Formative Assessment and Consequential Validity: A Practice Yet to be Effectively Implemented in Saudi Higher Education

Standardized tests have been found in various settings strongly influencing students’ learning processes as well as outcomes, but such tests have been reported being unhelpful in improving student learning. In contrast, formative assessment (FA) is employed to help students know the level of their learning during a course and allow them to increase the standard of their learning, through knowing their learning weaknesses, receiving informative feedback from their teachers and applying adequate learning strategies, in order to achieve the formulated goals of the course. A thorough examination of empirical published research in the field revealed that insightful studies in Saudi academic context are still awaited. Therefore, this exploratory study was an attempt to investigate consequential validity of formative assessment at a Saudi university. To examine the nature of the consequential validity, data were collected from 960 English-major students via a survey (of whom 465 responded), 18 classroom observations and 4 focus-group interviews. The data underwent both statistical and content analysis. The results showed that FA, in the context of this study, seriously lacks intended consequential validity—positive impact on students’ learning. Besides, the data indicated a strong unintended consequential validity i.e., negative bearing of FA on what the students learnt, how they learnt it and the depth of their learning. Therefore, it is recommended that FA practices should be urgently revisited with expert understanding for the sake of students’ improved learning. Finally, teachers should be trained in how to employ FA tools more skillfully and effectually

Customer’s Perception on Service Quality Dimensions in Banking Sector of Pakistan

This study is conducted to know about the customers’ perception on service quality dimensions in banking sector of Pakistan. The main objectives of study are to evaluate the service quality dimensions with respect to perception and expectation in banking sector of Pakistan, to ascertain the gap between perception and expectation and to identify the impact of customer perception/expectation on Perceived service quality. We applied Paired sample T test, correlation and regression analysis for empirical purposes. Our results indicate the significant difference between all the dimensions in customer perceptions and expectations. All dimensions showed the negative difference which means customer expectations are higher than perception in every dimension. In last, we find the significant impact of customer expectation and perception on customer service quality. So we can conclude that banks put attention to improve these dimension’s performance and to achieve their goals in these competitive business environment. Keywords: Customer Perception, Customer Expectation, Perceived Service Quality, Paired Sample T test

ADVERSARY AWARE CONTINUAL LEARNING

Continual learning approaches are useful as they help the model to learn new information (classes) sequentially, while also retaining the previously acquired information (classes). However, these approaches are adversary agnostic, i.e., they do not consider the possibility of malicious attacks. In this dissertation, we have demonstrated that continual learning approaches are extremely vulnerable to the adversarial backdoor attacks, where an intelligent adversary can introduce small amount of misinformation to the model in the form of imperceptible backdoor pattern during training to cause deliberate forgetting of a specific class at test time. We then propose a novel defensive framework to counter such an insidious attack where, we use the attacker’s primary strength – hiding the backdoor pattern by making it imperceptible to humans – against it and propose to learn a perceptible (stronger) pattern (also during the training) that can overpower the attacker’s imperceptible (weaker) pattern. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed defensive mechanism through various commonly used replay-based (both generative and exact replay-based) continual learning algorithms using CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and MNIST benchmark datasets. Most noteworthy, we show that our proposed defensive framework considerably improves the robustness of continual learning algorithms with ZERO knowledge of the attacker’s target task, attacker’s target class, shape, size, and location of the attacker’s pattern. The proposed defensive framework also does not depend on the underlying continual learning algorithm. We term our proposed defensive framework as Adversary Aware Continual Learning (AACL)

Privacy, Access Control, and Integrity for Large Graph Databases

Graph data are extensively utilized in social networks, collaboration networks, geo-social networks, and communication networks. Their growing usage in cyberspaces poses daunting security and privacy challenges. Data publication requires privacy-protection mechanisms to guard against information breaches. In addition, access control mechanisms can be used to allow controlled sharing of data. Provision of privacy-protection, access control, and data integrity for graph data require a holistic approach for data management and secure query processing. This thesis presents such an approach. In particular, the thesis addresses two notable challenges for graph databases, which are: i) how to ensure users\u27 privacy in published graph data under an access control policy enforcement, and ii) how to verify the integrity and query results of graph datasets. To address the first challenge, a privacy-protection framework under role-based access control (RBAC) policy constraints is proposed. The design of such a framework poses a trade-off problem, which is proved to be NP-complete. Novel heuristic solutions are provided to solve the constraint problem. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scheme that studies the trade-off between RBAC policy constraints and privacy-protection for graph data. To address the second challenge, a cryptographic security model based on Hash Message Authentic Codes (HMACs) is proposed. The model ensures integrity and completeness verification of data and query results under both two-party and third-party data distribution environments. Unique solutions based on HMACs for integrity verification of graph data are developed and detailed security analysis is provided for the proposed schemes. Extensive experimental evaluations are conducted to illustrate the performance of proposed algorithms

Highlights of Trends and Future Challenges in Higher Education Institutions: An Explanatory Study

