Collective Intelligence In Honors Program: Gifted Students Improved Creativity, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Motivation, And Satisfaction In University Life

The purpose of the current research was to explore the extent to which a proposed honors program facilitates the development of creativity, leadership, entrepreneurship, motivation, and satisfaction of gifted students in university life, and provide feedback on the program’s quality. In the era of AI’s minds that exceed humans in speed, problem-solving, and fast learnings algorithms, there are pressing needs for integrative and creative talented minds to form a super intelligent brain for innovative solutions that benefit society. The new millennium is full of challenges, that require a collective intelligence (CI) of gifted students to propose innovative solutions and think collaboratively to solve real-life problems. Higher education institutes ought to capitalize on gifted students’ intelligences to advance knowledge. Both quantitative and qualitative research design were employed on a volunteer sample consisted of 59 gifted students. The results showed that proposed honors program had achieved positive impact on students’ satisfaction, perception of program quality, motivation, creativity, and leadership. Gifted students pursued honors program form prestige, soft skills development and interactions with like minds. Further, qualitative results showed that CI of gifted students in honors program resulted in grand awards at national competition in innovative problem solving sponsored by a third party. Despite the limitations, it is very crucial that gifted students work collectively with like minds to develop a practical skill towards challenging issues that require CI

EFFECTS OF PARTICLE SIZE AND FLUIDIZING VELOCITY ON THE CHARGE DENSITY OF ENTRAINED FINES

A previously-developed Faraday cup fluidized bed unit was modified to facilitate the in-situ monitoring of the transient entrainment rate and net charge of entrained fine powders. This enabled the determination of the transient charge density as a function of particle size and residence time of entrained fine particles. The results showed that the charge density increased significantly with increasing size of entrained fines, but was not very sensitive to the residence time and the fluidizing gas velocity for the finest entrained particles at gas velocities of 0.24 and 0.36 m/s. At Ug=0.48 m/s, the charge density of larger particles increased with increasing particle residence time

The digitisation of paper-based assessment using e-standards

The use of computers to automate the process of learning and assessment is used in most educational and commercial institutions today. This is done by creating and storing online or digital learning materials and using them in required tasks. In order to use this principal in the automation of paper-based assessment, a standardised encoding scheme has to be employed. We have attempted an explorative study using the Instructional Management System’s (IMS) Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) specification and IMS Learning Resource Metadata Model (LRMM) to create learning objects (LOs). These LOs were based on traditional paper-based assessments and stored additional information that allowed for their effective sharing. The sharing was achieved by creating an OAI-compliant repository and the unqualified Dublin Core metadata (DC) set to describe them. A group of teachers evaluated the quality of paper-based assessments generated from these LOs and were very optimistic about the automation of this process

An Evaluation of the QTI E-Learning Standard in Resource-Limited Environments

Early Learning Management Systems (LMSes) were often criticised for their lack of interoperability. This situation is now being addressed by a cohesive standardisation effort in the form of IEEE-LOM, IMS-QTI and related specifications. While these standards are now supported by numerous LMSes, it is not known if they can be broadly applied to different types of LMSes developed for different communities, with widely varying facilities and requirements. This question was the focus of this study, where the IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standard was investigated for its applicability in a learning environment where not all learners have access to computers. It was proposed that alternative electronic learning management systems could focus on the teacher, with a shift in learning medium (to paper) at the interface between educators and students. To test this new philosophy for building LMSes, the QTI standard was used as the basis for a Web-based application to design questions and compose tests. Individual questions, collections of questions and entire tests were stored as linked and threaded collections of IMS-encoded records. The system then provided the ability to render a collection of questions for printing to paper. Analysis of the system building process revealed that the QTI standard is ambiguous and not easily applied in non-traditional situations where the focus is not on online testing. In spite of this shortcoming, a formal evaluation using a sample of educators confirmed that the system's use of the QTI standard was virtually transparent and that the system was indeed usable

Lightweight component-based scalability

Digital libraries and information management systems are increasingly being developed according to component models with well-defined APIs and often with Web-accessible interfaces. In parallel with metadata access and harvesting, Web 2.0 mashups have demonstrated the flexibility of developing systems as independent distributed components. It can be argued that such distributed components also can be an enabler for scalability of service provision in medium to large systems. To test this premise, this article discusses how an existing component framework was modified to include support for scalability. A set of lightweight services and extensions were created to migrate and replicate services as the load changes. Experiments with the prototype system confirm that this system can in fact be quite effective as an enabler of transparent and efficient scalability, without the need to resort to complex middleware or substantial system reengineering. Finally, specific problems areas have been identified as future avenues for exploration at the crucial intersection of digital libraries and high-performance computing

