Socio-Economic Factors Contributing to Female Students’ Dropout in Community Technical Colleges in Thyolo and Phalombe Districts: A Case of Milonga and Naminjiwa Technical Colleges

Most students in community technical colleges dropout before completion of their training course, particularly female students, which is counterproductive with regard to women empowerment. This paper therefore, reports on a study that was conducted at Milonga and Naminjiwa community technical colleges in Thyolo and Phalombe districts respectively. Thus, the study sought to establish probable socio-economic factors that influence dropout of female students from the two colleges, with a view of finding solutions to the problem. The two colleges were earmarked for the study because of their proximity to tea estates where manpower is the main source of labour for the tea industry. In addition, people in the two districts have similar cultural beliefs and economic status. Population of the study covered both female and male students including principals and instructors of the two technical colleges. In addition, identified parents of female students who dropped out of school were also part of the study. Thus, the study was conducted through qualitative research method so as to have an in-depth understanding of people views. Data was collected with reference to objectives of the study and then thematically analyzed. The study revealed several socio-economic factors that contribute to dropout of female students from the two colleges such as: cost of training and poverty, domestic chores and parents’ characteristics, cultural factors, early marriages and gender difference including training environment. However, the relationship among students and instructors showed that it had no effect on dropout as it was cordial and amicable. Recommendations to policy makers and other stakeholders were proposed as follows: Government and Ministry of Labour Skills and Innovation should have a national policy to provide bursaries and loans to needy students. The government should construct hostels at the two colleges to have conducive training environment. Ministry of Labour Skills and Innovation should organize awareness campaign programmes to sensitize the community surrounding the two colleges on the importance of TVET. Ministry of Labour Skills and Innovation should recruit more female instructors to act as role models to other female students.

Particle therapy masterclass

The aim of the new Particle Therapy MasterClass (PTMC) was to develop an educational and training environment in which anyone can learn about fundamental and applied research in particle therapy. The PTMC was recently integrated into the International MasterClass 2021 online programme that attracted 1500 students from 37 institutes in 20 countries, worldwide. The PTMC focuses on the topic of cancer treatment, a particularly sensitive and socially relevant topic. The main idea is to (a) provide a basic understanding of cancer radiation therapy, (b) demonstrate that fundamental properties of particle interactions with matter, which are used for detection in physics experiments, are also the basis for treating cancer tumours; and (c) show that the same accelerator technologies are used in both, research laboratories and therapy centres. For the hands-on session, the open-source professional treatment planning software matRad is used, developed for research and training by the German Cancer Research Center – DKFZ. Ultimately, students are shown “what physics has to do with medicine” and what are the various possibilities that physics and STEM studies may open up for job opportunities in fields that are lacking expert personnel.

Teaching Interpreting for Tourism Purposes

This article proposes a model for teaching interpreting for tourism purposes. It shows the aims of the model, interpreting materials, training strategies, training environment and assessment techniques. The model aims to train students to interpret in English with or without prior preparation or knowledge of the topic and without taking or reading form notes. The training model consists of the following exercises: (i) breathing exercises; (ii) memory training exercises; (iii) shadowing exercises; (iv) sentence paraphrasing; (v) summarizing sentences, then whole paragraphs about tourism; (vi) listening to single words, sentences, and a short paragraph about tourism and interpreting them; (vii) listening to familiar and easy tourism topics, then more difficult ones with a variety of tourism sub-topics. In a multimedia language lab, the students may listen to tourism podcasts, watch tourism documentaries or TED Talks and interpret the content from English to Arabic and vice versa. Simulations (role playing) of tourists and interpreters in teams of three or more may be conducted. Students may also visit a local tourist attraction, interpret, or give a commentary on-site. The training program objectives, types of interpreting, interpreting exercises, training materials, teaching and learning strategies and assessment techniques are described in detail.

Conceptions of nature from the poem “A Folha” by Drummond

This work aimed to analyze the poem “A Folha”, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, seeking to identify the ideas of nature that can be enunciated in a Biology teacher training environment. For this, we resorted to Discourse Analysis, using the Bakhtin Circle as a theoretical-methodological framework. From the analysis, it was possible to see that the poem raises dialogues that permeate different ideas of a historically constructed nature, based on the ideas of Plato, Kant, Hegel and Marx and Engels. Furthermore, the analysis of the poem reminds us of the importance of such discussions for teacher education.

