Motivation and Retention of Adult Online Sophomore Students Research Proposal - 1

Motivation and Retention of Adult Online Sophomore Students - Research Proposal Example The purpose of the study is to find out â€Å"Why the level of adult online dropout is increasing and how to motivate and retain the adult online sophomore students?† Various issues that may lead to an online dropout may vary from issue of isolation, disconnectedness to technological problems. According to an online survey conducted to understand the various reasons of online dropouts of sophomore students, reasons are varied and unique to each individual dropout. Although there are very less literature work as well as national statistics on online adult sophomore dropouts, a recent report published in â€Å"Chronicle of Higher Education† indicates that â€Å"Institutions report dropout rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent for online learners and administrators of online courses agree that dropout rates are often 10 to 20 percentage points higher in online offerings than in their face-to-face counterparts† (Frankola, n.d.). The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), in a research report conducted in the 1999, on the effectiveness of online learning, found that there are higher rate of sophomore dropouts in online learning than the traditional institutions. There are two theories which may provide an outline on dropout of online adult sophomore students. Tinto’s Student Integration Model and Bean’s Model of Student Departure are the two theories. The â€Å"Tinto’s Student Integration Model theory theorizes how well the individual’s motivation and academic ability match the institution’s academic and social characteristics. This match shapes a person’s commitment to completing college and commitment to the institution. The second theory, Bean’s Model of Student Departure, predicts persistence based on behavioral intention† (Willging & Johnson, 2004, p. 104). According to the US Census Bureau (2000), â€Å"one in every three Americans is a sophomore dropout†. It is becoming a

Network Rail a not for profit company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Network Rail a not for profit company - Essay Example The privatization of British Network Rail was the outcome of the â€Å"Railways Act 1993† legislated in the governing session of â€Å"John Majors† conservative regime. In the year 1991, the European Union formulated â€Å"EU Directive 91/440† in array to facilitate the admittanceThis act directed all EU affiliate states to split â€Å"the administration of railway maneuver and network from the stipulation of railway carrying services, partition of accounts being obligatory and managerial division being discretionary.†The main motive was that the â€Å"track operator† could charge the train operator irrespective of public or privatized with a translucent and reasonable fee against utilization of its network. The â€Å"Directive 91/440† was primarily only an accounting way of assuring an echelon playing-field for serving rail operators and novel businesses inflowing the market of rail transportation. (Green, 1997) Though, â€Å"Directive 91/4 40† presented the British regime with an explanation for hauling away a faraway added theatrical restructuring of the railway business whereas at the same occasion being capable to offer on a number of â€Å"opprobrium† to other European states. As per the amendment of the Railways Act 1993, it was anticipated that the introduction of private players. Some of the anticipations from the privatization are: (Transport, Railway Reform: Regulation of Freight Transport Markets, 2001)Superior Consumer Service Quality: Rail privatization was intended to develop patron service.

