Pace Of Learning Research Articles

Blended learning as a promising direction of informatization of higher education

The article discusses possible options for transitioning from the traditional form of organization of the educational process to blended learning at the university. The author reveals the advantages and disadvantages of blended learning organization models, which allow combining traditional face-to-face learning with the self-study work of students in a digital environment that corresponds to a new generation of professionals. The advantages of the models include the formation of educational routes for students, taking into account the goals of education, changes in the speciality and the labour market, and great freedom of the student when he can choose a convenient time, place and pace of learning; motivating students to study in traditional classes with a teacher, reducing the percentage of failed courses. Keywords: informatization, higher education transformation, blended learning models, learning trajectories.

DISTANCE LEARNING: ANALYSIS OF CONCEPTS, FORMATS, PLATFORMS, ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Formulation of the problem in general. The article analyzes the peculiarities of integrating distance learning into the educational process of higher military educational institutions and military educational units of higher education institutions under martial law in Ukraine. In modern conditions, higher education necessitates the use of distance learning, which allows for the acquisition of knowledge without interrupting professional duties. The purpose of this article is to analyze the concepts of “distance education”, “distance learning”, “blended learnin”, to conduct a comparative analysis of synchronous and asynchronous formats in the context of blended learning, to consider popular distance learning platforms (systems), and to identify the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning. In writing the article, a multidimensional approach was used to collect, analyze and summarize information on the integration of distance learning into military education. The following research methods were used: comparative analysis; technological assessment; survey. The combination of these research methods allowed us to get a holistic view of the subject, challenges and opportunities offered by the introduction of distance learning in military education. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Despite the numerous scientific works devoted to this issue, the practical application of innovative forms and methods of teaching in the field of military education is somewhat limited. Further research and exploration is needed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, thus advancing military education in the digital age and at the same time responding to the unique challenges and requirements of this specialized field. Therefore, researching and identifying the features related to the integration of distance learning into the educational process of higher military educational institutions and military educational units of higher education institutions is an important scientific task. Presenting the main material. The article analyzes the concepts of “distance education”, “distance learning” and “blended learning”. It is found that distance education is a purposeful pedagogical exchange between participants of the educational process, which organically combines traditional and distance learning forms. This combination can take place within a physical classroom or go beyond it, using synchronous and asynchronous formats supported by a wide range of information and communication technologies. Elements of scientific novelty. A comparative analysis of synchronous and asynchronous formats in the context of blended learning is carried out, and the distinctive features of each of them are highlighted. Synchronous learning provides quick feedback between teachers and students, promotes joint group activities, develops communication skills, and triggers intrinsic motivation through interactive discourse. Conversely, the asynchronous format provides for schedule flexibility, which allows students to determine their own pace of learning, ensures the availability of educational resources at a convenient time, and develops self-organization skills. It has been found that distance learning is a purposeful pedagogical exchange between participants in the educational process that combines traditional and distance learning. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning are identified. Advantages: individual pace of learning; the ability to choose areas of development; the ability to revise the educational material; mitigation of mental and physical stress and development of autodidactic competencies. Disadvantages: limited direct social interaction; increased technological impact on everyday life and limited practical hours devoted to skill acquisition. Practical significance of the article. At the National Defense University of Ukraine, popular distance learning platforms and systems such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Google Meet have become indispensable tools for providing educational services. In addition, this study emphasizes the key role that modern digital technologies play in shaping the training of military professionals. These technologies are a fundamental prerequisite for success in education, constantly evolving and defining the contours of pedagogical paradigms, especially in the field of distance learning. Conclusion and the perspectives of future researches. Information and Communication Technologies are an aid to learning, but they cannot replace live communication. A promising area for further research is the study of technologies for organizing distance and blended learning in higher education institutions.

