Due to the significance of beliefs in giving direction to the activities of educators, the present study examined the beliefs of 12 Iranian pre-service teachers about democratic education. Overall, the findings of focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews pointed to a technicist and often an apolitical view of teaching held by most of the participants. While these findings can be ex...

Mixed methods evaluation of Schools Intergenerational Dementia Project Teresa Atkinson & Jennifer Bray The Association for Dementia Studies, University of Worcester

This paper describes MyInfo, a novel interface for a personal news demonstrator that processes and combines content from TV and the web. We detail our design process from concept generation to focus group exploration to final design. Our design focuses on three issues: (i) ease-of-use, (ii) video summarization, and (iii) news personalization. With a single button press on the remote control, us...

In this exploratory focus group study, we investigate which possible characteristics could be considered when selecting exercises for learners and how humans adapt exercise selection to learner personality and performance, so that an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) can tailor exercise difficulty to these characteristics. In six focus groups, we had discussed which characteristics of the learn...

Abstract This study focused upon the effects of implementing the concept-map learning method among math educators. It is believed that this method is effective in assisting teachers during lesson content and activity design and reflection of teaching practice. This research found that the concept-map learning method was effective in different experience levels of teachers range from master-leve...

This research investigated gender differences in the characteristics IS managers perceive to be unique to the IS profession. An interpretivist perspective, qualitative data collection (i.e., focus group interviews) and the revealed causal mapping data analysis method were used to evoke and represent mental models (i.e., cognitive structures) of men and women in the IS field regarding the unique...

This paper reports on a methodological experiment, which was carried out in two large collaborative research projects targeted at innovative products. Video material was produced in order to visualize the project vision and solution ideas, and this video material was used in focus group discussions. The paper describes the process, the experiences gained and gives a number of hints which may be...

The issue of recruiting a diverse population to the library profession has been a concern for many years. The library literature is replete with articles and reports documenting this issue. Task forces, committees, and focus groups have been formed to discuss this situation and provide recommendations. The bottom line still remains the same. Comparatively little progress has occurred regarding ...

As a part of BC Hydro’s Advanced Metering Initiative (AMI), a time of use rate pilot project involving some 2,000 residential customers was implemented for winter 2006/07 and winter 2007/08. Customers participating in the project had an advanced meter installed at their house, and they also received information on how they could save energy during the peak period and shift load from the peak pe...

The study is an R&D research comprised of two phases study, the first phase aimed to investigate the problems of teaching educational computing courses and the second phase utilized the results of the study in the first phase to design and develop an effective instruction for Computer in Education course. In the first phase, questionnaire, interview, and focus group were used as tools to invest...