Component-based Digital Library Scalability using Cluster Computing

Most institutions make use of digital library systems (DL) to deal with the information they use. DL systems allow them to provide information management services, including the ability to search through and browse the information they have made available. The current architecture of the systems however, does not scale well when the amount of information increases dramatically. A good example of a digital library would be a national collection of academic theses. Such a system provides anyone the service of searching, browsing and viewing the theses in its collection. These services allow users to effectively and efficiently locate and make use of the materials available. With an increase in the number of users and underlying information these systems degrade quite rapidly though. This research is therefore aimed at creating digital library systems using components or services with the ability to migrate and replicate themselves on a collection or cluster of computers. Component based systems have proven to be more extensible and maintainable than monolithic systems. Each component encapsulates the functionality it requires and can be tested, modified and used without affecting other parts of the system. The components in this experimental system consist of Web services and are mobile, in that they have the ability to move around the cluster. Migration allows services or components to move to different locations in order to maximally use available resources. Replication serves to improve performance by improving availability as well as creating duplicates of services as an increase in the need for them arises. These two service enhancements promote a dynamic architecture with a greater degree of system efficiency and reliability. Currently, routing and migration modules have been implemented for the proposed system. Initial performance tests have been conducted and the results from these are discussed and analysed

Flexing Digital Library Systems

Digital library systems with monolithic architectures are rapidly facing extinction as the discipline adopts new practices in software engineering, such as component-based architectures and Web Services. Past projects have attempted to demonstrate and justify the use of components through the construction of systems such as NCSTRL and ScholNet. This paper describes current work to push the boundaries of digital library research and investigate a range of projects made feasible by the availability of suitable components. These projects include: the ability to assemble component-based digital libraries using a visual interface; the design of customisable user interfaces and workflows; the packaging and installation of systems based on formal descriptions; and the shift to a component farm for cluster-like scalability. Each of these sub-projects makes a potential individual contribution to research in architectures, while sharing a common underlying framework. Together, all of these projects support the hypothesis that a consistent component architecture and suite of components can provide the basis for advanced research into flexible digital library architectures

An Integration of Two Competing Models to Explain Practical Intelligence

Practical intelligence that accounts for people's performance on real-life problem solving is not related to intelligence in the traditional theories. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the role of two competing cognitive models in explaining practical intelligence. The author extracted from the literature four cognitive processes and two types of knowledge that significantly accounted for performance on real-life problem solving. The cognitive processes model included (a) metacognition, (b) defining a problem, (c) flexibility of thinking, and (d) selecting a solution strategy. The types of knowledge model included (a) structural knowledge, and (b) tacit knowledge. The secondary purpose of this research was to determine the contribution of some non-cognitive factors to practical intelligence. These factors included (a) self-efficacy, and (b) motivation. These processes and constructs were derived from contemporary theories of intelligence including the Triarchic Theory of Sternberg (1985a), the Bioecological Treatise of Ceci (1996), and theories of expertise.The author developed a Practical Intelligence Instrument (PII) battery based on components of the cognitive processes model, the types of knowledge model, and non-cognitive factors. The PII battery consisted of several subscales to measure components mentioned above. The PII also included items to measure familiarity with problems. The PII was administered to 116 volunteer participants. The validity of the PII subscales was derived from three sources: content, face, and construct validity, including convergent and discriminant. The reliability of the subscales in the PII battery ranged from .63 to .93. The PII also included four scenarios that are real-life problems. Participants were asked to provide solutions for these problems. Three experts from the social science field evaluated participants' strategies based on four criteria. Several statistical procedures were used to analyze the data including a hierarchal multiple regression model, ANOVA, and the Pearson Product-Moment correlation.The results showed that around 54% of the variance in practical intelligence was explained by the cognitive processes model, the types of knowledge model, and self-efficacy and motivation. The cognitive model explained around 42%. The types of knowledge model explained around 15%. The non-cognitive factors explained around 20 % of the variance in practical intelligence

Intelligence and Self-Control Predict Academic Performance of Gifted and Non-gifted Students

The role of intelligence and self-control on academic performance of academically gifted and non-gifted students was investigated. Intelligence was measured by the Cognitive Ability Test (CAT) which consisted of two subscales: verbal subtest and quantitative subtest. Selfcontrol was assessed by observing the level of students’ commitments to submit their assignments and homework timely. The sample consisted of 74 freshmen- male students. Academically gifted students were selected based on their academic performance as indicated by their GPA scores, the cut-off point was 3.50 out of 5.00. Intelligence and Self-control were entered a linear multiple regression model as independent variables whereas students’ GPAs in the first semester was entered as the criterion variable. The results showed that both intelligence and self-control correlated significantly with GPA for the whole sample, r (74)=.31 and .58 respectively (p<.01). Intelligence and selfControl did not correlate significantly with each other. The results also showed that for the whole sample both intelligence and self-control accounted for 42% of the variance in students GPAs. For the gifted sample, both intelligence and self-control explained around 59% of the variance in the GPAs