The challenges of digital divide and the use of web 2.0 platforms as knowledge sharing tools among Nigerian academics

This paper investigates the challenges affecting knowledge sharing among lecturers using web 2.0 platforms to meet the requirements of the digital age of the 21st century. Knowledge sharing is an exchange of skills, ideas, experience, and understanding among people. The study is base on the digital divide theory, which focuses on discrepancies or inequality of access to the Internet and technological devices. The survey method is adopted, involving 1,287 respondents sampled conveniently from the 13 faculties of the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria. Data was successfully retrieved from 1047 respondents, representing 81.9% and was presented and analyzed through descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that the most significant challenges facing users of web 2.0 platforms are the high cost of data, and an unstable power supply. The result indicates that the most used social media by the academic lecturers of Ahmadu Bello University is WhatsApp, while the most used educational resource site is ResearchGate. The study recommends that the challenge of the high cost of data should be solved by providing uninterrupted broadband and free Internet facilities. The qualitative method should be used to further this study to have users of these platforms from more than one institution.

Opus sorabjianum : les joies et les souffrances d’un biographe

La recherche, la rédaction et la publication de la première biographie du compositeur, pianiste et critique anglais Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988), parue en 2013 sous la forme d’un fichier au format PDF sur le Sorabji Resource Site, site documentaire géré par son auteur, a représenté un projet d’envergure qui s’est étalé sur de nombreuses années. L’article consiste en une visite individuelle guidée dans l’atelier du biographe permettant de constater l’ampleur des défis, les techniques de recherche mises en oeuvre, les difficultés rencontrées et les solutions adoptées pour arriver à fournir au lecteur ce qui a semblé la façon idéale de jeter une base solide pour toute recherche future.

The UbuWeb Electronic Music Corpus: An MIR investigation of a historical database

A corpus of historical electronic art music is available online from the UbuWeb art resource site. Though the corpus has some flaws in its historical and cultural coverage (not least of which is an over-abundance of male composers), it provides an interesting test ground for automated electronic music analysis, and one which is available to other researchers for reproducible work. We deploy open source tools for music information retrieval; the code from this project is made freely available under the GNU GPL 3 for others to explore. Key findings include the contrasting performance of single summary statistics for works versus time series models, visualisations of trends over chronological time in audio features, the difficulty of predicting which year a given piece is from, and further illumination of the possibilities and challenges of automated music analysis.

Exit selection process during crowd evacuation, modelled on the cockroach emergent behaviour

Groups of living creatures are often faced with searching for resources and choosing between one or more alternatives of resource site. Such a process is connected either with calm food acquirement or looking for a safe place to hide from danger. The question is, what kind of criteria are taken into consideration and what induces the collective decision, when all individuals in a swarm are equal. This paper identifies a simple mechanism of shelter selection by cockroach herd, whereby an emergent decision is made with limited information and without centralization of information processing or comparison of available solutions. The mechanism leads to the optimal benefit for both a group and an individual. The proposed model activates swarm self-organization and is independent of species, therefore, a possible application to human crowd control has been studied.

The Appreciation of Electroacoustic Music: The prototype of the pedagogical ElectroAcoustic Resource Site

This article introduces research on the influence of teaching on the change of inexperienced listeners’ appreciation of electroacoustic music. A curriculum was developed to make Key Stage 3 students (11–14 years old)1 familiar with electroacoustic music. The curriculum introduced music using concepts, such as music with real-world sounds and music with generated sounds. Presented in an online environment and accompanied with a teachers’ handbook, the curriculum can be used online or as classroom-based teaching resource.The online environment was developed with the help of user-centred design. Following this, the curriculum was tested in a large-scale study including four Key Stage 3 classes within three schools in Leicester, UK. Data were collected using questionnaires, a listening response test and a summary of the teaching (letter written by participants). Qualitative content analysis was used for the data analysis.Results include the change of the participants’ appreciation of electroacoustic music during the study. Successful learning and a decrease in alienation towards electroacoustic music could be measured. The study shows that the appreciation of electroacoustic music can be enhanced through the acquirement of conceptual knowledge. Especially important was the enhancing of listening skills following a listening training as well as the broadening of the participants’ vocabulary that enabled them to describe their listening experience.