Asia Pacific Journal of Contemporary Education and Communication Technology

1-14

Authors: Malcolm H. Field, Ph.D.

Higher education is not immune to the changing paradigms which we are witnessing in our contemporary society. Although more rapid, societies during the Industrial Revolution may have also faced similar concerns. The future presents many unknowns. We, in the academy, must not merely let the future be created for us: we must be a part of the creative process. This paper discusses several of the many ‘contexts’ that need to be addressed by and within the academy. Although the discsussion will be far from complete, the goal of the paper is to stimulate discsussion and should utopia be found to exist, be a catalyst for brave to show leadership to create and merge, to produce a kintsugi mono, rather than wait with the broken pieces, for the futures to arrive.

22-38

Authors: Ezra S. Aguilar, Allan B. De Guzman, Ph.D., Belinda De Castro, Ph.D.

With the system-wide implementation of backward design instructional framework vis-à-vis the K+12 system in the Philippine basic education level, curriculum and content specialists are challenged to contribute their share in the design and development of learning plans and packages that ensure transferability of students’ learning. Such tall order creates an instructional chasm which calls for more prototyping efforts in the light of constructivist principles. Anchored on Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence and Instructional Systems Design, this materials preparation endeavor attempted to develop and validate a prototype learning package in mathematics with a view to promoting a culture of understanding and transfer in mathematics classroom using technology.

51-57

Authors: N.D.K. Guruge, R.A.G.P. Ranasinghe, S.H.P.D.L. Abeywardana, D.M.S.N. Siriwardhana, Dhammika H. De Silva

Smart phones play a major role in people's life nowadays. However, it has become a challenging task for visually impaired people to get involved with smart phones in their day to day activities because of the limited accessibility to the input mechanism. “Insight” is a personal assistant mobile application mainly focusing on visually impaired, which will give them a hand in their routine tasks. This application provides a tangible input mechanism based on braille which will simplify the task of using mobile phones. Two types of keypads are used in the application according to the input needed to provide. There are several main components included in this application. Learning module, speed dialer, messaging, calculator, gaming module, scheduler, public transportation assistance and navigation instructions provider are those components. The main objective of this project is to provide equal opportunity for the visually challenged people to get the experience of a sighted person would get, using a mobile phone without any restraint due to their impairment.

64-73

Authors: Kathirgamalingam Somasundaraswaran

The objective of this paper is to describe the delivery of the engineering technology level capstone design course at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) where on-campus students had a chance to effectively engage with external students in a blended mode of delivery. The resources supplied from online sources, together with a well-designed assessment criterion of this course, helped to engage students in effective participation. The experiences in delivery gained when offering this AD capstone project in 2015 were used as scenarios to highlight the pros and cons of this blended mode of delivery. The results from selected projects show that these projects helped students to enhance their ability to optimise construction tasks including: proposing cost effective labour materials, designing and constructing reinforced concrete and masonry structure and comparing the probable output from using unit cost and productivity estimations. In addition, students have also used their enhanced design knowledge and drafting techniques learned from this degree program to professionally complete the project. However, maintaining the spirit of teams and continuous communication and access to data resources were identified to be challenging for students in this course. Alternatively, this blended learning model haspositivelyinfluences to increasing learning outcomes by helping students in various ways to undertake wide-ranging tasks. In particular, less experienced students have been able to expand their skill-set, knowledge and competencies from working alongside experienced students who are already working for the industry. This paper would be useful for academics considering a similar course with blended interaction.

1-5

Authors: EDWARD BACE

Despite the many advantages of online learning programmes in university curricula, such programmes can present challenges, particularly in terms of assessment of group coursework and participation in discussion fora. The author’s experiences suggest ways to mitigate the “free rider” problem often accompanying group coursework, in which a few motivated students perform the bulk of the work. This can be achieved by requiring a shorter, individual submission separately from each student, in order to better judge the relative contribution to the whole. Participation in online discussions can also be incentivised by making this element a meaningful part of the overall summative assessment. Lastly, both attendance and learning, whether online or face to face, can be motivated by including in each session a brief quiz, to be done individually or in groups, which again counts towards the overall assessment, and encourages students to participate, and further reinforces learning.

