PEYKE NOOR JOURNAL
Year:2004 | Volume:2 | Issue:1|Papers Count:13

This part is the text of the lecture entitled "Creating Works, Reference Book Characteristics, Selecting Subjects and Iranian Libraries Status", delivered at the amphitheatre of Payame Noor University by Kamran Fani, one of the eminent Iranian bibliographers. It is presented in this issue since it provides researchers with points of great importance.Fani mentions the theoretical and philosophical origins of the lack of new research themes in Iran and refers to civilizations, holistic views, the reviewing of past records, and perfectionism as the main causes. Moreover, he considers the ways study subjects are selected, the knowledge about reference books, the role oflisting books and thematic bibliographies. In conclusion, Fani emphasizes the importance of reference books, their recognition, and their significance in doing researches.

Coins are of great importance in presenting different nations’ culture, beliefs and religion and reflect their economic status. By examining each nation’s coins, precise judgements about their past and present identities are possible. From this viewpoint, the Sassanid coins have special status because, on their two faces, there are numerous pictorial elements, such as the crescent and stars, the holy fire, altars, priests and religious equipments, various kinds of jewels and ornaments, and the patterns of the period’s clothes. Each of these elements carries extensive religious, cultural and mythological concepts. The way these coins were made brought about, for the first time, a revolution in the process of easy and fast production of coins.The Sassanid coins forms were inspired by the Ashkanian ones. With the rise of Islam, the coins continued to live as a tool of trade with a little change until the end of the ‘Abbaside period. For centuries, these coins were used as currency exchange in the middle East, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, the eastern parts of Europe and the northern parts of Africa. The Sassanids’ economic power and their love for Irans’ glorification caused the coins to enjoy a unique status.By means of a new method in numismatics, the author has studied the treasure of the coins in Urmia Museum for two and half years and this article is just a partial presentation of the research findings.

In discussing the thematic structure of the sentence, it is usually said: "In most cases, theme in declarative sentences is a noun phrase." Based on this statement, in this article, the authors determine what kind of noun phrases (NPs) occupy theme slot and which NPs are more frequent. The data of this research are 954 Persian sentences produced by the third–grade elementary students in the educational year 2002-2003, third term exam. The first part of the article deals with the concept of theme, its theoretical framework, a short history of the previous studies, and some general points about discourse analysis. The second part provides some information about the objectives of the course called“Sentence writing”, and the statistic group and the sample of the research. In the third part, the research results along with necessary analyses are introduced.

Among those words that defy denoting a concrete entity, 'time' is of great significance.It is also one of the most formidable and complex topics in philosophy and physics about which there are different viewpoints. This concept, originally from Mesopotamia, has deeply influenced both the Greek thought and, after being transmitted to India through Iran, the Indian meditation.Indian, Chinese, European, Persian and Arabian philosophers have various ideas about time. Some describe it as an absolute fact which lacks any beginning or end.Others believe that time is relative and experimental, and therefore, it is the secondary reason of material transformations.New physics theories hold other views. The Relativity theory considers time fundamental, while the Quantum theory tries to drop itself from its despotism. Despite all related discourses, we can define ‘time’ as a quantity whereby we can take measure of events. We can also maintain that the recording of periodic events makes it possible to measure time itself.

Regarding the environmental dynamics and complexities in different communicative, scientific, academic, economic and social dimensions, organizations established after the Information era have become greatly interested in knowledge, and this is to their advantage. With respect to the aforesaid qualities, it is obvious that new complex organizations are in dire need of knowledge management.Meanwhile, intellectual organizations, like research institutions, which can distinguish problems, provide mechanisms and methods to solve them, and publish the results of their studies, are more in need of considering information, especially in the production, documentation, publishing, evaluation and reviewing of the knowledge.The border between research institutions and excecutive organizations is gradually omitted and, in near future, the executive and intellectual sections of the organizations will merge.Creativity and innovation, problem solving, doing research, learning, and producing thoughts are the common themes pertaining to knowledge, which makes the prime subject of study; therefore, in this article such themes are dealt with. This article is compiled on the basis of studies on (1) designing the pattern of managers’ continuous learning (organizational learning and the learner organization), (2) the designing of documentation systems, and (3) reviewing and publishing managers’ experiences. Besides, the results of the researches done since 1374 SH/1995 into knowledge management are examined.

