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101 Ways to Market Your Language Program: A Practical Guide for Language Schools and Programs (1st ed.)
(2024-12-01) Eaton, Sarah Elaine
This is a re-release of the the original 2002 first edition of this book. The author and copyright holder has released this as an open access work under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
This book provides 101 ideas and strategies to empower overall marketing efforts: (1) "Put On Your Thinking Cap" (e.g., define the problem before marketing it, set reasonable goals, and create a niche); (2) "Secrets to Boost Your Marketing Power" (e.g., emphasize the benefits, check out the competition, and sell oneself in as many languages as possible); (3) "Marketing Materials: Tools and Tips to Do the Job Better" (e.g., make a brochure, get mentioned in other brochures, and make it easy to phone for information); (4) "Going Beyond the Basics to Increase Enrollment" (e.g, offer volume discounts and guarantees and give away tuition); (5) "Specialty Tips for Programs at Large Institutions" (e.g., make sure the Web site is easy to find, partner with other educational programs, and get the program mentioned in the calendar); (6) "The Power of People: A Human Touch to Increase Enrollment and Polish Your Image" (e.g., build loyalty with host families, establish win-win relationships, and follow exceptional service standards); (7) "Continue Marketing While Your Students are Enrolled" (e.g., meet students at the airport, partner with local businesses, and create happy memories); and (8) "How to Keep Marketing Once Your Program is Finished" (e.g., create an alumni network, review successes and failures, and plan ahead for next year).
Assessing for Integrity in the Age of AI
(2024-12-04) Eaton, Sarah Elaine
In this webinar, Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton, explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI in educational assessment. Although AI offers opportunities for efficiency and personalization, ethical considerations, including potential biases, privacy concerns and the risk of undermining academic integrity, need to be addressed.
AI can enhance assessment practices by automating grading and feedback, enabling frequent assessments and providing personalized learning paths. However, AI algorithms can perpetuate biases, struggle to evaluate nuanced responses and raise privacy concerns about student data. Maintaining academic integrity in a technology-driven classroom is crucial, particularly avoiding unreliable and potentially biased AI-text detection tools.
To ensure equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in AI-powered assessments, it is important to incorporate accessibility and inclusion features for students with disabilities and use diverse and representative training data to minimize bias. This approach aligns with the principles of fairness and equity in AI assessment highlighted in the abstract, promoting a more inclusive learning environment. Ensuring fair and equitable AI-powered assessments requires diverse training data, regular audits for bias and transparency in assessment criteria. Strategies for ethical AI implementation include clear communication with students, data privacy protection, human oversight and ongoing system improvement.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, GenAI, education, higher education, assessment, academic integrity, ethics, bias, equity, ed tech, disability, neurodiversity, inclusion, inclusive education
How to cite this work: Eaton, S. E. (2024, December 4). Assessing for Integrity in the Age of AI [Online]. DOCEO AI. Calgary, Canada.
Polynomial Maps of Polynomial Processes for Energy Markets
(2024-12-05) Sun, Zuming; Ware, Antony; Ware, Antony; Aïd, René; Shaffer, Blake; Swishchuk, Anatoliy; Qiu, Jinniao
The empirical evidence reveals that energy prices are different from other commodity prices, exhibiting seasonality, mean reversion and extremely high volatility. These features arise from the interaction between supply and demand, with each subject to seasonal variations, and in particular from constraints on storage, transmission or transportation, perhaps exacerbated by sudden changes due to unforeseen infrastructure breakdowns. Pricing energy assets and energy derivatives is a significant challenge. In this thesis, we present a modeling framework based on the mathematical foundations for polynomial diffusions, involving polynomial maps of polynomial processes (PMPP models) for various energy prices such as oil, natural gas and electricity prices. Under the PMPP framework, underlying factors are modeled by polynomial processes such as the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, geometric Brownian motion, inhomogeneous geometric Brownian motion and etc. Energy prices are generated by polynomial maps of these underlying processes. The polynomial maps can be determined either by monotone polynomial maps or regression, revealing the relationship between underlying factors and energy prices. We will show that PMPP models are able to describe the dynamics of spot and forward prices in energy markets, providing the advantage of cheap and convenient computation of forward prices because of the property of polynomial processes that the conditional expectations of polynomial functions of future states, conditional on current states, are given by polynomials of the current states. We also introduce a potential extension of the PMPP framework where the underlying factor process and the map may not be polynomial. Under this extended framework, the PMPP model will still reserve a quasi-polynomial property whereby conditional expectation of polynomial functions of the future state are given by functions of the current state in a space spanned by a finite set of basis functions. The optimal PMPP model is determined by the statistical criteria. The maximum likelihood estimation and Kalman filters are applied for model calibration. Preliminary results indicate that the PMPP models are able to capture the behavior of energy prices well and can be useful for risk management purposes.
