An automatic marker for vector graphics drawing tasks

In recent years, the SVG file format has grown increasingly popular, largely due to its widespread adoption as the standard image format for vector graphics on the World Wide Web. However, vector graphics predate the modern Web, having served an important role in graphic and computer-aided design for decades prior to SVG's adoption as a web standard. Vector graphics are just as - if not more - relevant than ever today. As a result, training in vector graphics software, particularly in graphic and other creative design fields, forms an important part of the skills development necessary to enter the industry. This study explored the feasibility of a web application that can automatically mark/assess drawing tasks completed in popular vector graphics editors such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and Inkscape. This prototype has been developed using a collection of front-end and back-end web technologies, requiring that users need only a standards-compliant, modern web browser to submit tasks for assessment. Testing was carried out to assess how the application handled SVG markup produced by different users and vector graphics drawing software; and whether the assessment/scoring of submitted tasks was inline with that of a human marker. While some refinement is required, the application assessed six different tasks, submitted eleven times over by as many individuals, and for the greater part was successful in reporting scores in line with that of the researcher. As a prototype, serving as a proof of concept, the project proved the automatic marker a feasible concept. Exactly how marks should be assigned, for which criteria, and how much instruction should be provided are aspects for further study; along with support for curved path segments, and automatic task generation

Statistical methods for building better biomarkers of chronic kidney disease

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149268/1/sim8091.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149268/2/sim8091_am.pd

FROM THE CAMERA OBSCURA TO (DIGITAL) CAMERA: HISTORY, MEMORY AND SUBJECTIVITY IN CHRIS MARKER’S SUNLESS AND DAVID ALBAHARI’S BAIT

This thesis examines formal aesthetic elements and political premises and implications in works by the Serbian-Canadian author David Albahari and French writer, photographer and filmmaker Chris Marker by establishing the visual metaphor of the camera as an instrument and theory of history, memory and subjectivity. I argue that the position of self-imposed exile and the travelling cinematography of the narrative point of view invite both camera obscura contemplation and a photographic/filmic mode of spectatorship. Albeit in different art forms, Marker’s experimental documentary film Sunless and Albahari’s novel Bait both function as meditations on personal and global experiences and history. Their aim is to filter traumatic memories, trying to (re)constitute a new subjectivity and a new historical horizo

The acquisition of ergative languages

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling.1990.28.6.1291.Ergative languages have challenged the ingenuity of linguists for more than a century. This article explores learnability problems associated with the acquisition of ergative languages. Traditionally, an ergative language is one which treats the subjects of intransitive verbs in the same way as the objects of transitive verbs. Languages may have rules which operate on a morphologically or syntactically ergative basis, but all languages are syntactically accusative to some extent. Both types of ergativity raise problems for language-acquisition theory. Children acquiring ergative morphologies must learn to distinguish between the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs. Acquisition data suggest that children acquire ergative and accusative morphological systems equally easily. This finding supports a distributional learning procedure. Learnability considerations rule out the existence of syntactically ergative languages in the sense of Marantzs (1984) ergativity hypothesis. Unambiguous evidence of syntactic ergativity only appears in complex sentences; thus, children cannot use data within simple, active sentences to establish whether or not their language is syntactically ergative. Children acquiring languages with ergative syntactic constructions must learn when the direct object of a transitive verb functions as a syntactic pivot. Acquisition data for ergative syntactic constructions in K'iche' and Kaluli suggest that children initially fail to recognize ergative constraints on syntactic rules. This finding supports semantic bootstrapping as an acquisition mechanism for the initial construction of syntactic structure

M49-- Machine for the Living : a performance broadcast through an interfering FM radio transmission

