Intrinsic Factors for Continued ERP Learning: A Precursor to Interdisciplinary ERP Curriculum Design

Unilateral enterprise resource planning (ERP) curriculum improvements from the instructor's perspective are likely to generate only limited success. Understanding student motivations and beliefs with ERP systems is the missing link to effective ERP education. Relatively little attention in the ERP literature has been given to student learning associated with ERP experience, and almost none to factors influencing current and expected student beliefs and behaviors relative to ERP. The complexity of ERP systems demands that beliefs and behaviors be considered when planning ERP curricula. In the present study, the Theory of Planned Behavior was extended to examine students’ intentions to explore additional aspects of ERP after their class exercises. When considering all students, attitude and subjective norm had positive and significant effects on intentions to continue ERP learning. Subjective norm also affected attitude, and availability of support materials had a positive effect on subjective norm. Distinctive patterns are found for the construct relationships between student groups who valued ERP education (the engaged) and those who placed little or no value on ERP education (the undecided). Results from competing model analyses indicate that support materials influenced the engaged and undecided groups differently. Strategies for ERP curriculum design are provided.     

Service learning in higher education: a systematic literature review

Asia Pacific Education Review - In the last few years, adoption of service learning in higher educational institutions has emerged as a modern teaching and learning strategy. This study is aimed to...     

Transforming public schools: Impact of the CRI program on child learning in Pakistan

This paper evaluates the impact of teaching innovations, introduced in public primary schools under the Children Resources International (CRI) Program, on student outcomes. We estimate students’ learning based on their scores on standardized tests. We match schools and children within the treatment and comparison group and find that the CRI Program has been effective in raising learning achievement. Moreover, the results are robust to unobserved selection bias. The average gain for a CRI student represents an improvement of 0.40 standard deviations. The results stay unchanged when we use alternative estimators for the treatment effect including the bias-corrected estimator proposed by Abadie and Imbens (2006).     

Bridging the gap between higher education and the Telecommunications Engineering Sector

In this paper, the growth of the telecommunication sector in Pakistan and consequent development in the related professional education is studied. The widening gap between the telecommunication industry and associated education sector is identified. The higher educational programs in Pakistan have grown very rapidly to meet the needs of the explosive growth in the telecommunications＇ engineering sector but this growth is not in synchronization with the requirements of the industry due to non-existence of collaboration and co-operation between the two. The professional education in telecommunication in Pakistan and the higher educational degree programs are very precisely focused on producing quality graduates with refined technical and mathematical skills While the telecom sector in Pakistan is in principle a service provider and a consumer market that mainly requires engineers for operation and maintenance related activities. As such the skills imparted by the education sector are rarely utilized, which results in dissatisfaction among the telecommunications＇ engineers. A survey of both the telecommunication sector and the academia has been conducted along with detailed discussions to explore the reasons for this ever-increasing gap, ways and means to arrest this trend and future course of action for the academia and the telecom sector to develop. A study related to other emerging technical fields like computer science has also been made for the comparison. On the basis of this extensive exercise outlined above, measures have been suggested to bridge the gap between the education and the industrial needs of the telecom sector. By adopting these measures not only our education sector will become more beneficial to the industry, but the industry would also get the advantage of immense potential of young graduates and the academic research.     

Robust stabilization of uncertain 2-D discrete-time delayed systems using sliding mode control

This paper aims to solve the problem of sliding mode control for an uncertain two-dimensional (2-D) systems with states having time-varying delays. The uncertainties in the system dynamics are constituted of mismatched uncertain parameters and the unknown nonlinear bounded function. The proposed problem utilizes the model transformation approach. By segregating the proper Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional in concert with the improved version of Wirtinger-based summation inequality, sufficient solvability conditions for the existence of linear switching surfaces have been put forward, which ensure the asymptotical stability of the reduced-order equivalent sliding mode dynamics. Then, we solve the controller synthesis problem by extending the recently proposed reaching law to 2-D systems, whose proportional part is appropriately scaled by the factor that does not depend on some constant terms but rather on current switching surface’s value, which in turn ensures the faster convergence and better robustness against uncertainties. Finally, the proposed results have been validated through an implementation to a suitable physical system.     

香草醛缩色氨酸与稀土镧、钕、钐、铈配合物的合成及表征

合成了香草醛缩色氨酸席夫碱(简写为L)及其稀土La(III)、Nd(III)、Sm(III)、Ce(III)配合物,通过元素分析、摩尔电导、差热-热重分析、红外光谱、紫外光谱等手段.确定配合物为KRe(H2O)(NO3)·2H2O(Re=La,Nd,Sm,Ce).     

Revisiting the occupational aspirations and destinations of Anglo-Australian and Chinese-Australian high school students

Evidence from Australia lends support to the “Asian high achieving syndrome” in Chinese-Australian students and “self-deprivation syndrome” in Anglo-Australian students. Applying ethnographic case studies approach for doctoral thesis the author collected data on a longitudinal basis from homes and school of these students. All of these students attended the same school located in a predominantly middle class suburb of Perth Metropolitan area in Western Australia. Chinese-Australian families had settled in Perth from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, whereas Anglo-Australian families had been residing in Perth for three generations. Impetus to revisit these students (now young adults with their own families) 10 years later came from an urge to test the validity of the prediction the author had made in the concluding chapter of his doctoral thesis. The author had claimed that “if Anglo-Australian parents keep on dwelling in the era of 1950s and 1960s and do not change their laid-back attitude about education, their children could eventually be under-privileged in their own country”. Ten years later, the author undertook a follow-up study on these young adults from six of the eight original families in order to find out their occupational destinations and future aspirations. Data for the follow-up study were collected from these young adults and their parents. These research cases were interviewed twice, each time approximately for two hours and their parents were interviewed once for two to three hours. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the follow-up study which reveals a remarkable relationship between the attitude towards schooling and academic performance with their subsequent occupational destination.     

Terrorism in the Backyard: Coverage of London Attacks, 2005 by the British TV News Channels

The media-terrorism nexus needs further exploration. This article is a qualitative analysis of the coverage of London Attacks, 2005 by the British TV news channels. It aims to investigate and to empirically ascertain the veracity of the media-terrorism-symbiotic-relationship notion. The research draws a comparison with a similar study of the coverage of Mumbai attacks, 2008 and maintains that when the terrorist event happens on British soil, the symbiotic relationship theory is not verified completely. It concludes that British TV news channels, while reporting the home event of terrorism, do not overly focus on the theme of awe and terror. Instead, they are more responsible, careful, and nationalistic while covering the events of terrorism.     

Impact of light intensity on flowering time and plant quality of Antirrhinum majus L.cultivar Chimes White

Shades of different light intensities (29%, 43%, 54%, 60% or 68%) along with control (no shade) were studied to observe their effects on the flowering time and plant quality. A hyperbolic relationship was observed between different light intensities under shade, and time to flowering. The total number of flower buds showed a curvilinear relationship with light intensities. Growth parameters related to the plant characteristics such as plant height, leaf area and plant fresh weight were improved under shading treatments at the expense of flowering time and number of flower buds. However, both linear and polynomial models applied assumed that cultivar Chimes White was equally sensitive to light intensity throughout development.