One of the objectives of the performance measurement of grade-based higher education is to reduce the failure rate of students. To identify and reduce the number of failing students, the learning activities and behaviors of students in the classroom must be continuously monitored; however, monitoring a large number of students is an extremely difficult task. A penetration of web-based learning systems in academic institutions revealed the possibility of evaluating student activities via these systems. In this paper, we propose an early prediction scheme to identify students at risk of failing in a blended learning course. We employ a neural network on the set of prediction variables extracted from the online learning activities of students in a learning management system. The experiments were based on data from 1110 student who attended a compulsory, sophomore-level course. The results indicate that a neural-network-based approach can achieve early identification of students that are likely to fail; 25% of the failing students were correctly identified after the first quiz submission. After the mid-term examination, 65% of the failing students were correctly predicted.

Abstract:We can communicate with others in a noisy environment. This phenomenon is known as a "Cocktail Party Effect" and is one of the most important binaural functions. This paper addresses a frequency domain binaural model that plays the role of a binaural function based on an interaural phase and level difference. The proposed model is evaluated not only as a front-end of the speech recognition system, but also as a speech enhancer. According to the evaluation, when the direction of arrival of the target signal and noise differs by 10 , recognition rates improve in comparison with the previous time domain binaural model (TDBM) in any cases. Furthermore, recognition rates show more than 90% when the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is higher than approximately 5 dB. On the other hand, SNR and coherence of the frequency domain binaural model, which is obtained for an evaluation of the speech enhancer, show superior results over the TDBM.

<p>Textbook prices have soared over the years, with several studies revealing many university students are finding it difficult to afford textbooks. Fortunately, two innovations – open educational resources (OER) and open textbooks – hold the potential to increase textbook affordability. Experts, though, have stated the obvious: that students can save money through open textbooks only if teachers are willing to develop and use them. Considering both the high price of textbooks and the benefits offered by OER and open textbooks, the aim of this study was to assess the University of the South Pacific (USP) teachers’ willingness towards development of custom-built OER derived open textbooks for their courses with a focus on providing a foundation for strategies to promote open textbook development at USP. This paper reports the findings of an online survey of 39 USP teachers. The results show that 17 teachers were willing to develop OER derived custom-built open textbooks for their courses. Besides this, there are findings relating to six important areas: teachers’ motivation to develop open textbooks; the frequency of more than one prescribed textbook per course; teachers’ awareness of the costs of the prescribed textbooks; the average cost of prescribed textbooks in a course; teachers’ awareness and utilization of OER and open textbooks; and teachers’ perceived barriers to using OER and types of challenges they encounter while using OER. These findings have been discussed in relation to research studies on OER and open textbooks.</p>

Mongolia is a developing country with little infrastructure capacities, but with rapid economic growth for the past few years. Within the past few years, internet and mobile technologies have become more affordable and widespread. Even though there are improvements, it is no secret that quality in all levels of educational sector in Mongolia is inadequate. E-Learning is becoming a driving force of the pedagogical and technological innovations in the higher education institutions worldwide. The most practiced form of the e-Learning in the higher education institutions is blended learning. Some researches show that use of a blended learning course in higher education can result in better quality in instruction. Design and implementation of blended course in particular situation, revision and assessment of quality, would not only enable to share the experience with the similar higher education institutions but also contribute to the overall research in quality in higher education. This paper presents implementation and improvement of the blended "Pedagogy course," using Moodle Learning Management System and discusses the potential impact on teacher education in Mongolia. Pilot blended "Pedagogy course" was designed and implemented during 2012-2013 school year then revised in 2014-2015 school year. To ensure effectiveness, Keller's ARCS model of motivational design, validated by many researches was chosen. At the end of the implementation, the students' blended learning experience survey was completed followed by focus group discussion and statistical analysis. Results show that students in blended class could achieve better grades than traditional class, with high satisfaction. The outcome of the research shows that blended learning implementation can improve quality in higher education has a potential to improve teacher education and should be recommended in similar educational institutions in developing countries with similar situation in Mongolia.

Universities in developing counties have come to understand that relying on only traditional classrooms is not sufficient to advance students’ knowledge and skills. The rapid development of information systems and internet technology has brought many educational innovations that can eliminate the boundaries of conventional teaching and learning. However, universities and their members including students are still experiencing challenges in understanding how to access e-learning practically and what type of direct benefits can be gained before e-learning can be implemented at their universities. Consequently, this study develops a pilot program for e-learning content based on quizzes and delivers that content to inexperienced students. The current work aims to measure the effectiveness of e-learning experiences on students after practicing through online quizzes. The findings indicate that students have better grades on their final post-test, which was taken after self-study and practice with online quizzes. All the third-year students (24 students in total) from the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology (CEIT), Yangon Technological University (YTU), Myanmar, participated in these pilot e-learning tests. The paper also examines the relationships among e-learning study-time, number of accesses, the number of online activities, the number of quiz activities and the improvements in outcomes of students. The findings of this research will be useful for the universities from Development in establishing e-learning education.

Well-designed instructional material is equally important for successful e-Learning implementation. Teachers and instructors play a major role in terms of designing and building learning content. In one respect, it requires costs in terms of effort, time and experience. In other respects, a good learning content is likely a result of recurring revisions as a result of teaching experience as well as evaluating student activities. In the case of higher educational institutions (HEI) in developing countries (such as Indonesia), resource sharing in many aspects is highly recommended effort against high cost and redundant works, e-Learning is no exception. Sharing and re-using e-Learning content on particular subject between Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be one of the methods. In addition, collaborative teaching may cause a content develops gradually while conducting content sharing. Thus, the capability of synchronizing the content between LMS is necessary. On the other hand, typical e-Learning implementation might not be appropriate due to the concerns of network infrastructure in developing countries. In some areas, the network has less bandwidth and even frequent disconnections. This paper introduces a novel method of sharing e-Learning content between distributed Learning Management Systems by using dynamic content synchronization. This method also suites the need of course sharing which supports collaborative teaching activity. Moreover, this approach is designed to address the needs of content sharing in areas with network infrastructure limitation in terms of bandwidth and availability.

E-learning can be a potential solution to educational inequality problem in developing countries, like Mongolia, with vast land and sparse population. With the introduction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), some impressive cases bring the attention of the public towards it. But there is no specific evidence that shows Mongolian students' experiences related to these online courses yet. Purpose of this study was to examine Mongolian students' MOOC perception and experience, especially influence of access, skills, and preferences in their practice. We used a 15-item questionnaire and results were based on 6846 students' responses. The study population consists of undergraduate students of the National University of Mongolia and high school students from 8 schools in Ulaanbaatar city. There was a significant difference between university and high school students in the awareness and enrollment rates. 47% of the students have heard of MOOCs and 2518 respondents (37%) had an experience of taking MOOCs. Our results show that students have a doubt about MOOC's academical quality and consider it as an additional source of learning materials. The results of this study can be used to compare students' perception from other developing countries.

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