Media Research Center

About: Media Research Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Collaborative learning & Educational technology. The organization has 491 authors who have published 950 publications receiving 28581 citations. The organization is also known as: MRC.

Factors Influencing Pupils' Acceptance of an E-Learning System for Secondary Schools:

Abstract: The present study aims at investigating which factors are significant for pupils' acceptance of an E-Learning system introduced into secondary schools. The E-Learning system consisted of interactive learning modules for several school subjects and a Learning Management System (LMS). Research on IT acceptance and attitudes guided the specification of independent variables as predictors of acceptance. Survey data were collected from 125 pupils from 8 German high schools in January and July 2005. Results from a three-step hierarchical regression reveal that perceived usefulness was a significant positive predictor of pupils' acceptance, with perceived usefulness of the LMS having the greatest weight. Computer related attitude, self-efficacy, and gender had negligible or no influence on acceptance. The final regression model accounted for approximately 51% of the variance in the outcome measure. The findings indicate the critical importance of perceived usefulness in predicting pupils' acceptance of the E-Lea...

Knocking on the Outgroup's Door: Seeking Outgroup Help Under Conditions of Task or Relational Conflict

Abstract: Three studies investigated the willingness to seek help from another group in situations where collaborative goals are undermined by task or relational conflicts between the groups. Compared to task conflict, relational conflict was argued to trigger a striving for more autonomy. The results from three experiments (N = 82, N = 65, and N = 62) supported the prediction that relational conflict, compared to task conflict, promotes more help avoidance, in particular avoidance of dependency-oriented help (a full solution). As expected, no difference was found for the willingness to seek autonomy-oriented help (a hint) from the other group.

A New Mobile Multimodal Biometric Device Integrating Finger Vein and Fingerprint Recognition

Abstract: Mobile multimodal biometric systems have been recently used to overcome the limitations of unimodal biometric systems and to achieve high recognition accuracy. However, the conventional embedded mobile biometric systems have low processing power and small storage so they are insufficient for processing many biometric data. In addition, user feels inconvenience because they capture biometric data in several steps, which requires specific behaviors of the user. Therefore, we propose a new mobile multimodal biometric system based on the fusion of finger vein and fingerprint recognition. The recognition step can be completed within short time because the proposed system obtains finger vein and fingerprint images simultaneously. In addition, the proposed system has enough processing power and storage for many biometric data by using a conventional ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC) as an embedded system. Keywords-component; multimodal biometrics, finger vein, fingerprint

Differential influences of unilateral tDCS over the intraparietal cortex on numerical cognition

Abstract: Recent neuro-imaging research identified the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) to be a key area associated with number processing. However, causal structure-function relationships are hard to evaluate from neuro-imaging techniques such as fMRI. Nevertheless, brain stimulation methods like transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) allow for investigating the functional relevance of the IPS for number processing. Following up on a study using bilateral bi-cephalic tDCS over the IPS, the current study aimed at evaluating the differential lateralized functional contributions of the left and right IPS to number processing using unilateral bi-cephalic tDCS over either the left or right IPS. Results indicated a right lateralization for the processing of the place-value structure of the Arabic number system. Importantly, the processing of number magnitude information was not affected by unilateral IPS corroborating the assumption that number magnitude is processed in the bilateral IPS. Taken together, these data suggest that even though number magnitude is represented bilaterally, the left and right IPS seem to contribute differentially to numerical cognition with respect to the processing of specific other aspects of numerical information.