A survey on the pedagogical features of language massive open online courses

Purpose – This paper examines the pedagogical features of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for language learning–known as language MOOCs. The mainstream pedagogy of MOOCs typically involves the provision of short videos and reading materials for self-study; discussion forums, mostly for peer-to-peer interaction on course content; and machine-graded quizzes for self-assessment. For language learning, which has been conventionally understood as skill development, the pedagogical features of relevant MOOCs have yet to be comprehensively surveyed. Design/methodology/approach – This study surveyed a total of 123 language MOOCs from the major MOOC platforms. The pedagogical features shown in these courses were identified and categorised according to the types of course materials and learning activities as well as the participation of learners and instructors. Findings – English was the most common language taught in the courses. Over 80% of the courses took not more than six hours to complete. Most of these courses followed the typical approach of xMOOC delivery, with video watching, reading and auto-graded assessment being the most common learning activities. Less than half of the courses included discussion as part of learning, and instructors were involved in less than 30% of the discussion. Originality/value – The findings show that, despite the technological advances in course delivery, current language MOOCs do not differ substantially from conventional distance language learning. Yet, the utilisation of computer-assisted language learning technology and the massive student base of MOOCs for creating a virtual social community are opportunities for developing learners' language proficiency on this learning environment

HONG KONG TEACHERS’ ENGLISH ORAL INPUT IN KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOMS

Oral input has long been recognised as a key factor influencing second language acquisition in early childhood. Children rely heavily on oral input to learn new words and develop phonological awareness of a language. However, in the context of English teaching in Hong Kong kindergartens — which feature diversity in language use in the classroom — little work has been done on the oral input given to children. This study examined the English oral input of teachers in Hong Kong kindergarten classrooms. It investigated the amount and features of teachers’ English oral input, and how the input affected the conditions for English language learning. Classroom observations were conducted monthly for three months with one native speaking (NS) and two non-native speaking (NNS) kindergarten teachers together with a total of 44 Chinese-speaking children. The research used the Oral Input Quality Observation Scheme developed for systematically collecting oral input and output data from the teachers and children respectively. The results show that the learning activities did not seem to be hindered by the different pronunciations of the NS and NNS teachers. However, the NS teacher tended to use a broader variety of vocabulary and a richer amount of English than the NNS teachers. Both the NS and NNS teachers demonstrated limitations in pedagogical skills in teaching the children English pronunciation. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to the context of English teaching in Hong Kong kindergartens

Roundtable : Regional perspectives and politics = 圓桌討論 : 區域視野與政治

On 23rd July 2016, the first roundtable of SSFS3 was launched. Moderated by Ma Kwok Ming, this session consisted of 4 presentations by different speakers: Darwis Khudori, Pedro Páez, Wei Ran and Erebus Wong

Secondary intention healing with satisfactory outcome after nodular basal cell carcinoma excision on the face

AbstractSecondary intention healing on concave areas of the face may provide acceptable cosmetic outcome after tumor excision but is underused. We evaluated cosmetic outcome and tumor recurrence of this technique in 10 patients with nodular basal cell carcinoma and one patient with basosquamous carcinoma on the face. The average size of these tumors was 1 cm. Subjective evaluations included patients' satisfaction on the degree of wound pain, ease of wound care, and satisfaction with cosmetic outcome. Objective evaluations included physician's scoring on the time to complete wound healing, wound infection, cosmetic outcome, and tumor recurrence after operation. The operations were completed in 30 minutes on average. All wounds healed well without infection within 4 weeks. Postoperation wound pain was absent to mild. Wound care was neither difficult nor troublesome. All patients were satisfied with the cosmetic outcome. Physicians scored good or excellent cosmetic outcome in 91% of patients. No tumor recurred during 3–60 months (median, 13 months) of follow-up. Secondary intention healing appears to be a good option after excision of nodular basal cell carcinomas located on concave areas of the face. Good to excellent cosmetic results can be expected after wound healing

Local structural alignment of RNA with affine gap model

Predicting new non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) of a family can be done by aligning the potential candidate with a member of the family with known sequence and secondary structure. Existing tools either only consider the sequence similarity or cannot handle local alignment with gaps. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding the optimal local structural alignment between a query RNA sequence (with known secondary structure) and a target sequence (with unknown secondary structure) with the affine gap penalty model. We provide the algorithm to solve the problem. Based on a preliminary experiment, we show that there are ncRNA families in which considering local structural alignment with gap penalty model can identify real hits more effectively than using global alignment or local alignment without gap penalty model.The project is partially supported by the Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (Project number: 200911159065) of the University of Hong Kong

