Challenges in Emergency Remote Teaching Among Malaysian Public Elementary School Teachers

The purpose of this study was to explore challenges public elementary school teachers faced when conducting emergency remote teaching during the pandemic in Malaysia. The scope of the study was limited to remote teaching which was conducted between Mar 2020 and December 2020, when Malay-sia government urged an emergency national lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus in the country. This study adopted qualitative, case study re-search design. 10 public elementary school teachers were sampled using a purposive sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were employed to gain the insights of teachers’ challenges in implementation of emergency re-mote teaching. The data were analysed using thematic analysis and a facilitation of Nvivo 12 programme. There were six main themes emerged on teachers’ challenges, which were (1) Directing gateway; (2) Lack of skill and knowledge; (3) Unable to meet all needs; (4) Unable to engage students; (5) Lack of support from parents; and (6) Had no proper guideline. As teachers were the key persons in determining the functionality, effectiveness and de-velopment of future remote teaching, hence it was extremely crucial to listen to teachers’ voices and figure out how these educators could be supported in the future to benefit the learners and communities.

The psychological impact of COVID-19 on socially isolated individuals – a systematic review

Purpose This study aims to assess the various psychological effects of the Coronavirus on those in isolation, the factors that cause these effects during the pandemic, as well as to discuss the recommendations and strategies that can be implemented to help reduce the negative psychological impact. Design/methodology/approach Databases such as MEDLINE (Ovid), excerpta medica dataBASE (Ovid) and cumulative index of nursing and allied health literature (Elton B. Stephens Company), as well as grey literature, were used as a part of the search design to locate articles published on this subject. The search design was formatted in a way that aided in locating articles concerning a variety of mental health effects. Title and abstract screening and full text screening were conducted by two reviewers. The risk of bias assessment was conducted using AMSTAR2. Data extraction was performed by one reviewer and was confirmed by the other. Findings A total of 28 articles were obtained, and of those, 11 were included in the review. From the data that was reviewed, the majority of the isolated individuals felt depressed and anxious. This negative psychological distress contributes to deteriorating health and quality of life in many people. Research limitations/implications Few limitations include limited published research papers pertaining to the subject of the mental health effects of COVID-19 on individuals in social isolation. Therefore, this suggests the need for higher quality studies to be performed on this topic. Originality/value This review provides a unique viewpoint on the effects of COVID-19, allowing for others to have a better understanding of the wide range of psychological impacts the pandemic has brought on.

Applied Research of Knowledge in the Field of Artificial Intelligence in the Intelligent Retrieval of Teaching Resources

In the development process of education informatization, digital teaching resources continue to grow, and how to manage and organize massive teaching resources has become a key issue for teaching staff. An efficient and accurate search system is an important part of the teaching resource service system. The use of intelligent search engines can search teaching resources comprehensively and efficiently, and the artificial intelligence search engine provides a reliable and convenient solution for the design and development of intelligent search systems. The article analyzes the design principles and technical standards of the intelligent search system, expounds the system’s functional architecture and database design, and introduces the realization process and principles of the search system. By analyzing the characteristics of basic education resources and existing automatic abstracting methods, this paper proposes to integrate the calculated feature word weights in the field of basic education into the algorithm for calculating the weights of abstract sentences and simultaneously examine the sentence position, sentence length, and other texts. There is an automatic summarization algorithm for surface statistics. This article also introduces the search design ideas and implementation steps based on artificial intelligence, makes a scientific evaluation and summary of the actual situation of the automatic abstract system running in the basic education resource search engine, and looks forward to the next improvement work.

