Multi-component Concept Research Articles

ORGANIZATIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL CONDITIONS FOR TEACHERS’ READINESS FORMATION TO USE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND DISTANT LEARNING

NOSKOVA Marharyta – Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Pedagogy and Social Management Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, S. Bandera Str., 12, Lviv, 79013, Ukraine E-mail address: margaryta.v.noskova@lpnu.ua ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4396-3408 ResearcherID : http://www.researcherid.com/rid/R-7823-2017 HAVRYLIUK Marianna – Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Foreign Language Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University, S. Bandera Str., 12, Lviv, 79013, Ukraine E-mail address: mhavrilyuk@gmail.com ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2347-2188 ResearcherID : http://www.researcherid.com/rid/ D-9475-2019 To cite this article: Noskova, M., & Havryliuk, M. (2019). Organizational and pedagogical conditions for teachers’ readiness formation to use information technologies and distant learning. Liudynoznavchi studii. Seriia «Pedahohika» – Human Studies. Series of «Pedagogy» , 8/40, 81–93. doi: 10.24919/2413-2039.8/40.164407. Article history Received: November 4, 2018 Received in revised form: January 3, 2019 Accepted: February 18, 2019 Available online: April 22, 2019 Journal homepage: http://lssp.dspu.edu.ua/ p-ISSN 2313-2094 e-ISSN 2413-2039 © 2019 The Authors. Human studies. Series of «Pedagogy» published by Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University & Open Journal Systems. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ ). Abstract. The article is devoted to the study of teachers’ readiness formation to use the information technologies and distant learning. The research focuses on teachers working in schools who have completed vocational education for at least ten years ago as well as have already got some teaching experience and plan to develop their teaching career. The article analyzes the research works of Ukrainian scientists concerning the essence of the concept of readiness and the components that determine it. In particular, the notion of teacher’s readiness to conduct a professional activity, which has been used throughout the research, was defined as following: «teacher’s professional readiness» is a complex, multicomponent concept that requires a certain formation process throughout the professional activity of a teacher. The readiness or ability of a teacher to perceive various innovations in the professional activity is formed by external and internal factors, which, ideally, should be harmoniously combined and complement each other. The organizational and pedagogical conditions for the formation of teachers’ readiness to use information technologies and distant learning in their professional training have been formulated and substantiated, namely: the availability of the state professional standard of a teacher, which determines the teacher’s informational competence according to his/her education and position; a steady motivation to use information technologies in the professional activities; the creation of an appropriate technical support on the teacher’s workplace; the availability of an information learning environment and sufficient technical equipment and software in the educational institution; system of teachers professional training concerning the use of information technologies and distant learning in the educational process; professional freedom to choose forms, methods, technologies and teaching tools; adequate financial support for the use of information technologies and the introduction of distant learning in the educational institution. The prospects for further scientific research on the defined problem are the following: analysis of the current state of the regulatory and legal framework of Ukraine that regulates the informatization and implementation of information technologies and distant learning in Ukrainian educational institutions; analysis of the reasons for the inhibition of the distant learning introduction in the educational process of Ukrainian institutions of secondary education; the study of the current state of content and the organization of professional development of school teachers’ information competence in institutions of postgraduate education. Acknowledgments. We wish to express our gratitude and appreciation to Ph.D., Professor Mukan Nataliya for the assessment of the materials under study, which have been presented in the article as well as for the valuable recommendations concerning the structure of the article. A thorough discussion of organizational and pedagogical conditions for the formation of teachers’ readiness to use information technologies and distant learning in Ukrainian educational institutions as well as the influence of internal and external factors on the professional activity of a new Ukrainian school teacher has influenced the content of the article and contributed to the identification of new research areas. Funding. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

The complexity of wine: clarifying the role of microorganisms.

