Average Class Size Research Articles

Lessons learned from implementing culturally sensitive adaptations to a nutrition education program in four Anishinaabe communities

BackgroundThe Anishinaabe ways of eating healthy and staying physically active are not well represented in federally funded health education programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed). The curricula approved for use by SNAP-Ed implementing agencies was not developed with Anishinaabe foods, cultures and traditions in mind. ObjectiveThis paper shares the process and lessons learned from a collaborative effort to adapt recipes from a SNAP-Ed-approved nutrition and cooking education program, Cooking Matters® at Home (CMAH) to reflect cultural preferences and traditions of participants from four Anishinaabe tribal communities in Michigan. MethodsUniversity Extension instructors, tribal health staff and an inter-tribal organization co-designed and implemented the adaptation. Extension instructors facilitated four separate series of cooking and nutrition classes using CMAH curriculum with four Tribes. A descriptive, cross-sectional evaluation design focused on participant engagement and recipe adaptation. Evaluation included formative interviews with tribal health staff, post-intervention community participant focus groups to assess program satisfaction and cultural acceptability of adaptations, and process interviews with Extension instructors and tribal health staff. ResultsBetween October 3 and December 7, 2022, classes reached 30 adults across four sites. Average class size was 7-8 participants. 86% of participants attended every class session offered in their community. Eight recipes were adapted to include traditional foods (e.g., wild rice, maple syrup); eleven were prepared as written. A challenge was access and availability of some traditional recipe ingredients. Participants expressed a range of food knowledge and behaviors that reflect diverse histories and cultures within each community. Tribal staff and participants suggested that Extension instructors build rapport with community members, approach activities and participants with curiosity rather than sharing "expert" advice, implement more continuous programming, and improve cultural sensitivity. ConclusionsSNAP-Ed programs should support access to local indigenous foods and make space for both community and individual traditions.

School Leadership Capacity and Student Achievement: A Study of High Schools

Organizationally, what does not get measured is not prioritized or improved. Unlike student outcomes, the leadership environment that produces the results is rarely examined for its merit and impact. In this study, a quantitative survey gathered information to investigate the impacts of leadership capacity constructs on academic achievement. Principals from 161 public high schools and their schools provided the data (leadership capacity, demographics, and reading and math scores). Data were analyzed using descriptive, correlational, and regression statistics. Findings indicated significant high correlations among leadership capacity variables, significant relationships between school demographics (total school enrollment, percentage of low-income students, average class size, and attendance) and reading and math scores, and non-significant correlations between leadership capacity and academic achievement. The study delineated specific leadership capacity behaviors within the constructs that predicted student academic achievement in math and reading. The study suggests increased capacity and practice of these leadership behaviors to improve work setting and student achievement.

Blended Learning Approach in Teaching English Writing Skill at Senior High School

Online educational resources are combined with platforms or locations that simulate traditional classroom settings to create blended learning. Utilizing technology with the intention of achieving the learning process' objective is blended learning implementation. The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of the blended learning approach and to find out the students’ perception on the use of blended learning approach in English writing skill at senior high school the eleventh-grade students of SMA Negeri 13 Makassar, which consists of 6 classes with an average class size of 35 to 36 students, comprised the population of this study. After that, the researcher used the cluster random sampling approach to select 71 students from two classes as the study's subject. Based on the findings of this research, SPSS output for independent sample t-tests, t-test 4,426 is higher than t-table 1,995. The t-test's outcome demonstrates that there is a significant difference between the t-test's score and the t-table's score. This suggests that the treatment has a big impact on how well students can write. According to the questionnaire results, students at SMA Negeri 13 Makassar's eleventh grade have a positive perception of the behavior on the use of blended learning approach to teach English writing in senior high school. . In conclusion, SMA Negeri 13 Makassar's eleventh grade students' writing skills are considerably affected by the use of a blended learning approach.