A Prospective Comparison of Evidence Synthesis Search Strategies Developed With and Without Text-Mining Tools

Background: In an era of explosive growth in biomedical evidence, improving systematic review (SR) search processes is increasingly critical. Text-mining tools (TMTs) are a potentially powerful resource to improve and streamline search strategy development. Two types of TMTs are especially of interest to searchers: word frequency (useful for identifying most used keyword terms, e.g., PubReminer) and clustering (visualizing common themes, e.g., Carrot2). Objectives: The objectives of this study were to compare the benefits and trade-offs of searches with and without the use of TMTs for evidence synthesis products in real world settings. Specific questions included: (1) Do TMTs decrease the time spent developing search strategies? (2) How do TMTs affect the sensitivity and yield of searches? (3) Do TMTs identify groups of records that can be safely excluded in the search evaluation step? (4) Does the complexity of a systematic review topic affect TMT performance? In addition to quantitative data, we collected librarians' comments on their experiences using TMTs to explore when and how these new tools may be useful in systematic review search¬¬ creation. Methods: In this prospective comparative study, we included seven SR projects, and classified them into simple or complex topics. The project librarian used conventional “usual practice” (UP) methods to create the MEDLINE search strategy, while a paired TMT librarian simultaneously and independently created a search strategy using a variety of TMTs. TMT librarians could choose one or more freely available TMTs per category from a pre-selected list in each of three categories: (1) keyword/phrase tools: AntConc, PubReMiner; (2) subject term tools: MeSH on Demand, PubReMiner, Yale MeSH Analyzer; and (3) strategy evaluation tools: Carrot2, VOSviewer. We collected results from both MEDLINE searches (with and without TMTs), coded every citation’s origin (UP or TMT respectively), deduplicated them, and then sent the citation library to the review team for screening. When the draft report was submitted, we used the final list of included citations to calculate the sensitivity, precision, and number-needed-to-read for each search (with and without TMTs). Separately, we tracked the time spent on various aspects of search creation by each librarian. Simple and complex topics were analyzed separately to provide insight into whether TMTs could be more useful for one type of topic or another. Results: Across all reviews, UP searches seemed to perform better than TMT, but because of the small sample size, none of these differences was statistically significant. UP searches were slightly more sensitive (92% [95% confidence intervals (CI) 85–99%]) than TMT searches (84.9% [95% CI 74.4–95.4%]). The mean number-needed-to-read was 83 (SD 34) for UP and 90 (SD 68) for TMT. Keyword and subject term development using TMTs generally took less time than those developed using UP alone. The average total time was 12 hours (SD 8) to create a complete search strategy by UP librarians, and 5 hours (SD 2) for the TMT librarians. TMTs neither affected search evaluation time nor improved identification of exclusion concepts (irrelevant records) that can be safely removed from the search set. Conclusion: Across all reviews but one, TMT searches were less sensitive than UP searches. For simple SR topics (i.e., single indication–single drug), TMT searches were slightly less sensitive, but reduced time spent in search design. For complex SR topics (e.g., multicomponent interventions), TMT searches were less sensitive than UP searches; nevertheless, in complex reviews, they identified unique eligible citations not found by the UP searches. TMT searches also reduced time spent in search strategy development. For all evidence synthesis types, TMT searches may be more efficient in reviews where comprehensiveness is not paramount, or as an adjunct to UP for evidence syntheses, because they can identify unique includable citations. If TMTs were easier to learn and use, their utility would be increased.

Revealed Comparative Advantage Method for Solving Multicriteria Decision-making Problems

This study proposes and analyzes a new method for the post-Pareto analysis of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problems: the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) assessment method. An interesting feature of the suggested method is that it uses the solution to a special eigenvalue problem and can be considered an analog/modification in the MCDM context of well-known ranking methods including the authority-hub method, PageRank method, and so on, which have been successfully applied to such fields as economics, bibliometrics, web search design, and so on. For illustrative purposes, this study discusses a particular MCDM problem to demonstrate the practicality of the method. The theoretical considerations and conducted calculations reveal that the RCA assessment method is self-consistent and easily implementable. Moreover, comparisons with well-known tools of an MCDM analysis shows that the results obtained using this method are appropriate and competitive. An important particularity of the RCA assessment method is that it can be useful for decision-makers in the case in which no decision-making authority is available or when the relative importance of various criteria has not been preliminarily evaluated.

