The literature on using scoring rubrics in writing assessment denotes the significance of rubrics as practical and useful means to assess the quality of writing tasks. This study tries to investigate the agreement among rubrics endorsed and used for assessing the essay writing tasks by the internationally recognized tests of English language proficiency. To carry out this study, two hundred essays (task 2) from the academic IELTS test were randomly selected from about 800 essays from an official IELTS center, a (...) representative of IDP Australia, which was taken between 2015 and 2016. The test takers were 19 to 42 years of age, 120 of them were female and 80 were males. Three raters were provided with four sets of rubrics used for scoring the essay writing task of tests developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Cambridge English Language Assessment (i.e., Independent TOELF iBT, GRE, CPE, and CAE) to score the essays which had been previously scored officially by a certified IELTS examiner. The data analysis through correlation and factor analysis showed a general agreement among raters and scores; however, some deviant scorings were spotted by two of the raters. Follow-up interviews and a questionnaire survey revealed that the source of score deviations could be related to the raters’ interests and (un)familiarity with certain exams and their corresponding rubrics. Specifically, the results indicated that despite the significance which can be attached to rubrics in writing assessment, raters themselves can exceed them in terms of impact on scores. (shrink)

Introduction The major burden of the COVID-19 pandemic has been mainly on healthcare workers (HCWs) and as a result many of them have been afflicted with the disease thus far. -/- Purpose The present study was an effort to investigate Tehran University of Medical Sciences HCWs' experiences of COVID-19 during the pandemic in Tehran, Iran. -/- Methods This study is essentially a conventional qualitative content analysis. Twenty-six HCWs (including 7 physicians, 16 nurses, and 3 physiotherapists) were purposefully selected to participate (...) in the study. The data were collected from April 2020 to January 2021 through semi-structured face-to-face interviews. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed based on the Graneheim and Lundman method using MAXQDA 12. -/- Results Based on the qualitative content analysis which resulted in 364 initial codes, three themes and eight subthemes were extracted. The extracted themes were “support,” “control,” and “improvement.” -/- Conclusions HCWs are in close contact with COVID-19 patients as part of their professional careers and the provision of quality patient care in times of crises is unattainable unless HCWs enjoy support and their own health is maintained. Making institutional, national, and international preparations for their protection is an obligation. (shrink)

Background and Aim: Global trends and national policies have made internationalization and paying attention to the international markets of higher education inevitable on the one hand and becoming a legal requirement of Iranian medical sciences universities on the other hand. Therefore, the main goal of this article was to show, by examining the experience of international marketing of higher education in Tehran University of Medical Sciences, what are the futures of international marketing of higher education in medical sciences? Materials and (...) methods: in this documented data and the views, knowledge and lived experiences of the beneficiaries of the University of Medical Sciences were the basis of the study, and in the following, the methods of documentary studies, trend analysis, brainstorming, expert panel, theme analysis and scenario planning were used. Results: The most important achievement of this article is that among the challenges facing the international marketing of higher education in the University of Medical Sciences, two driving forces have the highest importance and uncertainty in shaping the future of this issue, including: sustainable security and cultural development. Conclusion: The normalization of political and economic relations with the world along with appropriate cultural development inside and outside the university and acceptance of cultural, racial, religious, intellectual, ethnic and gender differences strengthens the marketing process of higher education. In such a situation, the risk of investing in providing international higher education will be reduced. Therefore, the most expensive and the most important uncertainty facing the country's universities in international marketing is the attitude and approach of science and technology governance to the relations and structure governing the international system. (shrink)

Gaining a high level of proficiency is the ultimate aspiration of all language learners, and the use of apology and politeness strategies is consistently associated with the levels of language proficiency. Owing to the significance of speech acts, politeness strategies, and level of proficiency, this study aimed to investigate the realization of apology speech acts and politeness strategies among Iranian EFL learners to examine and compare the lower-intermediate and advanced learners’ use of apology and politeness strategies. To achieve this goal, (...) 320 learners were selected out of 390 EFL learners who took a test of English language proficiency and were then divided into lower-intermediate and advanced levels. The findings of the study revealed significant differences between lower-intermediate and advanced Iranian EFL learners in the realization of the speech act of apology and politeness strategies. Advanced learners preferred to use more indirect and complicated forms of apology speech acts and tended to apply negative politeness and off-record strategies more than the lower-intermediate learners did. However, lower-intermediate learners preferred to use simple and more direct forms of apology and politeness strategies. It can be concluded that as learners increase their knowledge in the target language, and as their interlanguages get closer to the target language, they tend to apply more complicated and native-like speech acts and strategies . (shrink)

