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Context Aware Mobile Learning Applications (CAMLA) are an emerging field of research, they provide educational resources tailored to educational needs and particular circumstances of the learner. Despite the increase in the number of applications being developed, there is a lack of study that provides comprehensive knowledge on the development of CAMLA. Motivated by this shortcoming, Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted to establish a body of knowledge that describes the key components of CAMLA that includes; context information extraction and representation, context adaptation and different types of applications developed. SLR was conducted on 24 papers retrieved from seven databases. The results identified different types of context amongst which learner, location and time are the most widely used in the development of CAMLA. The context data is collected using virtual and physical sensors and mostly represented as relational or ontology data. CAMLA provides different types of adaptation where adaptation to learning resource and location are very common. The results are useful to position future research activities to scientifically strengthen this field.

In this era of exponential prominence and adoption of technology, one needs to have the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share and create ideas, responsibly and ethically, using Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools and technologies combined with the Internet. This emerging human attribute is known as digital literacy. Today, digital literacy is an essential component of everyone's personal and professional lives to survive and thrive in the digital world. The notion of advocating digital literacy around the world is leveraged on the shoulders of higher education institutes. The institutes are playing a pivotal role in mentoring the younger generation to be digitally literate so that they can contribute effectively towards an individual, societal and national development and progression. This same now applies to the South Pacific region as well, with its recent progressive growth of ICT and the dynamic use of digital technology. It can also be added that digital literacy and, by extension, digital fluency is more needed in developing countries, including the South Pacific region, as these countries rely heavily on ICTs for their economic survival, competition and progression. However, there is a dearth of baseline research on digital literacy in the South Pacific since the concept is still new and an emerging one in the region. A few works have been done on the components of digital literacy highlighted in this integrative literature review paper. The anecdotal research will elaborate on the concept of digital literacy, discuss its importance and impacts with major emphasis on the South Pacific, and provide a comprehensive review of digital literacy, its importance and its impact on higher education in the South Pacific.

This research paper examines the acceptance of technology for learning by senior secondary school students and university newcomers. The objectives of the study are to measure the computer competency, computer self-efficacy of selected student cohorts on the acceptance of technology for learning. The study uses the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with two additional attributes, computer competencies and computer self-efficacies to examine students’ behavior towards learning with technology. Two sets of data were collected; one was from Year 12 and Year 13 students from 33 secondary schools in Fiji, and the other from newcomers of a regional university in the South Pacific. The cohorts were surveyed with a unipolar Likert scale 1–5 questionnaire. The results were analysed using the “Statistical Package for the Social Sciences” – SPSS software and the proposed extended TAM model was analysed using the Smart Partial least squares (SmartPLS) software. The results from the regression analysis confirmed that the two attributes had a significant positive impact on the acceptance of the technology, that is, computer competency and computer self – efficacy were significant predictors of students’ intention to continue using technology for learning. Therefore, a new model incorporating the two perfect scorers is designed and presented in this paper. The high values for Cronbach’s alpha also show that the results were reliable and valid. Finally, the study shows that computer competencies and computer self-efficacies are essential contributors to the continuous use of technology for learning.

As a novice, learning computer programming is challenging. It requires learners to be inquisitive and acquire skills to analyze problems to get to solutions critically. Unfortunately, students drop out of programming courses because students think that programming is difficult to understand. The student's understanding of the problem definition is one of the drawbacks that hinder them from accepting to solve problems. In addition to that, students also find the terminologies difficult to grasp. This study aims to determine whether visualization, interactivity, affective teaching, and the use of home language improve students' understanding. In this study, an application is designed to allow students to learn coding and their pre and the post-exam result was analyzed. The application incorporates animation, interaction, and examples in the home language. The result was tested at a 95% Confidence Level. It was found that the use of visualization and home language in teaching improves students' results and enhances their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Adaptation to technological advancements and intelligent digital tools can enable healthcare providers to overcome the challenges of their patient-oriented care systems and processes. One such intelligent tool is automated assistive robots, which can improve patient care and safety in the health sector. This paper presents an invariant set of continuous nonlinear control laws for an assistive robot and a rehabilitation wheelchair robot modeled as a new autonomous robotic dog and rehabilitation wheelchair system for navigating a highly constrained environment. The control laws are derived from the Lyapunov-based control scheme classified under the umbrella of artificial potential field (APF) methods, and inherently proved stability of the new heterogeneous system. The robotic dog guides the wheelchair robot during the navigation process in a cluttered environment where the avoidances are from the robotic dog and the integrated dynamic protective polygon. The wheelchair traverses the obstacle-free path traced by the dynamic polygon. The leash is flexible, and its length is bounded, which invariably provides the protective polygon to change its intrinsic dimension. Thus, the dual-robot system has increased mobility for obstacle avoidance and passing through narrow passageways. The solution proffered herein is only feasible in a highly constrained and isolated human environment where nothing else appears to be moving in the direction of the robotic dog and wheelchair. The computer simulations and associated convergence graphs present the efficacy of the unique control laws for the new heterogeneous robotic system. Adoption of such control laws and their suitable variants can make a big impact in the healthcare industry.

