Enabling Readiness of a School to Reopen during a Pandemic - A Field Experience

Modelling studies indicate that closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic may not be well grounded for the SARS-CoV-2 infection, as evidences indicate that children are less affected by this virus and the clinical attack rates in the 0-19 age group are low. Experts also opine that school closure might have negative effects on the scholastic abilities of a child and also an adverse impact on the economy and healthcare system, considering the responsibilities conferred upon the parents. Also, in a developing country like India, it is difficult for the rural population to afford distance online learning, which brings into importance the reopening of schools in a safe environment to avoid adversities such as increased drop-outs in the upcoming academic year, loss of in-person benefits such as mid-day meal scheme. This study highlights a field experience in relation to readiness assessment of a rural school in the Jodhpur district of Rajasthan, India, for a safe reopening to accept students in a safe and conducive atmosphere, which shall help prevent transmission of the virus in the schools among the children. In this regard, an indigenous readiness checklist has been developed to achieve the purpose, which assesses the readiness in three domains, viz, (i) Procedural readiness, (ii) Supplies, sanitation and infrastructure-related, (iii) Education and Training.

Evaluating the Academic Performance of K-12 Students in the Philippines: A Standardized Evaluation Approach

With growing technological advancements, demands for the industry with skilled and equipped workforce are proportionately rising. While this match between curricular offerings in academia and needs in the industry has been addressed in many countries across the globe through initiatives such as the K-12 educational system, some countries like the Philippines have only started its adoption. In the Philippines’ early adoption of the K-12 educational system, several concerns have been raised regarding its implementation, mainly, the mismatch between coursework offered in Philippine K-12 educational institutions with industry demands. With such outcomes, it is necessary to determine the status of the K-12 educational system in the Philippines. This paper attempts to shed light on such concerns by evaluating the performance of the K-12 students using a standardized approach. The Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults, a standardized test for measuring the academic competence of adults, is used in this study to measure scholastic abilities. The descriptive analyses made in this paper may aid in the development of more robust strategy frameworks for positioning the current K-12 educational system to global and industry demands. Moreover, the results obtained in this study would aid stakeholders in overseeing strategies that would address current gaps in the K-12 educational system of the country.

Sleepiness, Neuropsychological Skills, and Scholastic Learning in Children

Excessive daytime sleepiness is a frequent condition among children and adolescents that may lead to several and significant daytime consequences, including impaired neurocognitive skills and scholastic performance. Here, we evaluated in one hundred and ninety-one unselected primary school children, the relationship between sleepiness and a wide range of cognitive and academic skills through a standardized neuropsychological test battery. In order to assess the statistical relationship, we performed a partial least squares path modelling, a non-parametrical approach which combined a model of paths between latent variables and the coefficients between indicators and dimensions. Results were validated through the bootstrap approach and suggest that sleepiness is not associated with all cognitive and scholastic abilities, but only with those relying on verbal abilities and complex cognitive functions (i.e., reading comprehension, oral/syntactic comprehension, spelling, and mathematic skills). Our data suggest the idea that sleepiness in children is associated mostly with “higher” (mainly verbal) cognitive function(s), while the visuospatial domain was not affected.

An Assessment of the Mobile Games Utilization and It’s Effect to One’s Computational Thinking Skills

Transformation of knowledge can be obtained anytime anywhere but where and how you learn make all the difference. The increased number of different online games attract young people that can turn to addiction or cause dropout or sometimes makes them inspired. On the other hand, computational thinking skills are vital skills for the students in order to reduce the skills gap between education and the workplace. Computational thinking skills shall help the students become problem solver and innovator, when students have the capacity to determine what to extract from a system or problem in order to create a solution they are forced to think differently about the most important elements of what they are working with and remove irrelevant factors. The main purpose of this study is to assess the computational thinking among students on the mobile games utilization. The researcher employed quantitative data analysis and documentary analysis was used to measure the effect of mobile games utilization using Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults(SATA).The result of the study have average effect to enhance computational thinking. It also reveals that mobile games utilization such as collaboration actions provide incentives to engage with learning.