Numerous studies on blended learning suggested that students embraced this learning approach and yet there are not much comparative studies on the merits of online versus face-to-face activities. Online discussion, online debate and face-to-face debates between two classes of undergraduate student teachers were conducted. The author was interested to examine if the blended approach with another...

This study investigated the effectiveness of explicit pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of requests by college-level English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Taiwan. The goal was to determine first whether the use of explicit pragmatic instruction had a positive effect on EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. Second, the relative effectiveness of presenting pragmatics through two deli...

The objective of this study was to establish the reliability and sensitivity of both postal and interviewer-administrated versions of the Rivermead Extended Activities of Daily Living (READL) index, which assesses six domestic activities and six community activities. Sixty patients with stable neurological impairment were recruited. In one group (n = 40), every patient was assessed face-to-face...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to examine whether formal and informal social activities are associated with a lower risk of depression. Besides, we investigated which type of social activities may protect against late-life depression by gender using data from a population-based study of older Korean adults. METHODS Data for analysis were drawn from the 2010 Korean Longitudinal Study of ...

As intelligent environments become more focused on supporting human activity, we see a growing need for the computer to ascertain users’ location and activity, be it for face detection, gesture recognition, or even simple tracking. To support such applications, a robust tracking algorithm is required. A camera tracking algorithm for a pan and tilt camera is proposed, that is robust to moderatel...

Automatic face detection in images is a very popular application that makes good use of image processing techniques (and also some pattern classification methods) and it is useful for many real-life imaging automations such as face identification for biometric authentication, surveillance of human activity, image retrieval and image classification. In color images, face detection may have an ad...

This work reports on a study on the effectiveness of the usage of Internet based facilities in 4 graduate and undergraduate classes in software engineering. In the framework of this study it appears that the electronic communication media in engineering classes is effective if used as a complement to the traditional “face-to-face” communication, rather then as a substitute to it. Decision makin...