The most cited articles published since 2010, extracted from Scopus
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 938-942
Cloud computing is becoming an adoptable technology for many of the organizations with its dynamic scalability and usage of virtualized resources as a service through the Internet. It will likely have a significant impact on the educational environment in the future. Cloud computing is an excellent alternative for educational institutions which are especially under budget shortage in order to operate their information systems effectively without spending any more capital for the computers and network devices. Universities take advantage of available cloud-based applications offered by service providers and enable their own users/students to perform business and academic tasks. In this paper, we will review what the cloud computing infrastructure will provide in the educational arena, especially in the universities where the use of computers are more intensive and what can be done to increase the benefits of common applications for students and teachers. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 19, Issue , August 2011, Pages 756-777
Ernaz Altundaǧ | Münir A. Öztürk
A total of 444 naturally distributed taxa belonging to 62 families are used in the traditional medicine in the East Anatolian region of Turkey. These mainly belong to the families like Asteraceae (93 taxa), Lamiaceae (52 taxa), Rosaceae (30 taxa), Fabacaee (27 taxa), Boraginaceae (20 taxa), Apiaceae (17 taxa), Brassicaceae (16 taxa), Ranunculaceae (16 taxa), Malvaceae (12 taxa), Liliaceae (11 taxa), Polygonaceae (10 taxa), Euphorbiaceae (8 taxa), Scrophulariaceae (7 taxa), Solanaceae (6 taxa), Plantaginaceae (5 taxa), Crassulaceae (5 taxa) and Chenopodiaceae (5 taxa). The dominating genera are Achillea (11 taxa), Centaurea (11 taxa), Scorzonera (9 taxa), Alcea (8 taxa), Euphorbia (8 taxa), Salvia (8 taxa), Anthemis (7 taxa), Taraxacum (7 taxa), Tragopogon (7 taxa), Allium (7 taxa), Artemisia (6 taxa), Crataegus (6 taxa), Ranunculus (6 taxa), Rubus (6 taxa), Rumex (6 taxa), Thymus (6 taxa), Anchusa (5 taxa), Plantago (5 taxa), Rosa (5 taxa), Stachys (5 taxa), Tanacetum (5 taxa) and Verbascum (5 taxa). Although this region shows the highest ratio of endemism (25 %) in Turkey, this ratio for medicinal plants lies around 8 percent. Out of 444 taxa evaluated medicinally 82 were observed to be poisonous. Local people in the region generally use herbal remedies for the treatment of gastro-intestinal disorders, respiratory system disorders, rheumatic pain, kidney stones, hemorrhoids and skin troubles such as cut, wounds, burns, and abscess. In this paper an attempt has been made to present the information on the medicinal plants of the region for its availability to the researchers in different fields related to herbal drugs. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 5944-5955
Teodor Gabriel Crainic | Guido Perboli | Simona Mancini | Roberto Tadei
In this paper, we address the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem (2E-VRP) in which freight is delivered from depots to intermediary satellites, from where it is delivered to customers. Different from other multi-leVel problems, the focus in 2E-VRP is on the global routing costs of the overall network. 2E-VRP has been recently introduced and, to our knowledge, there are no studies of the impact of instance parameters on the global cost. We present the results of a broad experimental study aimed at analyzing the impact on the total distribution cost of several parameters including customer distribution, satellites-location rules, depot location, number of satellites, mean accessibility of the satellites, and mean transportation cost between the satellites and the customers. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 1368-1378
I. D L Ríos | Adolfo Cazorla | José María Díaz-Puente | José L. Yagüe
This paper presents an educational methodology of cooperative project-based learning. This methodology emerges in the final years of the undergraduate programme of the Technical University of Madrid. The paper focuses on the evolution of this experience up to its insertion in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), incorporating the project management competences of the International Project Management Association (IPMA) and broadening its scope to an entire educational strategy for undergraduate and graduate programmes. The results show how the methodology provides three main advantages: (1) it facilitates training in technical, personal, and contextual competences; (2) real problems in the professional sphere are dealt with; and (3) collaborative learning is facilitated through the integration of teaching and research. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 3904-3908
Hamid Tohidi | Aida Jafari | Aslan Azimi Afshar
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is one of the performance measurement tools that determine intangible assets of the organization. This system is more frequently used in a Strategic Planning than performance assessment. Due to the long domination of traditional management approaches in Iranian educational systems, seldom do they use a balanced performance measurement tool. The author shows how a Strategy Map is planned for educational organizations and how necessary data are gathered with interviews held with managers who had planned strategies for their organizations and who had not, by Using BSC tool. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 6297-6311