Understanding Economic Policy Reform Essay Example for Free

Understanding Economic Policy Reform Essay What is the point of loudly proclaiming reforms if these are not aimed at improving the well-being of a large majority of the population? And if that is their goal, why should reforms be unpopular? In many areas of policy, there may ex1 Quoted by Jose Maria Maravall in Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira, Maravall, and Adam Przeworski (1993). â€Å" T ist â€Å"technical† uncertainty as to what the appropriate solution is to the problems at hand. Think of President Clinton’s health care plan, for example, or of global warming. Consequently, reforms will arouse opposition if they are viewed as applying the wrong fix or if they are perceived as being primarily redistributive (that is, zero-sum). What is remarkable about current fashions in economic development policy (as applied to both developing and transitional economies), however, is the extent of convergence that has developed on the broad outlines of what constitutes an appropriate economic strategy. This strategy emphasizes fiscal rectitude, competitive exchange rates, free trade, privatization, undistorted market prices, and limited intervention (save for encouraging exports, education, and infrastructure). Faith in the desirability and efficacy of these policies unites the vast majority of professional economists in the developed world who are concerned with issues of development. 2 2 The convergence is not complete of course. But compared to two decades ago, the various sides have moved substantially closer to each other. One indicator of this is the recent book by Bresser Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski (1993), which advocates a â€Å"social democratic† approach. The views expressed in this book concede an inor- 9 10 Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXIV (March 1996) we observe such instances of collective irrationality. The events of the last decade have underscored the need to understand the political-economy of policy making. One of the eventual consequences of the global debt crisis that erupted in 1982 was a wave of market-oriented economic reforms, the likes of which have never been seen. The reforms were strongest and most sustained in Latin America, where countries like Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil joined Chile in orthodoxy. But this was very much a global phenomenon. â€Å"Stabilization† and â€Å"structural adjustment† became the primary preoccupation of government leaders in Asia and Africa as well, even though the commitment to economic orthodoxy varied across countries and over time. These countries were in turn soon joined by the previously socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Economists who had cut their teeth in Latin America’s economic quagmires became the advisors and analysts of these transitional economies. Even India, the giant archetype of a closed, import-substituting economy among developing countries, embarked on a process of economic liberalization in 1991 (see Jagdish Bhagwati 1993 and Arvind Panagariya 1994). These reforms were encouraging to economists and a vindication of sorts to those among them who had long advocated market-oriented reforms. But they in turn raise their own puzzles. Most fundamental of all, why are so many governments reforming now, after decades of adherence to policies of an opposite kind? This question poses a particularly important challenge to political economists: an understanding of these countries’ experiences now requires a theory that explains not only why seemingly dysfunctional policies had been initially un- Hence economists are often torn between two conflicting perspectives: on the one hand, good economic policy should produce favorable outcomes and therefore should prove also to be good politics; on the other hand, the implementation of good economic policy is often viewed as requiring â€Å"strong† and â€Å"autonomous† (not to say authoritarian) leadership. The experience of Chile, a country which has perhaps gone further than any other in implementing liberal economic policies, provides a good example. An essay on Chile’s reform strategy by Jose Pinera (1994), an economist and minister of labor and social security under General Pinochet, concludes: â€Å"[i]n the end, good policy is good politics† (p. 231). The irony is that most of the reforms the author glowingly discusses in the preceding pages required the suspension of normal politics and as heavy a dose of authoritarianism as seen anywhere. Good economics does often turn out to be good politics, but only eventually. Policies that work do become popular, but the time lag can be long enough for the relationship not to be exploitable by would-be reformers. In Chile’s case, free market policies (implemented after 1973) were eventually resoundingly endorsed in the presidential elections of 1989 and have become the envy of Latin America. 3 Conversely, bad economics can be popular, if only temporarily. President Alan Garcia’s popularity soared in Peru during his first two years in office (1985–86), thanks to expansionary fiscal policies whose medium-term unsustainability should have been obvious to anyone with common sense (see Ricardo Lago 1991). The puzzle is why dinate amount to the consensus view, and depart from it in remarkably few details. I will discuss this book in Section IV. 3 For a recent evaluation, see Barry Bosworth, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Ral Labn (1994). Rodrik: Understanding Economic Policy Reform dertaken and then maintained for so long, but also why these policies were suddenly abandoned en masse during the 1980s, often by the same politicians who had been among their most ardent supporters. Second, while the reforms were inspired at least in part by the East Asian experience, they took place much more quickly and, in many areas, are going considerably beyond those undertaken in East Asia. This raises the question of whether the new wave of reformers have internalized the correct lessons from the East Asian experience. Finally, are there any helpful rules for reformers to follow in guiding their policies through complicated political terrain? Can one hope to develop a â€Å"how-to† manual for the reformist politician? Puzzlement over such questions has led to a large and growing literature. A very short bibliography would include books by Merilee Grindle and John Thomas (1991), Robert Bates and Krueger (1993), Krueger (1993), Przeworski (1991), Ranis and Syed Mahmood (1992), Bresser Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski (1993), Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman (1992), Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards (1993), Haggard and Steven Webb (1994), Lance Taylor (1994), Williamson (1994), and Ian Little et al. (1993), not to mention countless papers. As this partial list indicates, both economists and political scientists have devoted their attention to these issues, often together in coauthored or coedited works. Indeed, no other area of economics or political science that I can think of has spawned so much interdisciplinary work. 5 In this essay, I will provide an econo4 One recent survey—Mariano Tommasi and Andres Velasco 1995—which overlaps with this one deserves special mention. 5 The litera ture on the economics of policy reform is of course even larger. For recent surveys, see Vittorio Corbo and Stanley Fischer (1995) and Rodrik (1995b). 1 mist’s perspective on the political economy of policy reform. I begin by examining the origins and analytical content of the new orthodoxy in development policy (Section II). I will focus here on two issues in particular which I feel remain in need of clarification. One of these concerns the distinction between (a) macroeconomic policies aimed at economic stability, such as fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies, and (b) liberalization policies aimed at structural reform and growth, such as the removal of relative-price distortions and the reduction of state intervention. It has become commonplace to conflate these two groups of policies, but for analytical purposes they are best kept apart. As we shall see, they also have different political-economy underpinnings. Moreover, maintaining the distinction reminds us that the consensus on what constitutes appropriate structural reform is based on much shakier theoretical and empirical grounds than is the consensus on the need for macroeconomic stability. The second issue concerns the appropriate lessons to be drawn from the experience of East Asian success stories. The new orthodoxy has tended to draw a somewhat biased picture that needs correction. Next, I will turn to the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. This experience has opened an important window on the motivations of politicians, as well as on the nature of interactions between the economy and the polity. As indicated above, an important question is why so many countries have suddenly caught the reform bug. The confluence of economic crisis with reform has led to the natural supposition that crisis is the instigator of reform, a hypothesis that keeps reappearing in the literature and yet is inadequately analyzed.