Academic Integrity Leadership in Chilean Universities: Insights from Policy Analysis and Leaders’ Narratives
(2024-12-02) Moya Figueroa, Beatriz Antonieta; Eaton, Sarah Elaine; Kenny, Natasha; Ayala, Jessica; Johnston, Dawn; Miller-Young, Janice
Interest in safeguarding academic integrity in higher education worldwide has grown with emerging challenges, such as the unethical use of artificial intelligence. In response, scholars have called for understanding academic integrity as a teaching and learning issue to be addressed at a systems level; however, this endeavour requires academic integrity leadership context-sensitive insights. Likewise, calls for equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization, and Indigenization require advancing understanding of the multiplicity of perspectives in the field. In this dissertation, I address these gaps with three manuscripts focusing on academic integrity in Chile. Acknowledging the critical role of policy, I led a qualitative research design of Hispanic South American education institutions’ (n = 10) academic integrity policies, identifying strengths and improvement areas and recommendations for the region through the lens of the five core elements of exemplary academic integrity policy: access, approach, responsibility, detail, and support (Manuscript 1). I also conducted a qualitative research design centred on Chilean universities (n = 43) using the five core elements of exemplary academic integrity to identify suggestions for the national context (Manuscript 2). The policy analyses showed difficulties in gaining access to documents, a prevalence of the punitive approach, a focus on students’ responsibility to uphold academic integrity, broad definitions regarding academic misconduct definitions (detail), and the lack of reference to support systems. These analyses paved the way for exploring leadership practice in three Chilean universities by studying the narratives of academic integrity educational leaders (n = 17) through a qualitative research design using the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) leadership dimensions and narrative analysis (Manuscript 3). Chilean leaders made meaning of their academic integrity leadership roles by creating new infrastructures for advancing academic integrity. These leaders’ interpretations shed light on their developing practices, recommendations for further improvement, and context-sensitive insights concerning academic integrity leadership in Chile. Policy analyses and exploring leaders’ narratives set the ground for developing eighteen questions for leaders underpinning recommendations for academic integrity’s promotion in Chile. These questions also push the current understanding of three core elements of exemplary academic integrity: access, responsibility, and support.
Reproductive Health Apps: The Benefits and Limitations to User Groups
(2024-11-30) Kazakoff, Alissa; Doyle-Baker, Patricia Katherine; Benham, Jamie Laura; Holash, John
The global mHealth market is growing at an unprecedented rate and is projected to reach an estimated value of over $187 billion by 2033. Many of these apps focus on women’s health and tracking of the menstrual cycle. The reasons for menstrual cycle tracking are diverse and include increasing awareness of reproductive health and body functions, preparing for different menstruation cycle phases, fertility and family planning, identifying bleeding irregularities, and informing conversations with healthcare providers. Two areas of limited research include user retention and engagement based on known theories and models and whether app use impacts menstrual literacy. The purpose of this thesis was to a) investigate the current state of reproductive health tracking through a scoping review (ScR) and b) explore tracking methods and experiences, motivations for using reproductive health apps, and baseline menstrual literacy in a menstruating population through a cross-sectional survey. The ScR observed users were motivated to engage in reproductive health apps for education, contraception, and conception. Several benefits of app use were identified, like improved menstrual health literacy and helping users feel empowered and prepared for their cycles. However, a number of limitations in current reproductive health apps came to light that negatively impact user experience, such as a lack of regulation, variable quality, inaccurate predictions, and minimal diversity. A social media campaign was then employed to recruit menstruating individuals between the ages of 18-35 to complete an online survey that resulted in 1,359 participants. The participant’s mean age was 26 years (± 5; range 18-35) and 66.4% were app users and 33.6% were non-users. The feasibility of using the TAM to explain menstrual cycle app use was demonstrated. The constructs of perceived usefulness (PU) (<0.001), perceived ease of use (PEOU) (0.001), and trust (0.027) to predict app use were all significant. Confidence in knowledge about the menstrual cycle was negatively associated with app use (OR = 0.80, 95% CI: 0.65-0.98, p = 0.034). Additionally, having sufficient information about menses and symptoms was a significant predictor of app use (OR = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.02-1.71, p = 0.038). To our knowledge, this study is the first to combine the TAM with menstrual literacy and highlight key differences in menstrual literacy and characteristics between app users and nonusers. These results provide valuable insights into this under-researched area of women’s health by offering preliminary data on the factors influencing app use while also informing future research aimed at improving app engagement and menstrual education.