Culture has a significant role in our assumptions, perceptions, and management behaviors. In the course of history, there have been six dominating value orienteions which have deeply influenced management behaviors in various situations. These orientations and their variations are studied in this article by means of a comparative approach. The variations are as follows.1. Human relationships to the nature consisting of a) subjugation to the nature, b)being in harmony with the nature, and c) commanding the nature variations.2. Time orientation consisting of a) past-oriented, b) present-oriented, and c) futureoriented variations.3. Evaluating people’s nature according to which people are grouped as a) primarily evil, b) good, and c) neutral.4. Activity orientation, the main dimension of which is the culture of existence in the shape of ‘to be’ or ‘to become’ which results in stablility or transformation in the culture of working along with action.5. Relationships between people including individualistic, multiple and hierarchical relationships.6. Space orientation including public, private and mixed variations.

Scientific test analyses are the most popular means for the evaluation of students at Payame Noor University. To study the quality of the evaluation at the university, ten tests from two fields of study, namely geology and psychology, of the faculties of Science and Humanities were randomly chosen and then students’answer sheets were analyzed.The aim of the study was to check the reliability and validity of the tests and the difficulty and discriminative indices and the variance of the test questions.The hypothesis of the research was that statistic indices of validity and reliability were outside the optimized level in most of the geology tests. The findings of the research indicates that: (1) 38% of the test items related to psychology subjects and 42% of the items pertaining to geology subjects are unsuitable. (2) The difficulty and discriminative indices of the tests are outside the optimized level, while the variances of the tests are within the level. (3) While the reliability of the tests related to geology subjects is better than that of psychology subjects, the validity of the test items of psychology subjects is better than that of geology ones.

The evaluation system of Payame Noor University greatly emphasizes tests comprising multiple choice items. These tests should be analyzed to determine their validity and difficulty index after they are conducted. Therefore, in order to have a balanced test, the distribution of the correct choices should be randomly done and the frequency of one choice in one place should not be more than that of the others.Regarding this principle on the one hand, and what low-achieving students had claimed about their successful guessing, on the other hand, we decided to study the keys of the tests. To do this, necessary information related to multiple choice tests was extracted from different tests, prepared by both Science and Humanities faculties, in the second term of the academic year 1379-1380 SH /2000-2001, and by applying statistic approaches, like binomnal distribution, the rate of the inteference of planners’ personal taste in selecting the choices was examined.The general result is as follows: when a choice is correct in one question, the chance of its reselection is minimzed in the next one. Besides, calculations reveal that the selection of next choices by the planners had not been random. Therefore, it can be said that guessing is increased and the students are in fact instructed to answer correctly.Since the problem of guessing is pertinent to multiple choice tests, this research provides multiple choice test planners with some suggestions to minimize guessing.

This article aimes at reporting the results of the investigations into different aspects of help-seeking strategies used by the high-and low-achieving students of Hong Kong Open University. These investigations have indicated that, statistically, there is no meaningful difference between these two groups of students; however, most of the students considered seeking help as a desirable approach to their learning.This is supported by examining the outcome of the interviews and questionnaires.The interviews reveal the follwing points.1) Those who had sought for help believed that they should try their best before asking for help. Most of them have indicated that what is asked is directly relevant to their subject matter.2) Female students, especially the high-achieving ones, were more interested, than others, in seeking help for almost all problems.3) The biggest difference between the number of high- and low-achieving females is related to tests, anxiety, self-motivation and finding time to study.The outcome of the questionnaires indicatied that the majority of students in both groups preferred to work by themselves, while the interviews shed light on the fact that some of the students, particularly the low-achieving ones, liked working in groups whenever it was easy to organize.

Afghanistan, the heartland of Asia, enjoys an important geopolitical and geostrategic situation. Therefore, it has become the batllefield of the world’s great powers. In this article, the author considers the geographical conditions of the country and its occupation by foreign military forces, especially how it was occupied by the Russians in 1979. Moreover, he explains how the Afghan objectives (ie to kill the foreign enemies and to have an independent country) changed into an irony and how, after getting rid of the Russians, the civil war broke out and had fratricide as its outcome. The author also mentions the reasons why a number of foreign countries have interfered Alghanistan’s domestic and foreign affairs.

In this article, the close and direct relation between information systems and registered statistical order is taken into consideration. By explaining the way the order is applied and how it is established, the proper use of the information systems is illustrated. The author believes that data are produced while most organizations are practicing daily operations and are sent, along with information forms, into files and archives.Therefore, if we want to have a record of daily, monthly or yearly operations, we should find and process the archived data one by one but this is extremely exhausting.So by daily recording of the data while the operation is being done, it is always possible to precisely avail ourselves of processed reports and save time and energy. This is only possible when the relation between the registered statistical order and the information systems is properly set up.