Using the IBM Personal Computer for Library Instruction

PurposeTaiwanese computer and electronic products possess advantages in design, innovation, rapid response, and global market flexibility. This study aims to examine Taiwanese computer and electronics firms to explore the product marketing strategies they adopted to deal with global competition. Furthermore, it is intended to analyze firms in different marketing strategic groups in terms of their product design strategies and how they incorporated design and marketing strategies into design innovation. This analysis is applied as an integrated innovation model for allocating design and marketing strategies.Design/methodology/approachBased on a questionnaire survey and case studies, the marketing strategies adopted by the Taiwanese computer and electronics industry can be classified into the categories of “market leader”, “market focus”, “market challenge” and “market niche”.FindingsFirms employing different marketing strategies employed different design innovation strategies in product design. The design strategies adopted by enterprises in the market leader group incorporated aggressive innovation; those in the market focus group were characterized by focus innovation in product design; those in the market challenge group exhibited strong innovation integration in product design; and those in the market niche group exhibited flexible innovation in product design.Originality/valueThe innovation models adopted by the Taiwanese computer and electronics industry were related to enterprise scale, business type, and product development category. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for enterprises with regard to R&D and marketing in relation to product innovation.

Science concepts are often abstract and difficult to understand through conventional teaching methods. Therefore, a more interactive and concrete approach is necessary. Students frequently struggle to imagine or visualize invisible processes, which can lead to misconceptions or difficulty in grasping the material. The pop-up book, as a learning medium designed to accommodate students’ characteristics and cognitive needs, can serve as a bridge between abstract concepts and concrete experiences. With its three-dimensional elements that appear as the pages are opened, the pop-up book is expected to enhance visual understanding of complex natural phenomena, such as the water cycle, photosynthesis, and the circulatory system. This study is relevant as it aims to systematically examine how the use of pop-up books can improve visualization abilities and understanding of science concepts among elementary school students. The research used a qualitative approach with a descriptive design, involving 23 third-grade students of SDN Pandanrejo II and a teacher as the research subjects. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and documentation analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of students’ and teachers’ experiences in using pop-up books during the learning process. The results show that 80–92% of students reported improvement in learning science through pop-up books. Around 80% of students felt engaged and interested, and found it easier to visualize and remember abstract concepts. Additionally, 85% showed better understanding of difficult concepts and became more active in discussions. About 78% showed improved critical thinking skills, and 82% felt learning became more student-centered. Thus, using pop-up books in science learning proved effective in enhancing students’ ability to visualize abstract and complex scientific concepts.

Efficacy of formative evaluation using a focus group for a large classroom setting in an accelerated pharmacy program

This study examined the relationship between teachers’ instructional strategies and learners’ performance in mathematics in the Schools Division of Antique during the year 2025. Using a descriptive-correlational research design, the study sought to identify the instructional strategies commonly employed by teachers, determine the level of learners’ performance in mathematics, and establish the relationship between these variables. The respondents comprised 203 public elementary teachers who were actively involved in mathematics instruction and were selected through total enumeration to ensure broad representation. Data were gathered through a validated questionnaire that measured teachers’ use of cooperative learning, problem-solving activities, visual aids, and differentiated instruction. Learners’ performance was evaluated in terms of problem-solving skills, conceptual understanding, and computational proficiency. Descriptive statistical measures, including frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation, were used to describe instructional practices and learners’ performance, while the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation coefficient was applied to determine the relationship between the variables. The results showed that teachers frequently employed cooperative learning and problem-solving strategies, supported by the use of visual aids and differentiated instruction, which corresponded with high levels of learner performance in mathematics. A significant positive relationship was found between teachers’ instructional strategies and learners’ performance, indicating that effective and varied teaching approaches contribute to improved academic achievement. The study underscores the importance of dynamic, learner-centered instructional practices and recommends continuous professional development, adequate resource provision, and collaborative teaching efforts to further enhance instructional effectiveness and learner outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019 and by Spring of 2020, in an effort to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe had closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching which may have disrupted their current learning procedures. In the United States, over 13,000 school districts completely closed down during this time. Schools began to offer multiple types and modes of instruction in order to continue providing instruction for their students. One of these was <i>emergency remote teaching</i>. During the emergency remote teaching environments (ERTE), teachers worked within the ERTE framework to design their online instructional strategies. The purpose of the study is to report instructional strategies teachers used to provide education to their students during the extremely constrained set of circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to examine their contextualized stories regarding why they used these strategies as well as their perspectives on the comparative success of those strategies.

