Learning Community Research Articles

Exploring the Dynamics of Learning Communities in Fostering Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange

Exploring the Dynamics of Learning Communities in Fostering Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange

Analisis Perbandingan Fungsionalitas dan Keluwesan antara Perplexity dan Phind.Com dalam Memenuhi Kebutuhan Belajar Mahasiswa di Lingkungan Perguruan Tinggi

This study aims to analyze the comparison of functionality and flexibility between Perplexity and Phind.com in meeting student communication needs in a university environment. In an increasingly advanced digital era, the use of artificial intelligence-based applications is very important to support the learning process and student communication. Perplexity is known for its fast and accurate search capabilities while Phind.com superior personalization and flexibility in the delivery of information. This research uses a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods. A survey was conducted among 200 students and semi-structured interviews were also conducted among 10 students at Hasanuddin University who had used the Perplexity application and Phind.com. Data collection techniques used in this research are questionnaires, interviews with informants who are considered competent and in accordance with the topics discussed. The results of this research show that Perplexity and Phind.com. has different functionality and flexibility in meeting student learning needs. In the case of researchers, Perplexity excels at providing access to quality and diverse learning materials and features that support independent learning. Meanwhile, Phind.com excels in providing an active discussion forum and learning community, as well as features that support collaboration and interaction between students. Both applications have their own advantages and disadvantages. The right application for students depends on their individual learning needs and learning style.

Sustainability of Professional Learning Communities in Chinese High Schools

Sustainability of Professional Learning Communities in Chinese High Schools

Capacity-building during public health emergencies: perceived usefulness and cost savings of an online training on SARS-CoV-2 real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) diagnostics in low- and middle-income settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upon the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Laboratory Support Unit (ZIG4) at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German National Public Health Institute, developed and delivered an online training on SARS-CoV-2 qPCR diagnostics to 17 partner countries in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This article analyses the usefulness and cost savings of this training. The authors performed a concurrent mixed-methodology study based on key informant interviews, interviewer-administered questionnaires, and document reviews. Economic costs were estimated from the perspective of RKI. Responding participants indicated that the course provided good and comprehensive information on up-to-date scientific knowledge and laboratory practice in PCR diagnostics. Respondents appreciated how the technical content of the training enhanced their ability to apply diagnostic methods in their daily work. Interviewees highlighted that the fast implementation and the low threshold of attending an online training had allowed them to quickly build skills that were crucial during, and beyond, the COVID-19 crisis. The total estimated cost of the online SARS-CoV-2 qPCR training was 61,644 euros. The total estimated cost of the equivalent face-to-face training was estimated at 267,592 euros. Programme weaknesses identified included the top-down approaches taken, lack of interactive components and opportunities to directly engage with other course participants and with teachers. An online training was developed and implemented to support RKI partner countries in SARS-CoV-2 qPCR diagnostics during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby strengthening pandemic response and health system resilience. The training incurred in important cost savings compared to the equivalent face-to-face training. Post-pandemic studies could usefully build on these research findings and explore ways to enhance end user involvement and improve interactive features to build stronger communities of learners and facilitate exchange of information and mutual learning.

Making a feminist impact: mobilising knowledge through scholarly activism

PurposeThis article reflects on our joint experiences co-creating impact through a project in knowledge mobilisation – a website that disseminated resources and facilitated developmental activities for scholar-activists. We examine this project from the perspectives of the first author who created and ran the website and the second author who participated as a community member from the project’s launch.Design/methodology/approachThe website attracted a scholarly activist community primarily comprising former and current women academics, who collaboratively informed the first author’s creation of articles, newsletters and workshops, that sought to develop individual and institutional capacities for feminist leadership.FindingsThis project in co-creating impact revealed the yearning and potential academics had for support and belonging. They were drawn to the website because many struggled with overwork, burnout and violence within a system that they did not feel was built for them. They strove to build a community around the website and its associated activities and resources so that they could fill the perceived gaps and heal the felt harms of their institutions.Originality/valueOur reflections consider the different ways impact may be collaboratively generated through knowledge mobilisation in community, including how feminist redefinitions of impact may be designed and demonstrated in future projects. At the same time, we also critically examine the limitations of attempting to redress institutional issues as individuals without formal authority in those institutions.

