Third wave of measurement in the self-regulated learning field: when measurement and intervention come hand in hand

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research on 24/07/2015, available online:http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00313831.2015.1066436Measurement is a central issue for the self-regulated learning (SRL) field as SRL is a phenomenon difficult to measure in a reliable and valid way. Here, 3 waves in the history of SRL measurement are identified and profiled. Our focus lies on the third and newest one, which combines measurement and intervention within the same tools. The basis for this approach is located in the reactivity principle via students’ self-monitoring: when students are aware of their actions, they can react and change what is needed. That happens when the measurement tools promote students’ self-monitoring which turn part of the intervention then. Examples of this new approach to SRL measurement and guidelines for implementing it are presentedThe first author was funded via Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, programa Ramón y Cajal [RYC-2013-13469]. The first and third author were funded via the Finnish Academy, project name PROSPECTS (PI: Sanna Järvelä, [grant number: 24301274]

Aiding compliance governance in service-based business processes

Assessing whether a company's business practices conform to laws and regulations and follow standards and SLAs, i.e., compliance management, is a complex and costly task. Few software tools aiding compliance management exist; yet, they typically do not address the needs of who is actually in charge of assessing and understanding compliance. We advocate the use of a compliance governance dashboard and suitable root cause analysis techniques that are specifically tailored to the needs of compliance experts and auditors. The design and implementation of these instruments are challenging for at least three reasons: (1) it is fundamental to identify the right level of abstraction for the information to be shown; (2) it is not trivial to visualize different analysis perspectives; and (3) it is difficult to manage and analyze the large amount of involved concepts, instruments, and data. This chapter shows how to address these issues, which concepts and models underlie the problem, and, eventually, how IT can effectively support compliance analysis in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs). © 2012, IGI Global

Economic regulation for multi tenant infrastructures

Large scale computing infrastructures need scalable and effi cient resource allocation mechanisms to ful l the requirements of its participants and applications while the whole system is regulated to work e ciently. Computational markets provide e fficient allocation mechanisms that aggregate information from multiple sources in large, dynamic and complex systems where there is not a single source with complete information. They have been proven to be successful in matching resource demand and resource supply in the presence of sel sh multi-objective and utility-optimizing users and sel sh pro t-optimizing providers. However, global infrastructure metrics which may not directly affect participants of the computational market still need to be addressed -a.k.a. economic externalities like load balancing or energy-efficiency. In this thesis, we point out the need to address these economic externalities, and we design and evaluate appropriate regulation mechanisms from di erent perspectives on top of existing economic models, to incorporate a wider range of objective metrics not considered otherwise. Our main contributions in this thesis are threefold; fi rst, we propose a taxation mechanism that addresses the resource congestion problem e ffectively improving the balance of load among resources when correlated economic preferences are present; second, we propose a game theoretic model with complete information to derive an algorithm to aid resource providers to scale up and down resource supply so energy-related costs can be reduced; and third, we relax our previous assumptions about complete information on the resource provider side and design an incentive-compatible mechanism to encourage users to truthfully report their resource requirements effectively assisting providers to make energy-eff cient allocations while providing a dynamic allocation mechanism to users.Les infraestructures computacionals de gran escala necessiten mecanismes d’assignació de recursos escalables i eficients per complir amb els requisits computacionals de tots els seus participants, assegurant-se de que el sistema és regulat apropiadament per a que funcioni de manera efectiva. Els mercats computacionals són mecanismes d’assignació de recursos eficients que incorporen informació de diferents fonts considerant sistemes de gran escala, complexos i dinàmics on no existeix una única font que proveeixi informació completa de l'estat del sistema. Aquests mercats computacionals han demostrat ser exitosos per acomodar la demanda de recursos computacionals amb la seva oferta quan els seus participants son considerats estratègics des del punt de vist de teoria de jocs. Tot i això existeixen mètriques a nivell global sobre la infraestructura que no tenen per que influenciar els usuaris a priori de manera directa. Així doncs, aquestes externalitats econòmiques com poden ser el balanceig de càrrega o la eficiència energètica, conformen una línia d’investigació que cal explorar. En aquesta tesi, presentem i descrivim la problemàtica derivada d'aquestes externalitats econòmiques. Un cop establert el marc d’actuació, dissenyem i avaluem mecanismes de regulació apropiats basats en models econòmics existents per resoldre aquesta problemàtica des de diferents punts de vista per incorporar un ventall més ampli de mètriques objectiu que no havien estat considerades fins al moment. Les nostres contribucions principals tenen tres vessants: en primer lloc, proposem un mecanisme de regulació de tipus impositiu que tracta de mitigar l’aparició de recursos sobre-explotats que, efectivament, millora el balanceig de la càrrega de treball entre els recursos disponibles; en segon lloc, proposem un model teòric basat en teoria de jocs amb informació o completa que permet derivar un algorisme que facilita la tasca dels proveïdors de recursos per modi car a l'alça o a la baixa l'oferta de recursos per tal de reduir els costos relacionats amb el consum energètic; i en tercer lloc, relaxem la nostra assumpció prèvia sobre l’existència d’informació complerta per part del proveïdor de recursos i dissenyem un mecanisme basat en incentius per fomentar que els usuaris facin pública de manera verídica i explícita els seus requeriments computacionals, ajudant d'aquesta manera als proveïdors de recursos a fer assignacions eficients des del punt de vista energètic a la vegada que oferim un mecanisme l’assignació de recursos dinàmica als usuari