The Effect of Colours: Emotion and Symbolism of Colour

The Effect of Colours: Emotion and Symbolism of Colour Colour theory has been dated back to the 15th Century with the writings of Leone Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci. From these early beginnings, colour theory has developed to cover painting, optics, psychology and many other disciplines, including film making. Colour and Emotion There has been research into colour, emotion and how they interlock for at least the last 50 years. A lot of this research comes under psychology. This is still useful to many other disciplines including film makers so they can try to control the emotion of the viewer using colour. T the work of Lois B. Wexner (1954) explores how mood-tone and colours are associated with each other. Her research shows that certain colours do have strong associations with mood-tones, such as red with excitement, blue with tender-soothing and yellow with cheerful-jovial-joyful among others. The American psychologist Frank H. Mahnke (1996) has also conducted experiments into colour and emotion associations, in his findings he found some very strong associations, especially with red/love, black/hate, blue/peace blue-violet/noble. In Table 1 tabulated from his experiments, it shows the range of colours chosen by participants with the term and the percentage match they gave. Mankhe also grouped certain colours together where there was strong overlap , for example, blue, blue-green, green with the term peace/tranquillity. Term Colours Chosen Percentage Love Red, Red-Violet 81% Hatred Black, Red 89.6% Peace/Tranquillity Blue, Blue-Green, Green 93.6% Mourning/Sorrow Black,Grey 86% Happy Yellow, Orange 63% Jovial Orange, Yellow 50% Life Green 73% Luminous Yellow 65% Noble Blue, Blue-Violet, Violet 81% Table Colour Emotion Associations (Mahnke 1996) Wei, Dimitrova Chang (2004) established their association of corresponding colours to mood-tones (emotions), which is summarized in table 2. Colours Associated Mood Tones (Emotion Terms) Black Hatred, Mourning, Sorrow, Indefinite White Mourning, Grief, Depression Red Love, Hatred, Life, Noble Orange Jovial, Happy Green Tranquillity, Peace, Life Blue Peace, Tranquillity, Noble Purple Love, Noble, Authoritative Table Wei, Dimitrova Chang (2004) Use of Colours in Film The use of colour by film makers is deliberate and planned (Bellantoni 2005). To ensure that a film will have the colour which will bring a response from the audience they can either do test screenings, such as what cinematographer Rodger Deakins does in Shawshank Redemption. He tested different colours and paints to find the look required for each scene. While the use of colour can be analysed as it can have a strong affect on mood and emotions many times cinematographers will work by instinct and what it just looks right (Bellantoni 2005). It is possible to distil each film into its own colour palette. Artist Alan Woo shows quite distinctly how a film can have a distinctive colour palette. In his project Pie (Woo 2008) he processed each frame of a film into a colour and produced a pie chart for that film. Film makers have used colours nearly the whole spectrum of colours to their advantage in storytelling. Red Red is associated with danger, risk taking, action, love, hate. Director Alfred Hitchcock used these associated in the film Marnie, where he added red frames to attempt to excite the audience (Hullfish Fowler 2003). Director Sergei Eisenstien use of selective red in The Battleship Potemkin where a hand painted Soviet flag is hoisted up the ships mast. As well as the glorifying the Communist regime, according to Misek (2019) the redness overwhelms its intended meaning, the viewer notices the colour red and its power over the Soviet connotations. Reds can also convey action. In the film Run Lola Run, director Franka Potente uses the central characters red hair, a red ambulance, red bag (Martell 2002) and saturated red light to keep the audience in a high octane state (Bellantoni 2005). Orange According to Bellantoni (2005), oranges on the other hand do not give a strong emotional response to the audience, they are often provoke a warm, romantic, welcoming and also a sense of nostalgia. This is strongly convey in the Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? where the whole film was digitally coloured in a orange/brown sepia to give the viewer a sense of the Mississippi during the Great Depression, a look of faded postcards (Fisher 2000). One place where orange does give the audience an unsettling appearance is when its in the air. For example, the orange sky in Blade Runner shows the polluted atmosphere. Production Designer Larry Pauli mentions to Bellantoni (2005 p.142), that the orange sky is acid but conversely softer and romantic depending on the outside or inside of the shot. Green The colour green can have two contrasting emotive responses in the viewer, depending on how it is used. Green is the colour of nature, health and vitality but also the colour of poison, illness and evil. Bellantoni (2005) writes that green is used by cinematographer John Seale creation of the lush vista in Witness. The green wheat fields where the Amish work. They connect the rural Amish to the agricultural work they live to do. These scenes are also where the protagonist is healing and in a stage of renewal, which the greens convey to the viewer. The colour green is used in The Matrix to show the virtual reality that central character Neo is trapped in. Directors the Wachokwski brothers