Wednesday 27 July 2016

Effect of Validity and Reliability in Research.


The precision with which you measure things also has a major impact on sample size: the worse your measurements, the more subjects you need to lift the signal (the effect) out of the noise   (the errors in measurement). Precision is expressed as validity and reliability. Validity represents how  well a variable measures what it is supposed to. Validity is important in descriptive studies: if the validity of the main variables is poor; you may  need thousands rather than hundreds of subjects.

Reliability tells you how reproducible your measures are on a retest, so it impacts experimental studies. The more reliable a measure, the less subjects you need to see, a small change in the measure. For example, a controlled trial with 20 subjects in each group or a crossover with 10 subjects may be sufficient to characterize even a small effect, if the measure is highly reliable.

Tuesday 5 July 2016

Video conferencing Impact on education - UGC NET EXAM

Videoconferencing (VC) is the conduct of a videoconference (also known as a video conference or videoteleconference) by a set of telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to communicate by simultaneous two-way video and audio transmissions. It has also been called 'visual collaboration' and is a type of groupware.

Videoconferencing differs from videophone calls in that it's designed to serve a conference or multiple locations rather than individuals.It is an intermediate form of videotelephony, first used commercially in Germany during the late-1930s and later in the United States during the early 1970s as part of AT&T's development of Picturephone technology.

With the introduction of relatively low cost, high capacity broadband telecommunication services in the late 1990s, coupled with powerful computing processors and video compression techniques, videoconferencing has made significant inroads in business, education, medicine and media.

Videoconferencing provides students with the opportunity to learn by participating in two-way communication forums. Furthermore, teachers and lecturers worldwide can be brought to remote or otherwise isolated educational facilities. Students from diverse communities and backgrounds can come together to learn about one another, although language barriers will continue to persist. Such students are able to explore, communicate, analyze and share information and ideas with one another. Through videoconferencing, students can visit other parts of the world to speak with their peers, and visit museums and educational facilities. Such virtual field trips can provide enriched learning opportunities to students, especially those in geographically isolated locations, and to the economically disadvantaged. Small schools can use these technologies to pool resources and provide courses, such as in foreign languages, which could not otherwise be offered.

A few examples of benefits that videoconferencing can provide in campus environments include:

  1. faculty members keeping in touch with classes while attending conferences;
  2. guest lecturers brought in classes from other institutions;
  3. researchers collaborating with colleagues at other institutions on a regular basis without loss of time due to travel;
  4. schools with multiple campuses collaborating and sharing professors;
  5. schools from two separate nations engaging in cross-cultural exchanges;
  6. faculty members participating in thesis defenses at other institutions;
  7. administrators on tight schedules collaborating on budget preparation from different parts of campus;
  8. faculty committee auditioning scholarship candidates;
  9. researchers answering questions about grant proposals from agencies or review committees;
  10. student interviews with an employers in other cities, 
  11.  teleseminars.