Reform and Thinking of Analog Electronic Technology Course in College Teaching

As a professional course that electronic majors must learn, analog electronic technology course plays an important role in students' professional learning, and the overall course is relatively strong in engineering practice. In addition, with the continuous development of technology in recent years, the pace of learning is getting faster and faster. The teaching reform around this course has always been a hot topic that many teachers focus on. Based on the practical teaching content of the analog electronic technology course, this paper thinks about the innovative teaching development mode of this course from the perspective of teaching reform in colleges and universities, hoping to adopt modern teaching technology, improve the reform of practical teaching, improve the quality of electronic technology course teaching, and promote the overall quality improvement and development of electronic students.

Education in the Digital World: From the Lens of Millennial Learners

The objective of this study is to determine Education in the Digital World from the lens of millennial learners. This also identifies the cybergogical implications of the issue with digital education as seen through the lens of the outlier. This study uses a mixed methods sequential explanatory design. A quantitative method was employed during the first phase and the instruments of the study were distributed using google forms. The survey received a total of 85 responses and the results were analyzed using descriptive methods. Following up with a qualitative method, during the second phase the outliers were interviewed,and the results were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of the mixed methods were interpreted in the form of cybergogical implications. The digital education from the lens of millennial learners in terms of the Benefits of E-Learning and Students Perceptions of E Learning received an overall mean of 3.68 which was verbally interpreted as Highly acceptable. The results reveal that millennial learners perceptions of digital education are influenced by the convenience in time and location, the fruit of collaboration using online interaction, the skills and knowledge they will acquire using digital resources, and the capability of improving themselves for the future. Millennial learners were able to adopt and learned how to use e learning. Also, since it is self paced learning,it allows them to study on their own time and schedule since e learning can be accessed anytime and anywhere. However, the technological resources of the learners should be considered in the implementation of e learning.

Adaptive Fine-Grained Predicates Learning for Scene Graph Generation.

The performance of current Scene Graph Generation (SGG) models is severely hampered by hard-to-distinguish predicates, e.g., "woman-on/standing on/walking on-beach". As general SGG models tend to predict head predicates and re-balancing strategies prefer tail categories, none of them can appropriately handle hard-to-distinguish predicates. To tackle this issue, inspired by fine-grained image classification, which focuses on differentiating hard-to-distinguish objects, we propose an Adaptive Fine-Grained Predicates Learning (FGPL-A) which aims at differentiating hard-to-distinguish predicates for SGG. First, we introduce an Adaptive Predicate Lattice (PL-A) to figure out hard-to-distinguish predicates, which adaptively explores predicate correlations in keeping with model's dynamic learning pace. Practically, PL-A is initialized from SGG dataset, and gets refined by exploring model's predictions of current mini-batch. Utilizing PL-A, we propose an Adaptive Category Discriminating Loss (CDL-A) and an Adaptive Entity Discriminating Loss (EDL-A), which progressively regularize model's discriminating process with fine-grained supervision concerning model's dynamic learning status, ensuring balanced and efficient learning process. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed model-agnostic strategy significantly boosts performance of benchmark models on VG-SGG and GQA-SGG datasets by up to 175% and 76% on Mean Recall@100, achieving new state-of-the-art performance. Moreover, experiments on Sentence-to-Graph Retrieval and Image Captioning tasks further demonstrate practicability of our method.

Investigating the effectiveness of flipped classroom model in a mathematics education course in Greece

An alternative instructional model, which due to the social reality created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is gaining more and more popularity in the global educational community, is the so called “flipped classroom”. In this paper we give the details of a one-week qualitative research we conducted in order to explore the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model in an undergraduate “mathematics education” course in Greece. The study involved thirty third-year math students, whose achievements and perceptions were captured with the help of questionnaire, task, personal interviews, and open discussion in the class. The analysis of the research data indicated increased engagement of the students, development of positive attitudes about the learning, control of the learning pace, autonomy in managing the time required for study and relative improvement of students’ performance in problem solving and teamwork. At the same time, several challenges emerged. The main ones concerned the demand for frequent active students’ participation in the educational process, the management of queries during the homework, the doubts about the effectiveness of the method on difficult teaching subjects, as well as the time and skill requirements for preparing such a lesson.

