Learning style preference and critical thinking perception among engineering students

Engineering education plays a vital role towards modernization of world. Therefore, engineering students need to be nurture with multiple skills like learning preferences and critical thinking skills. This study has been conducted to identify the learning style preferences and critical thinking perception of the engineering students from three programs electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and civil engineering at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), Johor. Survey research design was applied in this study. The quantitative data was collected by two questionnaires Index of Learning Styles (ILS) that is based on Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model (FSLSM) and Critical Thinking Skills (CTS) questionnaire which consists of analysis, evaluation, induction and deduction in terms of problem solving and decision making. A total of 315 final year engineering students were participated in this study. Data was analyzed in descriptive and inferential statistics involving tests Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson Correlation and linear regression. The study discovered that engineering students are preferred to be visual learners (83.80%). Visual learning style denotes FSLSM input dimension and visual learners learn best by diagrams, charts, maps and graphical presentations. This study also found that engineering students possess critical thinking perception in all dimensions. However, there is no statistical significant difference of learning style found among engineering programs as “p” value found 0.357. Whereas, there is statistical significant critical thinking difference found among engineering programs as “p” value found 0.006. Lastly, findings revealed that there is no significant relationship found between learning styles and critical thinking skills. The study findings suggested that providing preferred learning style (visual learning style) in classroom will enhance students’ academic achievement and increase their cognitive level. This study might serve as a guideline for educators to facilitate learners to enhance their learning and thinking for better outcomes in academia as well as in workplace

A Distributed Method for Trust-Aware Recommendation in Social Networks

This paper contains the details of a distributed trust-aware recommendation system. Trust-base recommenders have received a lot of attention recently. The main aim of trust-based recommendation is to deal the problems in traditional Collaborative Filtering recommenders. These problems include cold start users, vulnerability to attacks, etc.. Our proposed method is a distributed approach and can be easily deployed on social networks or real life networks such as sensor networks or peer to peer networks

Constraints and opportunities facing women entrepreneurs in developing countries: a relational perspective

Purpose: this purpose of the paper to examine the interplay of constraints and opportunities affecting female entrepreneurship in developing countries. The paper integrates salient micro- and macro-level perspectives and provides a rounded account of opportunities and constraints as part of a holistic interdependent system.Design/methodology/approach: the paper adopts an integrative multi-level research design and an interpretive research methodology, capitalizing on in-depth interviews with ten women entrepreneurs to explore their perceptions and interpretations of constraints and opportunities facing female entrepreneurship in the Lebanese context.Findings: the findings presented in this paper clearly illustrate the relevance of micro-, meso-, and macro-level factors in entrepreneurship research and the usefulness of integrating multiple lens and units of analysis to capture the complexity of the women entrepreneurship experience in any particular context.Originality/value: the value added of this research lies in adapting a framework recently popularized in the context of diversity management for use in entrepreneurship research, helping to capture in turn the dynamic interplay of multiple levels of analysis and objective/subjective factors influencing female entrepreneurshi

Characterization of whole-body vibration for monorail passenger ride comfort

Train travel has always been a major mode of public transport in developed countries. In the inner cities monorails are often used, which are operated at elevated rail or beam, the main advantage being traffic interactions can be minimized while maintaining its original landscape. Ride comfort is the basic requirement for every passenger in all kind of public transports. In monorail, vibration is considered as major factor of discomfort, it transmitted to human body, which contribute many health issues. The aim of this study was to evaluate the whole-body vibration transmission and the effects to the monorail passengers. There were total of twenty-four experiments conducted in a two-car train monorail on its complete line from Kuala Lumpur Sentral to Titiwangsa stations. Human vibration meter (HVM-100) with tri-axial accelerometer pad was used to measure the WBV of passengers and International Standards Organization (ISO) 2631-1: 1997 was used for analysis. The experimental results show that the daily vibration exposure 0.81 m/s2 was higher than the action value 0.5 m/s2 of the standard during peak operation and 0.82 m/s2 during off-peak operation. The health effect was measured 9.90 m/s1.75 during peak operation and 9.94 m/s1.75 during off-peak operation; both values are observed in moderate health effect zone as per standard (8.5 m/s1.75 to 17 m/s1.75). Moreover, the passenger ride comfort was measured, it was found to be fairly-uncomfortable at rear bogie and not-uncomfortable at center of car. The statistical analysis has proven the significance of orientation, location and operating hours by significant value p = 0.000 (i.e. p < α) with 29.5% of the variance has been accounted between groups. This provides justification to standardization of proper priority seating zone. The findings of this study can assist in the standard specification for seating design of monorail. The statistical analysis shows that all results are statistically significant for orientations, locations as well as operations

A bibliography and webliography of Arab Chicago

This Lab Note reflects the first stage of a three-year research project known as eChicago. This project is funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the full title of the project is Chicago community informatics: Places, uses, resources. Our interest here is to examine the population of Chicago, in particular a subset of ethnicities and community areas, and analyze how these communities are navigating the digital age. Stage one is to understand the communities today and discover how they are represented in cyberspace. Thus our initial products include a webliography/bibliography on each community.published or submitted for publicatio

The phase space analysis of modified gravity (MOG)

We investigate the cosmological consequences of a scalar-vector-tensor theory of gravity known as MOG. In MOG, in addition to metric tensor, there are two scalar fields $G(x)$ and $\mu(x)$, and one vector field $\phi_{\alpha}(x)$. Using the phase space analysis, we explore the cosmological consequences of a model of MOG and find some new interesting features which are absent in $\Lambda$CDM model. More specifically we study the possibility that if the extra fields of this theory behave like dark energy to explain the cosmic speedup. More interestingly, with or without cosmological constant, strongly phantom crossing happens. Also we find that this theory in its original form ($\Lambda\neq 0$), possesses a true sequence of cosmological epochs. Albeit we show that, surprisingly, there are two radiation dominated epochs $f_5$ and $f_6$, two matter dominated phases $f_3$ and $f_4$, and two late time accelerated eras $f_{12}$ and $f_{7}$. Depending on the initial conditions the universe will realize only three of these six eras. However, the matter dominated phases are dramatically different from the standard matter dominated epoch. In these phases the cosmic scale factor grows as $a(t)\sim t^{0.46}$ and $t^{0.52}$, respectively, which are slower than the standard case, i.e. $a(t)\sim t^{2/3}$. Considering these results we discuss the cosmological viability of MOG.Comment: To appear in EPJ