25-31

Authors: Alan Fenn-Lavington

Considerable attention is being afforded to the First Year Experience (FYE) of University students to enhance student retention and success. The literature highlights the importance of social capital (Bourdieu, 1993; Engestrom, 1987; Tinto, 2012; Wacquant, 2014), acquiring academic skills and in particular, argumentative essay writing (AEW), in the FYE and if it is seen to be influential for student success (Tinto, 2012; Kuh, 2013). The aim of this study is to identify implications for informing the improvement of AEW and academic skills within the context of the FYE. Moreover, the study will use a mixed methods approach by way of survey and semi-formal interviews. I will analyse the data and make deductions regarding the findings. I will code the data – this will be done as it is collected and will include, among other things, the date of the survey and interviews, who completed them and the number of returns. In conclusion, locating the study within the theoretical and conceptual framework of cultural activity theory (Engestrom, 1987; Bourdieu, 1993) provides a means to describe the dynamic interactions of the various personnel including lecturers and students in teaching and learning. Balancing the descriptive and interpretive elements of this study with structure and organisation will enhance the explication of the findings. In doing so, this study represents a credible contribution to the field and offers a viable approach for future investigations.

42-48

Authors: Raquel D. Bernabe

This study was conducted to determine the organizational Culture and School Productivity of Elementary Teachers in the City Schools Division of Dasmariñas City Cavite, Department of Education. The results of the study would help teachers and administrators to find the relationship of organizational culture and productivity of elementary teachers for enhancing the performance of teachers and rationalize the planning for activities intended for improving the performance of teachers. This study used the descriptive analysis method to determine the relationship of Organizational culture to School Productivity. Organizational Culture has a significant relationship to the School Productivity in the City Schools Division of Dasmariñas City Cavite. This study focused on the status of existing practices of City Schools Division of Dasmariñas City Cavite, Department of Education, in terms of Organizational Culture and Productivity of Elementary Teachers, as perceived by teachers. This paper will be an input towards understanding the greater need of the City Schools Division in making policies and plans and for a thorough understanding of the relationship between organizational culture and its productivity in an effort to improve performance of teachers and for upgrading existing policies and practices as a basis for policy formulation, program development and procedural enhancement.

57-64

Authors: J.P. Chen, T.P. Yum, Q.B. Ye, B. Jia

Chinese medicine shows it characteristics in various aspects including health services, research and education. Globalization also takes places in this profession with the increasing cultural interflow between the East and the West. Cross-institution collaboration is increasingly popular among institution in higher education. The benefit brought from the cross-institution collaboration might possibly fit students in the globalization changes. Across-institution and region collaboration teaching projects have been initiated by the University of Hong Kong and the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A Chinese medicine topic was selected and delivered with Problem-based learning. Blended learning was adopted in teaching and learning activities allowing students to interact with students from other institutes in online components. The experience shows possible ways in achieving the collaboration including flexible design, early resources identification, standardizing the differences and communication supported with advanced technology. Blended learning and asynchronous learning are suggested in the pedagogical design for cross-institution collaboration teaching projects. It gives both flexibility and feasibility in implementing the teaching and learning activities. The experience shows both challenges and benefit in implementing cross-institution collaboration teaching projects. This experience might bring a positive atmosphere in education advancement and further collaborative initiatives from different institutions.

73-82

Authors: Sri Djatnika Sya’diah, Rina R.Novianty

Millions of students graduate from universities all around the world, every year and hope to be prepared for the world of work. Whether the new graduates meet the needs of employers, however, is still a controversial issue. To compete with other graduates from neighboring areas like other AEC (ASEAN Economic Community) countries, this issue becomes even more important. This study focuses on what qualities do the students, who are the prospective employees and who have recently graduated with the graduate’s degrees, have. Employers need diverse qualities, such as analytical thinking (Andrews & Higson, 2008), interpersonal skills (Hellier et al., 2004) and willingness to work in teams (Hernández‐March et al.,2009). Fortunately, Indonesian Government through Directorate General of Higher Education (Dikti) has arranged and applied the Competency Based Curriculum that focused more on the soft-skill outcomes as the improvement of the former National Curriculum 1994 with its Content Based Curriculum. Although the research were scattered, several studies have covered the issue and proved that the attributes of the current Curriculum has better outcomes, in term of qualities that meet the Employers’ Perspective of Human Resource Competency needs in the job market. This study provides a thorough literature review on the subject, including the focus of research and major results of the studies on the topic. The findings of the studies are summarized and discussed. The need for a critical review of literature to summarize and integrate these studies still remains.

