‘The Game of the Sea’: An Interdisciplinary Educational Board Game on the Marine Environment and Ocean Awareness for Primary and Secondary Students

Games are a proven tool for learning at all ages and in many contexts. They increase the attractiveness of learning processes through arousing interest and enhancing motivation, and aid with the development of social skills. Educational games provide teachers with different approaches to teaching. ‘The Game of the Sea’ is an interdisciplinary board game, specifically designed to teach its players about the marine environment, regardless of their age. Through its 68 sections, coloured according to particular topics and organised as a fish shape, players encounter a wide range of questions and activities. Through playing this game, players acquire a broad knowledge of science, the marine environment and its importance, and literature. The game uses an interdisciplinary approach with question cards on a variety of topics (including maths, physics, biology, chemistry, art, etc.). A total of 222 players (111 children, aged 11–15, and 111 adults, aged 18–72) tested the game. These players were enrolled in different formal and non-formal educational contexts and had different educational backgrounds. For a qualitative analysis of game sessions (participant observation), researchers acted as game moderators and, while doing so, made subtle observations of players playing the game. On top of this, the value of the game, as a didactic tool, was evaluated with a test that players took before and after the game. After playing the game, knowledge of the marine environment, increased in both children and adults, with a slightly higher increase in children. Therefore, ‘The Game of the Sea’ is suitable for teaching all ages about the marine environment. Further, this game can impart to its players the importance of the marine environment and the importance of protecting this environment.

Reflections on Popular Culture and Philosophy

Contributions to the philosophical genre of popular culture and philosophy aim to popularize philosophical ideas with the help of references to the products of popular (mass) culture with TV series like The Simpsons, Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix and Jurassic Park, or popular music groups like Metallica. While being commercially successful, books in this comparatively new genre are often criticized for lacking scientific rigor, providing a shallow cultural commentary, and having little didactic value to foster philosophical understanding. This paper discusses some of these methodological and didactic objections and seeks to encourage a constructive discussion of concerns with the genre. It shows how the genre similar to previous attempts to foster public understanding of philosophy and that it is a methodologically viable approach to reach a broad range of readers with diverse informational preferences and educational backgrounds. Considering what makes this approach to the popularization of philosophical thinking successful will shed light on some of the criteria for popularization of philosophy in general.

AL-HÂJÂT AL-TADRÎBIYAH LI MU'ALLIMÎ AL-LUGHAH AL-'ARABIYAH FÎ INDONESIA WA 'ALÂQATUHÂ BI AL-JINS WA AL-MUAHAL AL-'ILMÎ

Among the problems of learning Arabic in Indonesia is the low pedagogic competence of teachers, which can be improved by attending regular and planned training. The purpose of the article is to understand (1) the need for Arabic teachers for instructional training (2) to measure the correlation between teacher needs and training with gender and educational background. This research is descriptive quantitative, using a questionnaire instrument. Data analysis using the SPSS program. The results showed a significant difference between the mean score of the study sample and the hypothetical mean in lesson planning. There is a significant difference between the average score of the study sample and the hypothetical average in the implementation of the lesson. There is a significant difference between the mean score of the study sample and the hypothetical mean in the learning technique. There was no significant difference between the samples in Arabic teacher training needs other than the gender variable. There is a significant difference between the Bachelors and Masters groups in learning technology, and not in other educational backgrounds.

PEMAHAMAN HADIS PERSPEKTIF GENDER: Studi Komparasi KH. Husein Muhammad dan Abdul Mustaqim

