Challenges for rural school leaders in a developing context: the case of Solomon Islands

Thirty-eight rural school leaders in Solomon Islands responded to a questionnaire aimed at identifying their perceptions of work challenges. The data analysis points to an overwhelming percentage of school leaders feeling they face multifaceted problems in their work settings, including such challenges as untrained teachers, lack of funding, limited learning and teaching resources, and land disputes. The latter in particular is beyond the school leader’s jurisdiction; addressing it needs urgent attention from the principal stakeholder(s). Such challenges, seemingly tangential to the business of schooling, inadvertently affect the provision of good-quality education. The findings demonstrate that contextual challenges raise questions about what powers leadership at school level has to deal with some of them. The suggestion is advanced for the significant place-conscious leadership development to help address some community and cultural challenges. Implications of this paper are likely to be relevant to other similar contexts in the Pacific region and beyond

Novel Lyapunov - based autonomous controllers for Qquadrotors

In this paper, we look into the dynamic motion planning and control of an unmanned aerial vehicle, namely, the quadrotor, governed by its dynamical equations. It is shown for the first time that the Direct or the Second Method of Lyapunov is an effective tool to derive a set of continuous nonlinear control laws that not only provide smooth trajectories from a designated initial position to a designated target, but also continuously minimise the roll and pitch of the quadrotor en route to its targets. The latter successfully addresses the challenging problem of a quadrotor autonomously transporting valuable and fragile payloads safely to the designated target. Computer simulations are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control laws

Factors Affecting Interaction on Moodle: An Empirical Study Based on TAM

In this paper, we looked at the factors that affect students’ interaction on Moodle. These factors were assimilated into Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to ex-plore if the mentioned factors actually affected the actual usage of Moodle. A qualitative method research approach was used to collect data. Students filled in a questionnaire with open ended questions for the purpose of this research. Data was collected and the identified factors were categorized according to the seg-ments of TAM. The factors were divided under perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward using and behavioral intention to use. It was found that the factors did have an effect on students’ interaction on Moodle

Motion planning and posture control of the general 3 - trailer system

This paper presents a set of artificial potential field functions that improves upon, in general, the motion planning and posture control, with theoretically guaranteed point and posture stabilities, convergence and collision avoidance properties of the general3-trailer system in a priori known environment. We basically design and inject two new concepts; ghost walls and the distance optimization technique (DOT) to strengthen point and posture stabilities, in the sense of Lyapunov, of our dynamical model. This new combination of techniques emerges as a convenient mechanism for obtaining feasible orientations at the target positions with an overall reduction in the complexity of the navigation laws. Simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the controls laws

Student Interaction on Moodle for a Foundation Course at a Tertiary Institute in Fiji

In this paper, we examine which interaction(s) students engage in the most on Moodle in a Pre-degree (English Foundation) course in a tertiary institute in Fiji. A mixed method research approach was used to collect data. Quantitative data was collected and analysed for students’ interaction on Moodle with the content, teacher, other learners, learning environment, assessment, and feedback on as-sessment. Qualitative data was examined to explore students’ interaction with the institution. It was found that students interacted mostly with the learning envi-ronment than the other forms of interaction, as this included the total number of times students logged into the course (LLFXX) Moodle page. Their interaction with the assessment and feedback on assessment was also higher than the con-tent, teacher, and other learners. Therefore, it can be concluded that students’ in-teraction was high for assessment related interactions (assessment and feedback on assessment)

Correlational study of students’ Moodle log for assessments and feedback on assessments on Moodle for a mandatory pre - degree English course

This study explored the correlation between students’ Moodle logs on assessments and feedback on assessments on LLFXX Moodle page. Nine forms of assessments and four forms of feedback on assessments on LLFXX Moodle page were studied. Four of these assessments are part of students’ continuous assessments which add up to 50% of their Course work. Three of the feedbacks on assessments are for these continuous assessed assignments and tests. 80 Blended mode students from the Laucala campus of the university participated in this research. LLFXX, which is a mandatory pre-degree English course was used for the purpose of this research. A quantitative research method was employed to analyse data. Data was extracted on Moodle logs of LLFXX Blended mode Laucala students and were analyzed using two statistical tests. Pearson’s chi-square test in SPSS was used to find the correlation between Moodle logs for assessments and feedback for assessments on LLFXX Moodle page. Pearson’s correlational coefficient test from SPSS was used to find the degree of association between Moodle logs for each of the assessments and their feedbacks in LLFXX. There was no correlation (statistically insignificant) found between the Moodle logs for test 2 for LLFXX and Moodle logs for feedback on tests. However, there was a statistically significant correlation found between the Moodle logs of other assessments and their feedback for LLFXX

Potential field functions for motion planning and posture of the standard 3 - trailer system

This paper presents a set of artificial potential field functions that improves upon, in general, the motion planning and posture control, with theoretically guaranteed point and posture stabilities, convergence and collision avoidance properties of 3-trailer systems in a priori known environment. We basically design and inject two new concepts; ghost walls and the distance optimization technique (DOT) to strengthen point and posture stabilities, in the sense of Lyapunov, of our dynamical model. This new combination of techniques emerges as a convenient mechanism for obtaining feasible orientations at the target positions with an overall reduction in the complexity of the navigation laws. The effectiveness of the proposed control laws were demonstrated via simulations of two traffic scenarios

Formation control of mobile robots

In this paper, we study the formation control problem for car-like mobile robots. A team of nonholonomic mobile robots navigate in a terrain with obstacles, while maintaining a desired formation, using a leader-following strategy. A set of artificial potential field functions is proposed using the direct Lyapunov method for the avoidance of obstacles and attraction to their designated targets. The effectiveness of the proposed control laws to verify the feasibility of the model is demonstrated through computer simulations

Effectiveness of school strategic planning: the case of Fijian schools

In Fiji, notable among the recent spate of educational reforms has been the Ministry of Education’s (MoEs) requirement that all schools undertake a process of school strategic planning. This preliminary study explores perceptions of a sample of Fijian teachers on the way this exercise has been conducted in their schools. The analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data indicates that school leaders’ lack of knowledge and skills in school strategic planning is a major limitation. As an unsurprising consequence, the process(es) schools adopted did not conform to what the literature suggests as best planning practices. School leaders need more training to ensure they are better prepared to carry out this strategic planning effectively, especially in widening the opportunities for all who have a stake in education to contribute to the process. Implications of the findings are likely to be pertinent to other developing contexts within and beyond the Pacific region for the training of school leaders to ensure they are better equipped to orchestrate and benefit from educational reforms thrust upon them

Synchronous and asynchronous engagement on moodle in an English course offered through blended mode

Learner engagement is a crucial component of the teaching learning process. More emphasis is placed on learner engagement with the introduction of technology-based learning. Learner engagement with the content, instructor, other learners, learning environment, assessment activities and feedback on Moodle in synchronous and asynchronous learning was investigated in this study for a pre-degree English language course. It was found that there was presence of asynchronous engagement in all the forms of engagement. However, synchronous engagement was only present for learner engagement with the content, instructor, and other learners. It was also found that generally, there was more asynchronous engagements than synchronous engagement