The concept of wine complexity has gained considerable interest in recent years, both for wine consumers and wine scientists. As a consequence, some research programs concentrate on the factors that could improve the perceived complexity of a wine. Notably, the possible influence of microbiological factors is particularly investigated. However, wine complexity is a multicomponent concept not easily defined. In this review, we first describe the actual knowledge regarding wine complexity, its perception, and wine chemical composition. In particular, we emphasize that, contrary to expectations, the perception of wine complexity is not related to wine chemical complexity. Then, we review the impact of wine microorganisms on wine complexity, with a specific focus on publications including sensory analyses. While microorganisms definitively can impact wine complexity, the underlying mechanisms and molecules are far from being deciphered. Finally, we discuss some prospective research fields that will help improving our understanding of wine complexity, including perceptive interactions, microbial interactions, and other challenging phenomena.

The Development Model for Integrated Care: a validated tool for evaluation and development

Purpose – Integrating health, social and informal care and seeking for new effective collaborations is a major topic in many countries, and requires innovation and improvement in current practices. Conceptual quality management models can facilitate practice improvement. However, a generic quality management model for integrated care was lacking. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of multiple studies that resulted in a validated generic quality management model for integrated care. The Development Model for Integrated Care (DMIC) is the basis for a digital tool for self-evaluation and is being used in multiple ways in a large number of integrated care settings. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review, a Delphi study and concept mapping study were executed to identify the essential ingredients of integrated care. A next step was an expert study on the development process of integrated care over time. Lastly, a survey study in 84 integrated care networks was performed to empirically validate the model. Based on the model, a digital self-assessment tool was created to apply the model in practice. Findings – The studies showed that integrated care is a complex and multi-component concept but generic elements can be assessed. The literature and expert study resulted in a set of 89 elements of integrated care. The elements were grouped in nine clusters; “quality care”, “performance management”, “inter-professional teamwork”, “delivery system”, “roles and tasks”, “patient-centredness”, “commitment”, “transparent entrepreneurship” and “result-focused learning”. Four developmental phases named “the initiative and design phase”, “the experimental and execution phase”, “the expansion and monitoring phase” and “the consolidation and transformation phase” were found. The findings showed that the model is applicable for multiple integrated care settings. Research limitations/implications – The DMIC has the potential to serve as a research framework for integrated care, and the use as an evaluation tool on multiple levels. Further research is suggested about more explicitly involving the perspectives of clients, research on the involvement of multiple stakeholders and their professional backgrounds and the use of the model in other countries. Practical implications – The DMIC is the basis of a digital web-based assessment tool, which is being used in the Netherlands in multiple integrated care settings. Applying the tool helps in assessing the current state of integrated care practice and defining suggestions for further improvement and development. It is also being used to benchmark multiple settings and is adopted in guidelines or care standards for integrated care. Originality/value – A generic conceptual and validated model that can be supportive for integrated care practices, policy and research was lacking. The results of the summarized studies in this paper present such a conceptual model for integrated care and gives suggestions for further use in an international audience. Results in a Canadian study showed that the model can also be used in other settings and countries. This contributes to the opportunities for use of the model in integrated care practice, policy and research also in other countries.

Passenger Perception Regarding Bus Service: A Deep Examination on Multi-component Concept of Loyalty

Loyalty is a preeminent concept for a company to get a higher share of customers. However, there are few studies on loyalty within bus service context. One possible reason for the low focus on bus user loyalty is that there are different views among researchers on the concept of loyalty. To address the issue, this paper proposes a model to express the concept of loyalty in which loyalty has been decomposed into three main phases including attitudinal loyalty, conative loyalty and action loyalty. The difference between the proposed model and conventional models is that attitudinal loyalty was represented in a formative construct. In addition, an excavation on the attitudinal facet of loyalty leads to a suggestion that there is a need to add up implicit loyalty as a new aspect of attitudinal loyalty. Furthermore, the study provides an empirical examination on impacts of social norm and habit toward attitudinal-behavioral relationship.

Do financially innovative futures matter?

Regarding the increasingly important role of financial services sectors like futures exchanges previous research has been unable to determine what types of futures contracts contribute to higher trading volumes and the likely magnitudes of their contributions. Thus, to investigate the sources of higher trading volumes in futures exchanges, this study, following the perspectives of diversification relatedness and core competence, adopts a multi-component concept and proposes that different futures exchanges have different types of futures contracts that work best. This study employs the Commodity Research Bureau's Yearbook to examine this issue. A stepwise regression model is fitted to the data set, and findings indicate that financially innovative futures dominate trading volume while traditional agricultural futures have little impact. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.