Managerialism and the neoliberal university: Prospects for new forms of "open management" in higher education

The restructuring of state education systems in many OECD countries during the last two decades has involved a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. The "new managerialism" has drawn theoretically, on the one hand, on the model of corporate managerialism and private sector management styles, and, on public choice theory and new institutional economics (NIE), most notably, agency theory and transaction cost analysis, on the other. A specific constellation of these theories is sometimes called "New Public Management," which has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These theories and models have been used both as the legitimation for policies that redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. Most importantly, there has been a decentralization of management control away from the center to the individual institution through a "new contractualism" - often referred to as the "doctrine of self-management" - coupled with new accountability and competitive funding regimes. This shift has often been accompanied by a disaggregation of large state bureaucracies into autonomous agencies, a clarification of organizational objectives, and a separation between policy advice and policy implementation functions, together with a privatization of service and support functions through "contracting out". The "new managerialism" has also involved a shift from input controls to quantifiable output measures and performance targets, along with an emphasis on short-term performance contracts, especially for CEOs and senior managers. In the interests of so-called "productive efficiency," the provision of educational serviceshas been made contestable; and, in the interests of so-called allocative efficiency state education has been progressively marketized and privatized. In this paper I analyze the main underlying elements of this theoretical development that led to the establishment of the neoliberal university in the 1980s and 1990s before entertaining and reviewing claims that new public management is dead. At the end of the paper I focus on proposals for new forms of "the public" in higher education as a means of promoting "radical openness" consonant with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and new research infrastructures in the global knowledge economy

