Blogging and online collaborative discovery learning - making a case for a successful group-tracking technique

With the surge of digital native students entering classrooms, instructors worldwide have been trying hard to incorporate ICTs into their pedagogy in order to enhance student learning environment and prepare better graduates for the employment market. Among various shifts in paradigms, online collaborative discovery learning (OCDL) has become a coin phrase that instructors want to include in their many attempts at responding to the needs of the digital native students. With the increasing popularity of OCDL, researchers have studied issues related to OCDL such as instructor lack of understanding of OCDL and how it can or should be incorporated into pedagogy; studies have also highlighted issues with actual assessment of collaborative projects. However, few studies have actually studied or even recognized the issue of tracking these collaborative efforts of students, monitoring their progress, reducing conflicts and enhancing students\u27 overall collaborative experience. This papers identifies three barriers to creating a successful OCDL environment in terms and proposes an adaptation and implementation of a blended learning tool, blogging, to help both instructors and students track their groups

Restless n\u27 youthful: Study into barriers young entrepreneurs face in Dubai

1. Statement of Problem Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are independently owned and operated companies that are finite in size. A small business generally has a small number of employees and less revenue flow. SMEs are the backbone of Dubai\u27s economy, representing 95% of all establishments in the emirate (Dubai SME, 2013). In particular, owners of SMEs are young, dynamic and often students when they begin. The economy of Dubai depends greatly on these small businesses. These SME businesses account for 42% of the workforce and contribute around 40% to the total value generated in Dubai\u27s economy (Dubai SME, 2013). However, are all SMEs successful? Is the process of setting up and running an SME in Dubai easy? What are the major barriers that young and aspiring SME owners face when setting up and running SMEs in Dubai? 2. Significance and relevance of work This pilot study is carried out on five SMEs owned and run by young students either just completing their undergraduate studies or post graduate studies. The Dubai government recognizes the importance of SMEs to the economy of Dubai and encourages the growth of SMEs in the city (Stanley, 2013). The government even set up a Dubai SME division under Department of Economic Development (DED) in 2002 to help support SMEs in Dubai. Existing research has studied the success of women entrepreneurs in the city and factors that help them to set up and sustain SMEs. Research led by Haan (2004) surveyed 30 women entrepreneurs to highlights some of the problems women usually faced when starting their own. However, it is interesting to note here that students and youngsters are also coming up and contributing to the Dubai\u27s economy by becoming small scale business owners and entrepreneurs. This is primarily because it doesn\u27t take up much of their time in a daily basis, these small scale businesses can be run as a part-time activity, and as students on student-visa cannot acquire a work-permit, so this is often a good alternative. It is therefore, very crucial to understand the factors that make such a business model successful. Hence, it is believed that this study is very timely as it is believed the findings of this study will help • Students - future entrepreneurs • Current student SME owners • Government bodies • Schools and Universities 3. Description of research method As this is the first phase of the pilot study, a mixed-method approach has been used in order to fulfil the objective of the study. First the existing literature has been reviewed and analysed to understanding the barriers that generally hinder success of SME set up and running. Then a qualitative exploratory case study design has been designed through a series of interviews and focus groups on five SME owners and their business models in Dubai. This has been followed by a quantitative analysis through a survey questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale to identify the barriers faced by the existing owners in Dubai. 4. Results This paper reports the findings of the phase one of the pilot study in Dubai on SMEs particularly owned by and run by students/young entrepreneurs. The report highlights that although there has been tremendous support in the recent years from the government to support such initiatives through conferences, funding made available, and banks that showed great initiative by suspending legal actions against SMEs struggling to repay debt (Trenwith, 2016), there still exists a need for more support and guidance aimed at student entrepreneurs. More specifically, the report highlights the difficulty faced by students in terms understanding legalities, process, visa process and so on. With a focus on five SMEs in Dubai, the fastest growing emirate in the UAE, the report provides an initial insight into the barriers faced by the students in setting up business that often has a ripple effect on the running of the business

