Student communities of practice: what virtual models can engage and address the needs of a diverse student environment

A report commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC 2008) found that the two most regular activities undertaken by students are, firstly, use of university systems which support their learning and, secondly, accessing social networking sites. Kirremuir ‘s (2008) EduServ Foundation study highlights the increasing number of UK universities which have a presence in the virtual world Second Life. University Systems are aware of student engagement with their own in-house technologies, such as virtual learning environments (VLEs), but knowledge of student engagement with social networking and virtual worlds is often derived from anecdotal evidence. This paper seeks to redress this by trying to increase understanding of three technological models for enhancing learning and student engagement: “established” technologies, e.g., VLEs; “populist” technologies, e.g., Facebook; and “emerging” technologies such as Second Life. This paper takes as its premise the notion that universities should strive to design peer support systems for students to engage in, and focuses its investigation on the potential use of virtual communities of practice (CoPs) to support peer-based student interactions. Evidence to substantiate this premise is derived from the literature which has explored areas of student diversity such as students from lower-income families, older students, first-generation students and international students. The work of Harvey et al. (2006) indicates that students from lower-income families have less peer support to draw on and suggests that there is some correlation between socio-economic groups, first-year grades and probability of withdrawing from study (especially where family problems intervene). Farmer et al (2008) found that older students perceived peer support as less supportive, with similar findings found for first-generation students – an alternative measure of socio-economic status. The study also found that international students experienced difficulty integrating into the university community. These studies, taken in conjunction with the findings of Eggens et al. (2007) that personal networks affect student attainment and Farmer et al. (2008) that academic marks achieved correlate positively both with degree of satisfaction and of supportive peer activity, provide evidence that substantiates the premise of this paper; in addition it endorses Smith and Bath’s (2006) suggestion that, since peer interactions (including social interactions) are essential determinants of graduate outcome, the notion of a learning community or a CoP should be reinforced within any innovations for supporting student learning. This suggestion prompted this investigation of the potential use of virtual CoPs to support peer-based student interactions. The approach taken includes a consideration of the relevant literature combined with analysis of primary data designed to gain more definitive evidence of student activity in different technological domains. In the light of this evidence, the advantages and disadvantages of the three virtual models in respect of supporting peer based student interactions within a CoP are considered

Science 3.0: Corrections to the Science 2.0 paradigm

The concept of Science 2.0 was introduced almost a decade ago to describe the new generation of online-based tools for researchers allowing easier data sharing, collaboration and publishing. Although technically sound, the concept still does not work as expected. Here we provide a systematic line of arguments to modify the concept of Science 2.0, making it more consistent with the spirit and traditions of science and Internet. Our first correction to the Science 2.0 paradigm concerns the open-access publication models charging fees to the authors. As discussed elsewhere, we show that the monopoly of such publishing models increases biases and inequalities in the representation of scientific ideas based on the author's income. Our second correction concerns post-publication comments online, which are all essentially non-anonymous in the current Science 2.0 paradigm. We conclude that scientific post-publication discussions require special anonymization systems. We further analyze the reasons of the failure of the current post-publication peer-review models and suggest what needs to be changed in Science 3.0 to convert Internet into a large journal club.Comment: 7 figure

Trustworthiness Management in the Internet of Things

The future Internet of Things (IoT) will be characterized by an increasing number of object-to-object interactions for the implementation of distributed applications running in smart environments. Object cooperation allows us to develop complex applications in which each node contributes one or more services. The Social IoT (SIoT) is one of the possible paradigms that is proposed to make the objects’ interactions easier by facilitating the search for services and the management of objects’ trustworthiness. In that scenario, in which the information moves from a provider to a requester node in a peer-to-peer network, Trust Management Systems (TMSs) have been developed to prevent the manipulation of data by unauthorized entities and guarantee the detection of malicious behaviour. The cornerstone of any TMS is the ability to generate a coherent evaluation of the information received. The community concentrates effort on designing complex trust techniques to increase their effectiveness; however, strong assumptions still need to be considered. First, nodes could provide the wrong services due to malicious behaviours or malfunctions and insufficient accuracy. Second, the requester nodes usually cannot evaluate the received service perfectly. In this regard, this thesis proposes an exhaustive analysis of the trustworthiness management in the IoT and SIoT. To this, in the beginning, we generate a dataset and propose a query generation model, essential to develop a first trust management model to overcome all the attacks in the literature. So, we implement several trust mechanisms and identify the importance of the overlooked assumptions in different scenarios. Then, to solve the issues, we concentrate on the generation of feedback and propose different metrics to evaluate it based on the presence or not of errors. Finally, we focus on modelling the interaction between the two figures involved in interactions, i.e. the trustor and the trustee, and on proposing guidelines to efficiently design trust management models

We\u27re Here, We Exist: An Exploration of how Second-Generation Afro-Caribbean College Women Make Meaning of their Race, Ethnicity, and Gender