took this green from was a whole motif inspired by the phosphorous green of old PCs (Davies n.d.). The use of the green in the simulated world contrasts with the harsher blue-white palette of reality, despite being a film all about the digital these greens were achieved optically through use of green lighting mise-en-scà ¨ne (Misek 2010). Blue Blue has strong associations with peace and tranquility. However in film it is more used to show coolness, detachment and passiveness. Dorothys dress in the Wizard of Oz is blue and white gingham showing her powerlessness in the film. It is not until she gains the bright red ruby slippers doe she gain any power (Bellantoni 2005). Bellantoni (2005) writes that blue is used to show the detachment and coldness of the prison in Shawshank Redemption. The prison uniforms and walls are all bathed in a soft blue/grey light which also highlight the passiveness of the inmates. However, blue also represents hope and freedom, Ellis Boyd Red Redding (Morgan Freeman) says I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams talking about his dreams of freedom and when the audience does get to see the ocean it is a much richer blue than the pale washed out version in the prison. Purple Purple has a long history of being a regal colour. This can be seen in Gladiator, where character Marcus Aurelius wears a purple hood, symbolising his regal power. Purple can also represent death or change. In Chicago, the strong use of purple light alludes to the death and delusion, bringing a seriousness to the musical song and dance (Bellantoni 2005). The dark purples are also heavy, representing the closeness of the criminal underworld. Death is also represented by purple in the film Apocalypse Now where a bright purple smoke flare is released and men start to die. Gaspar Noà ©s Enter The Void, a film about death, the afterlife and crime uses strong use of neon-purple contrasting with the dark Tokyo night where the film is set. Yellow Yellow can represent happiness, jovialness, wealth and warning. The use of yellow of Johns car as well as the yellow-neon lights in American Graffiti shows his youth and playfulness. Gold, a shade of yellow is closely associated with wealth. Koszarski (1999) writes that in Erich von Stroheim silent film Greed, Von Strohiem used Handschiegl colour on certain film prints to colour yellow all the gold items in an otherwise black and white film. This gave it a recurrent symbolism of the main characters greed. Greyscale Even with the advent of colour film, many film makers still choose to use the absence of colour in their works. The first film to go through the digital intermediate process of colour grading was Pleasantville, a film which uses the absence and presence of colour in its story. As the film progresses from the black and white beginning, the introduction of selective colourisation is used as a disruptive force on the traditional suburban black and white town. While other films have used the contrast of full colour and black and white scenes they are usually separate, giving the viewer an understanding of the differences between two places. For example the Wizard of Oz has a black and white Kansas, while the land of Oz is a glorious colour. Schindlers List is another example of selective colour used, in an otherwise black and white film a red coat of a young girl is used to individualise the cold, mechanical horrors of the holocaust. Greyscale can give a sense of seriousness and realism. Masik (2010) writes that Spike Lees Shes Gotta Have It was made in black-and-white for aesthetic and budget reasons and also because the Director of Photography liked the film black and white film Raging Bull which he interpreted as summoning the photojournalism s in 1950s Life magazine. Use of colour however is not always to the audiences and critics taste. Filmmaker Todd Miro (2010) blogs about the Color Grading Virus that is Teal Orange He cites Hollywood productions of Transformers 2 and Iron Man 2 where the colour grading has been overdone to attempt to bring attention to the skin tones(usually orange range of colours) of the actors away from the background. Journalist Phil Hoad (2010) spoke to Hollywood colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld, who says Traditional vs. Digital Colour grading has a long history. From the early days of hand painting individual frames to the photochemical processes still used by modern filmmakers. The bleach-bypass method was introduced by Technicolor (Shaw 2010). Shaw (2010) explains that this is when film is processed in lab to alter the colour balance. This process is also expensive and not reversible. This process has been used in many films, such as Dick Tracey, Saving Private Ryan (American Society of Cinematographers, 1998). Director Steven Spielberg and Director of Photography Janusz Kaminiski also used this technique in Munich. Kaminski mentions to Goldman (2005 p.14) a sense of tenseness, a sense of rawness. Kamainiski works with traditional laboratory methods as that is what he has done in the past and feels that the use of digital technology allows the colourist to constantly change their grading and get lost as they have no standard. Process used by Digital Colourists Primary Colour Grading When grading video, the first task is to set up the overall image. Tasks included including fixing white balance, removing colour casts, matching tones between shots and contrast levels. The first task many colourists will tackle first is setting the black level of the image.

