مطالب

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many countries all over the world. Most universities and institutions throughout the world offer online instruction to avoid disruptions in education during this global pandemic. This qualitative study investigated Iranian EFL university lecturers’ perspectives toward online instruction during the Coronavirus pandemic. Based on a researcher-developed protocol, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 university lecturers from Karaj and Science and Research Branches of Islamic Azad University, in Karaj and Tehran, Iran, whose teaching experiences ranged from 7 to 27 years, to identify their perspectives toward online instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak. The interviews drew upon emergent methodology to categorize the interviewees’ value-laden comments into four major attitudinal themes, namely,change in pedagogy with four subthemes of online teaching software, synchronous versus asynchronous teaching, benefits of online instruction, and university lecturers’ challenges regarding online instruction; supporting students with two subthemes of establishing rapport and positive relationship with students and student engagement; ethics in online instruction with a subtheme of assessment in an online environment; and the future of online instruction with two subthemes of university lecturers’ suggestions or recommendations regarding online instructionand changes in learning approaches after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrated that Iranian EFL university lecturers require professional training on the latest technology updates for online instruction. Further, the adequacy of technological infrastructure and free internet access could facilitate online instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak. Thus, universities and educational organizations are expected to promote the infrastructure and provide a variety of internet access alternatives.  

Given the importance of assessment in language education, this study was aimed at investigating the effects of interventionist and interactionist Dynamic Assessment (DA) on Iranian EFL learners’ perfectionism, willingness to communicate (WTC) and foreign language anxiety (FLA). The participants of the study were 166 pre-intermediate female and male learners at two public schools and one private language institute in Karaj. The participants were divided into three experimental groups and were given three separate questionnaires to measure their perfectionism, WTC, and FLA before the treatment sessions. During 14 sessions, groups A and B received instruction using interactionist DA and interventionist DA, respectively. Group C was instructed conventionally as the control group. At the end of the treatment sessions, they were given the same three questionnaires as the post test. The collected data were analysed using one-way ANCOVA. The results showed no significant differences among the two approaches of dynamic assessment and the control group in terms of their effect on learners’ perfectionism and willingness to communicate. Although there was no significant difference between the interventionist and interactionist models of DA, they were both significantly more effective than the control group on learners’ FLA. The findings suggested that dynamic assessment could reduce learners’ anxiety in language learning and lead to an effective teaching and learning process. These findings can have implications for teachers, students, and material developers.

Today city residents are experiencing a new way of life which is unprecedented ever since the urbanization concept appearance. The continuous demand to build and maintain the real city space with all the well-known problems, alongside the simultaneous management of urgency and the presence of a developing virtual parallel world, has baffled the city's management sys tems and city's residents. One of the proposed solutions is employing a machine approach to solve these related issues. The general purpose of this research is to provide a comprehensive definition of the concept of urban technology synthesis in the area of physical space as an urbanism machine. This inves tigation is a comparative s tudy to allocate and provide a particular paradigm for the introduction of augmented reality ins tances utilizing matter and information combination via technology in urban spaces. After the semantic framework formulation of the mentioned concept, recognition of tools ins tances in the context of nowadays cities have been considered. In the process of this research, the phenomenon of augmented reality has been retrieved, with its definitions and capabilities as tools for the realization of technological synthesis in the context of current cities. Another result of this research is the introduction of some advantages in applying augmented reality in cities.

Teaching and learning languages via the Internet is becoming increasingly common all over the world and therefore, the experts growingly debate around the positive or negative effects of online education. The present study aimed to critically investigate into science and technology lessons of the VOA English Learning Website in a two-year interval, which claims to teach new words and phrases through the authentic VOA world news. Applying van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square Model of CDA, the researchers attempted to critically analyze the representation of the key term the United States within the collected VOA news story transcripts in order to observe whether the Website was trying to manipulate the learners’ minds through in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. The findings revealed that the VOA online lessons promoted certain American political, economic, cultural, social, and ideological values through particular discursive structures that tend to describe in-group members in a positive or at least neutral manner. Thus, as McPhail’s (2006) Electronic Colonialism Theory assumes such free online lessons on the VOA Website, which is a core country multimedia giant, struggle to convert and capture the attitudes, desires, beliefs, faiths, lifestyles, and consumer behavior of the other countries. Therefore, it is highly recommended that English teachers and learners try to inspect the content, reflect on the purposes, and evaluate the merits of similar online authentic materials before and while applying them to facilitate the language learning process.

This s tudy examined national culture dimensions that cons titute barriers to the implementation of sus tainable cons truction practices among cons truction professionals in Nigeria. It deployed S tatis tical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software to analyze data collected through a ques tionnaire survey. Mean Score Index (MSI) result revealed 47 national culture variables that have great potential for causing barriers to implementation of sus tainable cons truction practices in Nigeria with the MSI range of 3.30 - 4.72. The variables were grouped into six of Hofs tede’s national culture dimensions (large Power Dis tance, Individualism, Masculinity, s trong Uncertainty Avoidance, Short-Term Orientation, and Res traint) with an average MSI range of 3.84 - 4.22. The Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tes ts indicated that irrespective of organizational and individual characteris tics, there was no significant difference in the national culture of cons truction professionals hindering the implementation of sus tainable cons truction practices in Nigeria (p>0.05); but for Individualism (IDV) and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) dimensions which indicated significant differences (p <0.05) due to personal attributes, disposition, and exposure. The study established that the differences have only a small effect (r = 0.171 and 0.156 respectively), signifying that the observed differences in IDV and UAI culture dimensions based on years of experience, were not a result of differences in the sizes of the groups. They then study raised concern for a new way of thinking towards overcoming barriers to implementing sustainable construction practices in Nigeria and suggested for optimization and operationalization of national culture dimensions that support the implementation of sustainable construction practices and eschewing those that cause barriers.

Inves tigating the effectiveness and relationship between environmental factors and the quality of the educational environment in the s tudents’ mental health is the main S tatement of the problem in current research. Intending to recognize environmental quality components and their role in predicting the s tudents’ mental health in the educational environments, the present s tudy has proposed the following hypotheses: There seems to be a direct and significant relationship between the environmental quality and the s tudents’ mental health. and It seems that the functional component of the environmental quality has the greates t influence on mental health prediction. The research method is descriptive of correlation type using s tructural equation model. The s tatis tical population of the s tudy was selected from the coeducational Highschool s tudents of Sama schools related to the Islamic Azad University of Arak, and 270 individuals were selected using the convenience sampling technique. To collect the data, texts, and documents, as well as two ques tionnaires of Goldberg’s mental health and environmental quality, were used. Also, for the data analysis, factor analysis, and SPSS software were employed along with descriptive (mean and s tandard deviation) and inferential (Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple regression) s tatis tical methods. The results indicate that there is a significant relationship between environmental quality and the s tudents’ mental health. It was also found that 51% of mental health changes are predictable based on the mental health in the educational environment. Moreover, it was concluded that the functional component of environmental quality has the greates t impact on predicting the s tudents’ mental health.