Transformation in the systems of higher education, increasing limitations of state funding and other related issues have led to elevate discussions on this matter. Existing descriptive research inclines to examine the relatively important emerging trends and challenges that are expected to be faced by the higher education institutes. Current study generally explains the higher educational context and has highlighted various discussions, overviews, and perceptions of various scholars of the field. In the broader framework the expected outcome is applicable to the policy makers at higher education level to see a glimpse of possible rising trends and emerging challenges in the higher educational sector and act accordingly. Further in other perspective the paper can be used in the literature review for further studies that tend to deeply investigate any specific challenge of higher education. Therefore, by keeping the track of emerging trends and challenges of higher education institutions will prove to be helpful in moving a step ahead

Socio-Economic development and sustainable development goals: a roadmap from vulnerability to sustainability through financial inclusion

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the importance of poverty reduction, and call for policy implementation that leads to the socio-economic development of impoverished people. However, there is a lack of knowledge about assessing individual-level socio-economic development, and how financial inclusion through microfinance can contribute to it. Therefore, the role of commercially operated Microfinance Banks (MFBs) is also considered to be controversial in the literature. This study assesses the overall socio-economic development by considering different sustainable livelihoods, multidimensional poverty, living standards, and social development measures. Thus, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), and Living Standard Index (LSI) have been estimated to gauge poverty and improvements in living standards. Data comprising 503 customers of MFBs, and 500 control respondents, has been gathered through a survey to signify this impact for two years. This paper substantiates that the microfinance obtained from MFBs contributes positively towards sustainable livelihoods, multidimensional poverty reduction, and living standards. However, microfinance does not contribute to social development. Impoverished people, mainly women living in urban areas, reap more benefits from microfinance, than their rural counterparts. Overall, financial inclusion shall be a gateway to achieve the SDGs in the long run through the socio-economic development of an impoverished segment of the society

Impact of Export on Economic growth of Pakistan

This research paper employed Augmented Dickey- Fuller to determine “impact of export on economic growth” while granger causality test which is statistically hypothesis test was used to determined the direction of causality between the selected variables under consideration whether selected time series is useful in forecasting. Correlation analysis was also deployed to determine the degree of relationship between the selected variables and the result shows that all the variables are highly correlated. The study uses time series data from 1992-2015, data obtained from the World Bank. The study reviles that export has an optimistic and significant impact on economic growth in Pakistan peroxide by GDP. Export was also found to be confidently and significantly impacting to economic growth in Pakistan proxied by GDP. Foreign reserve also has a optimistic and positive impact on economic growth of the country. Research result shows that the overall regression was statistically significant at both 99% and 95% level of confidence. The result of R2 (0.99) shows that the line of best fit was highly fitted. The result of the granger causality test shows that GDP granger causes Import & FDI. The research finds that, growth-export hypothesis is valid in Pakistan context. We therefore recommend among other things, that the government of Pakistan should take some necessary steps to restructure the Import sector so as to improve their contribution to the growth of Pakistani economy. The government should introduce more policies that will adequately boost the export sector of the Pakistan economy so that it will impact more meaningfully on economic growth of the Pakistan; other programs that encourages increase in foreign reserve should also be adopted in other to increase the growth of the economy in the country

Macroeconomic Variables Impact on Stock Market Performance in the Short & Long Run: A Pakistan Perspective

This study, based on 128 monthly observations, examines the impact of 11 macroeconomic variables on stock market performance in short and long run. The Johansen’s Co-integration test, Granger Causality test and Correlations test are used for empirical purposes. The timespan of study range from January 2005 to August 2015. The results states positive long run relationship between Stock Index and CPI, Money supply and oil prices. The negative long run relationship is found between stock returns and Exchange Rate, Foreign exchange reserve, Gold prices and Interest rate. However the results of Foreign Direct Investment, Index of industrial production, Imports and Exports are found insignificant for Johansen’s Co-integration. The Granger causality results states that causality runs from exchange rate to Index to FDI, Foreign exchange reserve, interest rate and exports. The only bidirectional causality is found between Crude oil prices and Index. To conclude, Stock index shows short and long run relationship with macroeconomic indicators and these can be used to predict each other. Keywords: Johansen’s Co-integration test, Granger Causality test, Karachi Stock exchange, Macroeconomic Variable

Operative management of patients with non-spinal metastatic bone disease. Does it actually improve quality of life?

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To determine the survival rate and functional outcome of skeletal stabilisation in patients with metastatic bone disease. METHODS: The retrospective study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and comprised data of patients with non-spinalmetastatic bone disease managed surgically from January 2002 to December 2010. All patients had been managed by experienced orthopaedic, oncology and multidisciplinary teams. Patients managed by non-oncologic orthopaedic surgeons were excluded. The prognostic influence of clinical, pathological and treatment variables on Musculoskeletal Tumour Society score, range of motion, local complications and death rate were measured. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Of the 49 patients whose records were included in the study, 21(42.9%) males and 28(57.1%) females with an overall median age of 59 years. Most common primary tumour site was breast in 15(3.8%) followed by lungs in 11(22.4%), Open reduction and internal fixation was the mpst commonly used procedure in 18(36.7%) patients. Mean duration of follow-up was 30.20±29.2 SD months (range: 10-48 months). The median patient survival was 23 months. 23% patients have superficial surgical site infection. Mean Musculoskeletal Tumour Society score was 23.73±14.3 SD. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm the principle that surgery for metastatic disease is done primarily to improve quality of life and ambulation status, and to alleviate pain