Continued urbanization, along with anthropogenic global warming, has and will increase land surface temperature and air temperature anomalies in urban areas when compared to their rural surroundings, leading to Urban Heat Islands (UHI). UHI poses environmental and health risks, affecting both psychological and physiological aspects of human health. Thus, using a deep learning approach that considers morphological variables, this study predicts UHI intensity in 69 European cities from 2007 to 2021 and projects UHI impacts for 2050 and 2080. The research (...) employs Artificial Neural Networks, Deep Neural Networks, and Gated Recurrent Units, combining high-resolution 3D urban models with environmental data to analyze UHI trends. The results indicate strong associations between urban form, weather patterns, and UHI intensity, highlighting the need for customized urban planning and policy measures to reduce UHI impacts and foster sustainable urban settings. This research enhances understanding of UHI dynamics and serves as a valuable tool for urban planners and policymakers to address the challenges of climate change, urbanization, and air pollution, ultimately aiding in the improvement of health outcomes and building energy consumption. Moreover, the methodology effectively demonstrates the ability of the GRU to link its scores with UHI projections, offering crucial insights into potential health impacts. (shrink)

Background and Aim: Today universities admit International Students as well as national students. Tehran University of Medical Sciences has been also started admitting International Students in regards of its Internationalization aims. Student’s satisfaction is of high importance in order to gain the given goals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction of International students of TUMS. -/- Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive study. The target group was international students of TUMS, the participants were selected through (...) availability sampling. The research instrument was researcher-made questionnaire which the reliability calculated as 0.97 by Chronbach’s alpha. The data was analysied by Microsoft Excell version 2010. -/- Results: The overall satisfaction of the students was 70% (satisfied and completely satisfied) while the overall dissatisfaction was 10% (dissatisfied and completely dissatisfied). -/- Conclusion: Given satisfaction of more than half of the International students, TUMS has performed reasonably. Based on the results obtained in this research the university may pay attention to the fields reported as dissatisfied. (shrink)

Inspired by the recent trends in education towards learner autonomy with their emphasis on the interests and desires of the students, and borrowing ideas from philosophy (particularly ethics), the present study is an attempt to investigate the discrepancy in the findings of the studies addressing error correction in L2 writing instruction, and suggest the (oft-neglected) students’ beliefs, interests and wants as what can point the way out of confusion. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and 56 advanced adult EFL (...) learners were asked to complete the questionnaire. The opinions of 20 EFL teachers were also collected using another questionnaire. Twenty-three of the students and 13 of the teachers were then interviewed in an attempt to collect explanations for their answers in the questionnaires. The results indicated that all the learners wanted the errors in their writings to be corrected. About 90 percent of them believed that all the errors in their writings should be corrected and only less than 10 percent of them agreed that there is no need to correct all the errors and that only “important” errors should be rectified. On the contrary, of the teachers who participated in the study, only 20 percent believed that all the errors in the students’ writings should be corrected. While most of the interviewed students attributed their preference of choice to feeling more confident and efficient in learning when they can recognize all the errors in their written assignments, most of the teachers believed that by correcting important errors (and not all errors), learners can get the most of their writings. Given the incongruity between teachers’ and (advanced) students’ beliefs over writing error correction, and considering advanced students as legitimate decision makers for their own learning, some suggestions are offered for EFL writing teachers. -/- . (shrink)

