Browsing by Author "Smith, Leonard"

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    Assessing the effectiveness of academic development programmes: A statistical analysis of graduation rates across three programmes
    (South African Journal of Higher Education, 2015-05-28) Smith, Leonard; Case, Jenni; van Walbeek, Corne
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    Open Access
    Foreign direct investment in South Africa : a comparative study of strategies and key determinants
    (2005) Danstile, Monwabisi Dominic; Black, Anthony; Smith, Leonard
    This dissertation considers the question of foreign direct investment (FDI) into South Africa. It examines constraints on investment, entry strategies by foreign films, firm performance and the impact of FDI on the South African economy.
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    Investigating the effectiveness of animations in exploring learning a case study in a Chemical Engineering course
    (2012) Ma, Karen; Case, Jennifer; Smith, Leonard
    Using technology in the classroom environment has become increasingly popular among educators. One way of employing technology is using instructional animations to teach concepts, favoured owing to their ability to depict changes in object over time. Animations are commonly believed to increase motivation and foster learning, but there is little empirical evidence for this belief. Some researchers have found that animations can be effective; others, however, show that animations have the same effect as a combination of static pictures and text. Some have even showed that animations could actually have negative effects on student learning. A lecturer at the University of Cape Town had planned to use animations in his third year undergraduate Chemical Engineering Course in Reactor Design. This became the context for the present study which investigated the effectiveness of these animations for promoting conceptual understanding as well as exploring students' perspective on learning from animations as well as students' enjoyment level. A quasi-experimental case study was conducted over four topics in Reactor Design and one topic was repeated. Each investigation was on one topic, and in each investigation, the Reactor Design class was split so that the student either attended a traditional lecture or an animation lecture. The two groups of students were used to compare the impact of animations on student learning.
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    Measuring the impact of educational interventions on the academic performance of Academic Development Students in second-year microeconomics
    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, 2015-05-28) Smith, Leonard; Ranchhod, Vimal
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    Measuring the impact of educational interventions on the academic performance of black academic development students
    (Southern African Comparative and History of Education Society, 2012) Smith, Leonard
    This article uses statistical analysis to estimate the impact of educational interventions in the first and second-year microeconomics courses on black academic development students' examination and final course marks. The results suggest that the educational interventions in the first and second years had a positive impact on the academic performance of the academic development cohorts, relative to a comparable group of mainstream students, in both the first and second-year courses. The results imply that the impact of interventions is more pronounced in respect of black students, and that the determinants of academic performance differ for black students relative to the student body as a whole. Finally, the implications of the results for education policy and research are considered.
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    A multivariate evaluation of mainstream and academic development courses in first-year microeconomics
    (Wiley, 2007) Smith, Leonard; Edwards, Lawrence
    This paper analyses the impact of the University of Cape Town's first-year microeconomics academic development course on performance in examinations. The paper makes two advances to existing empirical literature in this area. Firstly, we compare performance with a control group drawn from the mainstream economic course. Secondly, we evaluate performance in subsequent courses in first-year macroeconomics and second-year microeconomics. The results suggest that the academic development course has a major impact on students' performance in the structured/essay questions, relative to the control group, in first- and second-year microeconomics, and for the multiple-choice questions in first-year macroeconomics. Matriculation results, mathematics, English first language, physical science and gender are also important determinants of performance.
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    A system for the acquisition and digital analysis of lower limb flow waveforms
    (1994) Smith, Leonard; Capper, Wayne L; Bunn, Anthony E; Immelman, E J
    A PC based waveform acquisition and analysis system has been developed for use in aorta-iliac arterial assessment. A Motorola DSP56001 based system containing dual Analog to Digital converters is used to sample phase quadrature demodulated signals from a commercially available continuous wave Doppler unit. The Power Spectral Density is calculated using an autoregressive model from which the mean velocity waveform is calculated. This waveform is used to calculate the damping factor, vessel compliance and runoff resistance of a simple electrical model of the lower limb arterial circulation using a non-linear regression technique of curve fitting in the time domain. A pilot study using the system shows a significant separation (p < 0.001 Mann Whitney U-test) between the damping factors of a normal control group (quartile range = 0. 15 - 0.25 ; median = 0. 19) and a patient group with angiographically determined aorta-iliac arterial disease (quartile range = 0.45 - 0.89 ; median= 0.49).