Exploiting popular culture : exploring pedagogical and motivational approaches for design and technology education

This paper describes a case study of pedagogical developments carried out with teachers and secondary school students in response to new curriculum content in Product Design courses presented in Scottish secondary schools. The pedagogy attempts to challenge the anti-commercial manufacturing attitude that prevails among teachers and students and is based on motivational principles. It makes explicit use of the language and tools of popular media culture, specifically 'ask the audience' interaction and investigative forensic science. An electronic voting system is incorporated as an introduction to detailed product evaluation and technical analysis collaborative activities. It examines the educational potential of such ICT systems to help students explore emotional response, product semantics and value judgements and make connections to commercial manufacturing detail design

An Answer Explanation Model for Probabilistic Database Queries

Following the availability of huge amounts of uncertain data, coming from diverse ranges of applications such as sensors, machine learning or mining approaches, information extraction and integration, etc. in recent years, we have seen a revival of interests in probabilistic databases. Queries over these databases result in probabilistic answers. As the process of arriving at these answers is based on the underlying stored uncertain data, we argue that from the standpoint of an end user, it is helpful for such a system to give an explanation on how it arrives at an answer and on which uncertainty assumptions the derived answer is based. In this way, the user with his/her own knowledge can decide how much confidence to place in this probabilistic answer. \ud The aim of this paper is to design such an answer explanation model for probabilistic database queries. We report our design principles and show the methods to compute the answer explanations. One of the main contributions of our model is that it fills the gap between giving only the answer probability, and giving the full derivation. Furthermore, we show how to balance verifiability and influence of explanation components through the concept of verifiable views. The behavior of the model and its computational efficiency are demonstrated through an extensive performance study

Mode effect or question wording? Measurement error in mixed mode surveys.

[Dataset available: http://hdl.handle.net/10411/17672]

Andrew Carnegie, World Making and the Logic of Contemporary Entrepreneurial Philanthropy

This paper focuses on the relationship between the business and philanthropic endeavours of world-making entrepreneurs; asking why, how and to what ends these individuals seek to extend their reach in society beyond business. We present an original model of entrepreneurial philanthropy which demonstrates how investment in philanthropic projects can yield positive returns in cultural, social and symbolic capital, which in turn may lead to growth in economic capital. The interpretive power of the model is demonstrated through analysis of the career of Andrew Carnegie, whose story, far from reducing to one of earning a fortune then giving it away, is revealed as more complex and more unified. His philanthropy raised his stock within the field of power, extending his influence and helping convert surplus funds into social networks, high social standing and intellectual currency, enabling him to engage in world making on a grand scale