Background Improving the competencies of nurses requires improving educational methods through the use of novel methods in teaching and learning. We aim to explore the perceptions of stakeholders (including nursing education directors, faculty members and nursing students) of the requirements of implementing innovative educational approaches in nursing. -/- Methods In this qualitative descriptive study, 19 participants, including educational directors, faculty members, and undergraduate and graduate nursing students, were selected through the purposeful sampling method. Achieving the theoretical saturation in extracted categories (...) was considered as a criterion for determining the sample size and the completion of sampling. The data were collected from December 2019 to May 2020 in nursing schools of Tehran, Iran, through in-depth semi-structured individual face-to-face interviews and were then analyzed based on the Graneheim and Lundman method. -/- Results Using qualitative content analysis, eight sub-themes and three themes were extracted. The extracted themes were ‘novel educational policymaking’, ‘Innovative education-oriented platform’, and ‘managing barriers of innovative educational approaches’. -/- Conclusions Developing and implementing innovative educational approaches entail providing appropriate context, structure, and required facilities by the policymaking system and educational authorities. In addition, developing capacity and related competencies of faculty members and students as the major stakeholders in employing these approaches is crucial. (shrink)

Background: A better understanding of the pattern of epidemic-related referrals to healthcare centers might allow the identification of vulnerabilities and the required changes that the healthcare management system should undergo. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the COVID-19 referral pattern and the role of media and health management planning in changing the trends. Methods: Data extracted from the electronic medical database of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex (IKHC), located in Tehran, Iran, from February 20 to June 4, 2020 were examined. Individuals (...) were divided into two groups, COVID-19 positive and negative. We used Google Trends to evaluate Google Internet search queries and also available policy documents, programs, and official news related to COVID-19 in Iran during the mentioned period. Results: In this study, 8647 individuals aged 46.05 ± 16.5 years were referred to IKHC. Approximately 57% were male, and 70% were COVID-19 positive. The most clinical symptoms were dyspnea, fever, cough, and myalgia. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus were the most common underlying health conditions. In the first two weeks, the percentage of negative cases was higher than positive cases and then the pattern was reversed, when people searched for information about COVID-19 in media. Conclusions: Proper and timely information and education to people through the media and health management measures can be effective in reducing unnecessary visits to health centers, preventing the exhaustion of medical staff, and controlling the disease during epidemics. (shrink)

This study was a Persian-English comparative translation investigation on the selected poems of Forough- Farrokhzad, an influential contemporary Iranian poet. Two English translations were analyzed: one by a native Persian speaker, Sholeh Wolpé, an Iranian poet and translator, and the other by a non-native Persian speaker, Jascha Kessler, an American poet, writer and translator. The translations were reviewed according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s(1995) model which identifies two general translation strategies: direct and oblique, resembling literal versus free classifications, respectively, along with (...) their supplementary proce- dures in order to investigate the frequency of the application of each procedure by the two translators. After situating every line of the poems in the related categories, the number of times each procedure was em- ployed was examined. The findings indicated that both translators used the oblique strategy more than the direct one. The non-native translator, however, used the oblique strategy considerably more frequently com- pared to the native translator. Finally, new procedures called complementary procedures were proposed by the researchers to be added to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model in order to fill the gaps in the application of strategies and procedures to the poems of Forough Farrokhzad and probably other poems. (shrink)

This study investigated the rhetorical move structure of the dental sciences research article abstract (RAA) genre using Swales’ (2004) model of move analysis, CARS (Create a Research Space), to find the frequency of rhetorical moves and steps in RAAs of the selected journals and also to examine the association between the frequency of moves and steps in the RAAs. To this end, 251 abstracts from articles published in 2018, 2019, and 2020 in four Iranian PubMed-indexed dentistry journals were selected and (...) examined. The frequencies were counted and compared using the Chi Square statistic. The findings revealed that all of the abstracts included M3S4 and M3S5, and all but only one, included M3S1. Yet, M3S2 and M3S7 had not been used in the abstracts whatsoever, and M1S3 had been employed only once. It was also found that the RAAs in the Journal of Dentistry and the Dental Research Journal used the steps considerably more frequently than the RAAs in the Journal of Dental Research and Frontiers in Dentistry. The findings of this study can provide EAP instructors with practical insights into the needs and wants of dental students, and also serve as a complement to the guidelines for academic writing for dental researchers to produce more received RAAs. (shrink)

