STUDENT PERCEPTION OF ONLINE LEARNING DURING COVID: FINDINGS FROM A INDIAN UNIVERSITY

The pandemic threw student lives in disarray as they were forced to transition overnight to an online system of education for which they and the faculty were least prepared. In addition to the uncertainty relating to academic schedules, mode of examinations and evaluation patterns, students were forced to adapt to learning online without the facility of books, laboratories, libraries, computer systems and interactive classrooms. What was the perception of students regarding online learning as a result of this quick transition has been explored through a case of private university in Delhi-NCR region with an enrolment of 12000 students. The students were administered a survey with questions on the economic impact of the pandemic, ownership of digital devices, access to internet, and perception of online education. The 2463 student responses received indicated that perception of online learning was quite low even at the level of higher education despite the access to smartphones and internet. The factors scores relating to perception of quality of online education however were found to significantly vary across age, ownership of device and economic impact of covid.

Sustainability in FinTechs: An Explanation through Business Model Scalability and Market Valuation

Framework: Financial Technology (FinTech) is an industry composed of diversified firms that combine financial services with innovative technologies. The research question and main goal are attempting to answer whether they are more similar to traditional banks or trendy technological firms deploying their innovativeness to favor financial inclusion and sustainability. Justification: Evaluators may wonder if FinTechs follow the typical evaluation patterns of bank/financial intermediaries or those of technological firms. Preliminary empirical evidence shows that the latter interpretation is the one consistent with the stock-market mood. Objective: This study goes beyond the extant literature, analyzing the differences between FinTechs and traditional banks in market valuation, and showing the potential for digital interaction and cross-pollination of complementary business models. Methodology: The differences will be empirically analyzed with the stock market valuation and the multipliers associated with these firms. Results: The main contribution of this paper is that the appraisal approaches of FinTechs follow those of technological startups, having a revenue model much more scalable than that of a typical bank. FinTechs may so provide a solution for sustainable finance with microfinance and crowdfunding among others. FinTechs and traditional banks may eventually converge towards a common market exploiting co-opetition strategies.

Similarity and Consistency in Hotel Online Ratings across Platforms

Online ratings are a major driver of hotel choice. There are many ratings platforms, and the number of evaluations is huge. This article analyzes if hotel ratings vary across platforms, vary over time, and if consistency in ratings can be observed. Longitudinal online ratings taken from 11 platforms over a two-year period were analyzed through Self-Organizing Maps. The findings suggest a similar pattern of online ratings across most of the platforms, except for Yelp and HolidayCheck. In addition, the evaluation patterns are stable over time, and the analyzed attributes do not contribute decisively to explain the overall evaluation of hotels, which implies that tourists use a noncompensatory evaluation model. More interestingly, there is no difference between the evaluation patterns of the platforms that require proof of prior reservation and those that do not. The results were confirmed by means of two qualitative studies undertaken with hotel managers.

Assessment of the intellectual capital evaluation practices in Romanian IT companies

Intellectual capital started to raise and become a focal point of many businesses as they started invest in their own knowledge based activities and recognize its importance. In today’s world can be observed a more dynamic, flexible and growth oriented business environment than ever. Thus, the need for an increased amount of intangible assets in businesses lead to the recognition of the intellectual capital as a competitive advantage and strategic asset. Due to its expanding importance and relevance a significant number of measurement, valuation and evaluation methods were developed. Consensus regarding different methods was not yet reached, but all these methods are designed to help to get an approximation of the reality, thus contributing in short-term and long-term decision making. The aim of the paper is to assess the level of intellectual capital evaluation practices in multinational IT companies and IT SMEs in Romania. The study is questionnaire based and represents a mix of quantitative and qualitative research. Overall, although the challenge of intellectual capital evaluation remains significant, this study leads to the opportunity to identify evaluation patterns, best practices and a short list of useful evaluation indicators for businesses which already are or could be implemented in the near future.

An Effective Implementation of Face Recognition Using Deep Convolutional Network

Human Face Recognition for forensic investigations and e-governance is widely adopted so that the specific face points can be trained and further investigations can be done. In this approach, the key points of human face with the dynamic features are extracted and trained in the deep neural network model so that the intrinsic aspects of the human face can be realized and further can be used for the criminal investigation or social analytics based applications. In this research manuscript, the usage of deep learning based convolutional network is integrated for the human face analytics and recognition for diversified applications. It is done to have the cavernous evaluation patterns in multiple domains for the knowledge discovery and predictive features of the human face identification domain.

Sensitising Core Employability Skill Through Peer Assessment Approach

Indian Engineering Education is transforming from traditional approach to Outcome based Education approach. The engineering education organizations are not only to change the assessment strategies, evaluation patterns and student’s success with evidences but also to satisfy the employer perspective to be developed among the students. This paper discuss about the how a peer assessment strategy has been implemented to enhance the engagement of the learner to foster the core employability skills. A three layered model has been adopted to measure the progress of the Learner and to collect the reflections on core employability skills. In the first year of the study, a larger mass (more than 300 students) has been assessed through this model, and for next two years they have been closely monitored for the growth. In the final year of their study, all the parameters have been compared and it has evidently improved the acquisition of essential required core employability skill at entry level Job.

Authentic Assessment: Evaluating the Saudi EFL Tertiary Examination System

As early as 1983, Rossi propounded that one of the issues of particular interest and development within the foreign and second language teaching profession is that of proficiency testing or the evaluation of a learner's level of linguistic and communicative competence. This still holds true. On the contrary our pilot study using the Question Paper Evaluating Checklists (included in this paper) indicates that all is not right with the designing of EFL question papers in Saudi Arabia though EFL assessment patterns in the KSA have undergone much change from the time that English was first introduced into the curriculum as a compulsory foreign language. It is the demand of time that evaluation patterns be evaluated on the touchstone of latest research and their relationship with classroom practices be established. This will help the learner-teacher combine to plug the loopholes in language training. In other words, we have to realise as educators that good assessment forms the basis of a wealth of learner information that has direct and indirect ramifications on curriculum and pedagogy. Hence the need to study this aspect of EFL in the light of modern literatures in order come up with constructive recommendations.

La Predicción Del Rendimiento Académico En Alumnos De Bachillerato. Estudio De Un Caso (Centro) En España

This paper studies the assessment during the first year of baccalaureate in seventy-six students. In a public educational institution of Saragossa (Spain), no differences in academic achievement between men (forty) and women (thirty-six) were found, but between two main modalities (Sciences, thirty-five students, versus Humanities and social Sciences, with forty-one students), finding differences outstrip students Sciences throughout the year, equaling to end with their counterparts. This leads us to study the hypothesis of whether the ratings could be “inflated” by teachers in Humanities students. For this they were conducted by a retrospective design “ex post facto” an multiple lineal regression analysis, using as a dependent variable grades in the third final evaluation, and as independent, performance in the first and second assessment and all subjects, not including any other variables. The results show different prediction equations that explaining 87% and 88% of the variance in the final performance, in the two types of modalities respectively. The values predicted by the model resulting in a significant percentage of “inflation” in the ratings of 23% in the group of Sciences and 37% in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The mean scores of the subjects discussed in three different moments are analyzed and significant difference was observed in the three evaluations, emerging some evaluation patterns in the teachers. It intuits that the “rating inflation” could begin much earlier than in the preuniversity entrance course.