Students go click, flick and cheat... e-cheating, technologies and more

The UAE is a major hub for most trades and tourism in the Middle East. Attracting diverse populations from around the globe, the country has opened its markets to local and international academic bodies to cater to the growing need for tertiary education within the nation. All or most of these colleges and universities are caught up in the need to introduce or increase the dependence of classroom teaching on two aspects of new era education: e-sources and e-technology. World-wide increase in publishing documents in electronic formats so as to reach more readers has surpassed the millions. Publicly accessible sites and academic library database memberships make these publications readily available to students at their finger tips. Where traditional methods involved slow processes of physically finding information, now students need simply type in key words and their screens spit out hundreds of articles, book chapters and journal articles that could give them related information. Add to this, various types of e-technology, inside and out of classrooms that make it easy for students to share information and complete assessments successfully. However, little or no research exists on the possible implications of the increased e-sources and readily-available e-technology on students’ attitudes toward e-cheating. This study looks into the two factors and if at all there are any affects on the alarmingly rising cases of e-cheating in the UAE

Ethical consumerism and apparel industry - towards a new factor model

Ethical issues with offshore manufacturing plants in the ready-made garment industry is a regular affair, particularly for factories located in lesser developed nations. Despite efforts by non-government agencies around the globe pressurizing both governments and multinational corporations to adopt ethical practices, disastrous accidents and loss of lives continue to haunt the industry. This paper reviews existing literature to develop an understanding of consumers as pressure groups, and proposes a factor model that may influence consumers\u27 willingness to pay for ethical garments

'e’-thinking teaching and assessment to uphold academic integrity: lessons learned from emergency distance learning

Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on many day-to-day activities but one of the biggest collateral impacts was felt by the education sector. The nature and the complexity of higher education is such that no matter how prepared we are as faculty, how planned our teaching and assessments, faculty are all too aware of the adjustments that have to be made to course plans, assessments designed, content delivery strategies and so on once classes begin. Faculties find themselves changing, modifying and deviating from original plans to ensure accessibility and inclusiveness, this may be due to a variety of reasons such as student abilities, behaviour, disturbances and even outside factors that may be political, environmental, social etc. Majority of the time, faculty are prepared for the change that needs to be incorporated and are quick to adjust. However, no one expected the disruption to education that was caused by COVID19 pandemic. The world came to a standstill while schools and universities scrambled to push learning to the digital space. It was important to try to ensure continuity of learning for students, but the issue of integrity came to the forefront by summertime. Faculties were suddenly expected to restructure their lessons, delivery, teaching and assessing digitally, at the same time ensuring and upholding integrity of the concepts taught and assessed. This has neither been easy or straightforward because the situation was unprecedented with little or no prior documentation or guidelines to help. Recognising this gap, this paper is an attempt at providing exploratory findings from authors’ experiences in their respective institutions over the ensuing months. The paper attempts to record the changes made by the faculty and colleagues to lessons and assessments with particular focus on how technology has been used to help restructure classes, deliver lessons and assess students which have aided in minimizing the likelihood of students cheating. The paper further narrates the reflective changes that were made in response to experience, student/external examiners feedback etc.N/

Assisting you to advance with ethics in research: an introduction to ethical governance and application procedures

Ethics and ethical behaviour are the fundamental pillars of a civilised society. The focus on ethical behaviour is indispensable in certain fields such as medicine, finance, or law. In fact, ethics gets precedence with anything that would include, affect, transform, or influence upon individuals, communities or any living creatures. Many institutions within Europe have set up their own committees to focus on or approve activities that have ethical impact. In contrast, lesser-developed countries (worldwide) are trying to set up these committees to govern their academia and research. As the first European consortium established to assist academic integrity, European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI), we felt the importance of guiding those institutions and communities that are trying to conduct research with ethical principles. We have established an ethical advisory working group within ENAI with the aim to promote ethics within curriculum, research and institutional policies. We are constantly researching available data on this subject and committed to help the academia to convey and conduct ethical behaviour. Upon preliminary review and discussion, the group found a disparity in understanding, practice and teaching approaches to ethical applications of research projects among peers. Therefore, this short paper preliminarily aims to critically review the available information on ethics, the history behind establishing ethical principles and its international guidelines to govern research. The paper is based on the workshop conducted in the 5th International conference Plagiarism across Europe and Beyond, in Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania in 2019. During the workshop, we have detailed a) basic needs of an ethical committee within an institution; b) a typical ethical approval process (with examples from three different universities); and c) the ways to obtain informed consent with some examples. These are summarised in this paper with some example comparisons of ethical approval processes from different universities. We believe this paper will provide guidelines on preparing and training both researchers and research students in appropriately upholding ethical practices through ethical approval processes.European Network of Academic Integrity; University of Derb