The first case of COVID-19 in Iran was officially reported by the Iranian Government in February 19, 2020. In order to control and prevent the infection, the Government closed all the universities and requested the people to stay at home. Consequently, Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), like other universities, cancelled all the face-to-face classes in different Schools, and since the exact date for the resolution of this calamity could not be determined, TUMS decided to proceed the education flow through (...) the available Learning Management System (LMS). As one of the departments of the university, TUMS Department of Foreign Languages devised a plan and prepared itself for the new situation. This paper is a narrative account of the transition. Through reading this narration as a case of educational solution in the preset particular situation, language professors can adopt and implement efficient strategies and approaches in their educational settings. (shrink)

Rooted in the heart of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, mediation has recently received considerable attention in the field of TEFL. The existing literature suggests that mediation can play an essential role in language learners’ performance development. In addition, learners need to know about their thinking process which is interpreted as metacognition. This study aimed to investigate the effect of teacher- and peer-assisted evaluative mediation on learners’ metacognitive awareness development. To this end, 40 homogenized intermediate EFL learners were selected using a test (...) of English language proficiency. The participants were then randomly divided into teacher-assisted (n=20) and peer-assisted (n=20) groups. Before the instructional phase, a metacognitive awareness questionnaire was given to the participants. At the instructional phase, the learners in the teacher-assisted group received teacher-assisted mediation. The learners in the peer-assisted group, however, were exposed to mediation provided by their peers. After the instructional phase, the metacognitive awareness questionnaire was given to the participants as the posttest of the study. SPSS was used to analyze the data. The descriptive statistics, the Shapiro-Wilk test of normality, and the Paired Sample T-test for inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that peer-assisted evaluative mediation had positive effects on developing students’ level of metacognitive awareness, whereas teacher-assisted evaluative mediation did not reveal such effects. It could be concluded that peer-assisted evaluative mediation is an effective tool for improving students’ metacognitive awareness. (shrink)

Introducing alternative modes of assessment is but one response to the recent call for democratic and ethical language assessment. Yet, despite the recent emphasis in the discourse community and the rise in publication on alternative assessment, these new forms of assessment still need to be explored further. This study is a two-fold attempt: first, to investigate teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about different aspects of traditional testing and alternative assessment, and second to delve into their ethical orientation and to examine views (...) on language testing apropos of their general ethical viewpoints. A questionnaire was developed and used to collect Iranian EFL teachers’ views on language testing and ethics in general (N = 153). The results indicated that despite its agreed-upon disadvantages, an obstinate stigmatization and refusal of traditional testing may still seem a practice at odds with the common sense. In fact, until a better proposal can be offered, alternative assessment and traditional testing can best be regarded as supplements rather than substitutes. (shrink)

The University of Tehran English Proficiency Test (UTEPT) is a high-stakes entrance examination taken by more than 10,000 master’s degree holders annually. The examinees’ scores have a significant influence on the final decisions concerning admission to the University of Tehran Ph.D. programs. As a test validation investigation, the present study, which is a bias detection research in nature, utilized multistep logistic regression (LR) procedure to examine the presence of gender differential item functioning (DIF) in the UTEPT with a sample of (...) 6,555 examinees who took the test in November 2006. Specifically, the LR DIF two-degree of freedom Chi-squared test of significance was employed to test the significance of DIF. Following what has been recently suggested in the literature, the test of significance for DIF was accompanied by a measure of magnitude, namely the R-squared effect size for LR DIF, for the interpretation of which the two widely accepted classification schemes were used comparatively. The results reveal that 39 of the 100 items in the test display significant gender differences. However, these group differences are viewed as “negligible” based on both of the schemes. Accordingly, it could be argued that the UTEPT is a gender DIF-free test, though the Reading Comprehension section of the test remains in need of further analysis as it seems that the general trend of DIF indices at the item level may hint at an inclination towards males. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the benefits of international data sharing. Data sharing enabled the health care policy makers to make decisions based on real-time data, it enabled the tracking of the virus, and importantly it enabled the development of vaccines that were crucial to mitigating the impact of the virus. This data sharing is not the norm as data sharing needs to navigate complex ethical and legal rules, and in particular, the fragmented application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). (...) The introduction of the draft regulation for a European Health Data Space (EHDS) in May 2022 seeks to address some of these legal issues. If passed, it will create an obligation to share electronic health data for certain secondary purposes. While there is a clear need to address the legal complexities involved with data sharing, it is critical that any proposed reforms are in line with ethical principles and the expectations of the data subjects. In this paper we offer a critique of the EHDS and offer some recommendations for this evolving regulatory space. (shrink)

