Trends and Prospects of Instructional Material Development and Delivery at the University of Zambia

The major concern addressed in this study is why the University of Zambia UNZA despite being the first national University with so much vast experience in excellence and service as its motto is and being the first institution to offer distance education DE in Zambia has not commensurately grown to competitive and comparative massive enrollment numbers increased number of programmes and courses and development and delivery of instructional materials in Open and Distance Learning ODL The need to introduce DE at UNZA amongst many other compelling reasons could be attributed to the Lockwood Commission whose report in 1963 64 recommended that degree programmes at the Institution should be available by distance study to suitably qualified candidates who might not be in position to attend the University education on full - time basis This study is anchored on questions such as i How does UNZA run distance education ii How does UNZA develop instructional materials iii How does UNZA deliver instructional materials to its distance students iv What successes has UNZA scored in distance education mode of study v Why is distance education at UNZA not expanding as expected vi How best could UNZA deliver its learner support services to its distance students The study employed descriptive design and document analysis review It is largely qualitative in nature The major findings of the study show that UNZA being a dual mode institution depends on lecturers from various teaching schools to service distance education students Institute of Distance Education IDE the Unit of the University with sole responsibilities of administration organisation and coordination of DE programmes depends on lecturers employed under regular mode of study to develop instructional materials conduct face-to-face contact sessions during residential schools prepare assessment and examinations and mark them IDE experiences some degree of resistance from mainstream fac

Trends and Prospects of Instructional Material Development and Delivery at the University of Zambia

The major concern addressed in this study is why the University of Zambia UNZA despite being the first national University with so much vast experience in excellence and service as its motto is and being the first institution to offer distance education DE in Zambia has not commensurately grown to competitive and comparative massive enrollment numbers increased number of programmes and courses and development and delivery of instructional materials in Open and Distance Learning ODL The need to introduce DE at UNZA amongst many other compelling reasons could be attributed to the Lockwood Commission whose report in 1963 64 recommended that degree programmes at the Institution should be available by distance study to suitably qualified candidates who might not be in position to attend the University education on full - time basis This study is anchored on questions such as i How does UNZA run distance education ii How does UNZA develop instructional materials iii How does UNZA deliver instructional materials to its distance students iv What successes has UNZA scored in distance education mode of study v Why is distance education at UNZA not expanding as expected vi How best could UNZA deliver its learner support services to its distance students The study employed descriptive design and document analysis review It is largely qualitative in nature The major findings of the study show that UNZA being a dual mode institution depends on lecturers from various teaching schools to service distance education students Institute of Distance Education IDE the Unit of the University with sole responsibilities of administration organisation and coordination of DE programmes depends on lecturers employed under regular mode of study to develop instructional materials conduct face-to-face contact sessions during residential schools prepare assessment and examinations and mark them IDE experiences some degree of resistance from mainstream fac

CHALLENGES OF COPYRIGHT PROTECTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: THE NIGERIAN PERSPECTIVE

Copyright is one of the several intellectual property rights that accrues to authors of literary and creative works at the point of creation. Several legal frameworks such as the Berne Convention, WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the Nigeria Copyright Act have all been enacted for the purpose of recognizing and protecting these rights both at the international and local scene. Unfortunately, with the emergence of digital age, characterized by digital technologies such the internet, scanner, digital cameras smartphones, smart televisions, e-book, social media etc., has cause strain in copyright protection due to the relative ease of replication, manipulation, reproduction and dissemination of copyrighted materials in digital formats within the digital space. This paper, identified the following as the major challenges confronting copyright protection in the digital age; the ease in reproduction of copyrighted material, the ease in sharing & distribution of copyrighted, the availability of compact storage devices, and the challenge of detecting or tracing the sources of such infringement due to the apparent similarity between the original and the duplicate copies. The paper acknowledges the legislative response from international scene as well as local scene in addressing this social menace, particularly the WCT, WTTP and Copyright (Optical Disc Plant) Regulation. However, it was noted that current local copyright regime is inadequate to address the challenge. This paper recommends that authors and creators of creative media content in Nigeria should in addition to these legal frameworks, adopt independent modern technological measures such as block chain and watermarking technology to protect their work and prevent undue exploitation

Letter graphs and geometric grid classes of permutations: characterization and recognition

In this paper, we reveal an intriguing relationship between two seemingly unrelated notions: letter graphs and geometric grid classes of permutations. An important property common for both of them is well-quasi-orderability, implying, in a non-constructive way, a polynomial-time recognition of geometric grid classes of permutations and $k$-letter graphs for a fixed $k$. However, constructive algorithms are available only for $k=2$. In this paper, we present the first constructive polynomial-time algorithm for the recognition of $3$-letter graphs. It is based on a structural characterization of graphs in this class.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1108.6319 by other author

USE OF ONLINE DATABASES BY NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS OF GHANA ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION, GHANA: A REVIEW