<p>Kajian hadis Gender telah mendapat perhatian dari berbagai ilmuwan Muslim di dunia. Di Indonesia, KH. Husein Muhammad dan Abdul Mustaqim merupakan Tokoh yang aktif menarasikan kesetaraan gender dengan merelevansikannya dengan Teks-teks Agama. Keduanya memiliki Latar belakang Pendidikan yang berbeda, sehingga mendorong peneliti untuk melakukan kajian komparasi terhadap Pemikiran keduanya. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui metode pemahaman hadis perspektif gender dari keduanya. Melalui analisa komparasi, penelitian ini hendak menunjukkan perbedaan dan persamaan metode keduanya dalam memahami hadis dengan perspektif gender. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode komparasi dengan analisis Gender. Metode ini digunakan untuk melihat sejauhmana hadis dapat dipahami dan diaplikasikan dengan menggunakan analisis gender, sekaligus untuk memahami secara komprehensif perbedaan dan persamaan dari kedua tokoh. Pada penelitian ini dapat disimpulkan bahwa keduanya menggunakan prinsip-prinsip gender secara mendasar seperti kesetaran, kemanusiaan dan keadilan dalam memahami hadis. Keduanya juga menjadikan Maqashid al-Shariah sebagai basis penafsiran, dimana makna hadis harus sejalan dengan Prinsip yang terdapat dalam Maqashid al-Syariah. Namun KH. Husein Muhammad dan Abdul Mustaqim memiliki latarbelakang pendidikan akademik yang berbeda, dalam penelitian ini diketahui bahwa metode yang dipaparkan Abdul Mustaqim lebih sistematis dan metodis serta memudahkan pembaca untuk memahami langkah-langkah metodiknya dalam memahami hadis perspektif Gender.</p><p>[<strong>Understanding Hadith on Gender Perspective: A Comparative Study of KH. Husein Muhammad and Abdul Mustaqim</strong>.<strong> </strong>The study of Gender-hadith has received attention from various Muslim scientists in the world. In Indonesia, KH. Husein Muhammad and Abdul Mustaqim are figures who actively narrate gender equality by relevating it with religious texts. Both of them have different educational backgrounds, thus encouraging researchers to do a comparative study of their thought. This study aimed to determine the method of understanding the hadith from the gender perspective of both. This research aims to show the differences and similarities of two methods in understanding the hadith from a gender perspective through a comparative analysis. The method used is a comparative method with gender analysis. This method is used to see the extent to which the hadith can be understood and applied by using gender analysis, as well as to comprehensively understand the differences and similarities of the two figures. In this research, it can be concluded that both of them use basic gender principles such as equality, humanity and justice in understanding hadith. Both of them also make maqashid al-syariah as the basis for interpretation, where the meaning of hadith must be in line with the principles contained in maqasid al-shariah. However, KH. Husein Muhammad and Abdul Mustaqim have different academic educational backgrounds, in this research, it is known that the method described by Abdul Mustaqim is more systematic and methodical and makes it easier for the reader to understand his methodical steps in understanding the hadith from a gender perspective.]</p>

Studying human-to-computer bias transference

It is generally agreed that one origin of machine bias is resulting from characteristics within the dataset on which the algorithms are trained, i.e., the data does not warrant a generalized inference. We, however, hypothesize that a different ‘mechanism’ may also be responsible for machine bias, namely that biases may originate from (i) the programmers’ cultural background, including education or line of work, or (ii) the contextual programming environment, including software requirements or developer tools. Combining an experimental and comparative design, we study the effects of cultural and contextual metaphors, and test whether each of these are ‘transferred’ from the programmer to the program, thus constituting a machine bias. Our results show that (i) cultural metaphors influence the programmer’s choices and (ii) contextual metaphors induced through priming can be used to moderate or exacerbate the effects of the cultural metaphors. Our studies are purposely performed with users of varying educational backgrounds and programming skills stretching from novice to proficient.

A Participatory Assessment of Perceived Neighbourhood Walkability in a Small Urban Environment

Walkability has become a research topic of great concern for preserving public health, especially in the era of the COVID-19 outbreak. Today more than ever, urban and transport policies, constrained by social distancing measures and travel restrictions, must be conceptualized and implemented with a particular emphasis on sustainable walkability. Most of the walkability models apply observation and subjective methods to measure walkability, whereas few studies address walkability based on sense perception. To fill this gap, we aim at investigating the perceived neighbourhood walkability (PNW) based on sense perception in a neighbourhood of Brussels. We designed a survey that integrates 22 items grouped into 5 dimensions (cleanness, visual aesthetics, landscape and nature, feeling of pressure, feeling of safety), as well as the socio-demographic attributes of the participants. Using various statistical methods, we show that socio-demographics have almost no effects on perceived neighbourhood walkability. Nonetheless, we found significant differences between groups of different educational backgrounds. Furthermore, using a binomial regression model, we found strong associations between PNW and at least one item from each grouping dimension. Finally, we show that based on a deep neural network for classification, the items have good predictive capabilities (78% of classification accuracy). These findings can help integrate sense perception into objective measurement methods of walkable environments. Additionally, policy recommendations should be targeted based on differences of perception across socio-demographic groups.

Putting a Spotlight on Validators of Easy-to-Read Content

Easy-to-Read content results from applying text simplification principles to make information accessible for persons with reading and learning difficulties. While both the creation process and simplification principles have gained the interest of scholars and the general public in the past years, the role of validators is still less visible compared with that of writers or translators. This paper sought to put a spotlight on validators by answering the questions of who these professionals are, what tasks they take on, and how they have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills for the job. In doing so, it investigated a subset of the data about validators’ demographical and educational backgrounds and current activity collected in an online survey launched within the innovative framework of the Erasmus+ project Train2Validate.