A framework for training larger networks for deep Reinforcement learning

The success of deep learning in computer vision and natural language processing communities can be attributed to the training of very deep neural networks with millions or billions of parameters, which can then be trained with massive amounts of data. However, a similar trend has largely eluded the training of deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms where larger networks do not lead to performance improvement. Previous work has shown that this is mostly due to instability during the training of deep RL agents when using larger networks. In this paper, we make an attempt to understand and address the training of larger networks for deep RL. We first show that naively increasing network capacity does not improve performance. Then, we propose a novel method that consists of (1) wider networks with DenseNet connection, (2) decoupling representation learning from the training of RL, and (3) a distributed training method to mitigate overfitting problems. Using this three-fold technique, we show that we can train very large networks that result in significant performance gains. We present several ablation studies to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method and some intuitive understanding of the reasons for performance gain. We show that our proposed method outperforms other baseline algorithms on several challenging locomotion tasks.

Repositories transforming scholarly communication: an Insights special collection

Repositories transforming scholarly communication: an Insights special collection

Nursing Students’ Perspectives on Caring Pedagogical Relationship Within the Context of Simulation: A Phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract:This phenomenological research aimed to describe and understand nursing students’ meaning of the lived experience of a caring pedagogical relationship within the context of high-fidelity clinical simulation. Being inspired by a relational emancipatory pedagogy perspective, our findings highlighted an authentic engagement of educators as the cornerstone to fostering a safe, caring, and inclusive learning space, allowing them to co-create a humanistic collaboration with students to transform their learning process. Innovative and various avenues arising from our findings have been suggested in different domains of nursing practice to promote students’ learning and develop a caring inclusive learning community within simulation centers.

Molecular storytelling: a conceptual framework for teaching and learning with molecular case studies

Molecular case studies (MCSs) provide educational opportunities to explore biomolecular structure and function using data from public bioinformatics resources. The conceptual basis for the design of MCSs has yet to be fully discussed in the literature, so we present molecular storytelling as a conceptual framework for teaching with case studies. Whether the case study aims to understand the biology of a specific disease and design its treatments or track the evolution of a biosynthetic pathway, vast amounts of structural and functional data, freely available in public bioinformatics resources, can facilitate rich explorations in atomic detail. To help biology and chemistry educators use these resources for instruction, a community of scholars collaborated to create the Molecular CaseNet. This community uses storytelling to explore biomolecular structure and function while teaching biology and chemistry. In this article, we define the structure of an MCS and present an example. Then, we articulate the evolution of a conceptual framework for developing and using MCSs. Finally, we related our framework to the development of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPCK) for educators in the Molecular CaseNet. The report conceptualizes an interdisciplinary framework for teaching about the molecular world and informs lesson design and education research.

Feedback providers’ contributions of and benefits from engaging in online peer micro-teaching feedback practices

Although peer feedback is highly valued in the feedback process, the specific contribution of feedback providers in this process remains unclear. In this qualitative multiple-case study, the primary focus was to explore the contribution of feedback providers and the benefits they obtained through online peer micro-teaching practices. The study encompassed both anonymity and non-anonymity settings through a videoconferencing platform, involving 20 student teachers pursuing a Bachelor of Education (English language). Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, reflective journals and online classroom observations. The findings revealed that both anonymous and identified groups provided feedback of the same quality and types. Proactive feedback provision fostered the development of an online learning community, facilitated multimodal learning and enhanced peer cohesion. The student teachers who assumed the role of feedback providers in this study experienced cognitive, behavioural and socio-affective gains during their learning process.

A Confucian approach to a democratic classroom

This article delineates a Confucian approach to a democratic classroom by drawing upon the educational thought of third-century philosopher Xunzi. It is argued that Xunzi’s approach is generally compatible with the three salient features of a democratic classroom: (i) it is a way of life guided by the principles of equality, freedom, justice, and cooperation; (ii) it comprises a community of learners who are bounded by close ties and shared interests; and (iii) it provides a caring learning space that promotes openness and reflection. However, Xunzi does not conceive a democratic classroom as a means to equip students for participation in political democracy. His educational views are also not premised on the notion of liberal individualism. Rather, Xunzi adheres to a communitarian worldview where an individual’s identity, conduct, and commitments are necessarily situated within a community, and guided by yi (rightness). Furthermore, he rejects unfettered freedom for learners by balancing student choice with textual transmission and teacher guidance.