EUROSTAT figures show that 5720 people die in the European Union every year as a consequence of work-related accidents. Training in Health and Safety is indeed a key aspect to reduce this figure, and serious games constitute an effective method to provide this training. However, the development of this type of computer applications is a complex issue, requiring cross discipline knowledge on different areas, including instructional design, psychology, sociology, law, and computer graphics. Beyond the challenges already present in the development of non-educational computer games, serious games for health and safety are instructional tools. Therefore, they require an instructional design to cover specific educational issues, and knowledge on the health and safety regulations which are applicable in each particular context. In addition, these games have as their ultimate goal to increase the worker’s awareness about safety regulations and reduce the number and seriousness of accidents. Thus, the evaluation of this type of applications must be rather different from the evaluation of other games with a focus on entertainment. In this chapter we provide a description of existing serious games in the health and safety area, and describe major instructional and technological aspects related to the development of this type of training tools. Although technological developments will indeed increase the advantages of serious games as a means to deliver instruction in health and safety, we believe that the most challenging issues remain at the instructional side, and further research is still needed to maximize the effectiveness of this kind of training.

The rapid development of smart home technologies has driven significant growth in the smart bathroom hardware market, encompassing products such as smart toilets, sensor faucets, intelligent showers, and smart mirrors. This review examines design innovation and market promotion strategies within this sector, highlighting user-centered design, functional and technological advancements, aesthetic and material improvements, and modular customization. Market strategies including brand positioning, multi-channel distribution, digital marketing, and after-sales service are analyzed to demonstrate how they enhance consumer engagement and adoption. Challenges such as high R&D costs, supply chain complexity, consumer awareness, and regulatory compliance are discussed alongside opportunities from urbanization, sustainability trends, and expanding smart home adoption. Case studies of leading brands illustrate successful integration of design and marketing strategies. Finally, the review provides insights for future research, emphasizing human-computer interaction optimization, eco-friendly materials, and integrated IoT ecosystems to support sustainable growth and user-centric innovation.

During the past decade, computerized simulation and six related CBI lessons on the NovaNET (formerly PLATO) instructional delivery system have been pioneered into an early childhood preservice teacher education program at a large southeastern university.1 Related research has shown that this mode of instruction is highly effective in undergraduate teacher education. Approximately 450 subjects (experimental and controlled) have already taken five CBI lessons or responded to an attitudinal survey related to computers in education. These lessons were carefully selected because of their relationship to the scope and sequence of a prerequisite curriculum course to student teaching. Positive results related to integrating CBI into one section of a curriculum course over seven years, have inspired the expansion of this mode of instruction to three to four other sections of the same course. Implementation of CBI into other areas of the early childhood curriculum is also optimistic.

This paper reports on two design tools used in a teaching sequence (module) based on the Leeds Model Framework. This model framework draws upon theoretical insights into perspectives on learning and empirical studies to improve the teaching of electrochemistry by using the learning demand and the communicative approach. The learning demand identifies the differences between everyday social language and the school scientific language in terms of both content and the nature of the knowledge that are used to represent the same phenomena. The communicative approach focuses on the classroom discourse, especially on how the teacher interacts with the students when new ideas are introduced on the social plane of the classroom. These two design tools present the fundamental guidelines that could be utilised in designing a teaching sequence to improve students' conceptual understanding in any specific learning of science content. A study on two intact groups that had similar academic ability was carried out. The experimental class was conducted using the design teaching whilst the baseline group (comparison group) had followed the normal classroom teaching. The students' conceptual understanding in both classes was tested using a post-diagnostic test. The evaluation of students' responses of the items in the post diagnostic test was carried out using the ideographic and nomothetic approaches. The results show that there were significant differences in the experimental students' performances in comparison to the students in the baseline group. The findings suggest that the learning demand and different types of discourses had enabled students to explain some aspects of electrolytic cell content in details. The experimental students had demonstrated better conceptual scientific understanding than the baseline group in the learning area concerning the nature of electrolytes in the electrolytic cell.

BackgroundTeaching online is a different experience from that of teaching in a face-to-face setting. Knowledge and skills developed for teaching face-to-face classes are not adequate preparation for teaching online. It is even more challenging to teach science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses completely online because these courses usually require more hands-on activities and live demonstrations. Although the demand for online STEM courses has never been higher, little has been done to develop effective instructional and online course design strategies for teaching STEM courses online. This paper reports the effectiveness of the instructional strategies adopted and the online course design features in a fully online statistics course from the students’ perspectives. The online statistics course was an introductory, quantitative research course that covered common statistical concepts and focused on the application of educational research concepts for graduate students in educational technology. In terms of the statistics concepts covered, the course was similar to an introductory statistics class for students majoring in science, technology, math and engineering (STEM). The participants were mostly K-20 (meaning from kindergarten to college) instructors who had knowledge of instructional strategies.ResultsData collected from participants’ reflections and course evaluations revealed that a range of instructional strategies and course design features were effective and helped students learn statistics in an online environment. Specifically, case studies, video demonstrations, instructor’s notes, mini projects, and an online discussion forum were most effective. For online course design features, consistent structure, various resources and learning activities, and the application focused course content were found to be effective.ConclusionsThe implications of this study include effective instructional strategies and online course design for application-oriented STEM courses such as physics and engineering. The study results can be used to guide online teaching and learning as well as online course design for instructors, course designers, and students in STEM fields.