Hybrid resampling and weighted majority voting for multi-class anomaly detection on imbalanced malware and network traffic data

In a large skewed dataset, the data imbalance is severe and the classifier's accuracy is biased towards the majority class. Insufficient data makes it challenging for the classifier to learn the feature of the minority classes. Moreover, some existing techniques of binary classification cannot directly apply to multi-classification. Plain oversampling may generate redundant and irrelevant data for the minority classes while undersampling may eliminate too many features for the majority class. This paper proposes a combination of constrained undersampling, oversampling, noise cleaning, and a weighted majority voting classifier (WMVC) to detect multi-classification obfuscated malware via memory and network traffic anomalies. As a constraint on undersampling and oversampling, the proposed framework divides the total sample number by the class number to obtain the average class size. According to the constraint, one or more majority classes are down-sampled using Random Undersampling, while all the minority classes are up-sampled using Adaptive Synthetic Sampling Approach, which is followed by Tomek Link to remove the noisy data. Then a weighted majority voting classifier aggregated tree-based ensemble algorithms is designed and compared to the XGBoost and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) classifiers and six state-of-the-art ensemble algorithms. The comparison results show that the performance of the classifiers on balanced data outperforms those on imbalanced data, and the WMVC outperforms XGBoost, CNN, and the six other ensemble algorithms. Our approach can alleviate the classifier's bias towards the majority class while improving its performance for the difficult minority class.

The Effect of Scrabble Game on Students' Vocabulary Mastery of Grade Eight at SMP Negeri 12 Pematang Siantar

The aim of this research is to determine the effect of the reading aloud strategy on the pronunciation abilities of seventh grade students at SMP Negeri 3 Pematangsiantar. In this research, researchers used quantitative research methods with a quasi-experimental design and pre-test, post-test and control designs. The sample for this research consisted of class VIII students at SMP Negeri 12 Pematang Siantar with an average class size of 32 in the 2022–2023 academic year. There are around 288 students in class VIII. By using this technique, the sample that will be used in this research consists of two classes, namely class VIII-8 as the experimental class and class VIII-9 as the control class at SMP Negeri 12 Pematang Siantar. From the results of research conducted at SMP Negeri 12 Pematang Siantar, it was found that there was an influence of the application of the Scrabble game on mastery of mathematics. This can be seen from the students' average score in the test, namely pre-test 54.21 and post-test 76.09, while the researchers' learning results found that the t-test in this study was 2.14. Based on the previously designed hypothesis formulation, the hypothesis is not rejected if tcount is greater than ttable. The meaning of these results is that students who were taught to use the game Scrabble were better than students who did not use the game Scrabble in the classroom treatment process. After carrying out calculations, the researchers found that in this study the t-count was higher than the t-table. Referring to this, we can put forward the following hypothesis. t-count > t-table 5%, namely 2.14 > 1.670. Because the calculated t-value (2.14) is higher than the t-table (1.670) at the 5% significance level for a two-sided test, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted. Therefore, the Scrabble Game is very effective as a learning support medium, especially in improving mathematics mastery.

Quasi‐identifier recognition with echo chamber optimization‐based anonymization for privacy preservation of cloud storage

SummaryThe publication of data raises several security concerns, implying that when a reputable company offers data to a third party, personal information is not needed to be revealed. The fundamental issue that led to identity leakage is the connection of quasi‐identifiers (QIDs); however, the majority of researchers overlook the identification of accurate QIDs. This study developed a privacy preservation and clustering‐based quasi‐identification model based on the Echo Chamber optimization with a Z‐mixture parameter for privacy‐preserving combined data publishing to maintain the privacy of the data. The Echo chamber optimization is used to conduct a clustering‐based quasi‐identification to find the significant attributes especially, in determining the dimension of the solutions as well as the precise QIDs using the re‐identification risk rate as the fitness function. The loss of information is greatly reduced in terms of the metrics such as normalized certainty penalty metric, average equivalent class size metric, and discernibility metric. The developed optimized clustering‐based algorithm with the privacy preservation model extensively minimizes the leakage of private information and the utilization of data is well‐maintained compared with other existing algorithms.

