Enhancing colour-coded poll sheets using computer vision as a viable Audience Response System (ARS) in Africa

Audience Response Systems (ARS) give a facilitator accurate feedback on a question posed to the listeners. The most common form of ARS are clickers; Clickers are handheld response gadgets that act as a medium of communication between the students and facilitator. Clickers are prohibitively expensive creating a need to innovate low-cost alternatives with high accuracy. This study builds on earlier research by Gain (2013) which aims to show that computer vision and coloured poll sheets can be an alternative to clicker based ARS. This thesis examines a proposal to create an alternative to clickers applicable to the African context, where the main deterrent is cost. This thesis studies the computer vision structures of feature detection, extraction and recognition. In this research project, an experimental study was conducted using various lecture theatres with students ranging from 50 - 150. Python and OpenCV tools were used to analyze the photographs and document the performance as well as observing the different conditions in which to acquire results. The research had an average detection rate of 75% this points to a promising alternative audience response system as measured by time, cost and error rate. Further work on the capture of the poll sheet would significantly increase this result. With regards to cost, the computer vision coloured poll sheet alternative is significantly cheaper than clickers

Spartan Daily, November 2, 2004

Volume 123, Issue 45https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10049/thumbnail.jp

InterPoll: Crowd-Sourced Internet Polls

Crowd-sourcing is increasingly being used to provide answers to online polls and surveys. However, existing systems, while taking care of the mechanics of attracting crowd workers, poll building, and payment, provide little to help the survey-maker or pollster in obtaining statistically significant results devoid of even the obvious selection biases. This paper proposes InterPoll, a platform for programming of crowd-sourced polls. Pollsters express polls as embedded LINQ queries and the runtime correctly reasons about uncertainty in those polls, only polling as many people as required to meet statistical guarantees. To optimize the cost of polls, InterPoll performs query optimization, as well as bias correction and power analysis. The goal of InterPoll is to provide a system that can be reliably used for research into marketing, social and political science questions. This paper highlights some of the existing challenges and how InterPoll is designed to address most of them. In this paper we summarize some of the work we have already done and give an outline for future work

Spartan Daily, November 1, 2004

Volume 123, Issue 44https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10048/thumbnail.jp

Developing the vision: preparing teachers to deliver a digital world-class education system

In 2008 Australians were promised a \u27Digital Education Revolution\u27 by the government to dramatically change classroom education and build a \u27world-class education system\u27. Eight billion dollars have been spent providing computer equipment for upper secondary classrooms, yet there is little evidence that a revolution has occurred in Australian schools. Transformation of an education system takes more than a simplistic hardware solution. Revolutions need leaders and leaders need vision. In this paper, I argue that we must first develop educational leaders by inspiring future teachers with a vision and by designing our teacher-education courses as technology-rich learning-spaces. A multi-layered scenario is developed as the inspiration for a vision of a future-orientated teacher-education system that prepares teachers to deliver a \u27worldclass digital education\u27 for every Australian child. Although written for the Australian context this paper has broad relevance internationally for teacher education

Improving Voter Privacy for the Blind

Visually impaired voters in Denmark are unable to vote privately in national elections. Our study examined voting systems that could improve voter privacy for the visually impaired in Denmark. We also investigated different methods of voting that would allow the visually impaired to participate in elections within organizations. Through interviews with blind and sighted voters and with members of the Danish government, we determined which voting systems would be most acceptable for use in Denmark. Based on our findings, we concluded that the Danish Association of the Blind should push for the implementation of electronic voting machines that print paper ballots. We have also created a list of best practices for making organizational elections accessible to the visually impaired