrating technology into higher education. In this study the researchers aim to explore the perspectives of university students on online assessments. An understanding of students’ views can help identify obstacles and promotors in embracing online assessments at the undergraduate level. The social constructivist epistemology has been used in this qualitative study to understand students’ preferences, apprehensions and acceptance of online assessments. Semi-structured focus group discussions were carried out after recruiting 41 university students, using convenience and snowball sampling methods. Thematic content analysis was applied to the data. This study highlighted that students did not comprehend the need for online assessments. Concerns regarding technological incompetence of students and teachers alongside distrust in the technology infrastructure were stressed. Students felt online assessments were restrictive for the science courses and had resulted in falling grades; probably due to the increasing dependence on multiple choice questions. Students also expressed the importance of constructive, timely and personalized feedback. Students need to be convinced of the usefulness of the transition to online assessment before they agree with it. It is evident through this study that student acceptance would increase with a gradual transition towards online assessments alongside technological training for both students and faculty. Active individualized interaction with instructors is important to students, furthermore preferences and concerns emphasized by students should be addressed to successfully integrate online assessments into higher education

Payout Flexibility and Firm Innovation

This paper investigates how flexibility in payout decisions affects firm innovation. Firms that make payout mainly in the form of share repurchase have greater flexibility in making payouts compared to firms that make payout mainly in the form of dividends. Using a sample of 45,644 firm-year observations of 7,888 U.S. firms for the period 1987-2010, I show that firms with greater payout flexibility have higher levels of innovation and have better quality innovations. Using a Granger Causality framework, I show that firm innovation has no significant effect on payout flexibility while payout flexibility results in firm innovation. Results show that firms that make payout in the form of repurchase only, on an average, have 4.4% more patents granted compared to firms that make payout in the form of dividend only. The results are robust to whether I use the entire sample or a sub-sample of observations of firms with at least one patent granted during the sample period

Authentic assessment: An instructional tool to enhance students learning

This paper underscores the process of using authentic assessment as a learning tool in a school the context of Pakistan. Data was collected through classroom observations, conducting interviews, analyzing relevant documents and maintaining person reflective diary. Findings indicate desirable changes in the perception as well as practices of teachers and students. Replacement of traditional paper-pencil test with authentic assessment resulted in active participation of teachers and students in teaching and learning process. Study finding also reveal considerable improvement in high order skills of the students. They were actively engaged in planning, collecting information and disseminating it to the community. Use of rubric for assessment was found to be very effective in determining a pathway for both the teachers and the students to look for and get to the desirable results

Role of Tax Administration System and Public Governance on Taxpayers' Compliance Behavior, Moderating role of Religiosity

Considering the fact that direct tax collection and tax to GDP ratio in Pakistan is very low and the budget dificit is covered using debts, which further increases the dificit in the next years. It was needed to study the tax administration system of Pakistan and its impact of compliance behavior. This study is focused on determination of the impact of tax administration system and quality of public governance on individual taxpayers’ compliance behavior, in the presence of religiosity as a moderating variable. Survey method was employed and 625 questionnaires were distributed using a self-administered questionnaire from the individuals across the five major cities of Pakistan. The response rate was 66% and 412 appropriate questionnaires were returned from the respondents. Results of this study showed that tax administration system and quality of public governance has a strong and direct impact on taxpayers’ compliance behavior whereas, religiosity has an inverse and weak impact on taxpayers’ compliance behavior. Furthermore, religiosity moderates the relationships of tax administration system from positive to negative and weaken the relationship between public governance and tax compliance behavior

Sales activities of Kaymu Bangladesh to provide the most diversied online shopping experience for the Bangladeshi consumers

This internship report is submitted in a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Business Administration,2015.Cataloged from PDF version of Internship report.Includes bibliographical references (page 18).At the 21st Century, with the help of technology, people are getting all the latest facilities. In this paper, I have tried to put my overview of Bangladeshi e-commerce industry, Kaymu Bangladesh and its strategies, model, comparison with the current market players and its vision to provide the most diversified online shopping marketplace for the Bangladeshi Consumer. Kaymu Bangladesh is a venture of world’s largest internet incubator Rocket Internet GmbH. In September, 2013, Kaymu Bangladesh started its operations here in this country and within a short period of time, has become a popular destination for the online shoppers. Kaymu Bangladesh follows the EBay business model of buying and selling on a single platform where the sellers sell their products on Kaymu website in exchange of commission percentage on each and every sale. Kaymu is an online marketplace where buyers and sellers meet and exchange goods. Buyers from Dhaka enjoy the facility of payment via cash on delivery while the buyers outside Dhaka throughout the country also can enjoy the home delivery service by prepayment through mobile banking. Kaymu provides sellers the free advertisements of their products through social media, newsletter and Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Through Kaymu, sellers can sell their products very easily as they have the total control of the entire process of selling including the payment. Sellers use Kaymu website to showcase their products and get buyers for the products. When they get an order, they contact and deliver the product on their own or through Kaymu Delivery Partner- AIG Express. Right now, the online selling process is running smoothly but sometimes when there is pressure of more delivery, then the buyers might suffer. This is a major issue for Kaymu and they value this issue highly as at the Beginning it was becoming hard for them to run their operations without dependable delivery partner but now they have established AIG Express as a trusted and dependable delivery partner. Kaymu is trying to achieve its break even by the end of 2016, when their operation will be around three years in Bangladesh. Currently it runs from the funding of its parent company, Rocket Internet Gmbh. Kaymu’s revenue is increasing from its inception. Though Kaymu is a new company, but already they have created their own space in the market and becoming very popular to the online consumers. Kaymu believes that the more its sellers sell, the more revenue Kaymu makes. So they are working relentlessly to market the products of its sellers. Bangladesh is a challenging market for Kaymu. Most of the people do not know the use of internet yet. But Kaymu has a clear goal to offer their customers a diversified shopping experience.Shadman Azim Dad KhanB. Business Administratio