Nowadays, there is a growing interest in transdisciplinary approach to university curriculum development, transdisciplinary Studies are about the realms, goals, and goals of the transition field. The early phases of transdisciplinary in higher education curriculum can be complex and so there are challenges to the definition and operationalization this approach to the university curriculum. In this paper, in respect to the different perspectives on the subject, the conceptual framework and the model of the curriculum based on the causal layered learning (...) are explained and the challenges and obligations of the subject are conceptualized based on four different types of curricular issues: Philosophical and pedagogical considerations, issues and responsibilities affecting the teaching process, issues and responsibilities affecting students learning, issues and responsibilities affecting course design and issues and responsibilities affecting learning assessment. (shrink)

This article focuses on the criticisms of current approaches in educational research methodology. Itsummarizes rationales for mixed methods and argues that the mixing quantitative paradigm andqualitative paradigm is problematic due to practical and philosophical arguments. It is alsoindicated that the current rise of mixed methods work has increased problems with quantitativeand qualitative methods. In this article we offer a different symbolic system, with differentlogical form for describing educational phenomena based on the philosophical assumptions andnew mathematical reasoning: para-quantitativism. Para-quantitative theory is (...) an approachwhich has been developed in respect to close relationship between paradigm and method, using apostpositivist transcendental realism as a philosophical beginning of the research methodology,taking Operational Logic System or Fuzzy Logic System (OLS/FLS) as logic of scientificresearch in education. (shrink)

The increasing use of Generative AI raises many ethical, philosophical, and legal issues. A key issue here is uncertainties about how different degrees of Generative AI assistance in the production of text impacts assessments of the human authorship of that text. To explore this issue, we developed an experimental mixed methods survey study (N = 602) asking participants to reflect on a scenario of a human author receiving assistance to write a short novel as part of a 3 (high, medium, (...) or low degrees of assistance) X 2 (human or AI assistant) factorial design. We found that, for a human author, the degree of assistance they receive matters for our assessments of their level of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, but not what or who rendered that assistance, although it was more important to disclose human rather than AI assistance. However, in our assessments of the assisting agent, human assistants were viewed as warranting higher rates of authorship, creatorship, and responsibility, compared to AI assistants rendering the same level of support. These results help us to better understand emerging norms around collaborative human-AI generated text, with implications for other types of collaborative content creation. (shrink)

There are numerous kinds of definitions and discourses of conceptualization for the collaboration among disciplines. Examining a wide range of the related texts represents various, divergent, and also contradictory discourses back to this up. Carefully and critically examining the common perception of collaboration among disciplines, in this paper, authors introduce an alternative so-called pluridisciplinary. And, it is argued that pluri-disciplinary could be considered as an umbrella term for all other modes of collaboration among disciplines including multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdiciplinary. It (...) is also contended that unlike the conventional perception of collaborations between disciplines, epistemological and instrument rationales need to be seen as a continuous integration, so such a holistic approach will lead to a new so-called discipline; transdiciplinary. It is also articulated that there is a hierarchical relationship between disciplines in the alternative. In this paper, simple knowledge in pluridisciplinary studies will be replaced by super-complex knowledge, so called; trans-disciplinary, as a new-fashioned discipline, emerges. (shrink)

A theory of cognition and an interdisciplinary research program so-called enactivism put forward by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch since their book titled: “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience had been published in 1991. The theory and research program proposed in this book can be explicated in terms of eight significant themes including autopoiesis, sense-making, emergence, experience, embodied mind, embedded mind, enacted mind and the extended mind. This paper is an interpretation of the theory of enaction as a platform (...) to educational research methodological reform. So it is argued that the non-reductionistic enactive approach is the promising arena for addressing educational research methodology so that circulation between first- and third-personal phenomena makes sense across a range of objective and subjective issues that mixed methodologists want to deal. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of Mercury knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. The dreamer is instructed to confront a friendship he had abandoned and, when he does so, (...) is frightened by the inner life he discovers. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AN AUDIO-RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is given on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)