Key Challenges of On-Line Education in Multi-Cultural Context

In meeting the ever-growing educational needs of culturally diverse student populations, universities and colleges still seek to maintain high quality standards, both for in situ and on line education. Despite the latter's reportedly high effectiveness potential, online degree courses tend to have low students' persistence and satisfaction rates. In this pape, r we examine the role that students' and instructors' national cultures play in the way individuals learn at a distance. We argue that students' individual culture dimensions may prove influential in achieving overall learning outcomes. The key complexities for students involve understanding the instructor's role in a socio-constructivist approach, adapting online collaborative learning and acquiring academic skills. These can become crucial barriers to effective online learning. No less a challenge is presented by online distance education for instructors. Academic institutions' managements have high expectations in terms of utilizing up-to-date teaching techniques, enhancing competitive edge and maximizing cost-effectiveness. Thus, the teaching staff is expected to play an increasingly essential role in the new environment. We conclude that instructors have to develop strategies to motivate, support and counsel students with the aim of facilitating the students' on-line learning experience. This implies that teaching staff have to acquire new skills and competences vital for multicultural online education. Robert Kennedy College, whose experience is reflected in this paper, shares much of the issues of other institutions aiming to utilize distance online learning, but has the advantage that it was set up from the start as an online institution. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Diversification factors in the professional activities of Russian higher school faculty

Competitiveness of the higher education system is in many respects brought about by a degree of its diversification which is shown in vertical stratification and horizontal differentiation. These processes are manifested in the differentiation of the faculty professional activities, in their structure, contents, working hours and workloads. There become even more crucial the issues of balancing research and teaching activities, as well as the choice of criteria and subjects of the faculty effectiveness assessment.Конкурентоспособность системы высшего образования во многом обусловлена степенью её диверсифицированности, которая проявляется в вертикальной стратификации и горизонтальной дифференциации. Эти процессы находят отражения в дифференциации профессиональной деятельности вузовского преподавателя, в структуре, содержании и режиме работы ППС. Актуализируются проблемы соотношения научно-исследовательской и преподавательской деятельности, а также выбор критериев и субъектов оценки эффективности труда вузовского педагога

Heat pump energy in the energy and environmental security in the economic development of Ukraine

Volatility of Ukraine on imported energy resources and modern requirements to reduce anthropogenic pressure on the environment threaten the country's economic situation. A similar picture emerges in other countries. In this regard, special attention is paid to the energy policy of the development of heat pump energy. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3607

Russian military prose 1990–2000th

Становление новой военной прозы происходило в условиях необъявленной войны, сформировавшей устойчивое антимилитаристское общественное сознание, которое внесло существенные коррективы в современные исторические реконструкции. При всем разнообразии художественных подходов и стилевых воплощений современная проза о Великой Отечественной войне устремлена к решению главного вопроса — о цене Победы. Новая военная проза смыкается с литературой «потерянного поколения», усваивает опыт экзистенциалистской прозы, приемы модернистского письма, вступает на поле жанровых экспериментов.Formation of a new war prose occurred in the conditions of an undeclared war, to form a stable anti-militarist public consciousness, which has made significant adjustments in the modern historical reconstruction. Despite the diversity of artistic approaches and stylistic incarnations contemporary prose about the Great Patriotic War is oriented to solve the main issue — the price of Victory. New war prose literature merges with the “lost generation”, acquires experience existentialist prose, modernist techniques of writing, enters the field of genre experiments

Introduction to the special issue on generalisation from dialogical single case studies

Drawing on historical, theoretical and cultural knowledge, this introduction explains and justifies the importance of generalisation from dialogical single case studies. We clarify the meaning of dialogism and dialogicality, differentiate between single case studies and dialogical single case studies, identify the dynamic and ethical features of dialogical single case studies, and articulate the problem of generalisation as it pertains to this topic. We suggest that the question of generalisation ought to be viewed as an effort to resituate knowledge and its dialogical features, for example values, ethical standards or levels of engagement, in other dialogical single case studies

Artistic Reconstruction of the Great Patriotic War in Modern Mass Literature

Variants of artistic reconstruction of the events of the Great Patriotic War in modern mass literature are considered. The material is multi-genre texts of the 2000s: an alternative version of the history of the Great Patriotic War, free-thinking fantasies in a mystical spirit, a postmodern historical melodrama, a fantasy novel, a military-fantasy action movie. Particular attention is paid to the national bestsellers of the 2000s: novels by A. Turgenev (V. Kuritsyn) “Sleep and Believe: Blockade novel” and I. Boyashov “Tanker, or “The White Tiger.” It is shown that A. Turgenev in his work combines the legends of the besieged time with the cliches of a spy novel and love melodrama, I. Boyashov is the author of the story of the duel of a Russian tanker and a German miracle tank in the form of modern fantasy. The article affirms the idea that with the leave of the generation of front-line soldiers, the war moves from living memory into a repository of plots and images for literature and art, and becomes fertile material for constructing a different reality. It is hypothesized that mass literature, reconstructing the facts and events of the recent past, is involved in modeling and rethinking the ideological and value orientations of society and the formation of a new identity

Sing to me, baby: Infants show neural tracking and rhythmic movements to live and dynamic maternal singing

Infant-directed singing has unique acoustic characteristics that may allow even very young infants to respond to the rhythms carried through the caregiver’s voice. The goal of this study was to examine neural and movement responses to live and dynamic maternal singing in 7-month-old infants and their relation to linguistic development. In total, 60 mother-infant dyads were observed during two singing conditions (playsong and lullaby). In Study 1 (n = 30), we measured infant EEG and used an encoding approach utilizing ridge regressions to measure neural tracking. In Study 2 (n =40), we coded infant rhythmic movements. In both studies, we assessed children’s vocabulary when they were 20 months old. In Study 1, we found above-threshold neural tracking of maternal singing, with superior tracking of lullabies than playsongs. We also found that the acoustic features of infant-directed singing modulated tracking. In Study 2, infants showed more rhythmic movement to playsongs than lullabies. Importantly, neural coordination (Study 1) and rhythmic movement (Study 2) to playsongs were positively related to infants’ expressive vocabulary at 20 months. These results highlight the importance of infants’ brain and movement coordination to their caregiver’s musical presentations, potentially as a function of musical variability