Initiating count down - gamification of academic integrity

Any problem is a problem until a solution is designed and implemented. This paper reports on a workshop that highlights preliminary work done by the working group on Gamification in the scope of European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI), which aims to explore the possibility of developing and testing a gamified learning module on academic integrity values. In this paper, the group aims to look at proposing steps we are currently using to develop storyboards of scenarios for the first phase of the project, which were presented at the 6th International Conference Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond 2020 held virtually in Dubai as a workshop. The study also presents updated findings and scenarios drawn from the workshop conducted and audience feedback, in the following sections that pave the way for the future stages of the gamification process. This serves as a guide to academics and researchers in academic integrity who may wish to study gamification and apply it to develop their own modules for their learning modules.N/

Using Innovative Tools to Teach Computer Application to Business Students - A Hawthorne Effect or Successful Implementation Here to Stay

A year after the primary study that tested the impact of introducing blended learning and guided discovery to help teach computer application to business students, this paper looks into the continued success of using guided discovery and blended learning with learning management system in and out of classrooms to enhance student learning. Particularly, it looks at the successful adaptation and implementation of learning management system as an aid to learning and delivery of a computer application subject to a class that is majorly populated by business students with little or no IT background. This paper tests the continued success to establish whether the success recorded after the first implementation was sustainable or merely influenced by the Hawthorn effect of trialing an innovation. It concludes with final grade measure over a one-year period of implementation of the system, and student responses that strongly support the original approach used by the author

Developing a factor-model to understand the impact of factors on higher education students’ likelihood to e-cheat

Most educators strive to develop in their students a certain level of academic integrity that they hope will be carried into the workplace. Academic integrity can benefit higher education, workplaces and the greater society by promoting integrity, scientific progress and responsible citizenship. But, academic dishonesty has been a concern for academics and researchers as long as educational institutions have existed. In the last few decades, the concerns have increased due to an increase in the reporting of cases of cheating in academic settings. To date, many studies have been carried out that report instances of increasing cheating, some have researched ways to curb academic dishonesty and others have focused on the factors that may have influenced students’ cheating behavior. But all measures currently in practice seem to be reactive, rather than proactive. Trying to assess why a student has cheated may not help understand why a student will be inclined to cheat in the future. There has been limited research into the factors that may influence a student’s likelihood to cheat. Furthermore, over the past few years, researchers and academics have expressed growing concern over occurrences of academic dishonesty, especially among higher education students, sparked by advances in and the increased use of technology. It is believed that technology including the Internet has given students easy access to resources that can be easily copied and reproduced as their own thus potentially blurring students’ understanding of originality and ownership. This has also given birth to new types of academic dishonesty that can be grouped under a new term coined, e-cheating. This thesis defines e-cheating, provides a consolidated list of factors that influence students’ likelihood to e-cheat and describes the development of the Khan’s Factor Model intended for use by individuals, researchers and industry to understand the factors that influence students’ likelihood to e-cheat. The research model has been developed by first using Interpretive Structural Modeling and then testing the model using Structural Equation Modeling. Moreover, data analysis and evaluation have validated the Khan’s Factor Model, and have provided insight into the various factors that do influence students’ likelihood to e-cheat, leading to recommendations that can help deter and curb e-cheating among higher education students, ultimately concluding that with ICT-savvy students in classrooms, stakeholders such as universities, teachers and parents need to work towards solutions that are intrinsically motivated in order to enhance overall student integrity