A Visual Dashboard to Track Learning Analytics for Educational Cloud Computing

[EN] Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) stand out as useful platforms to teach distributed computing concepts as well as the development of Cloud-native scalable application architectures on real-world infrastructures. Instructors can benefit from high-level tools to track the progress of students during their learning paths on the Cloud, and this information can be disclosed via educational dashboards for students to understand their progress through the practical activities. To this aim, this paper introduces CloudTrail-Tracker, an open-source platform to obtain enhanced usage analytics from a shared AWS account. The tool provides the instructor with a visual dashboard that depicts the aggregated usage of resources by all the students during a certain time frame and the specific use of AWS for a specific student. To facilitate self-regulation of students, the dashboard also depicts the percentage of progress for each lab session and the pending actions by the student. The dashboard has been integrated in four Cloud subjects that use different learning methodologies (from face-to-face to online learning) and the students positively highlight the usefulness of the tool for Cloud instruction in AWS. This automated procurement of evidences of student activity on the Cloud results in close to real-time learning analytics useful both for semi-automated assessment and student self-awareness of their own training progress.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad, grant number TIN2016-79951-R (BigCLOE) and by the Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditacion of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) to develop the PIME B29.Naranjo, DM.; Prieto, JR.; Moltó, G.; Calatrava Arroyo, A. (2019). A Visual Dashboard to Track Learning Analytics for Educational Cloud Computing. Sensors. 19(13):1-15. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19132952S1151913Porter, W. W., Graham, C. R., Spring, K. A., & Welch, K. R. (2014). Blended learning in higher education: Institutional adoption and implementation. Computers & Education, 75, 185-195. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2014.02.011Thai, N. T. T., De Wever, B., & Valcke, M. (2017). The impact of a flipped classroom design on learning performance in higher education: Looking for the best «blend» of lectures and guiding questions with feedback. Computers & Education, 107, 113-126. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2017.01.003Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Kinshuk, & Chen, N.-S. (2014). Is FLIP enough? Or should we use the FLIPPED model instead? Computers & Education, 79, 16-27. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2014.07.004Baepler, P., Walker, J. D., & Driessen, M. (2014). It’s not about seat time: Blending, flipping, and efficiency in active learning classrooms. Computers & Education, 78, 227-236. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2014.06.006Molto, G., & Caballer, M. (2014). On using the cloud to support online courses. 2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings. doi:10.1109/fie.2014.7044041González-Martínez, J. A., Bote-Lorenzo, M. L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., & Cano-Parra, R. (2015). Cloud computing and education: A state-of-the-art survey. Computers & Education, 80, 132-151. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2014.08.017AWS Cloudtrailhttps://aws.amazon.com/cloudtrail/?nc1=h_lsFerguson, R. (2012). Learning analytics: drivers, developments and challenges. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(5/6), 304. doi:10.1504/ijtel.2012.051816Schwendimann, B. A., Rodriguez-Triana, M. J., Vozniuk, A., Prieto, L. P., Boroujeni, M. S., Holzer, A., … Dillenbourg, P. (2017). Perceiving Learning at a Glance: A Systematic Literature Review of Learning Dashboard Research. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 10(1), 30-41. doi:10.1109/tlt.2016.2599522Sedrakyan, G., Malmberg, J., Verbert, K., Järvelä, S., & Kirschner, P. A. (2020). Linking learning behavior analytics and learning science concepts: Designing a learning analytics dashboard for feedback to support learning regulation. Computers in Human Behavior, 107, 105512. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.004Tabaa, Y., & Medouri, A. (2013). LASyM: A Learning Analytics System for MOOCs. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 4(5). doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2013.040516Verbert, K., Govaerts, S., Duval, E., Santos, J. L., Van Assche, F., Parra, G., & Klerkx, J. (2013). Learning dashboards: an overview and future research opportunities. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. doi:10.1007/s00779-013-0751-2Arnold, K. E., & Pistilli, M. D. (2012). Course signals at Purdue. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge - LAK ’12. doi:10.1145/2330601.2330666Ali, L., Hatala, M., Gašević, D., & Jovanović, J. (2012). A qualitative evaluation of evolution of a learning analytics tool. Computers & Education, 58(1), 470-489. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.08.030Leony, D., Pardo, A., de la Fuente Valentín, L., de Castro, D. S., & Kloos, C. D. (2012). GLASS. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge - LAK ’12. doi:10.1145/2330601.2330642Vieira, C., Parsons, P., & Byrd, V. (2018). Visual learning analytics of educational data: A systematic literature review and research agenda. Computers & Education, 122, 119-135. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2018.03.018Jivet, I., Scheffel, M., Specht, M., & Drachsler, H. (2018). License to evaluate. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge. doi:10.1145/3170358.3170421Amazon CloudWatchhttps://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/?nc1=h_lsSpectrumhttps://spectrumapp.io/Opsview Monitorhttps://www.opsview.com/SignalFxhttps://signalfx.com/AWS Cloud Monitoringhttps://www.solarwinds.com/topics/aws-monitoringLonn, S., Aguilar, S. J., & Teasley, S. D. (2015). Investigating student motivation in the context of a learning analytics intervention during a summer bridge program. Computers in Human Behavior, 47, 90-97. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.07.013Pintrich, P. R. (2004). A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 385-407. doi:10.1007/s10648-004-0006-xButler, D. L., & Winne, P. H. (1995). Feedback and Self-Regulated Learning: A Theoretical Synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 65(3), 245-281. doi:10.3102/00346543065003245Knight, S., Buckingham Shum, S., & Littleton, K. (2014). Epistemology, Assessment, Pedagogy: Where Learning Meets Analytics in the Middle Space. Journal of Learning Analytics, 1(2). doi:10.18608/jla.2014.12.3Jivet, I., Scheffel, M., Drachsler, H., & Specht, M. (2017). Awareness Is Not Enough: Pitfalls of Learning Analytics Dashboards in the Educational Practice. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 82-96. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66610-5_

Security and health: Biopolitical health surveillance in China’s digital response to COVID-19