Encouragement of Class Magnitude on Student Triumph in Erudition of English Language

The environment which students engage in academic activities need to be reviewed to be up to the standard which students learning would not be jeopardized. Class size determines the number of students in a particular class. This study aims to analyze the influence of class size on student success in learning of English language and the relationship that existed between class size and their students’ academic performance in English Language. This study was an experimental study and harness if students’ achievement in English language correlates with their teachers’ quality. 200 English language students were sampled across schools. The statistical analysis used in the study was the mean, standard deviation and PPMC. The findings established that there was significant influence of class size on student success in learning of English language. The study concluded that the larger the number of students in class, the better the academic success of students in English language. It was however recommended that an average class size as recommended by the National Education scheme/board Commission be adhered to in Nigerian schools.

A Study of Safety Issues and Accidents in Secondary Education Construction Courses within the United States

Hands-on learning is paramount to teaching concepts about construction and the built environment; however, this poses some inherent safety risks. This study analyzed a subsample of 119 teachers from a national safety study, focusing on those who taught secondary-level construction courses. The current study aimed to examine the demographics of construction teachers, accident occurrences in construction courses compared to other secondary-level technology and engineering education (TEE) courses, and safety factors and items associated with accident occurrences in construction courses. The analyses revealed that a significantly higher number of minor accidents occurred in construction courses compared to other TEE courses during a five-year span. Additionally, 20 safety factors were found to be significantly associated with increases or decreases in accident occurrences. Most notably, increases in major accident occurrences increased with marginal significance when average class sizes (occupancy load) exceeded 20 students. Construction courses were also found to have significantly more accidents involving hand and power tools compared to other TEE courses. This research contributes to the limited literature on this topic and has implications for proactively limiting potential safety hazards and resulting risks. It also provides data to inform the safety efforts of post-secondary construction programs and the construction industry.

A historical overview of IPPE program administrators' roles and responsibilities at US colleges and schools of pharmacy

IntroductionThe objective of this research was to determine changes in introductory pharmacy practice experience (IPPE) program administrators' demographics, roles, and responsibilities over time, and reflect on internal and external forces resulting in these shifts. This information provides an opportunity for schools to improve functioning of their IPPE administrative offices. MethodsA 2020 web-based questionnaire was sent to IPPE program administrators at 141 fully accredited and candidate status colleges and schools of pharmacy (hereafter referred to as schools). The responses were compared to previously published results from similar surveys in 2008 and in 2013. ResultsOne hundred thirteen IPPE administrators responded to the 2020 questionnaire for an 80% response rate. A comparative analysis of the data from 2008, 2013, and 2020 revealed a decrease in average class size and changes over time in six administrative areas. These areas included IPPE administrator responsibilities, position types, primary administrator's time devoted to IPPE administration, utilization of a programmatic decision-making committee, inclusion on the school's executive committee, and the number of clerical fulltime equivalents utilized in managing IPPE programs. ConclusionsA comparison of data from three studies revealed significant trends in six areas of IPPE administration over time. The primary drivers of change appear to be workload, fluctuating class sizes, and programmatic costs.

Emergency Preparedness: Training Outcome in Hospital Staff

Introduction:A widely acknowledged aspect of emergency preparedness is hospital-wide staff education. Maintaining interest in hospital emergency preparedness among hospital staff is challenging. A hospital-wide education process involving a robust lecture and hands on donning and doffing sessions followed by periodic disaster drills has been recently undertaken as a quality improvement process.Method:A prospective pre- and post-test study of 256 hospital staff were given a six-hour training course in comprehensive Hospital Incident Command Systems (HICS), Hazmat (Hazardous Materials), and CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosive) events. The same pre and post-test were given to all participants that contained questions to assess emergency preparedness knowledge.Results:256 registrars within seven months (two classes per month) completed training with pre and post-tests. The average class size was 18.3 (range= 14 to 26 registrars). 3 of 256 (1.1 % 95% confidence interval) registrars achieved the pass mark of 70% in the pre-test survey and 230 (89.8 %) registrars achieved the pass mark in the post-test (χ2-test P < 0.001) with an absolute increase in the pass rate of 84%.Conclusion:This finding justifies Emergency Preparedness Training at our institution, showing a marked improvement in staff knowledge of HICS and CBRNE management. This study should encourage continuous widespread use of Emergency Preparedness training in hospital Emergency Preparedness.

