Educational Technology

This paper aims to develop and analyze a framework for measuring the competitiveness of a primary school. In order to evaluate the competitiveness the qualitative analysis has been adopted. The competitiveness of City School and Roots School System was evaluated using the developed competitiveness framework. Roots School was evaluated as more competitive. City School needs to focus more on grooming of students, faculty employment, retention and feedback mechanisms. The framework can be used to further improve the private sector primary schools.

The research study attempts to focus on the general attitudes that consumers tend to form towards advertising based on its three primary determinants of product information, social integration and hedonism. The literature starts by defining what attitudes actually are and their role in inclining people towards the desired products and services. It then highlights the ABC model of attitudes by focusing on the interrelationships among feeling, knowing and doing. Moving on with the research study, attitude towards advertisements accompanied by optimum advertising has also been described. The optimal distribution of resources between the various elements of the marketing mix tools remains a significant issue relevant to both the practitioners and academics. In factual terms, the issues crowding advertising and sales promotion spending continue to attract considerable managerial attention. Giving an ending note to the literature review, the significance of mass media advertising comprising of its primary determinants have been comprehensively described. In this research study, Statistical Package for the Social Science 20.0 was applied. Being an effective tool for performing quantitative research, it is quite easy to use and serves as a good starting point to adapt to advanced statistical packages. The results clearly pin point, that the independent variables of product information, social affiliation and hedonism have a positive impact on the general attitude development of the consumer towards advertising. The strongest positive correlation was against hedonism indicating that the emotional and excitement appeals play a major role in influencing consumers to be exposed to mass media promotional tools. Regression analysis was also applied to evaluate the relationship between one dependent variable and one or more independent variables, which indicated that the predictors explained the dependent variable of attitude towards advertising by 73%. Overall the results of the study truly supported our three hypotheses which show that as time passes by, the role of mass media advertising will play a major role in influencing potential consumer’s attitudes towards the advertised product and services.

The English pronunciation of the Panjabi learners is highly aggressive giving rise to defective pattern of speech in English. For example they don’t use labio-dental sounds or they are unaware of silent sounds in English words like /m/ in tomb. The present paper aims to analyze the phonetic and phonological patterns of English and Panjabi as taught by teachers in some schools. The structural approach is preferred over other approaches in this paper. This approach suits to English and Panjabi as the phonological structures of both the languages is of contrastive nature rather than identical or similar one. Both the languages are spoken and used in teaching. The structure is taken as an arrangement and combination of phonological units, not in the sense that of as grammarians use like word structure, noun formation, morphological constructions, etc. Veritably, Panjabi is written as it is spoken, whereas English is not spoken, as it is written, thereby causing doubts in the minds of the learners.

English occupies a place of prestige in the whole world simply because it is the lingua franca. In Saudi Arabia, though it can never replace Arabic yet becoming popular in younger generation for educational/economic growth and development. The way English has been taught in most of Asia including the gulf region, is to a great extent responsible for the deterioration of the standard of English for various reasons. The issue of falling standards of English in KSA in particular in the past is very much due to the curricular aims and objectives of English language Education. The main cause for the students learning difficulties and poor achievement especially in speaking skill is that teachers themselves have a very limited exposure of reasons of difficulties and appropriate instructional strategies.

The purpose of this study was to examine Biology students’ weaknesses as far as graph work is concerned. The target population was SHS 3 students offering biology as an elective science subject in Senior High Schools in the Cape Coast Metropolis during the 2009/2010 academic year. However, the accessible population was elective biology students from six schools in the Cape Coast Metropolis. At each school an intact class was randomly selected and used. In all a sample size of 230 students was used. The study revealed that elective biology students have difficulty with providing headings, an appropriate scale, and labeling the axes of graphs.

The purpose of this paper is to understand undergraduate students’ perception of the Final Year Project’s supervisory process. A survey was carried out to elicit the students’ views to gain an insight into their experience during the supervision process. The sample consisted of 91 students in a private university in Malaysia. The participants’ responses were analyzed according to the research questions and recurring themes. Only these factors are affected by gender of students: area of expertise of supervisors, timely feedback, duration of the research project and the number of meetings with supervisors. The implications of these findings are discussed. A number of implications were derived for theory, practice, and further research.

The same responsibility to educate Indonesian young generationlies on both private and public Universities. However, due to the rapid growth of both Universities,tighter and higher competition has been found. The lack of students entering private Universities (PTS) have made many of them collapsed.Therefore, to face the tight competition, PTS need to concern on some particular strategies to improve the number of students who enroll PTS. One of the strategies is by improving the academic performance.This study was to develop an optimalization model to improve academic performance in PTS through Total Quality Management (TQM) Development in many PTS at Central Java. The data were obtained from observation, questionnaire and in-depth formal and informal interviews to the lectures and the head of PTS. The data were gathered purposively using sequenced mixed methods. The study found thatthere was weak correlation between organizational culture, employee motivation, job satisfaction, academic performance and TQM in PTS at Central Java. Academic performance in PTS was stillworst with the index value of 3.94. Meanwhile, TQM indicated the index valueof 3.99 which was in medium to good category. As a matter of fact, it was necessary to build organizational culture, work motivation, job satisfaction to optimize academic performance also there was necessary to be develop TQM in PTS. This condition would be possibly happened along with the high commitment of the leaders, academic staffs, as well as continuous monitoring and evaluation program to achieve stakeholders’ satisfaction.

This paper is directed at highlighting the funding pattern of the federal government of Nigeria in relation to public education. It involves a review of relevant policy documents and research reports. The purpose is to stress the importance of adequate funding in relation to pertinent issues that affect the quality of free education programmes in Nigeria. This paper reveals that the adequacy of government funding of education has been adversely affected by inaccurate projection of target population for free education programmes due to poor statistical base and insufficient demographic information; the security situation in the country that compels government to spend increasing amount of money on security issues; and the weakness of the national currency against major international currencies like the British pound, the US dollar and the Euro that reduces the purchasing power of the naira in the international market. It recommends timely collection, collation, analysis and documentation of all demographic and institutional data relating to the funding of free education programmes. Keywords: Funding, basic education, national budget, expenditure.

In this era of global economic competition, universities play a dynamic role. Universities are no longer restricted to conventional activities. University needs to interact with industry as it plays an imperative role to foster progress and development of the nation. University-industry partnership (UIP) has become a dominant factor in technology and knowledge transfer through various channels. The aim of present study was to investigate the opinion of university faculty and researchers on partnership between university and industry. This research aimed at finding (i) the need of university-industry partnership (ii) the factors that hinder university-industry partnership, (iii) the roles universities are playing in research partnerships in general, and (iv) the means to increase university-industry partnership. It was hypothesized that academics are directly associated with industries. A questionnaire, consisting of 21 items on 5 point likert scales was developed to determine the opinion of 40 university faculty members and 10 researchers. The findings reveal the distinctive importance of high quality educational programs, industrial practice, research and development, internship and workshops, international attractiveness, flow of knowledge, and entrepreneurial spirit associated with UIP. The study concludes that universities are significantly associated with industries and research and development, publication, licensing and technological advancement paved important stone in UIP.

Abstract This paper focuses on admission policies for higher education in Nigeria: achievements and challenges. It was predicated on the determination of the achievements and challenges of the practice of existing admission policies for improved access and equity in higher education in a heterogeneous Nigeria. A lot of achievements as well as challenges were discerned to be associated with the admission policies. It was concluded that these policies are measures to achieve equal higher educational opportunity, which does not mean sameness or uniformity, but equal treatment of a heterogeneous country. Hence, the practice is supported, but should be based on the economic principle of positive discrimination.