Why is health a security issue now? An emerging paradigm that links epidemics and security concerns has influenced how we think about health and the preparedness of health surveillance. As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world with its tremendous threats to public health and societies, innovative digital health surveillance technologies have been (and continue to be) developed for pandemic surveillance. With a special focus on China’s Health Code system and its implementation in Wuhan since the Wuhan lockdown, this thesis aims to examine the surveillance dynamics of such technological artefacts. In doing so, this thesis applies institutional ethnography (IE) to illustrate how the ruling relations embedded in such assemblages coordinate and organize citizens’ everyday lives. The primary findings of this thesis suggest that Health Code as a health security practice is a flexible and dynamic surveillance assemblage embedded with political classifications and decisions to define and mediate risk in everyday settings, located in a larger network of power relations. The insecurities and anxieties brought by the normalized use of Health Code exacerbate the fear of being classified as sick, as the threat of illness leads people to embrace the current situation and cooperate with the existing surveillance system through the rationalization of collective norms and the valorization and stabilization of data-driven knowledge

MAPPA. Methodologies applied to archaeological potential Predictivity

The fruitful cooperation over the years between the university teaching staff of Univerità di Pisa (Pisa University), the officials of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana (Superintendency for Archaeological Heritage of Tuscany), the officials of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici, Paesaggistici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici per le Province di Pisa e Livorno (Superintendency for Architectural, Landscape and Ethno-anthropological Heritage for the Provinces of Pisa and Livorno), and the Comune di Pisa (Municipality of Pisa) has favoured a great deal of research on issues regarding archaeological heritage and the reconstruction of the environmental and landscape context in which Pisa has evolved throughout the centuries of its history. The desire to merge this remarkable know-how into an organic framework and, above all, to make it easily accessible, not only to the scientific community and professional categories involved, but to everyone, together with the wish to provide Pisa with a Map of archaeological potential (the research, protection and urban planning tool capable of converging the heritage protection needs of the remains of the past with the development requirements of the future) led to the development of the MAPPA project – Methodologies applied to archaeological potential predictivity - funded by Regione Toscana in 2010. The two-year project started on 1 July 2011 and will end on 30 June 2013. The first year of research was dedicated to achieving the first objective, that is, to retrieving the results of archaeological investigations from the archives of Superintendencies and University and from the pages of scientific publications, and to making them easily accessible; these results have often never been published or have often been published incompletely and very slowly. For this reason, a webGIS (“MappaGIS” that may freely accessed at http://mappaproject.arch.unipi.it/?page_id=452) was created and will be followed by a MOD (Mappa Open Data archaeological archive), the first Italian archive of open archaeological data, in line with European directives regarding access to Public Administration data and recently implemented by the Italian government also (the beta version of the archive can be viewed at http://mappaproject.arch.unipi.it/?page_id=454). Details are given in this first volume about the operational decisions that led to the creation of the webGIS: the software used, the system architecture, the organisation of information and its structuring into various information layers. But not only. The creation of the webGIS also gave us the opportunity to focus on a series of considerations alongside the work carried out by the MAPPA Laboratory researchers. We took the decision to publish these considerations with a view to promoting debate within the scientific community and, more in general, within the professional categories involved (e.g. public administrators, university researchers, archaeology professionals). This allowed us to overcome the critical aspects that emerged, such as the need to update the archaeological excavation documentation and data archiving systems in order to adjust them to the new standards provided by IT development; most of all, the need for greater and more rapid spreading of information, without which research cannot truly progress. Indeed, it is by comparing and connecting new data in every possible and, at times, unexpected way that research can truly thrive

Visual attention deficits in schizophrenia can arise from inhibitory dysfunction in thalamus or cortex

Schizophrenia is associated with diverse cognitive deficits, including disorders of attention-related oculomotor behavior. At the structural level, schizophrenia is associated with abnormal inhibitory control in the circuit linking cortex and thalamus. We developed a spiking neural network model that demonstrates how dysfunctional inhibition can degrade attentive gaze control. Our model revealed that perturbations of two functionally distinct classes of cortical inhibitory neurons, or of the inhibitory thalamic reticular nucleus, disrupted processing vital for sustained attention to a stimulus, leading to distractibility. Because perturbation at each circuit node led to comparable but qualitatively distinct disruptions in attentive tracking or fixation, our findings support the search for new eye movement metrics that may index distinct underlying neural defects. Moreover, because the cortico-thalamic circuit is a common motif across sensory, association, and motor systems, the model and extensions can be broadly applied to study normal function and the neural bases of other cognitive deficits in schizophrenia.R01 MH057414 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 MH101209 - NIMH NIH HHS; R01 NS024760 - NINDS NIH HHSPublished versio