Mediating Role of School Variables in Anticipating Blocks and ConsequencesCreativity among Rural Adolescents

Each developmental stage upholds new and its own unique competency requirements,challenges, struggles and opportunities for personal human growth. When an individual isin their early adolescence phase, his/her creativity is greatly influenced by its surroundingsand school environment is one of those crucial factors. Hence, the present study wasplanned to explore the mediating role of school environment in students’ blocks andconsequences creativity. The primary data was collected from 300 academically bright ruralyoung adolescents. Z-test and ANOVA were administered to discover the influence ofindependent variables (school environment) on the dependent variables (blocks andconsequences creativity). Results elucidated significant differences in blocks fluency,consequences originality and consequences creativity across school type, academic classand teaching method employed by the teachers. Blocks flexibility had significant differencesacross school type and academic class. Blocks originality was observed to have significantdifferences across academic class and consecutive academic record. It was revealed thatblocks creativity had significant differences across all the independent variables.Consequences fluency of the students had significant differences across school type,academic class and consecutive academic record.

Mismatched Students, Missed Opportunities

Theoretical frameworks on mismatch, rooted in affirmative action literature, provide divergent conclusions on how overmatch, a synonym for affirmative action, and undermatch shape degree completion outcomes for Black undergraduates at selective postsecondary institutions. Through examining data from the 2003–2009 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Survey, this study creates an academic index that estimates the precollege academic credentials of approximately 650 Black, first-time undergraduates enrolled at the top three tiers of selective colleges during the 2003–04 academic year to examine the effects of undermatching or attending a college that is less rigorous than a college that matches their precollege academic record. The findings suggest that overmatched Black students who enrolled at the most selective institutions were far more likely to graduate than students with similar precollege academic credentials who enrolled at their best academic match. The results also indicate that undermatching had an adverse effect on degree completion rates.

RETRACTED: Effect of the solid retention time in the obtention of polyhydroxyalkanoates [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

At the request of the authors, the article titled "Effect of the solid retention time in the obtention of polyhydroxyalkanoates" [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]. F1000Research 2021, 10:864 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.28852.1) has been retracted from F1000Research. Since publication of the article, the corresponding author has notified the Editorial team that this work was originally performed at University of A Coruña with the involvement of María C. Veiga and Christian Kennes, who were not notified regarding the submission of this manuscript or listed as authors. After discussion with all parties, including contact with the corresponding author’s institution, it was agreed that the article would be retracted in order to correct the academic record. As the article contains content which potentially should not have been made publicly available the content of the article has been removed. The authors apologise for this honest error.

Identification of Preferred Learning Style of Medical and Dental Students Using VARK Questionnaire

Students have unique preferences when it comes to knowledge acquisition, information processing, retention in memory, and recall. This study is aimed at examining the preferred learning styles of medical and dental undergraduate students of Pakistan. It is also aimed at investigating the influence of gender, preclinical or clinical academic year, and academic record on the preferred learning style. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in Pakistan. The learning styles of undergraduate students were identified using visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire. Students were also asked about their satisfaction towards teaching style of their teachers in institute. Descriptive statistics were done to characterize the learning styles of the students. The Fisher test and chi-square test were used to compare the learning preferences between genders and public/private sector students and among preclinical/clinical years. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. A total of 1473 students participated in the study. Among the students, 39.37% preferred unimodal learning style whereas 60.62% preferred multimodal style. Kinesthetic (K) and visual (V) were the most preferred unimodal styles. The preferred learning styles of female students are aural (A), visual (V), and kinesthetic (K), whereas male students preferred visual (V) and kinesthetic more (K). Students with lower academic record chose unimodal styles in comparison to high achievers that chose multimodal styles. Students of clinical year preferred multimodal and quadmodal styles in comparison to preclinical year students. An alarming 78% of students were dissatisfied with their teacher’s instructional style. Majority of students prefer multimodal learning styles over unimodal style. Gender, public/private sector, and academic record have influence on the preference of learning styles. Majority of the students are dissatisfied with their teacher’s instructional style and rely on social media platforms for understanding. Academics need to adapt their teaching methods according to student preferences in order to get better graduates.