90-96

Authors: R S Vignesh Raj, Ashik Ali, Dr. BabakKhazaei

Technology has made considerable advancements.in certain parts of the world; there is a disconnect between social system and technology which could influence the user acceptance of the latter, partly because it was designed givinglittle importance to the culture, way of life and attitude of the people in that region. This paper aims to introduce socio-technological approach to user acceptance of certain technologies with primary focus on speech-to-text technology in Tamil language.

104-113

Authors: Puspita Kencana Sari, Filia Stefany Sihotang

Based on statistics, it is known that Facebook is the primary social media used by the people in the world. Indonesia has the third largest number of Facebook users after the US and India. It turns out that the high number of theusers in Indonesia is aligned with many cases occurring on Facebook. The reason is that Facebook doesn’t provide enough safety information which createsa lack of awareness fromits users in entering personal information such as email, phone number, address etc. This study aims to find out more about information security on Facebook by analyzing information security awareness among its users based on their demographics (gender, age, educational background, income). The result of each category is then described. It can be concluded that there are relationships between awareness and each demographic category, therefore, there aredifferences between awareness and demographic category.

124-130

Authors: Dr. Iqbal Singh Brar

Information is a vital component of the modern society. It is the base of the developmental activities of the society. Library and information centers are the main repositories of information and web based delivery of information resources are the main services of most of these centers. The present study is basically a survey. A questionnaire was administered and distributed among the randomly selected 75 students of Engineering, Management and Medical streams. The main purpose of this study is to find out the use of web based information resources and services and to find out what kinds of problems faced by them in this era of Information and Communication Technology. An attempt has also been made to know the satisfaction level of the users from the web based resources and the services.

142-150

Authors: Hyeog-inKwon, Hyunk-kyungKim, Soon-GyuJung

Public interest in 3D printing as the next-generation technology is increasing and the potential and market size of the technology’s convergence industry are increasing accordingly. This presents an opportunity to focus on the positive effects of 3D printing technology, which is also emerging as a manufacturing innovation and to discuss its market entry and development from an industry ecological perspective. To this end, this study analyzes the application value of3D printing technology as a value chain and business model. The study uses the innovative Betz (2011) model of the introduction of new technology to propose an ecological model that can be used for a convergence industry. The 3D printing industry was categorized into three main domains—industry convergence, industry support, and industry control—and the characteristics of each domain were defined. This study’s analysis is based on a case of an R&D project carried out with government funding to solve the copyright problem in the 3D printing industry.

162-172

Authors: H T Palliyaguru, L I E P Weerathunga, E A L R Ekanayake, S P Wijesuriya, M P A W Gamage

Today, as the development of mobile hardware is getting better, the performance index is much higher than the actual requirements of the software configuration. Mobile Phone's features depend more on software. As the Android operating system is getting more widespread in the population of smart devices, the application based on Android SDK attracts much more attention and becomes more useful. Since the differences among programming languages between these devices, a lot of developers spend much time studying the programming language for development. In the case of conducting the research on Fine Payment and Penalty Point System to Sri-Lankan government problems related to the development of native android applications arise. Also, the most significant point is that all the available applications that are developed are not good at cross-platform, which causes some inconvenience to the users as well. In this paper, we propose a method to build an application for smart devices using the Cordova framework, which uses building apps in HTML and JavaScript. It is also good for web developer dives in mobile development and a simple way of making applications for cross-platform within a short time

180-185

Authors: Kwangho Song, Joonwoo Jeon, Yoo-Sung Kim

A feasible document clustering strategy is proposed to improve the execution time of plagiarism detections in national research report management portal system in Korea. The proposed document clustering scheme uses both a dimension reducing technique and a synonym dictionary to produce the appropriate clusters even with large number of documents. Hence, since the actual plagiarism detection is needed to be applied to only the related clusters not entire documents in the database, the execution time efficiency of the plagiarism detection can be improved.