Cross-linguistic influence: The role of L1 and L2 differences in acquiring second language

This article discusses the role of first language and second language differences in second language acquisition process of L2 learners. This small scale research focuses on finding answers to three main questions: a) what are the main reasons for transferring L1 knowledge into L2; b) what should learners do to deal with this problem; and c) when does transfer start to diminish. The participants of this study are 21 students who are studying in their eleventh grade. According to the analysis of results, (1) main reasons for language transfer are different language structures and not enough knowledge in target language (knowledge gap in the target language) these, in turn, can slow down language learning pace of learners; to deal with the problem (2) learners should devote much time to learning (analyzing speeches, listening to podcasts, reading authentic articles, communicating with native speakers) and expose to L2 as much as possible, finally, (3) the influence of their first language has diminished significantly after time passed, but it didn’t disappear fully.

CONTINUITY OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AS AN INNOVATIVE CHALLENGE IN THE CONDITIONS OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND DIGITALIZATION

The article is devoted to the issue of continuity of vocational education in the conditions of European integration and digitalization. The purpose of research is analysis of strategic documents and accumulated better practices of the EU countries for identifying the main directions of development of the continuous education in Ukraine in the conditions of European integration and digitalization. Based on the analysis of the strategic documents of the European Union, it has been found that high-quality educational content (in terms of content and form of execution) with the possibility of interactive participation and mentoring is in demand today. Distance education has significant advantages for the implementation of continuous education that is oriented to an unlimited number of students with the possibility of obtaining knowledge at a convenient time, the possibility of choosing a convenient (optimal) learning pace. That variant of obtaining education is available for people of different training levels, age, social position and health. It has been summed up that the distance format is largely consistent with the principles of the concept of continuous education, and meet the dynamically changing needs of a modern person in applied knowledge. The general specific of the examined formats is strengthening the components of the informal nature of education, individualization (customization) of educational practices and orientation to the subjective needs of the personality. It has been determined that the key direction of development of the educational environment in the conditions of European integration and digitalization are distance education; gamification of education and using cloud technologies; implementation of augmented reality solutions and visualization technologies; development of social networks in education; development of mass opened online courses. It has been generalized that the following measures will facilitate the continuity of vocational education in the conditions of European integration and digitalization: educational trips, exchange of delegations; education in the format of "summer" and "winter" schools with "deep immersion", organization and conduction of author’s master classes, use of project technologies and techniques of game technology; increasing the share of distance learning to 50% of the total number of courses, using interactive forms (webinars, quizzes, virtual traineeships, etc.) with the involvement of representatives of educational organizations of the European Union.

Educational practices of indigenous qene bet schools and its implications to the modern educational practices

This study explored indigenous educational practices of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Qene Bet education and its implications to the modern educational practices. The study employed a qualitative approach with an ethnographic design. Three Qene Gubae Bets, one in Bahir Dar City administration and the other two in West Gojjam administrative Zone, were selected using purposive sampling for this study. Data was gathered through field observations, semi-structured interviews and focused group discussion from Yenetas(Qene Teachers) and students. Twenty-four participants have participated in the study. Data is analyzed and results are presented based on thematic approach. The findings indicate that Qene Bet church schools have their own indigenous pedagogical practices such as Qene “Qotera” (self-study), Qene “Negera” (oral presentation and defense) and Qene “Zerefa” (creating and presenting original Qene poems) that demands student centered and deep learning approaches. The findings also indicate that the practices of cooperative learning, peer learning, reflective learning, pace learning, critical interpretation, argumentative oral defense, differentiated instruction, self and peer assessment and scaffolding are central to the Qene education system. The study concluded that Qene Gubae Bet schools pedagogical practices have valuable insights for the current pedagogical practices of contemporary schools in Ethiopia.