This paper reports on the instructional design used in an APOS (Actions, Processes, Objects and Schema) approach to difficulties experienced by first year engineering students at a University of Technology in constructing the concept of the chain rule. Instructional treatment followed the activities, classroom discussions and exercises (ACE) model as specified by a proposed genetic decomposition of the chain rule concept in differential calculus. This paper in particular presents instructional design used on three sequential lessons that were video recorded during class time in slots of one hour duration whilst introducing the chain rule to a class of about 197 first year students. Those lessons followed immediately after the students had done an introduction to calculus, differentiation using the product and quotient rules. Here I discuss in brief the techniques used in those lessons, instructional strategy used and the interactions between the researcher and the students, students to student collaborations in the classrooms. This was a qualitative study where the results revealed to a greater extent the effect of instructional design to an object understanding of the chain rule concept. The students’ interactions indicated that the instructional pedagogy should accommodate presentation of tasks that evoke rigorous deductive reasoning enabling the students to write and reflect on how they construct various mental images. A wide range of interactions between students themselves and between students and the researcher revealed that most students preferred the straight form technique and barely ever used Leibniz technique when differentiating loaded trigonometric functions. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n3p139

Distance education in occupational therapy programs is increasingly becoming an instructional norm. Technological advances and the common expected use of the Internet and its multiple options to communicate and share information have made its use also commonplace for occupational therapy educators. As with any instructional modality, Web-based instruction can offer a vibrant learning environment created through different teaching strategies, activities, and technologies. This article briefly outlines educational models and instructional designs that can be part of every occupational therapy program as they incorporate distance education and Web-based learning into their programs. The primary focus is on the incorporation of the constructivist approach.

Incorporating virtual reality (VR) tools into the pedagogical instructions has been found to facilitate abstract conceptualization, thereby enhancing learners’ understanding of complex concepts. However, the use of VR tools in biology instruction have not been extensively explored, primarily due to its accessibility and the perception that VR devices are perceived as gaming tools rather than learning mediums. This study investigated the effect of VR tools on students’ conceptual understanding, performance, and perceived usefulness. To gauge the effect of VRI approach on the students’ conceptual understanding, data from pre-and post-diagnostic tests were collected and analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed- rank test in SPSS, the effect size and item analysis was also performed. The effect of the VRI approach on students’ performance was evaluated through the summative assessments (SA), and descriptive analysis of the SA scores was conducted using SPSS. Regarding the students’ perceived usefulness of VR, selected students were interviewed, and their responses were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that VRI approach improved student’s conceptual understanding and performance. Additionally, students perceived that VR tools enhance their visualization of concepts and created an immersive experience. However, the complex features of the controllers and their limited availability hindered students’ learning. Overall, the study suggests that integrating VR tools into pedagogical instruction fosters an engaging, interactive learning environment and improve students’ performance.

RuO2 is considered as the state-of-the-art electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media. However, its practical application is largely hindered by both the high reaction overpotential and severe electrochemical corrosion of the active centers. To overcome these limitations, innovative design strategies are necessary, which remains a great challenge. Herein, robust interface Ru centers between RuO2 and graphene, via a controllable oxidation of graphene encapsulating Ru nanoparticles, are presented to efficiently enhance both the activity and stability of the acidic OER. Through precisely controlling the reaction interface, a much lower OER overpotential of only 227 mV at 10 mA cm-2 in acidic electrolyte, compared with that of 290 mV for commercial RuO2 , but a significantly higher durability than the commercial RuO2 , are achieved. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the interface Ru centers between the RuO2 and the graphene can break the classic scaling relationships between the free energies of HOO* and HO* to reduce the limiting potential, rendering an enhancement in the intrinsic OER activity and the resistance to over-oxidation and corrosion for RuO2 .

Urbanized delta areas worldwide share a growing tendency of exposure to water stress induced by the effects of climate change and anthropogenic factors, threatening the operation of infrastructure systems and future urban development. The important synergistic impacts coexisting with freshwater scarcity are increasing urbanization rates, subsiding soils, saltwater intrusion in aquifers and rivers, coastal erosion, and increased flooding. Innovative design strategies and concepts for the integration of decentralized rainwater management measures can contribute to the integrated and climate resilient planning of urban spaces that are threatened by climate change scenarios that worsen the security of urban infrastructures and the future availability of fresh water. Decentralized rainwater management, including retention, storage, and reuse strategies that are integrated into spatial planning and urban design, can reduce flood risks while simultaneously enhancing freshwater availability. This paper discusses a paradigm shift in urban water management, from centralized to decentralized management (that is, from threats to opportunities), using the example of two case studies. Concepts and strategies for building climate resilient cities, which address flood control, the protection of freshwater resources, and the harmonization of a natural and more sustainable water balance, are presented for Almere (Rhine Schelde Delta, The Netherlands) and Hsingchu (Dotzpu Delta, Taiwan).