archimedes :: essays research papers

Archimedes Archimedes lived during 287? - 212 B.C. The nationality of Archimedes is Greek in which he was born in Syracuse, Sicily. (World 605). Archimedes attended a school in Alexandria, Egypt. He was trained by such greats as Conon and Eratosthenes. (Math 22) The area of work that Archimedes was knows for is his work in Geometry and astronomy because his father was an astronomer. Archimedes is also known for Hydrostatics, static mechanics, pycnometry and he is called the â€Å"father of integral calculus.† (MCS 1). His mathematical contributions are endless and are still used to this day. First there is his method of finding Pi, the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle. This was greatly needed in his times for builders dealing with large works of art. He also computed the area of a segment of a parabola. By using triangles he found them to be the pieces of Geometry. There is the Archimedean spiral that is still used in Egypt to drain and fill farmland with water. It is a tube with a spiral screw that is turned and then the water enter the chambers and comes out the other side. Other remarkable works are the Sandreckoner that is where he starts a number system capable of expressing numbers up to 8x1016. He says this method can be used to count all the grains of sand in the world. He was also known for his invention of the catapult, which helped the Greeks with there Roman problems. (Math 24). Thing that helped and hindered Archimedes in mathematical greatness are concededly dealt with wars. Such as the Rome and Carthage war when the Romans decide to invade Syracuse. Archimedes used his math knowledge to come up with catapults and a large grappling hooks, that where hooked to a lever that in turn lifted the ships out of the water and dropped them. One of the most different things that he did that dealt with the war was when they attack, Archimedes had the Greek men hold up special shaped shields that were focused on the ships and when the sun hit the shields the ships went up in flames this is also a myth that no one knows the truth to. This in turn helped and hinder him it made him come up with new ideas but he had no time to deal with other thing of non-war activities (Gap 7)