Benefits of Communicative Method of Teaching Grammar in a Bhutanese Higher Secondary School: A Qualitative Study

The effective method to teach grammar to students has been a point of disputation between advocates for language acquisition and linguistics. The study investigated the benefits of the Communicative Method of Teaching Grammar (CMTG) in a Higher Secondary School under Thimphu Thromde. The study was based on the constructivist paradigm and adopted a qualitative case study research design. The study involved twelve students and three English teachers selected purposefully from a Higher Secondary School in Thimphu. The data was collected through one-on-one interviews, Focus group discussions (FGDs), and lesson observations. The data collected was analysed employing the thematic analysis procedure of Creswell & Creswell [1]. The findings revealed the benefits of CMTG. The results showed that the benefits of CMTG included enhancing speaking abilities, fostering creativity, comprehensible input, and the ability for effective communication. This study recommends that English teachers pursue professional development in the Communicative Method of Teaching Grammar (CMTG) and maintain an average class size of 20 to 25 students. This study also suggests providing classrooms with a sufficient variety of technologically advanced instruments. The CMTG should be used to teach grammar to students, and relevant stakeholders in education should provide policy recommendations on how to train in-service and pre-service teachers on its use. The benefits of CMTG could be thoroughly investigated in future studies utilizing a quasi-experimental design.

The average conjugacy class size and the Hall π-subgroups in π-solvable groups

Let [Formula: see text] be a [Formula: see text]-solvable group for some set of primes [Formula: see text]. We show that if [Formula: see text] is a Hall [Formula: see text]-subgroup of [Formula: see text], then [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the number of conjugacy classes of [Formula: see text].

Information Processing Ability and its Implications for Teaching and Learning

The aim of this paper is to explore how the brain processes information, and which factors affect the information processing ability of learners in the classroom. From the hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) analysis, it is evident that the independent variables age, home language, language of learning and teaching (LOLT), and average class size affect the information processing ability of learners in the classroom. The process by which the brain acquires, use, and think about knowledge is known as cognition. Cognition are those intellectual or perceptual processes occurring within us that the typical individual would describe as thinking, rational processing, or the mind. Through learning, an individual’s cognition develops long-term changes in mental representations or associations because of environmental learning and experiences. A quantitative design was followed to gather data from Grade 11 learners by means of a questionnaire. The results revealed that information processing ability of learners as a dependent variable was significantly influenced by the following independent variables: age, home language, language of learning and teaching, and average class size. Recommendations to teachers on how to facilitate efficient information processing are made, which could result in meaningful learning and understanding by the learners. It is hoped by the researchers that, employing these tactics, will render valid results that are consistent with the need to enhance learners’ depth and breadth of processing information, and thereby become sophisticated and complex producers of knowledge.

Measuring the impact of anonymization on real-world consolidated health datasets engineered for secondary research use: Experiments in the context of MODELHealth project.

IntroductionElectronic Health Records (EHRs) are essential data structures, enabling the sharing of valuable medical care information for a diverse patient population and being reused as input to predictive models for clinical research. However, issues such as the heterogeneity of EHR data and the potential compromisation of patient privacy inhibit the secondary use of EHR data in clinical research.ObjectivesThis study aims to present the main elements of the MODELHealth project implementation and the evaluation method that was followed to assess the efficiency of its mechanism.MethodsThe MODELHealth project was implemented as an Extract-Transform-Load system that collects data from the hospital databases, performs harmonization to the HL7 FHIR standard and anonymization using the k-anonymity method, before loading the transformed data to a central repository. The integrity of the anonymization process was validated by developing a database query tool. The information loss occurring due to the anonymization was estimated with the metrics of generalized information loss, discernibility and average equivalence class size for various values of k.ResultsThe average values of generalized information loss, discernibility and average equivalence class size obtained across all tested datasets and k values were 0.008473 ± 0.006216252886, 115,145,464.3 ± 79,724,196.11 and 12.1346 ± 6.76096647, correspondingly. The values of those metrics appear correlated with factors such as the k value and the dataset characteristics, as expected.ConclusionThe experimental results of the study demonstrate that it is feasible to perform effective harmonization and anonymization on EHR data while preserving essential patient information.