Teaching personal development in the digital age

The discussion about the changes in teaching is shaped by the ideas of what impact digitalization has on the development and socialization of the younger generation. These processes are closely related to personal development training. Personal development training is under ever expanding influence of digitalization, and researchers notice the gap between traditional teaching methods and work models and their poor reproducibility under such conditions. The aim of the study is twofold: to analyze how personal development training tasks are implemented in the current climate of digitalization, and to determine the major tendencies of the changes in personal development training. The methodology of the study is based on the provisions of the following theories: the theory of social education in the context of socialization (A. V. Mudrik), theories of personal development training systems (L. I. Novikova, N. L. Selivanova), and the network approach. Apparently, in the modern post-industrial digital society, a virtual community can become the space for personal development training. There emerge new subjects of personal development training (digital technologies, subcultural communities, network groups, voluntary assistants, volunteers, parents, etc.). This will “require” a change in the professional language and teacher’s professional functions. The intention to enable productive behavior of an individual to solve their own problems should remain an important component of personal development training. In order to do this, the life of an educational organization should be enriched with a variety of social practices that encourage interaction and joint productive activities; an educational organization should develop forms of self- and co-management, and introduce a variety of extracurricular activities. The search for forms of personal development training relevant to the needs of the modern teenager is being reinforced. Moreover, globalization raises the issue of how global and eternal values are compatible with the values of digital culture, i.e. the culture of the virtual augmented world. The authors note that in the current climate of the digital world, the boundaries of personal development training are constantly changing geographically, organizationally, meaningfully. As a result, the task of creating, developing and retaining the personal development training environment acquires significance not only at the content level, but also at the organizational level, including the virtual one.

DELPHIN2: AN OVER ACTUATED AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE FOR MANOEUVRING RESEARCH

Delphin2 is a hover capable torpedo style Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), developed at the University of Southampton to provide a test bed for research in marine robotics, primarily to enhance the manoeuvring capability of AUVs. This paper describes the mechanical design of the vehicle and its software architecture. The performance of the vehicle is presented as well as preliminary findings from the vehicle’s first fully autonomous video survey missions in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland. It is interesting to note that the low-cost of the vehicle and its development using a succession of MEng and PhD students has provided an excellent training environment for specialists in the growing area of marine autonomous vehicles.

Does empathy really decline during residency training? A longitudinal look at changes in measured empathy in a community program

Introduction Some studies, most cross sectional and urban, have shown a decline in empathy during residency training prompting medical educators to consider changes in curriculum or training environment. Our aim was to determine if there was a decline using a longitudinal, paired annual empathy measure across three years of a family medicine residency in a rural community hospital. Methods We administered a validated measure from 2015 through 2020 and of the 116 opportunities for survey completion, 112 from 48 residents were available for scoring. We also asked our residents to rank 10 factors that affected their empathy scores. The Baptist Health Madisonville IRB approved the protocol as exempt and the authors have no conflicts of interest.. Results With a response rate of 97%, we found no statistically significant decrease in our resident scores across the three years. Scores after our PG-1 year were significantly lower than two previous comparable studies. The longitudinal, paired study design revealed very wide ranges among individual residents even when group means indicated a statistical difference. Residents also differed widely on their rankings of factors that could affect the score, with only outlook on life showing a narrow range and high ranking. Conclusions The very wide range of individual paired scores as well as the broad range of factors the residents thought affected their scores indicate that empathy is a very individual concept. Some of our residents actually increased scores leading to resilience and others declined toward cynicism. Those seeking to make changes to curriculum or training environment to facilitate empathy during residency should consider this diversity of individual resident training experience.

Virtual Drilling Environments Enable Long Distance Training in Unprecedented Times of Sanitary Emergency

During the last five years, a digital training solution, based on Virtual Reality, for immersive and collaborative experience on a virtual drilling rig, was developed and updated by company’s Well Operations Department in collaboration with Corporate University Infrastructures. This paper will present the digital training environment and its applications, including a discussion of all supporting deployment facilities. The digital Drilling Environment consists in the full digitalization of a last generation offshore semi-submersible drilling rig. On the Virtual Rig, it is possible to access all equipment and workplaces, re-play past operations from a company’s database and interact with a number of safety situations from inductions and drills to the reproduction of a series of real incidental events. The virtual environment is accessible in dedicated 3D rooms, by using Virtual Reality headsets, stand-alone PCs, via lan or by remote internet connections. The new training method, which proved incremental to traditional approaches, turned out to be decisive in supporting long distance education in unprecedented times of sanitary emergency. In particular, the virtual drilling rig ensures an immersive and collaborative experience of rig operational and emergency conditions, while granting a safe and protected environment where knowledge can be quickly achieved. The necessity to focus on new long distance training approaches and the further enhancement of the virtual drilling environment portability were boosted by the particular world situation, which led to the necessity to address, manage and review the overall company’s educational strategies. This paper is made available to discuss suggestions and to present all lessons learnt.

Method of Fuzzy Parametric Selection for Making a Reasonable Decision by an Intelligent Training Module

Selection of an optimal route within the intelligent approach provides for the possibility of applying soft models and computing in estimation of the trainee presence in the knowledge space. Among numerous ways of representation and processing of information of this type, the special place is held by those able to adapt to the maximal number of NO factors, characterizing the actual training situations, their measurable data and actual methods and ways of their processing that have ambiguities, uncertainties and incompleteness of the respective models and methods. In this paper, we suggest to extend the certain well-proven best practices in data analysis and transformation in the training environment information space to solving the actual training management problems. In addition, the paper demonstrates approaches to the use of Pareto-optimal approaches for fuzzy and underdetermined situations in actual training processes. Formally, this problem is solved with a fuzzy systemic graph. Variants of calculating procedures, allowing the use of the available apparatus of soft models and computing with the purpose to eliminate uncertainties when forming grounded decisions, are given. Methods and criteria of route options selection with regard of vaguely defined functional specification requirements have been developed pursuant to the study.