Book Report On the Lost World :: essays research papers

Book Report on "The Lost World" Characters: The main character in the book is Ian Malcolm, a middle aged mathematician and a little bit of an explorer. The man who set up the exploration, Richard Levine, is a rich and reckless yet well known adventurer who spends a lot of his time and money exploring different places around the world and helps at a middle school to give students of ideas of careers in science. Sarah Harding is a zoologist who was hired to possibly deal with some of the animals. Jack Thorne is the man who made all of the special equipment the group is taking with them and he went along to help and show everyone how to and operate most of the vehicles. Synopsis: My book is about how Richard Levine tries to and does find the InGen corporation's second dinosaur island which he had been searching for and trying to locate for years. The second island is only a few hundred miles away from the original , and they both were abandoned when a freak and tragic incident left nearly everyone on both islands dead. Not many people who knew about the second island survived so it took him a long time to find one of the old employees of InGen and get him to tell him about and the location of the island. With his information Levine made a team of five people to take to the island himself, Ian Malcolm Sarah Harding, Jack Thorne, and Eddie Carr, the top employee of Thorne. They were going to leave in two weeks when Thorne finds out that Levine has left for the island early wanting to be the first one to â€Å" officially† find it. He and the small crew of people he took with him were attacked and all but Levine were killed. He would be found later. The team left for the island soon after to try and find him. Unknown to anyone, two of Levine's students at the middle school where he helps, sneaked into the cargo of the plane and went to the island with them. His two star pupils, Kelly and Arby really wanted to go when he told them that he was going on an exploration in the Caribbean to an unknown island. Almost as soon as they got to the island Kelly and Arby were found and everyone realized that they shouldn't but were going to have to stay the whole expedition. At the time they didn't mind. They later set up base and took the Explorer they brought to look around.

Baby Boom as a defining moment in Canadian History

The Baby Boom was a massive increase of Canada's population from 1946 to 1965. The Baby Boom was considered a defining moment in Canadian history for economical, educational, and environmental factors. Economically speaking, Canada had an Increase In employment and the economy started to improve financially. Jobs were set up, and new projects were financed. (Pain, peg. 217). Consumer demand also rose, as lots of new people were born. In search for a better quality of life, many Canadians would demand massive, stylish engages to cult the large kitchens of suburban bungalows.High performance, and ease In use and cleaning were other popular attributes, and all these factors led manufacturers to offer a variety of models that would be purchased by consumers to enhance both lifestyle and social status. (The Collection, 2014). Canada Improved economically due to the baby boom since consumerism exploded. Demands of services and products rose massively. Educationally Speaking, children had b etter opportunities with school since the overspent funded in creating more schools due to high demand.There became a high demand for schools, first starting with elementary, and as the children aged high schools and universities were built up. (Elena, 2008). An average student only spent six years attending school due to farming duties and only one in ten students graduated from High School. (Elena, 2008). Since the baby boom occurred, students had an opportunity to finish school up until their post secondary education. Environmentally speaking, families moved to suburbs to start fresh with a family. During the sass, 1. Million housing units were set up in suburbia. (Annie, ND). Highways were built for transportation and so it would be convenient for people to get to places. (Annie, ND). Environment was a factor during the Baby Boom, since it reflected the arbitration of suburbs in the sass. Common reasons why suburbs became quite popular include: a large variety of land, and to es cape crime. The Baby Boom affected Canada in a positive way as it was a defining moment In history for economical, educational, and environmental purposes.