Teacher burnout and demographic variables as predictors of teachers’ enthusiasm

This study was aimed to investigate the impact of several demographic variables and teacher burnout on teaching enthusiasm. The descriptive correlational model was used. The study sample was comprised of teachers from high schools (9th-12th grades) in Antalya, Turkey during the fall semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. 366 teachers fully completed the questionnaire in 52 high schools. Data were obtained through two scales, namely the Teacher Enthusiasm Scale, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Two models were implemented for teaching and subject enthusiasm, separately. Each model included three demographic variables and three sub-dimensions of teacher burnout as predictors of teachers’ teaching and subject enthusiasm. The binary logistic regression analysis was used in the study. The analysis showed that gender and seniority as demographic variables were found to be significant predictors in the teaching enthusiasm model. The average class size was the only variable which was not significantly effective on teaching and subject enthusiasms. Emotional exhaustion and decreasing sense of personal accomplishment were found to be significant predictors for teaching and subject enthusiasm, while emotional exhaustion was the dominant predictor. Also, depersonalization was not a significant predictor of teaching and subject enthusiasm as sub-dimensions of teacher enthusiasm. That the relations’, which can directly and indirectly define the relationship between enthusiasm and burnout in the literature being greatly ignored forms the justification of the current study

СТАТИСТИЧНЕ ОЦІНЮВАННЯ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ ВІТЧИЗНЯНИХ ЗАКЛАДІВ ЗАГАЛЬНОЇ СЕРЕДНЬОЇ ОСВІТИ ІЗ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯМ ДОСВІДУ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКИХ ДЕРЖАВ

General secondary education is the core of the educational system of any country and the basis for successful education at subsequent levels of lifelong learning. Therefore, in order to address the need to transform education in the context of globalization, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis of its state and conditions of development, identify characteristic trends, assess the effectiveness of the national system of secondary education, taking into account the results of interstate comparisons. The article considers the existing international systems of assessment of the state of secondary education and their application in the internal system of education on the example of such European countries as the Czech Republic, Finland and Estonia. The results of the international PISA education quality survey in Ukraine in 2018 are presented. The study of the quality of the activities of the general secondary education institutions was conducted on the example of the territorial communities of the Lviv region. The results of the participants of the external independent evaluation and state final certification for 2016–2021 were analyzed. In our analytical study, we also used financial indicators that allow us to assess the effectiveness of the use of funds from the state and local budgets. For this purpose, the calculation and comparative analysis of the most important indicators used in modern research by domestic and foreign scientists were carried out, in particular, the average salary of pedagogical workers; average costs per student, average costs per class, average class size, average number of students per teacher, etc. Research results show that the highest number of students per class, the highest number of students per teacher and, consequently, the lowest average cost per student are observed in general secondary schools of the urban territorial communities. As evidenced by the results of the external examination, a higher quality of school education is ensured. Thus, for example, local authorities managing the education system should look for ways to further improve national school education at other levels of budget funding. The use of European experience will help Ukrainian educational institutions to find a way to a certain vision and achieve the goals of the development strategy.

Implementation of an integrative movement program for residents with dementia in a VA nursing home

