Pragmatic meta analytic studies: learning the lessons from naturalistic evaluations of multiple cases

This paper explores the concept of pragmatic meta‐analytic studies in eLearning. Much educational technology literature focuses on developers and teachers describing and reflecting on their experiences. Few connections are made between these experiential ‘stories’. The data set is fragmented and offers few generalisable lessons. The field needs guidelines about what can be learnt from such single‐case reports. The pragmatic meta‐analytic studies described in this paper have two common aspects: (1) the cases are related in some way, and (2) the data are authentic, that is, the evaluations have followed a naturalistic approach. We suggest that examining a number of such cases is best done by a mixed‐methods approach with an emphasis on qualitative strategies. In the paper, we overview 63 eLearning cases. Three main meta‐analytic strategies were used: (1) meta‐analysis of the perception of usefulness across all cases, (2) meta‐analysis of recorded benefits and challenges across all cases, and (3) meta‐analysis of smaller groups of cases where the learning design and/or use of technology are similar. This study indicated that in Hong Kong the basic and non‐interactive eLearning strategies are often valued by students, while their perceptions of interactive strategies that are potentially more beneficial fluctuate. One possible explanation relates to the level of risk that teachers and students are willing to take in venturing into more innovative teaching and learning strategies

Students' motivation in practical schools in Hong Kong

The setting up of practical schools in Hong Kong aimed to cater for students identified as 'unmotivated'. However, there were no reliable tools in assessing the motivational behaviour of the students being placed in practical schools. This study was the first type of research conducted in Hong Kong intended to examine target students' motivation for learning. The subjects included 86 students from two practical schools, together with a sample of 121 academically low achievers from two low-band mainstream schools for comparison purpose, 108 of whom were secondary one while 99 were secondary two students. This study consisted of cross-sectional and longitudinal research methods. 50 teachers from two practical schools, as well as 52 teachers from two low-band schools were requested to respond to a questionnaire regarding their perceptions of students' motivational and disruptive behaviour. The motivational questionnaire involved multifaceted constructs such as attribution of success and failure, task-oriented motivation, learned helplessness, learned hopelessness, work avoidance, self-worth, value and purpose of education, parental support, and positive and negative attitudes towards schooling. Research techniques such as t-test, analysis of variance, effect size, and factor analysis were employed in the data analysis. The study provided evidence that students in practical schools and low-band schools showed different maladaptive motivation: the former tended to adopt a learned helpless motivation, accompanied with negative emotion whilst the latter were more likely to exhibit self-worth motive and work avoidance attitude. Students in practical schools showed deterioration in their motivation for learning between secondary one and secondary two. However, there was a positive change in students' motivation for students in low-band mainstream schools. Thus it was found that students' motivation for learning was less likely to be enhanced in a segregated setting. It is recommended that we should focus on aspects of school policy, the whole school environment and effective teaching strategies so as to enhance students' motivation for learning. Future research should involve quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data direct from classrooms

Phonological awareness in Cantonese-English bilingual preschool children

Also available in print.A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2005.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Competing roughening mechanisms in strained heteroepitaxy: a fast kinetic Monte Carlo study

We study the morphological evolution of strained heteroepitaxial films using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations in two dimensions. A novel Green's function approach, analogous to boundary integral methods, is used to calculate elastic energies efficiently. We observe island formation at low lattice misfit and high temperature that is consistent with the Asaro-Tiller-Grinfeld instability theory. At high misfit and low temperature, islands or pits form according to the nucleation theory of Tersoff and LeGoues.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, ReVTe

New Variance Ratio Tests to Identify Random Walk from the General Mean Reversion Model

We develop some properties on the autocorrelation of the k-period returns for the general mean reversion (GMR) process in which the stationary component is not restricted to the AR(l) process but take the form of a general ARMA process. We then derive some properties of the GMR process and three new non-parametric tests comparing the relative variability of returns over different horizons to validate the GMR process as an alternative to random walk. We further examine the asymptotic properties of these tests which can then be applied to identify random walk models from the GMR processes.mean reversion, variance ratio test, random walk, stock price, stock return

Robust Non-Parametric Mortality and Fertility Modelling and Forecasting : Gaussian Process Regression Approaches

Funding: This research received no external funding. Acknowledgments: The authors thank the editor and the reviewers for their very helpful and constructive comments.Peer reviewedPublisher PD