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-71).The focus of the M49: Machine For The Living project is a performance work that considers the omnipresence of layered communications, which extend, yet supersede corporeal space of the individual. M49 creates a framework to reveal the convergence of immaterial communication with the built environment through an interfering radio transmission. The performance elucidates conceptual boundaries revealed in the breakdown of a system. The project investigates effects of the sub-visible ambiance that overlaps and engulfs structures of urban inhabitation. "What appears in the cathedral of radio noise is an image of the individual as a machine making meaning in a feedback loop between human and alien forces. Without any point of reference or authority, the individual must decode the ether daily, or at least what is transmitted through the so-called ether for human ends. Daily, we work at separating meaning out from the multi-dimensional ether-sphere with its uncanny plenitude of signals that surround us, while the actual electromagnetic lattices beyond our inelegant organic makeup spin a deeper mystery." Joe Milutis, Ether.by Maximilian M. Goldfarb.S.M

A metacognitive feedback scaffolding system for pedagogical apprenticeship

This thesis addresses the issue of how to help staff in Universities learn to give feedback with the main focus on helping teaching assistants (TAs) learn to give feedback while marking programming assignments. The result is an innovative approach which has been implemented in a novel computer support system called McFeSPA. The design of McFeSPA is based on an extensive review of the research literature on feedback. McFeSPA has been developed based on relevant work in educational psychology and Artificial Intelligence in EDucation (AIED) e.g. scaffolding the learner, ideas about andragogy, feedback patterns, research into the nature and quality of feedback and cognitive apprenticeship. McFeSPA draws on work on feedback patterns that have been proposed within the Pedagogical Patterns Project (PPP) to provide guidance on structuring the feedback report given to the student by the TA. The design also draws on the notion of andragogy to support the TA. McFeSPA is the first Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) that supports adults learning to help students by giving quality feedback. The approach taken is more than a synthesis of these key ideas: the scaffolding framework has been implemented both for the domain of programming and the feedback domain itself; the programming domain has been structured for training TAs to give better feedback and as a framework for the analysis of students’ performance. The construction of feedback was validated by a small group of TAs. The TAs employed McFeSPA in a realistic situation that was supported by McFeSPA which uses scaffolding to support the TA and then fade. The approach to helping TAs become better feedback givers, which is instantiated in McFeSPA, has been validated through an experimental study with a small group of TAs using a triangulation approach. We found that our participants learned differently by using McFeSPA. The evaluation indicates that 1) providing content scaffolding (i.e. detailed feedback about the content using contingent hints) in McFeSPA can help almost all TAs increase their knowledge/understanding of the issues of learning to give feedback; 2) providing metacognitive scaffolding (i.e. each level of detailed feedback in contingent hint, this can also be general pop-up messages in using the system apart from feedback that encourage the participants to give good feedback) in McFeSPA helped all TAs reflect on/rethink their skills in giving feedback; and 3) when the TAs obtained knowledge about giving quality feedback, providing adaptable fading of TAs using McFeSPA allowed the TAs to learn alone without any support

Collaborative annotation on the Web

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72).More and more, web users are moving from simply consuming content on the web to creating it as well, in the form of discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, and other collaborative and conversational media. Despite this, the web remains largely read-only; web designers create sites that are designed to be consumed by the public, much like other, traditional mass media. In this thesis, I explore free, shared annotation as a means of making the web more writable. In doing so, I hope to empower readers to engage more deeply with web content by actively participating in its production, and to have a voice on equal footing with those of the media producers whose content they consume. This thesis details the design and evaluation of Webbed Footnotes, a system for publicly annotating web documents. Though it is not the first such system, its design is novel in that it is sensitive to the needs of both the would-be annotators and the owners of the websites being annotated. In particular, annotators would like their additions to be highly visible, yet website owners demand that their sites be presented in the manner they intended. Webbed Footnotes attempts to fulfill both of these conditions by making annotations highly visible, yet ensuring that the underlying documents remain legible.(cont.) If Webbed Footnotes can partially solve the tension between annotators and authors, then public, shared annotation on the web may have a chance for widespread success, leading to savvier and more engaged readers.by Scott Andrew Golder.S.M