The persistent growth of freight traffic congestion and air pollution in urban areas and the increase of imbalance and inefficiency in land use development drive public authorities and users to find alternative logistics solutions to ease the freight traffic problem. Intermodal freight logistics centres play an important role in achieving socio-economic and environmental sustainability by enhancing an optimal integration of different modes to provide an efficient and cost-effective use of the transport system through customer-oriented, door-to-door services while favouring competition among transport operators. An efficient logistics centre structure may lead to a significant profit and return on investment as well as a significantly increased competitive advantage in the market place by meeting strategic commercial objectives, where determination of the location is a key factor in enhancing the efficiency of urban freight transport systems and initializing relative sufficient supply chain activities. Hence, public authorities should consider the importance of this topic by any given decision in terms of strong economical, social and environmental implications before announcing an area as a logistics centre. The objective of this study is to explore the applicability of the way for the development of a conceptual model based on a combination of the fuzzy-analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and artificial neural networks (ANN) methods in the process of decision-making in order to select the most appropriate location. A numerical example is provided to demonstrate the concept of proposed model. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 2771-2776
Özgür Erdur Baker | Ibrahim Tanrikulu
This study aimed to examine the relations of cyber bullying experiences of Turkish secondary school children (as a victim and bully) to demographic variables (age and gender) and depressive symptoms. The participants were 165 secondary school students (94 females and 71 males) whose ages ranged from 10 to 14. According to the results, there is a significant interaction effect between age and gender on cyber bullying experiences, but they are not related to being a cyber victim. In other words, while school children's age and gender are related to being a cyber bully, school children may have the potential to be a cyber victim regardless of their age and gender. Moreover, the results revealed that the students who reported to being cyber victim indicate higher level of depressive symptoms. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 28, Issue , December 2011, Pages 937-942
Fezile Özdamli | Nadire Cavus
Mobile learning (m-learning) as a kind of learning model allowing learners to obtain learning materials anywhere and anytime using mobile technologies and the Internet. It is necessary that the elements of mobile learning are organized correctly and the interactions between the various elements are combined in an efficient and optimum way so that the mobile learning is successful and the implementation is efficient. In addition, the characteristics of mobile learning should be organized, and the way they are applied to mobile learning activities and the application methods and the duration of the application time should be planned well in advance. Consequently, a deeper insight into theory-based research is required to better understand the underlying motivations that lead academics to adopting mobile learning elements and characteristics. These reasons have motivated authors to carry out this study. Learner, teacher, environment, content and assesstment are basic elements of the complete mobile learning. The core characteristics of mobile learning are ubiquitous, portable size of mobile tools, blended, private, interactive, collaborative, and instant information. They enable learners to be in the right place at the right time, that is, to be where they are able to experience the authentic joy of learning. The aim of this study is to describe the basic elements and characteristic of mobile learning according to new trends in developing technology. The paper might be useful for anyone interested in designing, preparing and implementing a mobile learning. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 28, Issue , December 2011, Pages 97-101
Zailani Abdullah | Tutut Herawan | Ahmad Ahmad Noraziah | M. Mat Deris
Least association rules are the association rules that consist of the least item. These rules are very important and critical since they can be used to detect the infrequent events and exceptional cases. However, the formulation of measurement to efficiently discover least association rules is quite intricate and not really straight forward. In educational domain, this information is very useful since it can be used as a base for investigating and enhancing the current educational standards and managements. Therefore, this paper proposes a new measurement called Critical Relative Support (CRS) to mine critical least association rules from educational context. Experiment with students' examination result dataset shows that this approach can be used to reveal the significant rules and also can reduce up to 98% of uninterested association rules. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 15, Issue , December 2011, Pages 1425-1430
Gabriela Grosseck | Ramona Bran | Laurentiu Tiru