Deep Meaningful Learning

Deep meaningful learning is the higher-order thinking and development through manifold active intellectual engagement aiming at meaning construction through pattern recognition and concept association. It includes inquiry, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving, and metacognitive skills. It is a theory with a long academic record that can accommodate the demand for excellence in teaching and learning at all levels of education. Its achievement is verified through knowledge application in authentic contexts.

Securing Academic Record using Blockchain with Hyper ledger Fabric

Student records (SR) havetobe stable and safe from the third parties. Theblockchain could guarantee safety, privilege, transparency and also provides access control.Despiteof having a scalable architecture in Hyperledgerfabric Block chainthere are various factors which affects the performance of the system and causes latency. Addedto that it could also not provide better indexing capability.In this proposed system, astorage structure is created which could provide better access time. Initially, ablock of desired size is created, basedon the configuring parameter this reduces the latency.Next,themetadata of the SR block is duplicated on an off-chain database to overcome the disadvantage of indexing capacity and latency .SR data will be transparent and could beaccessed at less time using less manpower and time.

Converting Access Microbiology to an open research platform: focus group and AI review tool research results

The Microbiology Society will be launching an open research platform in October 2021. Developed using funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the platform will combine our current sound-science journal, Access Microbiology, with artificial intelligence (AI) review tools and many of the elements of a preprint server. In an effort to improve the rigour, reproducibility and transparency of the academic record, the Access Microbiology platform will host both preprints of articles and their Version of Record (VOR) publications, as well as the reviewer reports, Editor's decision, authors' response to reviewers and the AI review reports. To ensure the platform meets the needs of our community, in February 2020 we conducted focus group meetings with various stakeholders. Using articles previously submitted to Access Microbiology, we undertook testing of a range of potential AI review tools and investigated the technical feasibility and utility of including these tools as part of the platform. In keeping with the open and transparent ethos of the platform, we present here a summary of the focus group feedback and AI review tool testing.

Intelligence and Academic Achievement as Predictors of Reading Disability: A Comparative Study

Children at risk of dyslexia face problems in academic achievement and they were often viewed as children with low intelligence. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between academic achievement and intelligence. The study also aimed to find out academic achievement and intelligence as predictors of children at risk of dyslexia. The study was conducted from September 2020 to November 2020. Sample of 268 students exhibiting problems in reading, writing or mathematical expression was selected from 1532 students with the help of teachers. Dyslexia screening test Junior (DST-J) was used for screening (Nicolson & Fawcett, 1996). Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998) were used to assess intelligence. Academic record of all the students was obtained based on their performance in last examination. Results showed children had above average intelligence. Further, academic achievement showed significant positive relationship with intelligence (r=.32, p<.001). Moreover, intelligence and academic achievement were found to be significant predictors of performance of children at risk of dyslexia. Results concluded that children should be given intervention to improve their academic performance.

Designing a smart system for building student’s schedule-An application at Neelain University

This paper aims to design a smart system for building student’s schedules based on a set of limitations and restrictions that can mainly contribute to the formation of student's schedules. Where the process of schedule formation, addition, and deletion is done automatically, this is our contribution. This system helps to raise the student's abilities, improves his academic achievement, and raises his rate. Moreover, it allows the student to delete and add a course based on his average and the number of hours recorded by the system, and the number of hours he is allowed to register, and some other restrictions. In this research, the courses of the study plan are classified according to the scientific content (nature of the course) into four main groups; 1-preservation materials, 2-understanding materials, 3-higher understanding materials, 4-applied materials. The system should take the academic record of each student and analyzes it for identifying the group where the student has higher academic achievement in comparison with the rest. The process of deletion and addition will be done taking into account the priority of adding the courses of the lower levels and the courses that are prerequisite for other courses at higher levels, and the priority of deletion of courses that do not affect other courses at higher levels. VB Application is used in the practical application of the system, where it succeeds in building student’s schedules for the computer department-university of Neelain, which contributed to enhancing the cumulative rate for the students, which reflect positively on the quality of the educational process.