The conceptualisation and measurement of DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder: the development of the IGD-20 Test

Background: Over the last decade, there has been growing concern about ‘gaming addiction’ and its widely documented detrimental impacts on a minority of individuals that play excessively. The latest (fifth) edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) included nine criteria for the potential diagnosis of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) and noted that it was a condition that warranted further empirical study. Aim: The main aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable standardised psychometrically robust tool in addition to providing empirically supported cut-off points. Methods: A sample of 1003 gamers (85.2% males; mean age 26 years) from 57 different countries were recruited via online gaming forums. Validity was assessed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), criterion-related validity, and concurrent validity. Latent profile analysis was also carried to distinguish disordered gamers from non-disordered gamers. Sensitivity and specificity analyses were performed to determine an empirical cut-off for the test. Results: The CFA confirmed the viability of IGD-20 Test with a six-factor structure (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict and relapse) for the assessment of IGD according to the nine criteria from DSM-5. The IGD-20 Test proved to be valid and reliable. According to the latent profile analysis, 5.3% of the total participants were classed as disordered gamers. Additionally, an optimal empirical cut-off of 71 points (out of 100) seemed to be adequate according to the sensitivity and specificity analyses carried

An agent system to support student teams working online

Online learning is now a reality, with distributed learning and blended learning becoming more widely used in Higher Education. Novel ways in which undergraduate and postgraduate learning material can be presented are being developed, and methods for helping students to learn online are needed, especially if we require them to collaborate with each other on learning activities. Agents to provide a supporting role for students have evolved from Artificial Intelligence research, and their strength lies in their ease of operation over networks as well as their ability to act in response to stimuli. In this paper an application of a software agent is described, aimed at supporting students working on team projects in the online learning environment. Online teamwork is problematical for a number of reasons, such as getting acquainted with team members, finding out about other team members’ abilities, agreeing who should do which tasks, communications between team members and keeping up to date with progress that has been made on the project. Software agents have the ability to monitor progress and to offer advice by operating in the background, acting autonomously when the need arises. An agent prototype has been developed in Prolog to perform a limited set of functions to support students. Team projects have a planning, doing and completing stage, all of which require them to have some sort of agent support. This agent at present supports part of the planning stage, by prompting the students to input their likes, dislikes and abilities for a selection of task areas defined for the project. The agent then allocates the various tasks to the students according to predetermined rules. The results of a trial carried out using teams working on projects, on campus, indicate that students like the idea of using this agent to help with allocating tasks. They also agreed that agent support of this type would probably be helpful to both students working on team projects with face to face contact, as well as for teams working solely online. Work is ongoing to add more functionality to the agent and to evaluate the agent more widely

Developing Effective K-16 Geoscience Partnerships

This article describes the benefits of research partnerships to scientists, students, and teachers. There is growing awareness that the way science is experienced in the K-16 classroom deviates greatly from the experiences of practicing researchers. Whereas researchers are immersed in more open-ended observation and inquiry, many K-16 students find themselves cramming to memorize core scientific content in preparation for standardized examinations. This issue can be mitigated by the development of partnerships in which scientists benefit by added human resources (teachers and students) for data collection and analysis, and teachers and students benefit from a learning process that fosters creativity, sets high standards, teaches problem solving, and is highly motivating. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

School Design to Promote Physical Activity

Increasing children’s physical activity (PA) at school is a national focus to address childhood obesity. Research has demonstrated associations between school built environments and students’ PA, but has lacked a comprehensive synthesis of evidence. Chapter 1 presents new evidence-, theory-, and practice-informed school design guidelines, including evidence substantiality ratings, to promote PA in school communities. These guidelines delineate strategies for school designers, planners, and educators to create K-12 school environments conducive to PA. They also engage public health scientists in needed transdisciplinary perspectives. There have been few longitudinal studies to verify causal relationships between the school built environment and PA. Chapter 2 presents results from a natural experiment with objective PA-related measures before and after a move to a new K-5 school designed based on the Chapter 1 guidelines. The study hypothesized that the school would have desirable impacts on students’ sedentary behaviors and PA. The intervention school group was compared longitudinally with a demographically-similar group at 2 control schools. School-time analyses showed that the intervention school design had positive impact on accumulation of sedentary time, and time in light PA, likely due to movement-promoting classroom design. Studies of built environment impacts on human behaviors and health have presented challenges in control of confounding effects. Chapter 3 presents results from experiments using an agent based model (ABM) to simulate population samples of children and to quantify the impact of a single design intervention, dynamic furniture in school, on obesity and overweight prevalence over time. Results of computational experiments showed that there could be some desirable population impact among girls with low PA profiles. Chapter 4 places the work presented in Chapters 1-3 in a larger context. Via exploration of theories of space as a social phenomenon, of design as a discipline with human purpose, and of limitations of current public health built environment studies, the investigator proposes key strategies toward achieving substantial unrealized potential to design our built environments to achieve health

Iterated local search using an add and delete hyper- heuristic for university course timetabling

Hyper-heuristics are (meta-)heuristics that operate at a higher level to choose or generate a set of low-level (meta-)heuristics in an attempt of solve difficult optimization problems. Iterated local search (ILS) is a well-known approach for discrete optimization, combining perturbation and hill-climbing within an iterative framework. In this study, we introduce an ILS approach, strengthened by a hyper-heuristic which generates heuristics based on a fixed number of add and delete operations. The performance of the proposed hyper-heuristic is tested across two different problem domains using real world benchmark of course timetabling instances from the second International Timetabling Competition Tracks 2 and 3. The results show that mixing add and delete operations within an ILS framework yields an effective hyper-heuristic approach

