No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led universities to transform the traditional teaching methodologies into distance education. Therefore, social media has become progressively prominent as teaching and learning resources in universities. Several studies have been conducted for the development of social media as a learning tool. However, there is limited empirical evidence supporting this claim. The present study bridges the gap in the literature concerning the value of the use of social media in higher education. This research seeks to examine the impact of the use of social media in (a) enhancing teaching and learning in universities, (b) motivating and supporting students and (c) developing community connection. A qualitative methodology was adopted. Specifically, in-depth interviews were conducted to assess the effectiveness of social media on students learning in higher education. The results showed that the use of social media by higher educational institutions positively impacts the educational process by (a) promoting teaching and learning, (b) motivating students to be active participants, and (c) establishing connections in the university community. Some obstacles in the teaching and learning process were also identified. Future areas of research are proposed.

We are currently living in the big data era, in which it has become more necessary than ever to develop “smart” schedulers. It is common knowledge that the default Storm scheduler, as well as a large number of static schemes, has presented certain deficiencies. One of the most important of these deficiencies is the weakness in handling cases in which system changes occur. In such a scenario, some type of re-scheduling is necessary to keep the system working in the most efficient way. In this paper, we present a pipeline-based dynamic modular arithmetic-based scheduler (PMOD scheduler), which can be used to re-schedule the streams distributed among a set of nodes and their tasks, when the system parameters (number of tasks, executors or nodes) change. The PMOD scheduler organizes all the required operations in a pipeline scheme, thus reducing the overall processing time.

The Lisbon European Summit in 2000 has been a milestone in reframing education policies to foster a 'knowledge economy', whilst amid the challenges of the new decennium Lifelong Learning (LLL) has been propounded as a powerful lever for attaining 'sustainable growth'. The present article aims to elucidate the development of an integrated European Union (EU) policy framework for LLL in light of the 'Lisbon' and 'Europe 2020' Strategies. Through a bilevel analysis of policy texts with high political significance representing a point of reference for a given discourse, it seeks to explore trends and identify interrelations between EU LLL policy and emerging challenges within the Union, as well as global socioeconomic mandates that inform contemporary education policy. On the first level, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed, categorizing the data in five main discourse strands. On the second, the data underwent Implicative Statistical Analysis. The results have indicated a substantial shift in the relationship between education and politics, with education assigned a monolithic role in providing for a flexible 'up-to-date' workforce, so as to enable the EU to remain a strong global actor.

The study indicates that the overall results of speech-language impairments in children via the adapted in-Nepalese criterion-referenced instrument are supported by international studies. In addition, justifiable reliability and validity was obtained. Therefore, based on these overall evidence, this instrument can be useful for the screening of speech-language impairments in primary school children in Nepal.