Bringing Computational Thinking to STEM Education

AbstractToday, as advanced technologies and cloud computing tools emerge, it is imperative that such innovations are sustained with knowledge and skill set among STEM educators and practitioners. In this paper, the author reports on a project, HBCU-UP II, that works on bringing Computational Thinking to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. A Computational-Thinking based strategy is adopted to enforce thinking computationally in STEM gate-keeping courses. The paper presents framework, implementation and outcomes. This on-going project contributes to efforts to establish computational thinking as a universally applicable attitude that is meshed within STEM conversations, education, and curricula. This paper will be particularly useful for researchers interested in Computational Thinking and its applications in STEM education, in particular and higher education in genera

HeWEK: Measuring the Health Website Quality From the Perception of the African American

Unintentionally, the growth of health websites deepened health disparities between population subgroup as it considers the perception of some sub-populations and ignore the needs of others when designing health websites. This paper presents a study that aims onto considering the perception of the African American in identifying the quality attributes of health websites. Based on focus group research and two-round factor analysis, findings indicate that quality of health websites is a function of dimensions of Aesthetic Design’, ‘Website Usability’, ‘Information Quality’, ‘Information Architecture’, ‘Responsiveness’, ‘Trust’, ‘Identity’, ‘Appropriateness to Culture’, and ‘Learnability’. The paper provides useful messages for website designers, website content mangers, usability practitioners, and web-based healthcare program managers. Also, theoretical implications and limitation of the study are presented

Developing an Instrument for Measuring Electronic Shopping Service Quality: E-SQUAL

In contrast to service quality in traditional facilities (e.g., stores, restaurants, clinics) that enjoyed an extensive research during the last 20 years and resulted in a solid base for service quality measurement and management, service quality that is delivered via the web, termed here electronic service quality, lacks maturity. The present study develops and validates an instrument for measuring electronic service quality of online shopping sites. Using two independent datasets, a conceptual framework of e-service quality is proposed and empirically tested. This research develops an E-SQUAL scale consisting of six dimensions: information quality, web usability, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and personalization. The developed scale demonstrates strong psychometric properties in terms of reliability and validity. Conclusion, implications and limitations of the study are presented

Key Dimensions of E-commerce Service Quality and Its Relationships to Satisfaction and Loyalty

Evidence exists that one successful strategy to satisfy and retain customers is offering superior service quality. Motivated by the growing interest in e-commerce, we focus our research questions on identifying the key dimensions of e-commerce service quality and its relationships to customer satisfaction and loyalty. In exploring answers to our research questions a hypothesized model is proposed and empirically tested using a research survey with 370 online shoppers. Salient results include: (1) key dimensions of e-commerce service quality are website usability, information quality, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and personalization; (2) customer satisfaction is influenced mostly with the perception of reliability, while customer loyalty is affected by the perception of assurance; (3) customer retention is predicted by the customer satisfaction index. Results of the study contribute to the nascent body of research in e-service quality and offer unique insights for managers of online firms on how to manage the quality of their e-commerce e-service

Spectrophotometric analysis of lipid used to examine the phenology of the tick <i>Ixodes ricinus</i>

Ticks store lipid as an energy souce, which depletes progressively between blood meals. The amount of lipid and rate of lipid depletion can be used as a good indicator of the feeding history and assist in explaining the phenology of tick populations. However, existing gravimetric approaches to lipid measurement are relatively imprecise. To improve our ability to accurately measure lipid accumulation and metabolism in individual ticks, a microquantity colorimetric sulfophosphovanillan method of lipid estimation was standardised and used to explore the seasonal variations in the lipid content of I. ricinus nymphs.Lipid values for field-derived questing ticks, collected by blanket dragging, varied between 5-45 μg and clear patterns of lipid depletion were demonstrated under controlled laboratory conditions. For field populations collected monthly over two years, the results indicate that two different cohorts of nymphs enter the questing tick population in autumn and spring, with very few nymphs joining the population in summer.The data illustrate the seasonal change in lipid content of nymphal ticks, reflecting their feeding history and highlight the utility of the spectrophotometric technique for analysis of lipid in ticks in helping to improve our understanding of seasonal activity patterns