ICT has greatly changed how research, teaching and learning is done. In the past, these activities were aided mainly by manual databases consisting of paper or print material records. However, over the period of time this has dramatically changed to digital electronic formats such as portable document format (PDF). The goal of this paper was to examine the use of online databases by Nuclear Scientists of Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and review the literature available. A systematic review of 20 articles from 1970 to 2021 was conducted. The review covered studies on both quantitative and qualitative research approaches both locally and abroad. The findings revealed that from the older literature, awareness of the existence of online databases by patrons in their institutions was low. However from the current literature the trend has changed with patrons now been much aware of these online databases. Some problems identified as hindering the access to online databases included low bandwidth speed, and cost of infrastructure which are stumbling blocks especially in developing countries of which Ghana is a part. Recommendations included the provision and expansion of infrastructure, training programmes, information literacy, subscription to current and relevant online databases, conducting regular surveys and funding and financing of electronic resources. It is essential libraries are supported to improve access and usage whiles creating awareness of the numerous benefits that can be gained by research and academic institutions in channelling their energies into having current, available electronic resources for their patrons for teaching, learning and research

A Study to Analyze the Efficacy of Maitland’s Mobilization Technique and Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on Pain and Hand Grip Strength in Patients with Post Colle’s Fracture Stiffness

Abstract- BACKGROUND: Colle’s fracture is a very common extra-articular fracture that occurs as the result of a fall on out stretched hand (FOOSH). Although Colle’s fractures are commonly seen in all age groups and demographics, they are particularly common in osteoporotic individuals and as such are more frequently seen in elderly women. Some complications are associated with injury itself. The complications such as persistent neuropathy of median nerve, ulnar nerve or radial nerve, malunited fracture and post traumatic stiffness have been reported in 1 out of 3 patients. Rehabilitation of fractures is a very important thing because of the limitations produced by improper management can lead to stiffness, deformity and limitation of functions. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to find out the effects of Maitland’s mobilization with Neuro-Muscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) on pain and hand grip strength in patients with post Colle’s fracture stiffness. DESIGN: Pre- test and Post- test experimental study desig

PRESERVATION OF LIBRARY MATERIALS: A CASE OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY WITHIN THE ACCRA METROPOLITAN AREA OF GHANA

Preservation is an important component of the library as it is designed to prolong the lifespan of library collections in order to provide access to users. The study was achieved through different reviews on literature in relation to library preservation. Globally different kinds of literature have been reviewed on the preservation of library materials and specifically narrowed to Ghana. The purpose of the study was to review the literature on the prospects and challenges of library materials in Ghana. The study further sought to find out the benefits of preserving library materials and identification of the internal and external factors that affect the preservation of library materials in Ghana. Some of the benefits identified were the cost-effectiveness, promotion of scholarly work, protection of organisational memory and heritage. Other internal and external factors include; quality of materials in terms of manufacturing and putting measures in place to protect loyalty and access to documentary materials. It was recommended that both user and staff training must be encouraged, the need for librarians to keep good housing practices and to be aware of the total library collections, proper shelving of library materials must be taught and unfavourable environmental conditions for biological agents must be enhanced

Enforcing statistical constraints in generative adversarial networks for modeling chaotic dynamical systems

Simulating complex physical systems often involves solving partial differential equations (PDEs) with some closures due to the presence of multi-scale physics that cannot be fully resolved. Although the advancement of high performance computing has made resolving small-scale physics possible, such simulations are still very expensive. Therefore, reliable and accurate closure models for the unresolved physics remains an important requirement for many computational physics problems, e.g., turbulence simulation. Recently, several researchers have adopted generative adversarial networks (GANs), a novel paradigm of training machine learning models, to generate solutions of PDEs-governed complex systems without having to numerically solve these PDEs. However, GANs are known to be difficult in training and likely to converge to local minima, where the generated samples do not capture the true statistics of the training data. In this work, we present a statistical constrained generative adversarial network by enforcing constraints of covariance from the training data, which results in an improved machine-learning-based emulator to capture the statistics of the training data generated by solving fully resolved PDEs. We show that such a statistical regularization leads to better performance compared to standard GANs, measured by (1) the constrained model's ability to more faithfully emulate certain physical properties of the system and (2) the significantly reduced (by up to 80%) training time to reach the solution. We exemplify this approach on the Rayleigh-Bénard convection, a turbulent flow system that is an idealized model of the Earth's atmosphere. With the growth of high-fidelity simulation databases of physical systems, this work suggests great potential for being an alternative to the explicit modeling of closures or parameterizations for unresolved physics, which are known to be a major source of uncertainty in simulating multi-scale physical systems, e.g., turbulence or Earth's climate

Problems and Prospects of Automating Public Libraries in Ghana

Automation has become a very integral aspect of modern libraries. Automation of libraries is designed to replace traditional libraries with its numerous challenges, specifically for public libraries in Ghana. This study was conducted by reviewing different papers on prospects and challenges of library automation globally and specifically narrowed to Ghana. From the study, it was revealed that the main problems of automating libraries have been categorised under four main headings which are; No automation problem, pre automation problem, automation problem, and post automation problem. Other problems revealed were poor construction of databases, lack of provision of information literacy education among patrons, poor usage of online information resources among others. The study further sought to identify the potential benefits of automating public libraries in Ghana which were the availability of more resources to patrons, deployment of inventory libraries, reduce manual labor, and increased rate of patron’s access to catalogs. It was recommended that funds must be allocated to automate public library systems, encouragement of practical hands-on workshops, review progress on areas of digitisation, planning, and consultation from other automated libraries, and employment of computer mastery databases