SOAP3-dp: Fast, Accurate and Sensitive GPU-based Short Read Aligner

To tackle the exponentially increasing throughput of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), most of the existing short-read aligners can be configured to favor speed in trade of accuracy and sensitivity. SOAP3-dp, through leveraging the computational power of both CPU and GPU with optimized algorithms, delivers high speed and sensitivity simultaneously. Compared with widely adopted aligners including BWA, Bowtie2, SeqAlto, GEM and GPU-based aligners including BarraCUDA and CUSHAW, SOAP3-dp is two to tens of times faster, while maintaining the highest sensitivity and lowest false discovery rate (FDR) on Illumina reads with different lengths. Transcending its predecessor SOAP3, which does not allow gapped alignment, SOAP3-dp by default tolerates alignment similarity as low as 60 percent. Real data evaluation using human genome demonstrates SOAP3-dp's power to enable more authentic variants and longer Indels to be discovered. Fosmid sequencing shows a 9.1 percent FDR on newly discovered deletions. SOAP3-dp natively supports BAM file format and provides a scoring scheme same as BWA, which enables it to be integrated into existing analysis pipelines. SOAP3-dp has been deployed on Amazon-EC2, NIH-Biowulf and Tianhe-1A.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PLoS ONE, additional files available at "https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bhclhxpoiubh371/O5CO_CkXQE". Comments most welcom

A Study of Success Rate of Miniscrew Implants as Temporary Anchorage Devices in Singapore

Objective. To find out the success rate of miniscrew implants in the National Dental Centre of Singapore (NDCS) and the impact of patient-related, location-related, and miniscrew implant-related factors. Materials and Methods. Two hundred and eighty-five orthodontic miniscrew implants were examined from NDCS patient records. Eleven variables were analysed to see if there is any association with success. Outcome was measured twice, immediately after surgery prior to orthodontic loading (T1) and 12 months after surgery (T2). The outcome at T2 was assessed 12 months after the miniscrew’s insertion date or after its use as a temporary anchorage device has ceased. Results. Overall success rate was 94.7% at T1 and 83.3% at T2. Multivariate analysis revealed only the length of miniscrew implant to be significantly associated with success at both T1 (P=0.002) and T2 (P=0.030). Miniscrew implants with lengths of 10–12 mm had the highest success rate (98.0%) compared to other lengths, and this is statistically significant (P=0.035). At T2, lengths of 10–12 mm had significantly (P=0.013) higher success rates (93.5%) compared to 6-7 mm (76.7%) and 8 mm (82.1%) miniscrew implants. Conclusion. Multivariate statistical analyses of 11 variables demonstrate that length of miniscrew implant is significant in determining success

A Study of Success Rate of Miniscrew Implants as Temporary Anchorage Devices in Singapore

Objective. To find out the success rate of miniscrew implants in the National Dental Centre of Singapore (NDCS) and the impact of patient-related, location-related, and miniscrew implant-related factors. Materials and Methods. Two hundred and eighty-five orthodontic miniscrew implants were examined from NDCS patient records. Eleven variables were analysed to see if there is any association with success. Outcome was measured twice, immediately after surgery prior to orthodontic loading (T1) and 12 months after surgery (T2). The outcome at T2 was assessed 12 months after the miniscrew's insertion date or after its use as a temporary anchorage device has ceased. Results. Overall success rate was 94.7% at T1 and 83.3% at T2. Multivariate analysis revealed only the length of miniscrew implant to be significantly associated with success at both T1 ( = 0.002) and T2 ( = 0.030). Miniscrew implants with lengths of 10-12 mm had the highest success rate (98.0%) compared to other lengths, and this is statistically significant ( = 0.035). At T2, lengths of 10-12 mm had significantly ( = 0.013) higher success rates (93.5%) compared to 6-7 mm (76.7%) and 8 mm (82.1%) miniscrew implants. Conclusion. Multivariate statistical analyses of 11 variables demonstrate that length of miniscrew implant is significant in determining success