A Scenario-Based Parametric Analysis of Stable Marriage Approaches to the Army Officer Assignment Problem

This paper compares linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit reduced variability in the presence of one or more additional constraints. Several variations of each approach are compared with respect to solution quality, as measured by the overall social welfare among Officers and Assignments, and robustness as measured by the number of changes after a number of randomized perturbations. We examine the contrasts between these methods in the context of assigning Army Officers among a set of identified assignments. Additional constraints are modeled after realistic scenarios faced by Army assignment managers, with parameters randomized. The Pareto efficient approaches, relative to these measures of quality and robustness, are identified and subjected to a regression analysis. The coefficients of these models provide insight into the impact the different scenarios under study, as well as inform any trade-off decisions between Pareto-optimal approaches

Printing Process Parameters Identification System

The paper presents the research aimed at setting up and developing a software system for the printing process parameters identification based on modern computer and software systems, algorithmic principles, principles of expert systems construction and advanced learning. Thus, the possibilities of application of contemporary software tools were investigated, which facilitates the process and forms the program structure of the model that uses programming languages based on the expert systems construction principles and tools for the development of system model based on the principles of modern learning. For complex model development, concepts of process knowledge bases with influential process parameters of printing technique have been developed through modelling and construction based on the logic of expert systems with the presentation, use and involvement of experts knowledge in decision making with the evaluation of the impact of individual parameters. In addition to this approach, a module was developed using modern software tools based on an algorithmic principle and a module for identifying printing process parameters using modern platforms based on advanced learning. Sophisticated software model has been made through the research and developed with databases of process parameter identification systems based on modern software tools. This tool enables a significant expedition of the solution resolving, thus improving the graphical production process and the processes of acquiring and expanding knowledge. The model is based on integrative modules: a printing process parameters identification system based on algorithmic program structure systems, a printing process parameters identification system based on expert system building principles, and a printing process parameter identification system based on modern learning systems

Evaluating the effect of SWITCH PE on physical activity and sedentary behavior in and out of physical education classes

Physical education (PE) is a key channel to influencing youth physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) but it has proven difficult to improve the quality of PE lessons. SWITCH PE is a concept-based PE curriculum that helps shape healthy behaviors in relation to the energy-balanced lifestyle. The purposes of this study are to evaluate (a) whether a SWITCH PE can provide recommended amounts of PA in PE and (b) whether SWITCH PE can impact children’ s daily PA and SB levels. Data were collected from fourth and fifth grade students at four elementary schools in Iowa (with two schools in the experimental group and two in the control group; N = 475). Children’s in-class PA during PE were monitored via Actigraph GT3X+w accelerometer. Their overall PA and SB were pre- and post-measured using the Youth Activity Profile (YAP). Descriptive statistics and two-way (time and group) repeated measure analyses of variance were conducted to address the research questions. The SWITCH PE lessons yielded similar distributions of SB, LPA and MVPA as regular PE lessons. The SWITCH PE lessons did not meet the absolute standard for in-class PA (i.e., MVPA for 50% of the PE time) but neither did the regular PE lessons. There was no statistical difference in PA levels at home by time or group (p\u3e.05) between youth in SWITCH PE or traditional PE classes. There was a significant group difference in PA at school (Pre: F1, 926=6.36, p\u3c0.01; Post: F1, 926=9.42, p\u3c0.01, η2 = .017) but this difference was driven by the significantly lower scores at one SWITCH PE school (i.e., School 1). The time effect for PA at school was not significant. The levels of SB at both SWITCH PE and regular PE schools decreased over time. However, only the SWITCH PE schools demonstrated significant decrease from baseline (F1, 928=7.33; p\u3c0.01, η2 = .006). In conclusion, SWITCH PE provided similar amounts of MVPA as regular PE but levels did not meet recommendations for MVPA time in PE (i.e. 50% of the class time). SWITCH PE did not significantly impact students’ behavior outsides of school but the education on lifestyle behaviors may have long term benefits. The SWITCH PE program is an innovative addition to the SWITCH program but further work is needed to improve the lessons

Building audiences: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts

Building Audiences examines the barriers to and the strategies for increasing audiences in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts sector. This research investigates the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of current and potential audiences. What is in the report? The findings reveal the key barriers facing audience attendance include: uncertainty about how to behave at cultural events and fear of offending lack of awareness with audiences not actively seeking information about Indigenous arts and outdated perceptions of the sector – that it is only perceived as ‘serious or educational’. Building Audiences also considered several strategies to build audiences for Indigenous arts: providing skills development, advice and resourcing to Indigenous practitioners within the arts sector; increasing representation of Indigenous artists in the main programing of arts companies by including more Indigenous people in decision making roles; promoting relationships between Indigenous arts and non-Indigenous companies to present their work to wider audiences; introducing children and young people to Indigenous arts through schools and extracurricular activities; allowing audiences to feel comfortable engaging by creating accessible experiences; implementing long-term strategies to change negative perceptions of Indigenous arts. The project was commissioned by the Australia Council for the Arts and funding partners include Australia Council for the Arts; Faculty of Business and Law and Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University; Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne