New Project

I am starting a new project. I got the idea for the new project this morning.

Related Facebook post:

This song is so touching.....

A displaced little girl
Wept years in silence
And whispered wishes you'd materialize
She pressed on night and day
To keep on living
And tried to many ways
To keep her soul alive
Did you really care
Care enough for me
Did you really care
Did you care at all for me.
 
If I'm not quite good enough
Or somehow undeserving of
A mother's love
You could have had the decency
To give me up
Before you gave me life
Don't you even care
Just the slightest little bit for me
Cause I really need to feel you cared
(Lyrics of Reflections by Mariah Carey)

I am inspired to research issues in the parent-child relationship so we can learn from the lessons.
Some mothers walk out on their kids.
Some mothers put their kids up for adoption.
There are all sorts of issues.

Remember this story?
https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/crime-history/5-things-to-know-about-andrea-yates-mom-drowned-5-kids-in-the-bathtub

The Bible does say to honor your mother and father.
This will be another major project.

#fahmeenaodetta #phdproject

Gamification For Learning

Yesterday's post on the gamification of an open government data portal was very interesting. I discovered that the term gamification is also used in connection with training/learning. Gaming concepts are also used to make learning fun and increase student engagement.

I have some experience using games for learning. During my MS in Finance program, one of my professors used a kind of simulation game to teach us corporate finance concepts. He wrote a computer program to simulate what would occur if the student's target values (for P/E ratio and so on) were put into practice. For my personal benefit, I used a stock simulation game to experiment with the stock market (example: https://www.stocktrak.com/).

I really do believe simulation games are very helpful. I was surprised to read in the following research paper that there is emerging research work arguing that gamification is not effective (the paper did not support this conclusion, however).

Paper: Exploring the impact of gamification on student engagement and involvement with e-learning systems
By: Imed Bouchrika, Nouzha Harrati, Vanissa Wanick & Gary Wills
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10494820.2019.1623267

Maybe more attention needs to be paid to the design of game-based tools and applications. Simulation games or simulations are useful for decision-making.

I recently updated the decision-making section of my LinkedIn research profile. Here is what it looks like now:

Open Government Data Portals And Gamification

I found an interesting paper on open government data portals:

Tailoring open government data portals for lay citizens: A gamification theory approach
Anthony Simonofski, Anneke Zuiderwijk, Antoine Clarinvala, Wafa Hammedi
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401222000421

I learned from the paper that most open government portals work best for expert users. The researchers proposed a gamification approach to "simplify" the portals for lay citizens. Games are the inspiration for gamification, which uses elements from games to improve the user's experience with the portal in a fun and more engaging way.

The researchers collected lay citizen's requirements for open government portals in order to consider user input for their design of a prototype of the gamified portal. The requirements provide insight into what the public wants the sites to include and how they should work (the researchers interviewed only 10 lay citizens). I thought the requirements would be useful for other areas, such as websites that provide online reviews.

I found the comparison between requirements by lay citizens and expert users interesting. Their requirements do conflict. Gamification improved the ease of use (or usability) of the portal for the lay citizens.

Trust in Web Retailing

Trust is important. Customers are more likely to purchase items (such as food) from a retailer he/she trusts. In the area of online reviews, users are more likely to act on a recommendation from a review he/she trusts (thinks is fair and balanced rather than one-sided, is from a recognized expert, provides pictures, and so on).

In web retailing / electronic commerce, customers are more likely to trust a retailer that has more security features. Security is a big issue. If the customer suspects that his/her information could be compromised during transmission or when in the possession of the retailer, then he/she is less likely to purchase items.

I found research that showed the quality of the user interface of a website also impacts trust in web retailing. The research found there is a strong relationship between interface quality and trust. Here is the paper:

The impact of interface usability on trust in Web retailers
By: Marie Christine Roy, Olivier Dewit, Benoit A. Aubert
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/10662240110410165/full/html

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking

My cousin Sonia was a good cook. Her last job was a cook for a small restaurant that sold food at several locations in Linden. She told me she cooked the food in very large (waist-high) pots.
Sonia learned a lot about cooking from her mom who made food for children.

My grandmother was also a good cook. A long time ago, she had a "boarder" business where she cooked lunch for employees of the bauxite company. I remember her cook-up rice with pigtail, casareep fish, and curry fish. All good.

So some members of my family had small food businesses.

I grew up eating "good food." I was fat.

 

New Word

This morning, I learned of the passing of a cousin in Guyana. I may be traveling soon for her funeral. R.I.P. Sonia.

One of yesterday's posts highlighted words that were created/formed by combining two words. Culturability and Amerindian.
The combined word is called a portmanteau of the two words (Amerindian is a portmanteau of "American Indian").

The word for today is: AGGLUTINATE, a word used in Biology.

One definition of the word is: to unite or combine into a group.
Link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agglutination

I also found a more complicated definition:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/agglutination-grammar.
This definition explains that words can be formed by agglutination.

Here is an interesting tidbit:

Word Combiner is a web tool that allows a user to combine up to 4 words to create a unique new one. It can be used to create passwords.
Link: https://www.wordunscramble.io/word-combiner

Contract Work

This is a staffing firm but the IT version of it:
https://www.upwork.com/
(website for contract workers by Upwork, formerly Odesk)

I signed up for an account at Odesk.com many years ago. I have not been using the account.