Students’ Rating: Is it a Measure of an Effective Teaching or Best Gauge of Learning?

AbstractThis paper discusses the issue of how students’ rating could reflect on the effectiveness of teaching or gauge students’ learning. Student ratings of instruction are not the best gauge of learning. To boost student ratings we have created an evidence of their learning. Ratings of overall teaching effectiveness are moderately correlated with independent measures of student learning and achievement. At one time, it was considered contentious to administer student rating forms. Now such forms have become commonplace because it makes sense to survey students to find out what they think about their experiences in the class over the term. Also new suggestions that reflect on students’ learning and creative thinking were proposed here and consequently students rating form has been updated

QPSO-based energy-aware clustering scheme in the capillary networks for Internet of Things systems

Energy efficiency is a crucial challenge in cluster-based capillary networks for Internet of Things (IoT) systems, where the cluster heads (CHs) selection has great impact on the network performance. It is an optimization problem to find the optimum number of CHs as well as which devices are selected as CHs. In this paper, we formulate the clustering problem into the CHs selection procedure with the aim of maximizing the average network lifetime in every round. In particular, we propose a novel CHs selection scheme based on QPSO and investigate how effective it is to prolong network lifetime and reserve the overall battery capacity. The simulation results prove that the proposed QPSO outperforms other evolutionary algorithms and can improve the network lifetime by almost 10%

Effect of realistic sea surface movements in achieving full-view coverage camera sensor network

In stationary camera sensor networks (CSNs), when the deployment characteristics and sensing models are defined, the coverage can be deduced and remain unchanged over time. However, in the maritime environment, the rough and random sea condition can move CSN from the initial location. We envisage that camera sensors are mounted on quasi‐mobile platforms such as buoys. Hence, it is important to understand the effect of realistic sea surface movements in achieving full‐view coverage because in full‐view coverage, target's facing direction is taken into account to judge whether a target is guaranteed to be captured because image shot at the frontal viewpoint of a given target considerably increases the possibility to detect and recognize the target. To accurately emulate the maritime environment, the movement of the buoy, which is attached with a cable that is nailed at the sea floor, has been characterized based on the sea wave that is created by the wind, and it is limited by the cable. The average percentage of full‐view coverage has been evaluated based on different parameters such as equilateral triangle grid length, sensing radius of camera, wind speed and wave height. Furthermore, a method to improve the target detection and recognition has been proposed in the presence of poor link quality using cooperative transmission with low power consumption. In some parameter scenario, the cooperative transmission method has achieved around 70% improvement in the average percentage of full‐view coverage of a given target and total reduction of around 13% for the total transmission power PTotal(Q)

Fetal Cardiac Doppler Signal Processing Techniques: Challenges and Future Research Directions

The fetal Doppler Ultrasound (DUS) is commonly used for monitoring fetal heart rate and can also be used for identifying the event timings of fetal cardiac valve motions. In early-stage fetuses, the detected Doppler signal suffers from noise and signal loss due to the fetal movements and changing fetal location during the measurement procedure. The fetal cardiac intervals, which can be estimated by measuring the fetal cardiac event timings, are the most important markers of fetal development and well-being. To advance DUS-based fetal monitoring methods, several powerful and well-advanced signal processing and machine learning methods have recently been developed. This review provides an overview of the existing techniques used in fetal cardiac activity monitoring and a comprehensive survey on fetal cardiac Doppler signal processing frameworks. The review is structured with a focus on their shortcomings and advantages, which helps in understanding fetal Doppler cardiogram signal processing methods and the related Doppler signal analysis procedures by providing valuable clinical information. Finally, a set of recommendations are suggested for future research directions and the use of fetal cardiac Doppler signal analysis, processing, and modeling to address the underlying challenges

An analysis of uncovered area for camera sensor network in maritime environment

Nowadays, accurate and low-cost autonomous maritime surveillance of camera sensor network is a critical requirement for various applications. In a maritime environment, camera sensors are deployed on mobile platforms, such as buoys. With an anchored buoy architecture, sensor locations are quasistationary. When sensors move, some areas may not be covered at some times. This paper analyzes the extend of the uncovered area in a realistic maritime environment. We present numerical results to variation in uncovered areas from time to time. Also in this paper, the simulation of the uncovered area detection of camera sensor network (CSN) used in maritime surveillance is presented using MATLAB

Full-view coverage quasi-mobile camera sensor network for maritime surveillance

Coverage of a camera sensor network (CSN) is a critical issue in deploying such network in maritime environment. In such environment, camera sensors will not be stationary after the initial deployment due to the hostile sea environment. Hence, the mobility pattern poses a major limitation on identifying the time-varying coverage. In full-view coverage, target's facing direction has been introduced to judge whether a target's facing direction is guaranteed to be captured. To this end, we exploit full-view coverage in CSN, since image shots at the frontal viewpoint of a given target considerably increase the possibility to detect and recognize the target. In this paper, we have developed a mobility pattern based on wind speed and spring relaxation technique which are used to characterize the total displacement of a given buoy. Furthermore, the average percentage of full-view coverage has been evaluated based on different parameters such as equilateral triangle grid length, sensing radius of camera, wind speed and wave height. Consequently, the proposed model has been validated through MATLAB simulation platform

An overview of maritime wireless mesh communication technologies and protocols

Maritime wireless mesh networks (MWMNs) are conceived to provide network connectivity for maritime users and enable them to communicate with correspondent users connected to terrestrial communication networks. The high cost and low data-rate of satellite and other legacy maritime communication technologies and systems deployed in MWMNs pose major limitation to establish reliable and affordable maritime communications. In addition, the design of routing protocols in MWMNs remains a significant challenge due to the lack of reliable communication infrastructure and complexity of maritime environment. This paper explains the existing maritime communication technologies and routing protocols which could be deployed in implementing reliable MWMNs. Comprehensive guidelines are outlined to easily understand and critically assess the different deployed maritime communication networks and systems with routing protocols, and identify the milestones in the process of developing and implementing broadband MWMNs