Accommodations Knowledge and Practice for Students With Visual Impairments

Introduction Classroom accommodations are a primary means of supporting the appropriate education for students with disabilities. Student involvement in the accommodation process is valuable. Therefore, we need to teach students to be knowledgeable and strategic regarding their accommodations. Methods Four high school students with visual impairments were taught the Student Self-Accommodation Strategy (SSA). A comparative case studies approach within a sequential explanatory design was used to investigate their accommodations knowledge and practices. Results Participants improved or maintained accommodations knowledge. Their most-used types of accommodations were access accommodations and accommodations for content support. Three of the participants increased advocacy after strategy instruction. The participants’ accommodation practices were influenced by emotional-behavioral regulation, independence, and teacher involvement. Discussion Findings from this study relate to existing literature on accommodations support, teacher involvement in the accommodations process, instruction in accommodations advocacy, and the relationship between accommodations and emotional-behavioral dysregulation. Implications Findings emphasize the need to be explicit about the accommodations available to students with visual impairments and the need for strategy instruction in the SSA to address emotional-behavioral dysregulation.

Evaluation of Abstraction Capabilities and Detection of Discomfort with a Newscaster Chatbot for Entertaining Elderly Users

We recently proposed a novel intelligent newscaster chatbot for digital inclusion. Its controlled dialogue stages (consisting of sequences of questions that are generated with hybrid Natural Language Generation techniques based on the content) support entertaining personalisation, where user interest is estimated by analysing the sentiment of his/her answers. A differential feature of our approach is its automatic and transparent monitoring of the abstraction skills of the target users. In this work we improve the chatbot by introducing enhanced monitoring metrics based on the distance of the user responses to an accurate characterisation of the news content. We then evaluate abstraction capabilities depending on user sentiment about the news and propose a Machine Learning model to detect users that experience discomfort with precision, recall, F1 and accuracy levels over 80%.

Cytokinin- microbiome interactions regulate developmental functions

The interaction of plants with the complex microbial networks that inhabit them is important for plant health. While the reliance of plants on their microbial inhabitants for defense against invading pathogens is well documented, the acquisition of data concerning the relationships between plant developmental stage or aging, and microbiome assembly, is still underway. In this work, we observed developmental-age dependent changes in the phyllopshere microbiome of tomato. The plant hormone cytokinin (CK) regulates various plant growth and developmental processes. Here, we show that age-related shifts in microbiome content vary based on content of, or sensitivity to, CK. We observed a developmental age associated decline in microbial richness and diversity, accompanied by a decline in the presence of growth promoting and resistance inducing bacilli in the phyllosphere. This decline was absent from CK-rich or CK-hypersensitive genotypes. Bacillus isolates we obtained from CK rich genotypes were found to re-program the transcriptome to support morphogenesis and alter the leaf developmental program when applied to seedlings, and enhance yield and agricultural productivity when applied to mature plants. Our results support the notion that CK-dependent effects on microbiome content support developmental functions, suggesting that these are mediated by CK in part via the bacterial community.

TRENDS OF MARKETING OUTSOURCING IN THE ACTIVITY OF ENTERPRISES

The article considers the stages of origin and development of outsourcing, its theoretical foundations. The types of outsourcing and functions that are most often transferred to third-party specialized organizations are highlighted. The objective reasons for the global spread of outsourcing (technology development, internationalization of businesses, budgetary and legislative constraints) are considered. Outsourcing models based on the criterion of "customer-contractor relationship" are identified. Features and main trends in the use of outsourcing in different countries are considered. A package of criteria for substantiating the decision to use outsourcing has been formed and the advantages and disadvantages of its use have been established. The peculiarities of the use of marketing outsourcing are highlighted due to the need to establish analytics, obtain an objective assessment of marketing activities of enterprises, the introduction of new marketing tools, the inability of a small staff of marketing to have high-quality professionals. Models of the organization of outsourcing in marketing are considered and criteria of a choice of optimum model are allocated.The stages of evolution of outsourcing in marketing and its current trends, which are to outsource the following functions and operations: development of advertising campaigns and promotions, analysis of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, design and preparation of advertising materials, advertising production, debugging and contextual media support. advertising, advertising on social networks, administration of the company's pages in social networks, technical and content support of the site, SEO-promotion of the site, development of strategy and tactics of marketing activities, comprehensive implementation of marketing functions. Highlighted marketing trends related to outsourcing: focus on low-risk marketing strategies; total and rapid transition of buyers to digital channels; automation of part of marketing processes; rapid spread of software, digitalization of advertising structures; changing the model of content monetization and advertising; personalization of advertising offers; increasing the cost of marketing influence; establishment of stricter control over advertising content by platforms; appearance of Shoppable content; use of socio-ethical concepts of advertising campaigns; taking into account environmental trends.

Developing Web Content Management Systems – from the Past to the Future

The article presents an overview of the main stages of development and formation of content management systems as a component of software, in conjunction with the material base. The need of a society in creation and development of systems is revealed. The main elements of the mentioned systems, their functionality, and user groups are described. The features of modern content management systems are presented. The change in approaches to the development of such systems from monolithic to distributed systems is outlined. Further formation of Web-content management systems is seen in the development of systems with open source code, using Web 3.0, refining tools analysis of the quality of content, support for business B2B and B2C, interface development, active use of headless CMS, support of a new level of SEO, implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms. Keywords: content management systems

Ace Chemistry Classroom Management with LMS Schoology

It is no doubt that information technology has played significant importance in higher education in particular in the era of the 4.0 industrial revolution. The progress in technology is expected to support and facilitate the teaching and learning process. One information technology product that can be used is a learning management system (LMS) such as Schoology. Schoology offers all the tools in classroom management which are needed to create interesting content, support learning activities, and assess student understanding. However, the platform itself being used in a chemistry classroom is still rarely found. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to investigate chemistry classroom management using LMS Schoology. A quantitative-descriptive analysis was used to analyze data. Registered inorganic chemistry undergraduate students (n = 52) of semester IV participated in this study. The data was collected using a 28-items questionnaire which accumulated the perception of students regarding chemical class management using Schoology. The results of the study showed positive responses toward that management of teaching materials, management discussions, assignments, quizzes/exams, management of communication and ultimately interaction using LMS Schoology aced the chemistry classroom management.

Online Learning Platforms: Reconstructing Modern Higher Education

Online learning platforms play an important role in modern education. However, they may not be sufficiently represented in educational institutions. In this regard, the research objectives are set, namely: organize a comparative analysis of several popular distance learning platforms (Moodle, Open edX and NEO LMS) in accordance with the criteria (system features, content support, content creation, user management, reporting system; conduct consultation with university teachers, during which they will highlight the benefits of distance education systems from the point of view of the teacher; and test students, who use the online platform for learning in order to clarify its impact on academic performance. While consulting with 40 teachers of Russian and Chinese universities (Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, Peking University, Tsinghua University), the following advantages of distance platforms have been highlighted: greater freedom of access, lower education prices, the possibility of dividing the content of the e-course into modules, flexibility of education, the ability to keep up with modern pace of life, and the ability to define criteria for assessing knowledge. According to the results of testing, after working with the Moodle platform, students (300 people in total) with different academic performance have improved their results. The most significant improvement has occurred among students with “unsatisfactory” grades; more than 50% have improved their results. Analysis of distance learning systems, testing of students and consultation with teachers allow saying that such platforms help to make education more accessible and convenient. Besides, information technologies are introduced in the educational process. That is why it is important to implement such platforms in higher education.