136,368 research outputs found
Resilience markers for safer systems and organisations
If computer systems are to be designed to foster resilient
performance it is important to be able to identify contributors to resilience. The
emerging practice of Resilience Engineering has identified that people are still a
primary source of resilience, and that the design of distributed systems should
provide ways of helping people and organisations to cope with complexity.
Although resilience has been identified as a desired property, researchers and
practitioners do not have a clear understanding of what manifestations of
resilience look like. This paper discusses some examples of strategies that
people can adopt that improve the resilience of a system. Critically, analysis
reveals that the generation of these strategies is only possible if the system
facilitates them. As an example, this paper discusses practices, such as
reflection, that are known to encourage resilient behavior in people. Reflection
allows systems to better prepare for oncoming demands. We show that
contributors to the practice of reflection manifest themselves at different levels
of abstraction: from individual strategies to practices in, for example, control
room environments. The analysis of interaction at these levels enables resilient
properties of a system to be âseenâ, so that systems can be designed to explicitly
support them. We then present an analysis of resilience at an organisational
level within the nuclear domain. This highlights some of the challenges facing
the Resilience Engineering approach and the need for using a collective
language to articulate knowledge of resilient practices across domains
Teaching, learning and technology: An e-route to deep learning?
This is the author's pdf version of an article published in Research into Education.This paper details a research project that considered the extent to which e-learning is congruent with the notion of inculcating and maintaining deep approaches to learning within HE. Also, to explore what actions may be taken to engender and or maintain a deep approach when using e-learning as the central androgogy as knowing what (is possible) and how (it may be achieved) provides a fuller picture. Whilst this paper is designed to help inform practice and professional judgement it is not purporting to provide absolute answers. Whilst I have attempted to provide an honest account of my findings, truth and reality are social constructions (Pring 2000). The research was based upon methodical triangulation and involved thirty-eight undergraduate students who are undertaking study through e-learning and five academic members of staff who utilise e-learning in their programmes. As such, the project was small scale and how much may be inferred as applicable to other groups and other contexts may be contested, as those sampled for this research have their own unique paradigms and perceptions. Finally, it is always worth remembering that effective teaching and learning is contextual (Pring 2000). The research revealed that deep approaches to learning are situational (Biggs 2003) and e-learning can authentically lead to a student adopting and maintaining a deep approach. There are several factors that increase the likelihood of a student adopting this desired approach. These include; where students perceive the programme to be of high quality (Parker 2004), they have feelings of competence and confidence in their ability to study and interact with the technology and others. In addition, students require appropriate, reliable access to technology, associated systems and individualised planned support (Salmon 2004). Further to this deep approaches are more likely to be adopted where programmes are built on a constructivist androgogy, constructive alignment is achieved, interaction at several levels and a steady or systematic style of learning are encouraged (Hwang and Wang 2004). Critically study programmes should have authentic assessment in which deep approaches are intrinsic to their completion. To effectively support students in achieving a deep approach to learning, when employing e-learning, staff require knowledge and skill in three areas: teaching and learning, technology, and subject content (Good 2001). They also require support from leaders at cultural, strategic and structural levels (Elloumi 2004)
Performance Dynamics and Termination Errors in Reinforcement Learning: A Unifying Perspective
In reinforcement learning, a decision needs to be made at some point as to
whether it is worthwhile to carry on with the learning process or to terminate
it. In many such situations, stochastic elements are often present which govern
the occurrence of rewards, with the sequential occurrences of positive rewards
randomly interleaved with negative rewards. For most practical learners, the
learning is considered useful if the number of positive rewards always exceeds
the negative ones. A situation that often calls for learning termination is
when the number of negative rewards exceeds the number of positive rewards.
However, while this seems reasonable, the error of premature termination,
whereby termination is enacted along with the conclusion of learning failure
despite the positive rewards eventually far outnumber the negative ones, can be
significant. In this paper, using combinatorial analysis we study the error
probability in wrongly terminating a reinforcement learning activity which
undermines the effectiveness of an optimal policy, and we show that the
resultant error can be quite high. Whilst we demonstrate mathematically that
such errors can never be eliminated, we propose some practical mechanisms that
can effectively reduce such errors. Simulation experiments have been carried
out, the results of which are in close agreement with our theoretical findings.Comment: Short Paper in AIKE 201
Understanding quality in inclusive research: a process of dialogue
The case for research by and with (rather than on) people with learning disabilities has been successfully made. Calls for emancipatory research have drawn attention to the ways that research owned by disabled people can better tackle social oppression. For learning disabled people moves towards a productive rather than passive role in research have largely retained some involvement of non-disabled people. This paper reports on a study in England which brought together learning disabled researchers leading their own research, learning disabled and non-disabled researchers working in collaborative research partnerships, and academic researchers using participatory design or methods. We adopted Walmsely and Johnsonâs (2003) concept of inclusive research to recognise the overlaps between emancipatory and participatory research and the need for research that matters to the people involved, represents their views, involves them in the research process, treats them with respect, and may improve their lives. The intention was to work together in a series of focus group discussions to take stock of what we had learned about doing inclusive research and to answer Walmsley and Johnsonâs call to âgrapple honestlyâ with the challenges. This is necessary if quality in inclusive research is to be understood. In the paper I reflect on the research process and the resulting model of ways of researching together and guidance in the form of questions to ask ourselves: when judging the quality of inclusive research; when negotiating how to work together in inclusive research; and when using the case study materials the project generated
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Development of an undergraduate multidisciplinary engineering project
During their time at university it is necessary for undergraduate engineering students to develop not just technical skills related to their chosen engineering subject, but to also develop team working, time management, self organisation and decision making skills that will enable them to work effectively as engineers in the real world after graduation. These important transferable skills are highly sought after by industry and any chance to identify where such skills have been successfully used during an undergraduate degree course is a valuable addition to a studentâs CV when subsequently entering the job market. To address the need of developing transferable skills, the School of Engineering and Design Multidisciplinary Project (MDP) was introduced in 2007 to provide first year undergraduate students with an opportunity to work together in multidisciplinary teams on a design and construction project. Each team is comprised of students from across the range of subject areas within the School and tasked with designing and building a robotic vehicle to tackle an obstacle course. The basis for the kits provided to each team are Lego Mindstorms robots for a majority of groups while the remaining groups are provided with a Parallax Basic STAMP 2 chip and a micro-controller chip to design their vehicle around. Figure 1 shows a selection of the 50 completed project builds from the 2009 MDP, showing the wide array of designs produced by the students. This paper describes the main aims of the MDP and gives an overview of how it has developed over the last three years to become a key part of the engineering undergraduate programme at Brunel University
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