Context Aware Mobile Learning (CAML) provides a learning experience tailored to educational needs and the particular circumstance of the learner. CAML has become an active area of research. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of research conducted on CAML through counting and classifying contributions. The applied method is a systematic mapping study using eight major publication databases. Initially, 115 studies were retrieved after assessing against the selection criteria 90 studies were selected. The results provide useful insight into the current state of research, the geographical distribution of papers, venues of publication, and types of studies published. The results were useful to position future research activities.

This paper essays a new solution to the landmark navigation problem of planar robots in the presence of randomly fixed obstacles through a new dynamic updating rule involving the orientation and steering angle parameters of a robot. The dynamic updating rule utilizes a first-order nonlinear ordinary differential equation for the changing of landmarks so that whenever a landmark is updated, the path followed by the robot remains continuous and smooth. This waypoints guidance is via specific landmarks selected from a new set of rules governing the robot’s field of view. The governing control laws guarantee asymptotic stability of the 2D point robot system. As an application, the landmark motion planning and control of a car-like mobile robot navigating in the presence of fixed elliptic-shaped obstacles are considered. The proposed control laws take into account the geometrical constraints imposed on steering angle and guarantee eventual uniform stability of the car-like system. Computer simulations, using Matlab software, are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique and its stabilizing algorithm.

Background or introduction Multiple Lower extremity amputation (MLEA) is an unfortunate outcome following a lower extremity amputation (LEA) in individuals with diabetes. The challenges faced by individual with MLEA are significantly higher than those who have undergone a single amputation. Therefore, developing a reliable and accurate method for determining risk factors associated with MLEA is essential for reducing the incidence of this outcome among diabetic patients. Objectives This study aimed to explore the demographic and clinical characteristics of diabetic inpatients with foot ulcers. The goal was to develop a statistical model to determine the risk factors of MLEA among patients type 2 diabetic mellitus (T2DM). Methods Data for statistical model development were collected from patients’ folders involving 1,972 patients with T2DM who were hospitalized for acute diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) at three tertiary care hospitals in Fiji from 2016 to 2019. This cross-sectional study was conducted in accordance with the STROBE guidelines focusing on patients who experienced MLEA at the hospitals. Patients were categorized into three ordinal outcomes: no-amputation, primary amputation, and multiple amputations. A partial proportional odds model was developed to fit the ordinal outcome and determine the risk factors associated with MLEA. The proposed model was validated by comparing it to a proportional odds model and a multinomial logistics regression model. Results The proposed partial proportional odds model (PPOM) identified several risk factors for MLEA, including age, gender, ethnicity, hypertension, anemia, leukocytosis, and thrombocytosis. Conclusions The analytical findings reveal that the PPOM is appropriate for determining the risk factors associated with MLEA in T2DM patients in Fiji.

This paper addresses motion control of a cooperative intelligent transport system (C-ITS) of nonholonomic mobile robots navigating a dynamic environment while maintaining a locally rigid formation. We consider the design of acceleration-based control inputs that govern the motion of cooperative intelligent transport system (C-ITS) using the artificial potential fields method for the avoidance of obstacles and attraction to designated targets. The control scheme utilizes a new leader-follower strategy using Cartesian coordinates to accomplish a collision-free locally rigid formation of an autonomous and intelligent transportation system. The concepts of virtual parking bays and minimum distance technique (MDT) are utilized to attain prescribed orientations of the formation at the final destination. The robustness of the control scheme is established by considering the effect noise on the formation, while the effectiveness of the proposed nonlinear control laws is demonstrated through computer simulations.

Context-aware mobile learning applications provide learning materials to suit the needs of individual learners. Despite several applications developed, there is a lack of architectural support for developing these applications. This has resulted in a number of challenges; lack of standardization, poor quality of developed applications, and reliability. Motivated by this shortcoming, a reference architecture was designed using requirements gathered from twenty-four context-aware mobile learning applications. The reference architecture provides architectural support for context capturing and processing. Evaluation of the reference architecture was conducted, and the results indicate that it solves the motivated problem and also consolidates necessary requirements.