BackgroundPreventing Loss of Independence through Exercise (PLIÉ) is an integrative group movement program developed for adults with mild-to-moderate dementia attending day programs. However, many older adults with dementia ultimately require assistance with their activities of daily living and become residents in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities with their complex comorbidities and unique needs. We conducted a post-implementation evaluation of PLIÉ at a San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) nursing home to assess reach and effectiveness among residents, staff, and family members who participated in ≥ 1 PLIÉ class from 9/2018 to 6/2019.MethodsPost-implementation number of classes offered and mean attendance; anonymous satisfaction surveys (5-point Likert scales); qualitative content analysis of open-ended survey responses and clinical progress notes.ResultsForty-five PLIÉ classes were offered over 9 months. Residents attended an average of 13 ± 12 classes with an average class size of 14 residents, 4 staff members, and 2 family members. Most survey respondents rated the program overall as “very good” or “excellent” (100 % residents, n = 15; 87 % staff, n = 14; 100 % family members, n = 8). Respondents reported improvements in themselves and/or others in four domains: (1) physical, (2) psychological, (3) social, and (4) cognitive. Physical improvements among veterans included mobility, strength, and energy. Psychological improvements included feelings of happiness/well-being, enjoyment, and self-empowerment. Social improvements included connection, social skills, and social support. Cognitive improvements included engagement, communication ability, and focus/attention. Responses were similar among resident, staff, and family member surveys and clinical progress notes. Participants frequently reported improvements in multiple domains (e.g., “The veterans are more alert and engaged, many are smiling and laughing.”). Negative comments were primarily related to logistics, suggesting that the class occur more frequently.ConclusionsPLIÉ was successfully implemented in a VA nursing home with high attendance and satisfaction among residents, staff, and family members. Participants reported clinically meaningful physical, psychological, social, and cognitive benefits. Other long-term care facilities could potentially benefit from implementing PLIÉ to increase quality of life in residents with dementia.

Factors Motivating Virtual Lab Simulations Adoption in Secondary School Physics Instruction in Jordan

Abstract: The study investigated the factors that motivate secondary school physics instructors to use virtual lab simulations in teaching and learning in four regions of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. To examine the research question, the study utilized a quantitative survey research methodology using a survey questionnaire consisting of 25 Likert-type scale questions to measure physics instructors' attitudes toward using virtual lab simulations in practical investigations’ preparation and delivery. Contrary to what might be expected, the findings came across a number of variables that were not predictors of statistical significance for a physics instructor's virtual lab simulation adoption: gender; level of education; school site; average class size; ways of acquiring technology skills, for instance, self-taught and computer courses; and perceived barriers. The findings support the prediction that the lack of virtual lab simulations in the Jordanian high-school physics curriculum has an impact on Tawjihi students' achievement in physics. Keywords: Simulation, Virtual lab, Roger’s diffusion of innovations theory.

Utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in K to 12 Basic Education Program in Secondary Schools in Lupao District

The objective of the study was to determine the extent of utilization of ICT by the respondents. Samples were selected using purposive sampling. Data were collected using a survey questionnaireMajority of the respondents are female, more or less 35 years old, and have been in the service for about seven years. Most of them were college graduates and were major of Filipino or Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE), currently handling grade 10 students having an average class size of 45 students. A greater number of the respondents were Teacher I. In congruence with the level of knowledge with the use of different software’s of computers, the result shows that respondents always use a word processor in entering text and image and formatting texts, margins, layout, and tables. Moreover, ICT was also often utilized in the preparation of lessons and activities appropriate to the level of learning and cultural background of the respondents. Also, ICT was used to encourage students to analyze a problem, decide, and come up with new ideas. The use of presentation software was also observed in presenting lessons and teaching students with the use of various media. An evaluation of the learners' achievement, design of rubrics in assessing performance was also done by the respondents. The mean indicates that there were some aspects with regards to the use of technology that was not fully utilized by the respondents.

Level of Knowledge of Teachers on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Equipment and Facilities under K TO 12 Basic Education Program in Secondary Schools

The objectives of the study were to determine the level of knowledge of the respondents in using ICT hardware, software, and facilities by the respondents. Samples were selected using purposive sampling. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire. The majority of the respondents are female, more or less 35 years old, and have been in the service for about seven years. Most of them were college graduates and were major of Filipino or Technology and Livelihood Education (TLE), currently handling grade 10 students having an average class size of 45 students. A greater number of the respondents were Teacher I.Result shows that respondents were very knowledgeable in using the computer. On the other hand, respondents admitted that they need training with the use of the interactive whiteboard. With regards to the use of different software, respondents were knowledgeable about the use of word processing, internet browser, and presentation software. With the use of the facilities, respondents stated that they were knowledgeable about the use of computer rooms and audiovisual rooms. The mean respondents have a fair level of knowledge with regards to the use of ICT hardware, software and facilities were fair.