Loved equally by the young and the not so young, the social networking site Facebook has become a significant part of students' life. Consequently, more and more university teachers embrace the idea that it can also be used at an academic level and not just at a social level, and that it can be used for many different things / purposes connected to (formal) education. In this context our paper focuses on how students perceive the use of the social networking site Facebook for academic purposes and how / if they integrate it in their learning, training or other (extra) educational activities. After a short presentation of Facebook's features, we'll review its educational value from published research studies. In order to investigate how students are engaged in Facebook academic activities, an online questionnaire was applied to our first year students in the academic year 2010. We found that the majority of students spend significant time on Facebook more for social uses (to stay in touch with friends and family, to share / tag photos, to engage in social activism, volunteering etc.) and less for academic purposes, even if they take part in discussions about their assignments, lectures, study notes or share information about research resources etc. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 4737-4741
Sehnaz Baltaci-Goktalay | Zehra Özdilek
The aim of the study was to examine the pre-service teachers' perceptions about Web 2.0 technologies in their learning process and to understand their acceptance levels and attitudes towards these tools. The data gathered from a sample of 101 first year pre-service science and computer teachers in the 2009 Fall semester. The survey was made up of three components: demographic data, Web 2.0 attitude scale, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) scale. The results indicated that participants' perceptions about Web 2.0 technologies were positive and also acceptance and willingness to use these technologies was high. The learners mostly preferred to use audio/video conferencing technologies rather than the other technologies since they are more familiar with it. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 4064-4069
Pipatsarun Phobun | Jiracha Vicheanpanya
An e-learning system is increasingly gaining popularity in the academic community because of several benefits of learning anywhere anyplace and anytime. Most frequently it seems to be used for web-based instruction so that learners can access online courses via internet. One likely reason for the lack of success is that just placing lecture notes on the internet does not train. This situation can be improved through the use of training software such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). ITS incorporate built-in expert systems in order to monitor the performance of a learner and to personalize instruction on the basis of adaptation to learners' learning style, current knowledge level, and appropriate teaching strategies in e-Learning systems. While Adaptive Hypermedia systems (AH) do provide instruction in skills, it is generally less advanced than comparable ITS instruction. E-learning systems are web-based learning so that learners can access online courses via Internet without adaptation based on Learners' behavior. Therefore, it is a challenge to make e-Learning systems to be more "adaptive". Both ITS and AH are normally used for computer-based instruction. However, adaptive hypermedia is better suited for the instruction of concepts whereas intelligent tutoring system generally assists in the use of these concepts to solve problems. Therefore, a general instruction system requires both of these instructional approaches in order to provide a full learning environment. In this paper, describes a conceptual for combining ITS and AH into Adaptive Intelligent Tutoring System (AITS) for e-learning systems that allows knowledge to be stored in such a way that is not only independent of the knowledge domain, but also supports the storage of transfer knowledge relationships and prerequisite knowledge relationships. The conceptual results show that this innovative approach is helpful to the learners in improving their learning achievements. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 5544-5548
Hamid Tohidi | Aida Jafari | Aslan Azimi Afshar
The purpose of this article is Strategic Planning in Iranian educational organizations (especially schools). Although there are lots of problems in educational organizations, strategic planning is used rarely. The results of this article might be useful for managers of educational and related organizations, relating their internal processes to strategies and make them applicable. Using the BSC tool, the author shows how a Strategy Map is planned for educational organizations and how necessary data are gathered with interviews held with managers who had planned strategies for their organizations and who had not. In addition, the BSC abilities and flexibility - in comparison with other strategic planning models - to solve educational organization problems and increasing its effectiveness and efficiency, have been shown in the results. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 7, Issue , December 2010, Pages 130-138
Norazah Mohd Nordin | Mohamed Amin Embi | Melor Md Yunus
This paper proposes a conceptual framework for mobile learning applications that provides systematic support for mobile lifelong learning experience design. It concerns four perspectives: generic mobile environment issues, learning contexts, learning experiences and learning objectives. The paper also explores crucial factors and design requirements for the mobile learning environment. It also suggests how mobile learning applications can be designed with an understanding of these factors and requirements and further applied to lifelong learning. The proposed framework provides forward engineering support for the successful design of the future mobile lifelong learning systems. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 1127-1132