Current trends in chloroplast genome research

Chloroplast is an important cellular organelle of autotrophs which has an independent, circular, doublestranded DNA molecule termed as chloroplast genome. The chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) contains essential genes for its maintenance and operation. Several components of the photosystems andproteins involved in biosynthetic pathways are also encoded by the chloroplast genome. Exploring the genetic repository of this organelle is vital due to its conserved nature, small size, persistent gene organization and promising ability for transgenic expression. Therefore, cpDNA sequence information has been instrumental in phylogenetic studies and molecular taxonomy of plants. Chloroplast genome sequencing efforts have being initiated with conventional cloning and chain-termination sequencing technologies. Dedicated databases such as CGDB and GOBASE among others have been established as more and more complete cpDNA sequences are being reported. Presently, elegant molecular biologytechniques including shotgun sequencing, rolling circle amplification (RCA), Amplification, Sequencing and Annotation of Plasteome (ASAP) and Next generation sequencing are being used to accelerate data output. Owing to many fold increase in submission of cpDNA sequences in nucleotide databases, challenges of in-depth data analysis stimulated the emergence of devoted annotation, assembling and phylogenetic software. Recently, reported bioinformatics software for chloroplast genome studiescomprise of DOGMA for annotation, SCAN-SE, ARAGON and PREP suit for RNA analyses and CG viewer for circular map construction/comparative analysis. Faster algorithms for gene-order based phylogenetic reconstruction and bootstrap analysis have attracted the attention of research community. Current trends in sequencing strategies and bioinformatics with reference to chloroplast genomes hold great potential to illuminate more hidden corners of this ancient cell organelle

Determinants of Financial Self Sufficiency in Microfinance Institutions: A study of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh

This study is an attempt to identify the factors that are affecting the financial self-sufficiency of MFIs in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Panel data on MFIs of these countries for the year 2011 to 2015 is used. This yielded balanced panel data for thirty-two MFIs, comprising of 161 observations. Our results shows that Size of MFI and Loan Portfolio to total assets has positive impact while Portfolio at Risk, Breadth of outreach, Management inefficiency and operating cost ratio has negative impact on financial self-sufficiency

Determinants of Financial Self Sufficiency in Microfinance Institutions: A study of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh

This study is an attempt to identify the factors that are affecting the financial self-sufficiency of MFIs in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Panel data on MFIs of these countries for the year 2011 to 2015 is used. This yielded balanced panel data for thirty-two MFIs, comprising of 161 observations. Our results shows that Size of MFI and Loan Portfolio to total assets has positive impact while Portfolio at Risk, Breadth of outreach, Management inefficiency and operating cost ratio has negative impact on financial self-sufficiency

Comparative effect of water extract of parthenium hysterophorus, Datura alba, Phragmites australis and Oryza sativa on weeds and wheat

Laboratory and pot experiments were conducted at the Department of Weed Science, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Pakistan during fall 2011 and repeated in 2012. Allelopathic plants were used against wheat and associated weeds. Allelopathic plants showed significant activity against three selected species - Triticum aestivum, Avena fatua and Rumex crispus. Aqueous extracts of Parthenium hysterophorus and Datura alba showed significant effect against weeds of Triticum aestivum although aqueous extract of Phragmites australis possessed moderate activity. It was noted that aqueous extract of Oryza sativa and control were comparable for all parameters studied. Aqueous extract of P. hysterophorus and D. alba decreased seed germination, shoot length, fresh and dry biomass as compared to the rest of the treatments. The degree of toxicity of different treatments can be placed in the following order of inhibition: P. hysterophorus > D. alba > P. australis > O. sativa ≥ control. The present studies showed that the plants used contain water soluble allelochemicals that retard or inhibit the germination, growth and biomass of other species. These experiments suggests that P. hysterophorus, D. alba and P. australis extracts may have negative effect on major weeds like A. fatua and R. crispus. Thus there is a possibility of using these plant extracts for weed management. However, more extensive studies is required to identify the allelopathins responsible for inhibitory effects on seed germination and plant growth

The Relationship between Industrial Electricity Consumptions, Industrial Employment and Industrial GDP

The study was carried out to see how electricity effects industry by identifying the relationship between industrial electricity consumptions, industrial employment, and industrial GDP. Industrial electricity shortage has been a major threat and has caused approximately two percent loss to the Pakistan’s economy with the rate of unemployment reaching 6% during 2013-14, leaving millions unemployed across the country. Co-integration and granger causality test was employed to find the long-term relationship between industrial electricity consumption, employment, and industrial growth. Results revealed that all three; industrial electricity consumption, employment, and industrial growth, were stationarity at the 1st difference and co-integrated on the basis of optimal lag selection criteria. Vector error correction model employed to test the speed of adjustment showed that industrial GDP & industrial electricity, and industrial employment & industrial GDP, both were significant at 5% level, while Industrial employment and industrial electricity was significant at 13.5%. Results of granger causality indicated that industrial electricity has a long-term relationship both with industrial GDP and industrial employment. Data analysis revealed that for Pakistan’s economic growth reliable electricity to industrial sector is essential and hindrance or unavailability of electricity to the industry will lead to unemployment and reduce economic growth