Students’ Opinions on Their Competences for Reaching Life Success

Life success is an equivocal and a highly subjective notion. Nevertheless, for a lot of people it constitutes an important parameter which they rely on when assessing their life achievements, experiences and decisions. It is a parameter which they use to define their life strategies, aspirations and objectives. Higher education gives students an opportunity to enhance their competences for reaching professional success. However, professional success is only a component of a holistically-defined life success. This is why the author has decided to determine if students of education studies have their definitions of life success, and if they assess their chances of reaching it, and if so, under what conditions. Research results show that the subjects define life success as a multicomponent concept: life success means to them reaching their private and professional objectives in a balanced way. Students admit being apprehensive of failing to reach professional success. The criteria that influence reaching life success include – in the students’ opinion – their own actions and external factors. They also believe that education studies do not give them sufficient opportunities to develop their competences for reaching life success, despite the considerable amount of knowledge that the academic courses offer. The students point out to their low level of self-esteem as the most vital hindrance on their way to success. Unfortunately, in their opinion, their academic studies do not help them develop in this respect.

The Evaluation of Carbonation Depth of Concrete Incorporating Industrial By-Product Materials

Fly ash from the combustion of coal and silica fume from certain metallurgical operations, are among the industrial by-products that are widely used as mineral admixtures in Portland cement concrete to improve durability and produce high strength and high performance concrete. In addition, due to energy-saving and resource-conservation, both ecological and economical benefit can be achieved by using blended Portland cement. Due to the pozzolanic reaction between calcium hydroxide and fly ash or silica fume, compared with ordinary Portland cement, the carbonation of blended concrete is much more complex. In this paper, based on multi-component concept, a numerical model is built which can predict the carbonation of concrete containing fly ash or silica fume. The proposed model starts with a mix proportion of concrete and considers both Portland cement hydration reaction and pozzolanic reaction. The amount of hydration products which are susceptible to carbonate, such as calcium hydroxide (CH) and calcium s...

Reproducibility of the multi-component aspect of species diversity across different areas and scales: towards the constitution of a shortlist of complementary indices for monitoring fish diversity?

Recent theoretical and field studies conducted in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems have suggested that diversity could be a more complex and multi-component concept than previously thought. However, it is still poorly understood to what extent the information provided by the various indices is complementary with regard to diversity, and to what extent this complementarity is reproducible in different situations or at different scales of observation. In the present work, we have analysed the reproducibility of the empirical relationships between 11 diversity indices related to four major aspects (components) of species diversity (species richness, rarity, evenness and species taxonomy) in order to determine whether there is a general pattern of redundancy or complementarity in diversity measures that holds across years, areas and spatial scales. We have applied this approach to groundfish diversity through the analysis of 2404 trawl hauls collected during the first large-scale annual surveys carried out using a single sampling design throughout the northern Mediterranean Sea (ranging from 36.3 to 45.7°N, and 5.3°W to 28°E). Whatever the years, areas and scales studied, we found a strong reproducibility in the number and the nature of the main complementary components of diversity. The whole set of diversity indices considered may be roughly split into 6 complementary groups of descriptors. This result highlights that, in contrast to what is still the usual practice, monitoring diversity should not be based on only one or two of the most widely used components, even at large scale. Finally, in a context where developing tools for monitoring diversity is considered as a high priority worldwide, the strong reproducibility of the relationships between diversity indices we observed offers a basis for discussion of the feasibility and relevance of proposing a general shortlist of indices for monitoring diversity at different management scales.

