Preliminary study on the role of social presence in blended learning environment in higher education.

This paper contributes to the growing body of knowledge which identifies benefits for Blended Learning in the understanding of social processes role. It reports on an exploratory study into the role of social presence in blended learning environment. Employing a qualitative methodology, the study sought to understand social presence of learners in Blended Learning environment. The paper presents the definition of social presence as described by blended learning instructors and it’s role in the development of Blended Learning environment

COVID-19 and online behaviors in higher education: A comparative study of an Iranian, Omani and Malaysian Universities

The outbreak of the COVID-19 in early 2020 caused most of higher learning institutions to close the campuses and forced them to initiate online teaching and learning. Since, regular classrooms are temporarily empty, this paper focuses on the online education experiences of three Asian universities during the COID-19 pandemic. For the purpose of the current study from each case, Up to Six (6) specific instructional strategies are presented in each case. The strategies summarized current online teaching experiences which can be used by other faculty members in similar circumstances

A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of fractional programming (1965-2020)

Fractional programming (FP) refers to a family of optimization problems whose objective function is a ratio of two functions. FP has been studied extensively in economics, management science, information theory, optic and graph theory, communication, and computer science, etc. This paper presents a bibliometric review of the FP-related publications over the past five decades in order to track research outputs and scholarly trends in the field. The reviews are conducted through the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) database of the Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Analytics). Based on the bibliometric analysis of 1811 documents, various theme-related research indicators were described, such as the most prominent authors, the most commonly cited papers, journals, institutions, and countries. Three research directions emerged, including Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Telecommunications, and Applied Mathematics.Web of Science1011art. no. 179

Using technology to teach higher order thinking ( HOT) skills

Slide Presentation at National Seminar on Higher Order Thinkin

La efectividad de la enseñanza basada en estrategias de neurociencia educativa sobre el rendimiento matemático de los niños que trabajan

Previous studies have shown that working children are at risk of financial, cultural, and educational damages due to the street-working and street-living conditions. In Iran, the issue of educating the working children has always been a concern for the community officials. Due to the conditions that working children have in Iran, they suffer from academic failure, especially in subjects such as mathematics. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of teaching based on educational neuroscience strategies on the mathematical performance of working children. Therefore, through Pre‐test‐Post‐test control group design, the ten steps of educational neuroscience strategies were implemented for 23 male and female Afghan children in two basic mathematical topics of the third-grade elementary school. In contrast, in the control group, 20 male and female Afghan children were assigned into the same grade and undergone the traditional instruction of the same topics in the two educational centers of working children in Molavi and Naser Khosrow districts in Tehran. The ANCOVA test results obtained from the researcher-made mathematical test showed that the instruction based on educational neuroscience strategies were effective on the mathematical performance of working children. It is suggested that teachers pay more attention to the individual-learning differences of the working children in using the steps of neuroscience-based instruction, in order to prevent their academic failure, and constantly take the right steps in teaching based on educational neuroscience strategies, all of the other courses like in mathematics.Estudios previos han demostrado que los niños que trabajan corren el riesgo de sufrir daños financieros, culturales y educativos debido a las condiciones de trabajo en la calle y de la vida en la calle. En Irán, la cuestión de la educación de los niños trabajadores siempre ha sido una preocupación para los funcionarios de la comunidad. Debido a las condiciones que tienen los niños que trabajan en Irán, sufren fallas académicas, especialmente en materias como las matemáticas. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este estudio fue investigar la efectividad de la enseñanza basada en las estrategias de la neurociencia educativa sobre el rendimiento matemático de los niños que trabajan. Por lo tanto, a través del diseño del grupo de control Pre-test-Post-test, se implementaron los diez pasos de las estrategias de neurociencia educativa para 23 niños afganos masculinos y femeninos en dos temas matemáticos básicos de la escuela primaria de tercer grado. Por el contrario, en el grupo de control, 20 niños afganos varones y mujeres fueron asignados al mismo grado y recibieron la instrucción tradicional de los mismos temas en los dos centros educativos de niños trabajadores en los distritos de Molavi y Naser Khosrow en Teherán. Los resultados de la prueba ANCOVA obtenidos de la prueba matemática realizada por el investigador mostraron que la instrucción basada en estrategias de neurociencia educativa fue efectiva en el rendimiento matemático de los niños trabajadores. Se sugiere que los maestros presten más atención a las diferencias de aprendizaje individual de los niños trabajadores en usando los pasos de la instrucción basada en la neurociencia, para prevenir su fracaso académico, y constantemente dar los pasos correctos en la enseñanza basada en estrategias de neurociencia educativa, todos los otros cursos como en matemáticas

Instructional design models for online instruction: from the perspective of Iranian higher education

Today, online instruction is a new approach among many higher education institutions and is also becoming more prevalent in higher education. In terms of importance and effectiveness of online instruction in academic achievements, motivation and attitudes of students, this study investigates current uses of instructional design (ID) models in designing and developing online instruction for higher education. The purpose of this study is to understand how ID models are being used in the design and development of online instruction. It is also to identify which elements of an ID model are necessary in developing online instruction. In order to address the research objectives, a Delphi research methodology was employed. The population of this study consists of academicians who are actively involved in the instructional design activities of online instruction with particular focus on the Iranian higher education. The instrument to gather the data for this descriptive research was a survey questionnaire. A survey questionnaire was designed and executed to collect the necessary data which will then be coded and analyzed using SPSS

A Bibliometric Analysis on the Research Trends of Gamification in Higher Education: 2010-2020

Research on gamification shows that it has positive impacts on learning, performance, motivation, and engagement. To have a big picture on gamification research in higher education, a combination of bibliometric and thematic analysis was conducted. For this study, a total of 432 documents from 2010 to 2020 which have been indexed in Web of Science database are investigated. Additionally, the researchers analyzed a group of 10 articles to review how much contribution they had to the body of research. General tendencies in the way gamification has been changing or developing in academic literature were scrutinized from the perspective of a variety of different factors including the time the works were published; the areas of the research field; and the authors, organizations, countries, and co-authorship publishing the most number of works in the issue. The possible future applications and results for educational organizations and academicians, top academic decision-makers, and educationists are discussed

Sense of community and English perceived learning in a social networking site: a study of Facebook

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship exists between sense of community and English perceived learning in the social networking site-Facebook. 27 students from multiple nationalities who were members of English learning page participated in this study. The data were obtained via an online questionnaire with three scales. Results indicate that the students have positive feelings about Facebook as a tool for learning English, English perceived learning and sense of community. Low correlation exists between sense of community and English perceived learning

The Effect of Computer Games on Students’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Educational Achievement

The main aim of this research was to investigate the effect of computer games on student’ critical thinking disposition and educational achievement. The research method was descriptive, and its type was casual-comparative. The sample included 270 female high school students in Andimeshk town selected by multistage cluster method. Ricketts questionnaire was used to test critical thinking and the researcher made questionnaires were used to test computer games. T-test and one-way ANOVA were employed to analysis of the data. The findings of the study showed that playing computer games has no significant effect on critical thinking, however, there were a significant effect of playing computer games on students’ educational achievement (P0/05). Furthermore, the results showed that the type of computer game has no significant effect on students’ disposition to critical thinking and their educational achievement.Keywords: Computer games, disposition to critical thinking, educational achievement, secondary student