The unit effect from a performance management perspective

PurposeThe subjective interpretation of numerical information can induce the so-called unit effect, i.e. the scale and unit chosen to quantify such information might influence a person's judgment. Although this bias is well-known, until now, it has been difficult to obtain an overview of the respective research. There are a variety of versions of the unit effect, different terms are used for the same kind of effect and proposals for grouping such effects lack a straightforward typology.Design/methodology/approachA literature review is conducted using a systematic literature search design. We address the following questions: (1) What knowledge exists about the unit effect? (2) What is a suitable concept for structuring the findings? (3) What ideas can be deduced for future research focusing on performance management?FindingsA total of 11 versions of the unit effect and 27 moderating variables are identified and grouped into four contexts in which the effects occur. Structured according to these contexts, research ideas are depicted. They include suggestions for studies adapted to the field of performance management to scrutinize the main effects and moderators addressed in the literature to date as well as to consider additional potential moderators.Originality/valueFew publications explicitly address the unit effect from the perspective of performance management. As one of the core objectives of this business function is to enable rational decision-making based on numerical information, it can be assumed that corresponding research will be very fruitful.

SEARCH DESIGN OF TECHNOLOGICAL CARBON DIOXIDE LASERS BASED ON A NEW INFORMATION MODEL OF THE PHYSICAL PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

A specialized method for synthesizing conceptual technical solutions for energy converters (EC) is considered using the example of carbon dioxide-based technological lasers. The method is based on a new information model of the physical principle of action (PPA). The results of the research were presented in the form of a guiding methodological material (GMM), consisting of four parts.

Impact of COVID-19 on search in an organisation

COVID-19 has created unprecedented organisational challenges, yet no study has examined the impact on information search. A case study in a knowledge-intensive organisation was undertaken on 2.5 million search queries during the pandemic. A surge of unique users and COVID-19 search queries in March 2020 may equate to ‘peak uncertainty and activity’, demonstrating the importance of corporate search engines in times of crisis. Search volumes dropped 24% after lockdowns; an ‘L-shaped’ recovery may be a surrogate for business activity. COVID-19 search queries transitioned from awareness, to impact, strategy, response and ways of working that may influence future search design. Low click through rates imply some information needs were not met and searches on mental health increased. In extreme situations (i.e. a pandemic), companies may need to move faster, monitoring and exploiting their enterprise search logs in real time as these reflect uncertainty and anxiety that may exist in the enterprise.

ORGANIZATION OF ADOLESCENTS RESEARCH PROJECTS IN TOURISM AND LOCAL HISTORY

The relevance of the appeal to the organization of research projects of adolescents in tourism and local history in institutions of additional education is justified by the need to educate an growing citizen who is able to critically understand and appreciate the most important historical events, prominent individuals, small Motherland, adequately and perceive information of a social nature and actively learn new areas of knowledge, assign universal values (Man, Family, Labor, Knowledge, Culture, Earth, World, Fatherland) within the framework of accessible improvement of the surrounding world. Tourism and local history is a peculiar basis for the implementation of research projects of adolescents in the real format of life, forming the development of an active life position of a holistic-oriented person — an growing patriot and citizen during acquaintance with the history and nature of his native land, communication coherence in choosing goals, coordinating positions, virtuosity in the application of methods of solving personal and group problems when developing a socially needed project, its presentation and protection. In tourist and local history projects of additional education institutions , adolescents are given the opportunity to freely choose their fields of activity. Their personal interests, needs, abilities are taken into account, as well as the possibility of their free self-determination and self-realization. Organization of research projects in tourism and local history activities with the following possibilities: semantic (organization of multilevel communications of subjects of axiological communication, exchange of moral ideas, feelings, ideas, values), transforming (activation of positive self-attitude of adolescents, translation of samples of accumulated experience of constructive interaction into various spheres of society), integration (freedom of teenagers to choose forms, methods of tourist and local history activities), the author presents in the form of a structure: motive — problem — goal — tasks — methods and methods — plan — actions — results — reflection. This structure is described on the example of the tourist and local history association “Seekers” MBUDO “Center for Additional Education” in Tulgan and is a real technological chain, which in turn consists of five “P”: problem, search, design, product, presentation.