This study investigated the potential value of Weblog use on English language learning in the context of a university in Thailand. It examined students' perceptions of and attitudes towards using Weblogs. A content analysis was used to analyse the data that derived from short questionnaires, interview questionnaires and student Blogs. The findings indicated that the students perceived Weblog as a tool for the development of their English, in terms of writing, reading, vocabulary, and recording their learning experience. The students also viewed Weblog as giving an opportunity and freedom for self-expression in English, writing for both a local and global audience, fostering creative, analytical and critical thinking skills, creating social interaction and good relationships between writer and reader, and supporting the learning community. Overall then, in spite of some minor limitations, they had positive attitudes towards Weblog use. These findings suggest that Weblogs can provide learning motivation and opportunities for authorship and readership, as well as the development of writing and learning strategies, including critical thinking. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 1840-1845
Selen Turkay | Sonam Adinolf
While large amounts of resources are put into making games engaging, little is known about the effect of specific game features such as customization. This study is part of a larger research which focuses on the effect of customization on user motivation, enjoyment and engagement. The goals of this exploratory survey study were to investigate the importance of customization on players' enjoyment and motivation to play, and the effectiveness of different forms of customizations on enjoyment and motivation. We also aimed to capture players' reasons for specific game customizations, and investigate differences in gender, player experience in these areas. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 9, Issue , December 2010, Pages 2003-2009
Christine D. MacDonald | Bridget J. Roberts-Pittman
Participants were 439 college students who were asked how often they had experienced each of a series of bullying behaviors since they have been in college. Results indicated that 38% of college students knew someone who had been cyberbullied, 21.9% had been cyberbullied, and 8.6% had cyberbullying someone else. It was apparent that some forms of electronic media are more commonly used to cyberbully others than are other forms. All the cyberbullying behaviors and traditional bullying behaviors were significantly positively inter-correlated. There were no significant gender or ethnic group differences in any of the cyberbullying behaviors. © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 21, Issue , December 2011, Pages 269-278
Khwanruthai Bunruamkaew | Yuji Murayama
The main objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the potential ecotourism sites using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in Surat Thani Province, Thailand. This study identifies the following factors as indicators of suitability within land ecosystems: landscape/naturalness, wildlife, topography, accessibility and community characteristics. The evaluating process for ecotourism site conducted based on nine chosen criteria including visibility, land use/cover, reservation/protection, species diversity, elevation, slope, proximity to cultural sites, distance from roads and settlement size. Those factors were selected according to the professional expert's opinions. AHP was effectively used in this study to calculate the details of the factors and class weights. GIS plays a crucial role in ecotourism planning. The methodology proposed was useful to identify ecotourism sites by linking the criteria deemed important with the actual resources of the Province. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 10, Issue , March 2011, Pages 79-89
Teresa Doménech | Michael Gordon Davies
Within the field of industrial ecology, Industrial Symbiosis (IS) has emerged as a body of exchange structures to progress to a more eco-efficient industrial system. By establishing a collaborative web of knowledge, material and energy exchanges among different organisational units, IS networks aim to reduce the intake of virgin materials and lower the production of waste by the industrial sector. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the operation of IS networks by focussing on the structure and morphology of IS networks and their patterns of interaction and how this influences the outcomes of the collaboration, both in economic and environmental terms. Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been adopted here as the main methodological framework and has been applied to the IS network in Kalundborg (Denmark), proving useful in the analysis of the structural characteristics of the network and the understanding of the role that different actors play. The paper concludes that SNA provides a comprehensive methodological and analytical framework to understand the structural elements of IS networks. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 6355-6365
Francesco Russo | Antonio Comi
Around the world, interest in urban and metropolitan goods movements is increasing since they account for a substantial share of traffic in urban/metropolitan areas. In this context, many city administrators have implemented measures to mitigate the negative effects of freight transport. Starting from an analysis of existing studies relative to freight policies implemented at urban scale, this paper proposes a general classification of measures adopted at an urban scale and an empirical analysis of obtainable results. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 2, October 2010, Pages 5682-5685