Developing Machine Learning and Statistical Tools to Evaluate the Accessibility of Public Health Advice on Infectious Diseases among Vulnerable People

Background. From Ebola, Zika, to the latest COVID-19 pandemic, outbreaks of highly infectious diseases continue to reveal severe consequences of social and health inequalities. People from low socioeconomic and educational backgrounds as well as low health literacy tend to be affected by the uncertainty, complexity, volatility, and progressiveness of public health crises and emergencies. A key lesson that governments have taken from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is the importance of developing and disseminating highly accessible, actionable, inclusive, coherent public health advice, which represent a critical tool to help people with diverse cultural, educational backgrounds and varying abilities to effectively implement health policies at the grassroots level. Objective. We aimed to translate the best practices of accessible, inclusive public health advice (purposefully designed for people with low socioeconomic and educational background, health literacy levels, limited English proficiency, and cognitive/functional impairments) on COVID-19 from health authorities in English-speaking multicultural countries (USA, Australia, and UK) to adaptive tools for the evaluation of the accessibility of public health advice in other languages. Methods. We developed an optimised Bayesian classifier to produce probabilistic prediction of the accessibility of official health advice among vulnerable people including migrants and foreigners living in China. We developed an adaptive statistical formula for the rapid evaluation of the accessibility of health advice among vulnerable people in China. Results. Our study provides needed research tools to fill in a persistent gap in Chinese public health research on accessible, inclusive communication of infectious diseases’ prevention and management. For the probabilistic prediction, using the optimised Bayesian machine learning classifier (GNB), the largest positive likelihood ratio (LR+) 16.685 (95% confidence interval: 4.35, 64.04) was identified when the probability threshold was set at 0.2 (sensitivity: 0.98; specificity: 0.94). Conclusion. Effective communication of health risks through accessible, inclusive, actionable public advice represents a powerful tool to reduce health inequalities amidst health crises and emergencies. Our study translated the best-practice public health advice developed during the pandemic into intuitive machine learning classifiers for health authorities to develop evidence-based guidelines of accessible health advice. In addition, we developed adaptive statistical tools for frontline health professionals to assess accessibility of public health advice for people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Modeling the adoption of a garlic variety (Allium sativum L.) in Mexico through survival analysis

The objective of this research was to analyze the adoption behavior over time for the improved variety of garlic CEZAC 06, and the factors associated with the adoption process through survival analysis (SA), in North-Central Mexico. The data comes at farm level and was collected in 2019 through a questionnaire given to 40 garlic farmers in Zacatecas, Mexico. The results show that 62.5 % of the farmers who adopted CEZAC 06 carried out this process in the first two years after they were first introduced to it. The factors that played a role in the adoption process were: farmer age, how long the farmer had been in business for, number of hectares availables for garlic production, yield, number of college-educated family members, income from crop farming, income from garlic farming, agriculture-related courses taken, financial aid from the federal government, and being part of any type of organization. Improving yield and the quality of the garlic bulb requires an adequate extension system that allows farmers to receive updated and reliable information on the importance of technological innovation. Highlights The analysis also suggested that new technologies should be transmitted at higher rates to increase adoption. This can be done by implementing courses aimed at farmers with low educational backgrounds, small plots of land and low productivity levels. The factors affecting the adoption process were: farmer age, how long the farmer had been in business, yield, etc. CEZAC 06 will increase yield and rural farmers could improve the quality of the bulb as a marketable surplus. This work contributes to the scarce literature on the application of survival analysis to agricultural technologies.

Back to the Iron Cage? Institutional Isomorphism of the AIIB

During its first five years of operation, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is becoming more and more similar to traditional Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in terms of operational goals, business area, and environmental and social standards. Why has the AIIB, the newest type of multilateral development bank (MDB) initiated by an emerging economy, undergone institutional isomorphism? Based on the socialization theory, this paper argues that the institutional environment in which the AIIB is operating has a strong influence on AIIB’s institution-building, mainly through the coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional isomorphic processes. On coercion, the pressures from European donors, international credit rating agencies, and global civil society have resulted in the AIIB’s institutional isomorphism. On mimicking, the social uncertainty of the relationship between the AIIB and the Belt and Road Initiative and the technical uncertainty of infrastructure projects have triggered the AIIB’s institutional isomorphism. On normativeness, the similar educational backgrounds and working experience of the AIIB’s staff and active interactions among the MDB family members have caused the AIIB’s institutional isomorphism. The paper concludes that the international institutional environment might hamper emerging economies’ capabilities of institutional innovation.