A Bibliometrics Visualization Analysis of Sustainable Green Supply Chain Management in Small and Medium Enterprises

This bibliometric study entails an analysis of publications about green supply chain management (GSCM) within small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The research aims to scrutinize the research performance concerning GSCM in SMEs. This study identifies countries, leading journals, scholars, and research themes. This research adopts bibliometric methods to focus on publications between 2007 and 2024, sourced from the Scopus database and limited to English-language publications. The document type analyzed is articles, yielding 133 qualifying articles for analysis using Rstudio and VOSviewer. Results indicate rapid growth in studies on GSCM in SMEs since 2007. Influential countries in the realm of GSCM within SME contexts include China, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the Journal of Cleaner Production and author Le TT emerge as the most prolific scholarly output in this domain. Supply Chain Management, GSCM, and SMEs are frequently recurring keywords, totalling 407 keyword link strengths. Keyword analysis over time indicates a trend towards adopting newly pertinent terms such as human resources, technology, circular economy (CE), trade, and business. Thus, utilising GSCM signifies promising prospects for SMEs in the future. This study adopts bibliometric methods based on document-type articles from the Scopus database collected as of March 15, 2024. Publications based on document types such as conference papers, conference reviews, book chapters, and sources outside the Scopus database, such as WoS, are disregarded in this research. The study reveals that the sustainable implementation of GSCM in SMEs is an emerging requirement and complex to manage for SMEs, necessitating new concepts and appropriate strategies for implementation. This study objectively evaluates research progress in GSCM within SMEs, highlighting research achievements and gaps while discussing contributions to the scholarly community.

The question of an alleged resurrection in Jubilees 23:29–31

The scholarly community has generally concluded that Jub. 23:29–31 does not envision a resurrection of the dead. There are those who doubt the consensus, however. The question has implications for the debate over the existence of a so-called spiritual (non-bodily) resurrection in Second Temple Judaism. There is a fundamental distinction in the text between the Lord’s servants (ʾ agbertihu) who have long lives on the earth and the righteous ( s.ādeqān) whose bones rest in the earth while their spirits observe the servants. Consequently, any attempt to isolate a spiritual resurrection in Jub. 23:29–31 fails.

Digital competences of university students after face-to-face and remote teaching: Video-animations digital create content

In today's digitally advanced society, there is a need to focus on collaborative educational approaches of a socio-community nature that incorporate technology. From this perspective, the FEJYLEN and FEJYLENVAL programs were conceived and implemented for both remote (online) and face-to-face teaching. These programs are based on an E-Learning-Service methodology, enabling the training of university students in digital skills, and facilitating the transfer of their interactive educational video-animations to early childhood education centers. The study sample consisted of 221 students enrolled in Early Childhood Education and Speech Therapy Degrees. The study had two objectives: first, to compare digital competences before and after participating in the mentioned programs; and second, to evaluate the impact of the type of teaching and university training on the acquisition of digital competences. The findings indicate that students receiving face-to-face teaching demonstrated significant improvement across all digital competences' factors with a medium-high effect size. Conversely, for students receiving remote instruction, improvements were limited to only certain skill factors. Our study reveals that face-to-face teaching is associated with higher scores in digital competencies and more efficient digital content creation. In conclusion, this research highlights the advantages of face-to-face teaching in comparison to remote instruction. This has facilitated a closer connection between the university and the realities faced by educational centers, fostering the exchange of knowledge between learning communities.