Re-visiting the past in search for silver-lining: Moroccan students’ perceptions of technology-mediated faculty practices under COVID-19

ABSTRACT Despite the wide-ranging research on technology-mediated learning, which has contributed immensely to a better understanding of how best it can be implemented, lockdowns during COVID-19 times have revived debates on teacher preparedness to adequately engage in this modality of instruction. Research-validated evidence has shown that a complex combination of technology, pedagogy and content is necessary for impactful teaching practices. Thus, the present paper reports on a qualitative study that investigated students’ perceptions of their teachers’ performance during the lockdown period. Online interviews and focus groups were conducted with a cohort of 30 university students. The students were selected by means of purposeful sampling informed by a set of pre-defined criteria. Overall, the students reported that most of their teachers utilised asynchronous teaching modalities. Also of interest was the finding that a small proportion of faculty varied the instructional deliverable with a clear intent to cater for a wider spectrum of student learning pace and style. Under COVID-19, additionally, distance education was hugely crippled by student psychological ill-being. One of the implications of these findings, among others, is the pressing need, now more than ever, for comprehensive and intensive teacher professional programs focused on technology-enhanced methodology.

Increase in academic performance due to the application of cooperative learning strategies: A case in construction engineering

Cooperative learning has positive effects on student motivation, participation, and performance. Following the principles of this methodology, an intervention was designed to be implemented online during the confinement period in the Road Infrastructure of the UCN (n=40). The data collected shows that the operation of cooperative learning in online environments has the same benefits in terms of improving satisfaction, learning pace, and performance. These findings have implications for future instructional designs in hybrid or online modalities.The cooperative work teaching and learning methodology, if effective, will involve the conscious and sustained effort of a small group of students toward a pre-established goal, where each of its components assumes roles and coordinate their actions to achieve said purpose. The articulation of their individual resources-capabilities, the interaction that is generated between the members during the process, and the preliminary results that are obtained, promote a greater commitment-responsibility for their work and interdependence and support among their peers, raising the threshold between individual and group.The article allows documenting the effects of this didactic proposal on 4 elements: the participation rates, the improvement of the learning pace, the increase in the academic performance, and the satisfaction of the participants. The increase of 0.5 points in qualifications, of 17% in the approval rate, or reaching 85% of the learning compared to the minimum required 80% are some of the data that, together with the participation and satisfaction rates, lead to consider the extension of the proposal to other modules and subjects.

Training to Build Nutrition Capacity in the Nigerian Agricultural Sector: Initial Assessment and Future Directions.

In response to calls to increase nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA), the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development developed the Nigeria Agricultural Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy 2016-2025 (AFSNS). Capacity development activities to facilitate the AFSNS implementation subsequently commenced. This study analyzed the processes and outputs of initial capacity development efforts, examined findings from the analysis using existing literature, and identified critical next steps for nutrition capacity development in the Nigerian agriculture sector. The study reviewed documents including a proposal for nutrition training of agriculture sector actors, reports of meetings held among 6 resource persons who designed and/or delivered training, training reports, participants' pre- and posttraining assessments, and participants' training evaluation. Interviews were conducted with 2 resource persons involved in training design and delivery. Documents and interviews were coded and analyzed to identify emergent themes. Participants' pre- and posttests results were compared using paired t test in Stata 12.0. Knowledge and practice gaps were more extensive than had been anticipated. Training had some but limited effects on knowledge scores at the federal level. Modules addressing implementation practices had to be scaled down for participants to keep up with the learning pace. Existing literature indicates that such training would have been better planned as part of a broader sectoral nutrition workforce strategy, to facilitate greater tailoring of training to participants' job roles. Effective AFSNS implementation requires developing and operationalizing a comprehensive short-, medium- and long-term Agriculture Sector Nutrition Capacity Development Strategy for Nigeria.