Ozge Yasar | Tufan Adigüzel
Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) have been used in education for a number of years to deliver and manage electronic learning sources. Learning Management systems (LMS), also known as VLE, have lots of functions in the process of learning activities as well as the course administration and tracking, but they still have some limitations which decrease the effectiveness of learning. With their functions of giving the opportunity of involving in the process of constructing meaning from experiences to students, 3D virtual environments have emerged to remediate such LMS problems. SLOODLE is a dynamic learning environment which links 3D virtual environment, Second Life, to an open source LMS, MOODLE(). The aim of this study is to outline weaknesses of traditional LMSs and explore the features of 3D virtual learning environment, SLOODLE, as a potential solution. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 2, Issue 6, August 2010, Pages 7682-7683
The paper deals with the Sobol's sensitivity analysis of load-carrying capacity both of building structural members and steel plane frames. The sensitivity analysis was used to identify those initial imperfections that significantly influenced the load-carrying capacity (model output). Whereas higher order sensitivity indices are practically negligible for separate members, the higher order interactions can play, for a system composed of those members, an important role. With greater sophistication of the system, also the demanding character of numerical calculation increases. The Latin Hypercube Sampling method was utilized for the analysis. For a separate member, the computational model was formed by analytical solution, for the calculation of the load-carrying capacity of steel plane frame, the geometrical nonlinear finite element solution providing numerical result per run was employed.
Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 5967-5979
Tariq Van Rooijen | H. J. Quak
A new urban consolidation centre, called Binnenstadservice.nl ('Inner city service'), started business in April 2008 in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. The consolidation centre in Nijmegen differs from initiatives in the past, distinguishing itself from other UCC initiatives by its focus on receivers rather than on carriers. After one year already 98 stores joined Binnenstadservice.nl and this number is still growing. Due to Binnenstadservice.nl, fewer trucks enter the city centre and fewer kilometres are driven. In this paper we provide insights into the local effects of the Binnenstadservice pilot after one year, such as air quality, inconvenience for residents and noise nuisance. The effects on local air quality and noise nuisance are limited, due to the amount of passenger and bus traffic remaining. Plans exist to start Binnenstadservice.nl franchises in other Dutch cities, which could result in making Binnenstadservice.nl a more serious partner for carriers to handle the transport of last mile distribution in cities. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Volume 28, Issue , December 2011, Pages 107-111
Zailani Abdullah | Tutut Herawan | Ahmad Ahmad Noraziah | M. Mat Deris
Association Rules Mining is one of the popular techniques used in data mining. Positive association rules are very useful in correlation analysis and decision making processes. In educational context, determine a "right" program to the students is very unclear especially when their chosen programs are not selected. In this case, normally they will be offered to other programs based on the programs? availability and not according to their program?s field interests. The main concern is, by assigning inappropriate program which is not reflected their overall interest; it may create serious problems such as poorly in academic commitment and academic achievement. Therefore, Therefore in this paper, we proposed a model which consists of preprocessing, mining patterns and assigning weight to discover highly positive association rules. We examined the previous chosen programs by computer science students in our university for July 2008/2009 intake. The result shows that the proposed model can mine association rules with high correlation. Moreover, for data analysis, there are existed students that have been offered in computer science program at our university but not within their program?s field interests. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Volume 2, Issue 3, September 2010, Pages 6002-6012
Dai Tamagawa | Eiichi Taniguchi | Tadashi Yamada
This paper presents a methodology for evaluating city logistics measures considering the behaviour of several stakeholders associated with urban freight transport using a multi-agent model. The model constructed consists of a learning model and a model for vehicle routing and scheduling problem with time window-forecasted (VRP-TW-F). We used a method of Q-learning, a technique of reinforcement learning, in constructing a learning model. We implemented the model on a test road network representing an urban area. The results indicate that implementing a truck ban directly to environmentally damaged areas and discounting motorway tolls entirely in the urban motorway network together has large environmental effects, and leads to an acceptable environment for all stakeholders. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.