Investigating the Influence ofWeb 2.0 Tools on the Group Cohesion of Pre-service Teachers

The study investigated the Influence of Web 2.0 Tools on the Group Cohesion of Pre-service teachers in cooperative learning classroom. It adopted the two-group post-test only quasi experimental design. Task and social cohesion were the two dimensions of Group Cohesion that were studied. The sample was seventy (70) fourth year students from the Department of Educational Management, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The sample size was seventy (70) fourth year students from one teaching option (Economics) in the Department of Educational Management who offered the course Computer in Education during the 2013/2014 session. It was an intact class. The technique used for selecting this sample was purposive sampling. The instrument for data collection was Group Cohesion Questionnaire designed by Carless and De Paola (2000). The internal consistency of the Group Cohesion Questionnaire was determined by the authors. Using a sample of students outside the study sample, the researcher used the split-half method to determine the reliability of the instrument. Cronbachs coefficient alpha was reported at .680. Research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while hypotheses were analysed using Z-test. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the task and social cohesion of students who used web 2.0 technologies and those who did not. Though, the major findings showed that web 2.0 technologies did not significantly affect students task and social cohesion, incidental findings showed that students communication and information literacy skills were improved as they worked online. Thus, the researchers recommended that Web 2.0 technologies should be adopted in higher institutions.</jats:p

Shape recognition: convexities, concavities and things in between.

Visual objects are effortlessly recognized from their outlines, largely irrespective of viewpoint. Previous studies have drawn different conclusions regarding the importance to shape recognition of specific shape features such as convexities and concavities. However, most studies employed familiar objects, or shapes without curves, and did not measure shape recognition across changes in scale and position. We present a novel set of random shapes with well-defined convexities, concavities and inflections (intermediate points), segmented to isolate each feature type. Observers matched the segmented reference shapes to one of two subsequently presented whole-contour shapes (target or distractor) that were re-scaled and re-positioned. For very short segment lengths, performance was significantly higher for convexities than for concavities or intermediate points and for convexities remained constant with increasing segment length. For concavities and intermediate points, performance improved with increasing segment length, reaching convexity performance only for long segments. No significant differences between concavities and intermediates were found. These results show for the first time that closed curvilinear shapes are encoded using the positions of convexities, rather than concavities or intermediate regions. A shape-template model with no free parameters gave an excellent account of the data

Secondary education reform in Lesotho and Zimbabwe and the needs of rural girls: Pronouncements, policy and practice

Analysis of the educational needs of rural girls in Lesotho and Zimbabwe suggests a number of shortcomings in the current form of secondary education, and ways in which it might be modified so as to serve this sizeable group of students better. Several of the shortcomings, notably in relation to curricular irrelevance and excessive focus on examinations, have long been recognised, including by politicians. Yet political pronouncements are seldom translated into policy, and even where policy is formulated, reforms are seldom implemented in schools. This paper makes use of interviews with educational decision-makers in the two southern African countries and a range of documentary sources to explore why, despite the considerable differences between the two contexts, much needed educational reforms have been implemented in neither

ISUOG Practice Guidelines: diagnosis and management of small-for-gestational-age fetus and fetal growth restriction

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Commercials, careers and culture: travelling salesmen in Britain 1890s-1930s

Within the lower middle-class, British commercial travellers established a strong fraternal culture before 1914. This article examines their interwar experiences in terms of income, careers, and associational culture. It demonstrates how internal labour markets operated, identifies the ways in which commercial travellers interpreted their role, and explores their social and political attitudes