A model predicting carbonation depth of concrete containing silica fume

Silica fume (SF) has been used since long as a mineral admixture to improve durability and produce high strength and high performance concrete. Due to the pozzolanic reaction between calcium hydroxide and silica fume, compared with ordinary Portland cement, the carbonation of concrete containing silica fume is much more complex. In this paper, based on a multi-component concept, a numerical model is built which can predict the carbonation of concrete containing silica fume. The proposed model starts with the mix proportions of concrete and considers both Portland cement hydration reaction and pozzolanic reaction. The amount of hydration products which are susceptible to carbonate, such as calcium hydroxide (CH) and calcium silicate hydrate (CSH), as well as porosity can be obtained as associated results of the proposed model during the hydration period. The influence of water-binder ratio and silica fume content on carbonation is considered. The predicted results agree well with experimental results.

A model for predicting the carbonation depth of concrete containing low-calcium fly ash

Low-calcium fly ash (FL) is a general product from the combustion of anthracite and bituminous coals and has been widely used as a mineral admixture to produce high strength and high performance concrete. Carbonation of cement blended with fly ash is much more complex than ordinary Portland cement because of the pozzolanic activity in an aluminosilicate glass phase of fly ash. In this paper, based on multi-component concept, a numerical model that can predict carbonation of low-calcium fly ash contained concrete was built. This numerical model includes two parts: hydration and carbonation models. The hydration model starts with a mix proportion of concrete and considers both Portland cement hydration and pozzolanic activity. By applying a hydration model, the amount of hydration product that is susceptible to carbonate as well as porosity was obtained as a function of curing age. Furthermore, the diffusivity of CO 2 in concrete was determined and the carbonation depth of concrete was also predicted. The prediction results showed good agreement for the results of the experiment performed in this study.

Neuroprosthetics of the upper extremity--clinical application in spinal cord injury and future perspectives.

Within the last couple of years, partial restoration of lost motor functions in a larger number of spinal cord injured patients has become possible by the introduction of neuroprostheses into the clinical environment. The Freehand system in particular is the first implantable neuroprosthesis from which a certain group of tetraplegic patients with stable shoulder function, but missing or weak grasp and hold function of the hand do benefit. The system is based on the combination of electrical stimulation and operative tendon transfers and thus represents a multicomponent concept for long-term restoration of the grasp function. The crucial prerequisites for successful use of an implantable neuroprosthesis are the right indication, careful preoperative muscle stimulation, differentiated planning of the surgery and functional training adopted to the individual residual functions. After successful completion of an extensive rehabilitation program, patients are able to use the system for activities of daily living without the need for special additional aids, which enhances their quality of life and independency. In order to extend the group of potential users of neuroprostheses in the future, new technological developments will have to take into account that nowadays the majority of spinal cord injured patients suffer from an incomplete lesion of the spinal cord. For these particular patients who still possess residual functions, modular, "naturally" controllable systems for supporting these functions are needed rather than complex systems to substitute them.

Multiple transport systems for basic amino acid transport in streptomyces hydrogenans

In Streptomyces hydrogenans the uptake of basic amino acids occurs via several transport systems: 1. 1. One system (System b Arg) is highly specific for arginine ( K m = 7.10−6 M). l-Arginine influx is only inhibited by closely related analogs such as d-arginine, canavanine and arginine methyl ester, but not by lysine, ornithine, neutral and acidic amino acids. 2. 2. A second system (System b Arg/Lys) transports both arginine ( K m = 0.6 · 10−6 M) and lysine ( K m = 0.9·10−6 M). This system has a higher affinity for l-arginine than System b Arg. Cells grown in synthetic media containing 12 mM l-lysine or l-arginine show a much higher transport capacity than cells grown in complete media or synthetic media with NH 4Cl as nitrogen donor. These differences in transport capacity strongly support the multi-component concept of basic amino acid transport in Streptomyces cells. System b Arg/Lys can be inhibited by analogs of arginine and lysine but not by neutral and acidic amino acids. 3. 3. At very high extracellular concentrations of lysine or arginine both amino acids are transported via a system primarily mediating the uptake of neutral amino acids (System n). The capacity of this system is high but its affinity to basic amino acids is very low [ K m (arginine) = 0.7·10−3 M; K m (lysine) = 1.6·10−3 M]. This system shows exchange between neutral and basic amino acids.