This case study was situated within Florida International University and explored how second-generation Afro-Caribbean college women make meaning of their race, ethnicity, and gender. This dissertation expands the existing scholarship on Black college students who have historically been presented as monolithic. Furthermore, my study illuminates how the race, ethnicity, and gender intersect to complicate the experiences of these women. Additionally, my research highlights how the surrounding community of a college campus impacts second-generation Afro-Caribbean college women’s ideas of belonging. This study involved two semi-structured interviews with 9 undergraduate college women attending FIU. All women self-identified as second-generation Afro-Caribbean. This two-interview scheme is a modification of Seidman (2013) three-phase interview process. The first interview focused on the life history of the participant, and the second interview centers on the lived experiences of the participants within the context of FIU. The women represent backgrounds that include Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guyana, and Belize. Four overarching themes emerged from this study. First, the study revealed that early childhood experiences, particularly religion, played a major role in gender identity. Second, their physical appearance impacted how others viewed and treated them which influenced how the participants made meaning of their racial identity. Third, the women shared experiences where both their racial and ethnic identities were challenged by others within their racial and ethnic groups. Finally, participants expressed concern of feeling excluded from notions of diversity within the university. Findings illuminate the factors influencing college choices among second-generation Afro-Caribbean college women. My participants shared powerful stories of how their physical appearance and hair influence how they are viewed and treated. Specifically, these women spoke of engaging in the process of self-love and challenging traditional standards of beauty and professionalism in the media as well within their circle of family and friends. The importance of peer groups where they could be their authentic selves and find comfort against systems of oppression selves were also discussed

Peer-to-Peer Secure Multi-Party Numerical Computation Facing Malicious Adversaries

We propose an efficient framework for enabling secure multi-party numerical computations in a Peer-to-Peer network. This problem arises in a range of applications such as collaborative filtering, distributed computation of trust and reputation, monitoring and other tasks, where the computing nodes is expected to preserve the privacy of their inputs while performing a joint computation of a certain function. Although there is a rich literature in the field of distributed systems security concerning secure multi-party computation, in practice it is hard to deploy those methods in very large scale Peer-to-Peer networks. In this work, we try to bridge the gap between theoretical algorithms in the security domain, and a practical Peer-to-Peer deployment. We consider two security models. The first is the semi-honest model where peers correctly follow the protocol, but try to reveal private information. We provide three possible schemes for secure multi-party numerical computation for this model and identify a single light-weight scheme which outperforms the others. Using extensive simulation results over real Internet topologies, we demonstrate that our scheme is scalable to very large networks, with up to millions of nodes. The second model we consider is the malicious peers model, where peers can behave arbitrarily, deliberately trying to affect the results of the computation as well as compromising the privacy of other peers. For this model we provide a fourth scheme to defend the execution of the computation against the malicious peers. The proposed scheme has a higher complexity relative to the semi-honest model. Overall, we provide the Peer-to-Peer network designer a set of tools to choose from, based on the desired level of security.Comment: Submitted to Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications Journal (PPNA) 200

Development and Experimental Analysis of Wireless High Accuracy Ultra-Wideband Localization Systems for Indoor Medical Applications

This dissertation addresses several interesting and relevant problems in the field of wireless technologies applied to medical applications and specifically problems related to ultra-wideband high accuracy localization for use in the operating room. This research is cross disciplinary in nature and fundamentally builds upon microwave engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, and biomedical engineering. A good portion of this work has been published in peer reviewed microwave engineering and biomedical engineering conferences and journals. Wireless technologies in medicine are discussed with focus on ultra-wideband positioning in orthopedic surgical navigation. Characterization of the operating room as a medium for ultra-wideband signal transmission helps define system design requirements. A discussion of the first generation positioning system provides a context for understanding the overall system architecture of the second generation ultra-wideband positioning system outlined in this dissertation. A system-level simulation framework provides a method for rapid prototyping of ultra-wideband positioning systems which takes into account all facets of the system (analog, digital, channel, experimental setup). This provides a robust framework for optimizing overall system design in realistic propagation environments. A practical approach is taken to outline the development of the second generation ultra-wideband positioning system which includes an integrated tag design and real-time dynamic tracking of multiple tags. The tag and receiver designs are outlined as well as receiver-side digital signal processing, system-level design support for multi-tag tracking, and potential error sources observed in dynamic experiments including phase center error, clock jitter and drift, and geometric position dilution of precision. An experimental analysis of the multi-tag positioning system provides insight into overall system performance including the main sources of error. A five base station experiment shows the potential of redundant base stations in improving overall dynamic accuracy. Finally, the system performance in low signal-to-noise ratio and non-line-of-sight environments is analyzed by focusing on receiver-side digitally-implemented ranging algorithms including leading-edge detection and peak detection. These technologies are aimed at use in next-generation medical systems with many applications including surgical navigation, wireless telemetry, medical asset tracking, and in vivo wireless sensors