Graduate Students’ Experiences in a Blended Learning Program in Kazakhstan: A Mixed-Method Study Employing Interaction Equivalency Theorem

This explanatory sequential mixed-method study explored the effectiveness of blended learning (BL) courses offered to graduate students at an English medium university in Kazakhstan. The study’s purpose was to explore and understand graduate students’ experiences while enrolled in BL courses by learning their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of BL, as well as its potential for enhancing their teacher leadership skills. A survey (n=81) and semi-structured individual interviews (n=17) were used as the main research instruments. This allowed for a detailed and rich data set on the conceptual underpinnings of the BL courses, their effectiveness, and their potential to inform higher education institutions towards implementing BL policies and practices, specifically in the field of education. Through the lens of the Interaction equivalency theorem, we analyzed students’ experiences and their interactions with their teachers and peers, as well as the mode, place, and pace of learning. This investigation revealed that the benefits of learning using BL outweighed its challenges. However, most of the participants preferred the face-to-face part of the BL course over its online teacher-student interaction component due to the opportunity to gain immediate feedback. Most importantly, the BL courses facilitated the enhancement of teacher leadership skills among the students. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for further development and revisions to current BL courses to enhance their learning value.

The effect of a training webinar on decreasing inter-observer variability in making a radiologic diagnosis of bronchiectasis

Non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis is a clinically important disease with an estimated 340,000–522,000 persons living with the disease and 70,000 being diagnosed annually. The radiographic diagnosis remains a pivotal part of recognizing the disease due to its protean clinical manifestations. As physicians are sensitized to this disease, a greater proportion of patients are being diagnosed with mild to moderate bronchiectasis. Despite the established use of CT chest as the main tool for making a radiologic diagnosis of bronchiectasis, the literature supporting the process of making that diagnosis is somewhat sparse. Concurrently, there has been an increased trend to have Web-based radiologic tutorials due to its convenience, the ability of the learner to set the pace of learning and the reduced cost compared to in-person learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend. We wanted to look carefully at the effect of a Web-based training session on interrater reliability. Agreement was calculated as percentages and kappa and prevalence adjusted kappa calculated. We found that a single Web-based training session had little effect on the variability and accuracy of diagnosis of bronchiectasis. Larger studies are needed in this area with multiple training sessions.

ELT Students’ Language Learning Beliefs and the Correlation to English Proficiency

There are various factors affecting an English learner to be able to learn English successfully. These factors may influence one’s learning pace and difficulties. One factor that is often referred to in many studies is the learner’s belief. The diverse beliefs of English learners are often said to be an influential factor to their language achievement. Based on this notion, this paper makes an effort to prove the correlation between the students’ language beliefs and achievement. This study focuses on students of English Language Teaching (ELT) as the participants. The ELT students’ beliefs are concluded from the questionnaire adapted from Horwitz’s Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI). Then, using the quantitative research approach, the results from the questionnaires are correlated to the students’ score of English proficiency test using Pearson correlation with SPSS 26. In the end, the result of the study shows positive beliefs by the ELT students. However, its correlation to language proficiency is not significant.

Improving procedural skills acquisition of students during medical device training: experiments on e-Learning vs. e-Learning with hands-on

In the context of medical device training, e-Learning can address problems like unstandardized content and different learning paces. However, staff and students value hands-on activities during medical device training. In a blended learning approach, we examined whether using a syringe pump while conducting an e-Learning program improves the procedural skills needed to operate the pump compared to using the e-Learning program only. In two experiments, the e-Learning only group learned using only the e-Learning program. The e-Learning + hands-on group was instructed to use a syringe pump during the e-Learning to repeat the presented content (section “Experiment 1”) or to alternate between learning on the e-Learning program and applying the learned content using the pump (section “Experiment 2”). We conducted a skills test, a knowledge test, and assessed confidence in using the pump immediately after learning and two weeks later. Simply repeating the content (section “Experiment 1”) did not improve performance of e-Learning + hands-on compared with e-Learning only. The instructed learning process (section “Experiment 1”) resulted in significantly better skills test performance for e-Learning + hands-on compared to the e-Learning only. Only a structured learning process based on multi-media learning principles and memory research improved procedural skills in relation to operating a medical device.

