Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing

Social cognition focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions. On the other hand, the term cognitive computing is generally used to refer to new hardware and/or software that mimics the functioning of the human brain and helps to improve human decision-making. In this sense, it is a type of computing with the goal of discovering more accurate models of how the human brain/mind senses, reasons, and responds to stimuli. Socio-Cognitive Computing should be understood as a set of theoretical interdisciplinary frameworks, methodologies, methods and hardware/software tools to model how the human brain mediates social interactions. In addition, Affective Computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects, a fundamental aspect of socio-cognitive neuroscience. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer science, electrical engineering, psychology, and cognitive science. Physiological Computing is a category of technology in which electrophysiological data recorded directly from human activity are used to interface with a computing device. This technology becomes even more relevant when computing can be integrated pervasively in everyday life environments. Thus, Socio-Cognitive and Affective Computing systems should be able to adapt their behavior according to the Physiological Computing paradigm. This book integrates proposals from researchers who use signals from the brain and/or body to infer people's intentions and psychological state in smart computing systems. The design of this kind of systems combines knowledge and methods of ubiquitous and pervasive computing, as well as physiological data measurement and processing, with those of socio-cognitive and affective computing

A Review of Work Based Learning in Higher Education

The idea of work based learning in higher education might sound like a contradiction in terms. Work based learning is surely in the the workplace. The senses in which it might also, under certain conditions, be in higher education are explored in this review. There are increasing arrangements whereby people can obtain academic recognition for learning which has taken place outside of educational institutions. In addition to traditional forms of professional education and sandwich courses, one can add a host of relationships between employers and higher education institutions which involve quite fundamental questioning of the roles and responsibilities of each in the continuing education and training of adults. Such developments can be related to broader themes concerning the organisation of knowledge in society, the changing nature of work and career, the learning society and the implications they hold for individual workers, their employers and educational providers. The Department for Education and Employment sponsored the study to produce a substantial literature review of progress and issues raised in the field of work based learning in higher education. The first part of the book provides a contextual and conceptual backdrop against which more practical aspects of work based learning are then considered in part two. The final part considers strategic issues of implementation for higher education institutions, employers and individuals, before turning to more wide ranging issues of policy

Three stakeholders’ perceptions of effective practices in observing experienced teachers and peers in a UK initial teacher training course : degree of agreement, attitudes to an innovation in the course and changes to observation practices

This exploratory mixed methods study focuses on perceptions of three key stakeholder groups in a UK initial teacher training (ITT) course regarding how to observe experienced teachers and peers effectively to learn to teach. It set out to investigate perceived effective observation practices in the academic year 2012-2013 and utilised 40 semi-structured interviews of student teachers, university tutors and school mentors as its primary method and a questionnaire (n=89) and document analysis of the course handbook as its secondary ones. The adopted theoretical perspective for analysis included the social leaning theories of Legitimate Peripheral Participation and Communities of Practice. The research has identified many observation techniques, institutional requirements and personal qualities perceived to be conducive to producing effective observation practices in this course. The secondary questions investigated the degree of agreement among the participants’ perceptions, student teachers’ perceptions of the innovation of peer observation, changes in their observation practices during the course and future plans for changing their observations. The results revealed a high degree of agreement among the participants, positive attitude toward peer observation despite a slight preference for observing experienced teachers and few changes to their observation practices. This research attempts to contribute to the literature, which is lacking in the UK, regarding this topic and its findings should prove useful for identifying effective observation practices for future ITT courses