Key Challenges of On-Line Education in Multi-Cultural Context

In meeting the ever-growing educational needs of culturally diverse student populations, universities and colleges still seek to maintain high quality standards, both for in situ and on line education. Despite the latter's reportedly high effectiveness potential, online degree courses tend to have low students' persistence and satisfaction rates. In this pape, r we examine the role that students' and instructors' national cultures play in the way individuals learn at a distance. We argue that students' individual culture dimensions may prove influential in achieving overall learning outcomes. The key complexities for students involve understanding the instructor's role in a socio-constructivist approach, adapting online collaborative learning and acquiring academic skills. These can become crucial barriers to effective online learning. No less a challenge is presented by online distance education for instructors. Academic institutions' managements have high expectations in terms of utilizing up-to-date teaching techniques, enhancing competitive edge and maximizing cost-effectiveness. Thus, the teaching staff is expected to play an increasingly essential role in the new environment. We conclude that instructors have to develop strategies to motivate, support and counsel students with the aim of facilitating the students' on-line learning experience. This implies that teaching staff have to acquire new skills and competences vital for multicultural online education. Robert Kennedy College, whose experience is reflected in this paper, shares much of the issues of other institutions aiming to utilize distance online learning, but has the advantage that it was set up from the start as an online institution. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Diversification factors in the professional activities of Russian higher school faculty

Competitiveness of the higher education system is in many respects brought about by a degree of its diversification which is shown in vertical stratification and horizontal differentiation. These processes are manifested in the differentiation of the faculty professional activities, in their structure, contents, working hours and workloads. There become even more crucial the issues of balancing research and teaching activities, as well as the choice of criteria and subjects of the faculty effectiveness assessment.Конкурентоспособность системы высшего образования во многом обусловлена степенью её диверсифицированности, которая проявляется в вертикальной стратификации и горизонтальной дифференциации. Эти процессы находят отражения в дифференциации профессиональной деятельности вузовского преподавателя, в структуре, содержании и режиме работы ППС. Актуализируются проблемы соотношения научно-исследовательской и преподавательской деятельности, а также выбор критериев и субъектов оценки эффективности труда вузовского педагога

Zen law and features of liquidus-solidus curves in binary state diagrams based on elements VIIIA and IB of the periodic table

The paper presents the analysis of binary state diagrams based on elements VIIIA and IB of the periodic table and crystal geometry parameters of solid solutions and intermetallic compositions. The analysis shows an explicit correlation between the type of the evolution of phase diagrams classified by Lebedev depending on the nature of atomic volume deviations observed in solid solutions and intermetallic compounds from Zen law

Social representations of HIV/AIDS in five Central European and Eastern European countries: A multidimensional analysis

Cognitive processing models of risky sexual behaviour have proliferated in the two decades since the first reporting of HIV/AIDS, but far less attention has been paid to individual and group representations of the epidemic and the relationship between these representations and reported sexual behaviours. In this study, 494 business people and medics from Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Russia sorted free associations around HIV/AIDS in a matrix completion task. Exploratory factor and multidimensional scaling analyses revealed two main dimensions (labelled ‘Sex’ and ‘Deadly disease’), with significant cultural and gender variations along both dimension scores. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in the light of growing concerns over the spread of the epidemic in this region

Binary phase diagrams based on elements VIIIA and IB periods of the D. I. Mendeleev's table and features of crystallographic parameters

The data obtained as a result of the analysis of crystallogeometric parameters and the structure of state diagrams of binary systems from elements VIIIA and IB periods of the D. I. Mendeleev's table are presented. It is shown that the classification of the evolution of phase diagrams of binary systems by types, proposed by T. A. Lebedev, correlates with features of concentration dependences of the deviation of atomic volumes in solid solutions from Zen law

Spectroscopic determination of the fundamental parameters of 66 B-type stars in the field-of-view of the CoRoT satellite

We aim to determine the fundamental parameters of a sample of B stars with apparent visual magnitudes below 8 in the field-of-view of the CoRoT space mission, from high-resolution spectroscopy. We developed an automatic procedure for the spectroscopic analysis of B-type stars with winds, based on an extensive grid of FASTWIND model atmospheres. We use the equivalent widths and/or the line profile shapes of continuum normalized hydrogen, helium and silicon line profiles to determine the fundamental properties of these stars in an automated way. After thorough tests, both on synthetic datasets and on very high-quality, high-resolution spectra of B stars for which we already had accurate values of their physical properties from alternative analyses, we applied our method to 66 B-type stars contained in the ground-based archive of the CoRoT space mission. We discuss the statistical properties of the sample and compare them with those predicted by evolutionary models of B stars. Our spectroscopic results provide a valuable starting point for any future seismic modelling of the stars, should they be observed by CoRoT.Comment: 31 pages (including 14 pages online material), 32 figure

Low mass loss rates in O-type stars: Spectral signatures of dense clumps in the wind of two Galactic O4 stars

We have analyzed the far-UV spectrum of two Galactic O4 stars, the O4If+ supergiant HD190429A and the O4V((f)) dwarf HD96715, using archival FUSE and IUE data. We have conducted a quantitative analysis based on the two NLTE model atmosphere and wind codes, TLUSTY and CMFGEN. We have derived the stellar and wind parameters and the surface composition of the two stars. The surface of HD190429A has a composition typical of an evolved O supergiant (N-rich, C and O-poor), while HD96715 exhibits surface N enhancement similar to the enrichment found in SMC O dwarfs and attributed to rotationally-induced mixing. We find that homogeneous wind models could not match the observed profile of O V1371 and require very low phosphorus abundance to fit the P V1118-1128 resonance lines. However, we are able to match the O V and P V lines using clumped wind models. We find that N IV1718 is also sensitive to wind clumping. For both stars, we have calculated clumped wind models that match well all these lines from different species and that remain consistent with Halpha data. These fits therefore provide a coherent and thus much stronger evidence of wind clumping in O stars than earlier claims. We find that the wind of these two stars is highly clumped, as expressed by very small volume filling factors, namely f=0.04 for HD190429A and f=0.02 for HD96715. In agreement with our analysis of SMC stars, clumping starts deep in the wind, just above the sonic point. The most crucial consequence of our analysis is that the mass loss rates of O stars need to be revised downward significantly, by a factor of 3 and more. Accounting for wind clumping is essential when determining the wind properties of O stars. Our study therefore calls for a fundamental revision in our understanding of mass loss and of O-type star winds. (abridged)Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics; 16 pages; accepted version after minor revisio