Students’ Acceptance and Motivation on Andragogical Approaches Towards their Academic Performance

Online Distance Learning (ODL) has been practiced widely around the world. The educational delivery of ODL provides learners vast opportunities to deal with the learning process, that includes time, place as well as pace of learning. Assisted by technology, ODL has tremendously improved the educational system in many ways. This erupts the possibility of implementing andragogical approach through ODL. Hence, this study, which is guided by Knowles’s theory of andragogy, is qualitative research investigating the issue of learning process via andragogical approaches of seven adult learners in UiTM Perlis, Malaysia. The study also seeks whether students’ attitudes vary differently among themselves throughout ODL so that their performance during class could be evaluated. The findings of the study support andragogical approaches which they positively affect the students’ learning experiences.

Automating process design by coupling genetic algorithms with commercial simulators: a case study for hybrid MABR processes.

The development of commercial software and simulators has progressed to assist engineers to optimize design, operation, and control of wastewater treatment processes. Commonly, manual trial-and-error approaches combined with engineering experience or exhaustive searches are used to find candidate solutions. These approaches are becoming less favorable because of the increasingly elaborate process models, especially for new and innovative processes whose process knowledge is not fully established. This study coupled genetic algorithms (GAs), a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI), with a commercial simulator (SUMO) to automatically complete a design task. The design objective was the upgrade of a conventional Modified Ludzack-Ettinger (MLE) process to a hybrid membrane aerated biofilm reactor (hybrid MABR). Results demonstrated that GAs can (1) accurately estimate five influent wastewater fractions using eleven typical measurements - 3 out of 5 estimated fractions were nearly the same and the other two were within 7% relative errors and (2) propose reasonable designs for the hybrid MABR process that reduce footprint by 17%, aeration by 57%, and pumping by 57% with significantly improved effluent nitrogen quality (TN<3 mg-N/L). This study demonstrated that tools from AI promote efficiency in wastewater treatment process design, optimization and control by searching candidate solutions both smartly and automatically in replacement of manual trial-and-error methods. The methodology in this study contributes to accumulating process knowledge, understanding trade-offs between decisions, and finally accelerates the learning pace for new processes.

Scaffolding strategy to enhance reading sub-skills among young-adult learners

The notion of scaffolding is widely used in education, where the real protagonist of the whole process is the learner. The teacher’s role, then, becomes more of that of a facilitator. The main objective of the present study was to improve the reading sub-skills of second semester students at the Quevedo State Technical University. The methodology used was semi-structured interviews and expert judgments. The results indicated that it is important that the teacher be familiar with the students’ competence and knowledge to know how to best help them, and what is most appropriate for their progress and pace of learning. To determine this, students should participate in different activities. In addition, it is essential that the university's language center promote ongoing training so that instructors can update their knowledge by taking professional training courses. Lastly, the approach of this research is purely qualitative since it is based on students' perceptions of which scaffolding strategies they believed were most useful to understand the readings.

English Education Master Students' Perceptions on Online Learning During COVID-19 Pandemic

AbstractELT enterprises are always ever-changing in these recent years due to the learners’ learning needs, preferences, interests, and proficiency. This progressive change is noticeable during this covid-19 pandemic where all educational institutions are commissioned their learners to study from home with the support of technological interfaces. This current small-scale qualitative study was an attempt to discover the specific perspectives upheld by English Education Master Students concerning the internalization of online EFL learning activities during these recent 2 year periods. To fulfill this research objectivity, the narrative inquiry was employed to fully attain the authentic data derived from the research participants manifested in the form of stories. In the short-term data gathering processes, 5 open-ended written narrative inquiry questions were distributed to 2 English Education Master Students of Sanata Dharma University, batch 2020. Anchored on the obtained research results, online EFL learning activities are quite beneficial in promoting more fruitful learning outcomes and embracing learners’ learning pace in absorbing the imparted learning materials. Hence, it is worth highlighting that this learning method is appropriately suitable for nowadays target language learning venture due to its practicality and feasibility. Some specific suggestions were also depicted in the last section.Keywords: Online learning; graduate students; covid-19 pandemic