Management of Hybrid Learning in Resource-Scarce Communities in Nigerian Schools

Management of Hybrid Learning in Resource-Scarce Communities in Nigerian Schools

Bridging the Evidence and Practice Gap in Chronic Kidney Disease: A System Thinking Approach to Population Health.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is common, costly, and life-limiting, requiring dialysis and transplantation in advanced stages. Although effective guideline-based therapy exists, the asymptomatic nature of CKD together with low health literacy, adverse social determinants of health, unmet behavioral health needs, and primary care providers' (PCP) limited understanding of CKD result in defects in screening and diagnosis. Care is fragmented between PCPs and specialty nephrologists, with limited time, expertise, and resources to address systemic gaps. In this article, the authors define how they classified defects in care and report the current numbers of patients exposed to these defects, both nationally and in their health system Accountable Care Organization. They describe use of the health system's three-pillar leadership model (believing, belonging, and building) to empower providers to transform CKD care. Believing entailed engaging individuals to believe defects in CKD care could be eliminated and were a collective responsibility. Belonging fostered the creation of learning communities that broke down silos and encouraged open communication and collaboration between PCPs and nephrologists. Building involved constructing a fractal management infrastructure with transparent reporting and shared accountability, which would enable success in innovation and transformation. The result is proactive and relational CKD care organized around the patient's needs in University Hospitals Systems of Excellence. Systems of excellence combine multiple domains of expertise to promote best practice guidelines and integrate care throughout the system. The authors further describe a preliminary pilot of the CKD System of Excellence in primary care.

The Interplay of Professional Learning Communities on Teacher Empowerment of Public Secondary Teachers in IGACOS Division

The Interplay of Professional Learning Communities on Teacher Empowerment of Public Secondary Teachers in IGACOS Division

Optimizing the Structures of Transformer Neural Networks Using Parallel Simulated Annealing

Abstract The Transformer is an important addition to the rapidly increasing list of different Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) suited for extremely complex automation tasks. It has already gained the position of the tool of choice in automatic translation in many business solutions. In this paper, we present an automated approach to optimizing the Transformer structure based upon Simulated Annealing, an algorithm widely recognized for both its simplicity and usability in optimization tasks where the search space may be highly complex. The proposed method allows for the use of parallel computing and time-efficient optimization, thanks to modifying the structure while training the network rather than performing the two one after another. The algorithm presented does not reset the weights after changes in the transformer structure. Instead, it continues the training process to allow the results to be adapted without randomizing all the training parameters. The algorithm has shown a promising performance during experiments compared to traditional training methods without structural modifications. The solution has been released as open-source to facilitate further development and use by the machine learning community.

Leadership and Infrastructure in Implementing Professional Learning Communities in Lahore HEIs: An Interpretive Structural Modeling Approach

Professional learning communities (PLCs) are considered vital for teachers’ professional development and filling the achievement gaps among students. Implementing PLCs in higher educational institutions (HEIs) may be affected by various factors such as leadership support, infrastructure, environment, and knowledge about its usefulness. Identifying all these key factors is necessary for the HEIs growth and students’ outcomes. This study aims to identify such important factors that help implement PLCs in Pakistani universities by utilizing Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM). The data were collected from fourteen university faculty members. This qualitative study first identified the important factors for the implementation of PLCs from the prior studies then established relationships among these factors and proposed a final model through the ISM approach. The results suggest that leadership support and infrastructure are important factors for the implementation of PLCs in Pakistani HEIs while time constraints, equal participation, workload, working environment trust among stakeholders and vague understanding of PLCs act as mediators. The suggested final model can be used for further empirical investigation and future planning and implementation of the PLCs.

The validity and reliability of professional learning community instruments in small schools peninsular Malaysia

A professional learning community (PLC) instrument was developed to determine the level of PLC practice in small schools in Peninsular Malaysia. This study was conducted in Perak and Negeri Sembilan to determine the instrument's reliability and validity. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and item reliability analysis were used to determine the questionnaire’s reliability and validity. Next, the average congruence percentage (ACP) is used to determine the reliability test between expert assessors. Experts approved the validity and reliability of the instrument before the EFA test was conducted. All five constructs have high-reliability index values between 0.86–0.95. Next, the EFA analysis shows five dimensions in the PLC instrument with factor loadings ranging from 0.61–0.84. The findings also show that the variance explained in the data is 68.99% with an Eigenvalue greater than 1. This result indicates that all items are received with high approval. In addition, a very high-reliability coefficient value, α=0.96. The results prove that this PLC instrument has high validity and reliability and can measure the level of PLC implementation practices in small schools in Peninsular Malaysia.