Educational Technology as Seen Through the Eyes of the Readers

In this paper, I present the evaluation of a novel knowledge domain visualization of educational technology. The interactive visualization is based on readership patterns in the online reference management system Mendeley. It comprises of 13 topic areas, spanning psychological, pedagogical, and methodological foundations, learning methods and technologies, and social and technological developments. The visualization was evaluated with (1) a qualitative comparison to knowledge domain visualizations based on citations, and (2) expert interviews. The results show that the co-readership visualization is a recent representation of pedagogical and psychological research in educational technology. Furthermore, the co-readership analysis covers more areas than comparable visualizations based on co-citation patterns. Areas related to computer science, however, are missing from the co-readership visualization and more research is needed to explore the interpretations of size and placement of research areas on the map.Comment: Forthcoming article in the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learnin

Online Store Locator: An Essential Resource for Retailers in the 21st Century

Most retailers use their websites and social media to increase their visibility, while potential customers get information about these retailers using the Internet on electronic devices. Many papers have previously studied online marketing strategies used by retailers, but little attention has been paid to determine how these companies provide information through the Internet about the location and characteristics of their stores. This paper aims to obtain evidence about the inclusion of interactive web maps on retailers’ websites to provide information about the location of their stores. With this purpose, the store locator interactive tools of specialty retailers’ websites included in the report “Global Powers of Retailing 2015” are studied in detail using different procedures, such as frequency analysis and word clouds. From the results obtained, it was concluded that most of these firms use interactive maps to provide information about their offline stores, but today some of them still use non-interactive (static) maps or text format to present this information. Moreover, some differences were observed among the search filters used in the store locator services, according to the retailer’s specialty. These results provided insight into the important role of online store locator tools on retailers’ websites

Intellectual Capital Architectures and Bilateral Learning: A Framework For Human Resource Management

Both researchers and managers are increasingly interested in how firms can pursue bilateral learning; that is, simultaneously exploring new knowledge domains while exploiting current ones (cf., March, 1991). To address this issue, this paper introduces a framework of intellectual capital architectures that combine unique configurations of human, social, and organizational capital. These architectures support bilateral learning by helping to create supplementary alignment between human and social capital as well as complementary alignment between people-embodied knowledge (human and social capital) and organization-embodied knowledge (organizational capital). In order to establish the context for bilateral learning, the framework also identifies unique sets of HR practices that may influence the combinations of human, social, and organizational capital

Dirichlet belief networks for topic structure learning

Recently, considerable research effort has been devoted to developing deep architectures for topic models to learn topic structures. Although several deep models have been proposed to learn better topic proportions of documents, how to leverage the benefits of deep structures for learning word distributions of topics has not yet been rigorously studied. Here we propose a new multi-layer generative process on word distributions of topics, where each layer consists of a set of topics and each topic is drawn from a mixture of the topics of the layer above. As the topics in all layers can be directly interpreted by words, the proposed model is able to discover interpretable topic hierarchies. As a self-contained module, our model can be flexibly adapted to different kinds of topic models to improve their modelling accuracy and interpretability. Extensive experiments on text corpora demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model.Comment: accepted in NIPS 201

Beyond Gazing, Pointing, and Reaching: A Survey of Developmental Robotics

Developmental robotics is an emerging field located at the intersection of developmental psychology and robotics, that has lately attracted quite some attention. This paper gives a survey of a variety of research projects dealing with or inspired by developmental issues, and outlines possible future directions

Building new modes of teacher education: research analyses for the Teacher in Education in Sub Saharan Africa programme

The provision of basic education for all children by 2015 is now one of the world’s major educational objectives. Through UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) commitments and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) national and international attention has been focussed on measures to achieve this end. There has been some progress. The number of school age children with no access to schooling is dropping (from x to y in the period 1999–2005?). There is, however, some way to go in terms of the basic provision and the gender parity that the MDGs seek to achieve. Most significantly attention has now turned to the challenge of providing sufficient teachers of the appropriate quality to staff such rapid expansion. The focus of enquiry of this proposed keynote symposium is the ways in which different forms of research are contributing to: • analyses of factors impacting on teacher supply and retention; • developing conceptual understanding of the ‘life’ experiences of teachers working in challenging circumstances, with a special emphasis on female teachers in rural communities; • evidence about the nature and effectiveness of new modes of education and training. The symposium papers will explore the different research and investigative methodologies being drawn on and the different forms of international co-operation and collaboration being used. The papers will explore the issues of teacher supply, retention and education through educational and development studies, theories of change and intervention. A key issue the symposium will address is the need to bring together theoretically and through research practice the related separate specialist domains of education and development enquiry. In doing this the papers will provide a new patterning or mapping of the literature. The five papers draw particularly on the work of UNESCO, including the widely respected annual monitoring reports evaluation the progress to EFA and the new Teacher Training in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) initiative (see tessaprogramme.org). One of the papers will look at the research around teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa by reference to developing country contexts in other parts of the world. It has been argued that the challenge to provide schooling and teachers for the children of Sub-Saharan Africa represents the world’s biggest educational challenge (Moon, 2007). In identifying key research findings, for example significant variables impacting on teacher supply and retention, the relationship between teacher quality and pupil achievement and comparative evidence on the effectiveness of different modes of education and training, the symposium will point to the ways in which researchers in the field of education and the research community generally can contribute to increasing capacity in this enormously important area

Launching the Grand Challenges for Ocean Conservation

The ten most pressing Grand Challenges in Oceans Conservation were identified at the Oceans Big Think and described in a detailed working document:A Blue Revolution for Oceans: Reengineering Aquaculture for SustainabilityEnding and Recovering from Marine DebrisTransparency and Traceability from Sea to Shore:  Ending OverfishingProtecting Critical Ocean Habitats: New Tools for Marine ProtectionEngineering Ecological Resilience in Near Shore and Coastal AreasReducing the Ecological Footprint of Fishing through Smarter GearArresting the Alien Invasion: Combating Invasive SpeciesCombatting the Effects of Ocean AcidificationEnding Marine Wildlife TraffickingReviving Dead Zones: Combating Ocean Deoxygenation and Nutrient Runof

Reflecting on the technical development of the Mapping Sculpture project

This paper explains, evaluates and reflects on the technical challenges and opportunities that underpin both the Mapping Sculpture project and its mobile interface. It provides insights into the development process as an integral component of the research methodology, and highlights the importance of meaningful collaboration between researchers and software developers. Just as the project questions the conventional notion of the lone sculpture practitioner, so the technical development needed to mirror the complex web of connections between people, places, objects, organizations and events through enabling large-scale, distributed and collaborative research. Enabling access to these rich resources on mobile devices was a further innovative and challenging development, but one that opens up the possibility for fresh modes of access and development of new audiences. The success of this technical development offers a model for representing complex relationships hidden in multiple sources, enabling innovative research and enhancing access

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation