11,585 research outputs found
Online participation: the Woodberry Down experiment
The internet and world wide web are generating radical changes in the way we are able tocommunicate. Our ability to engage communities and individuals in designing theirenvironment is also beginning to change as new digital media provide ways in whichindividuals and groups can interact with planners and politicians in exploring their future.This paper tells the story of how the residents of one of the most disadvantagedcommunities in Britain ? the Woodberry Down Estate in the London borough ofHackney ? have begun to use an online system which delivers everything from routineservices about their housing to ideas about options for their future. Woodberry Down isone of the biggest regeneration projects in Western Europe. It will take at least 10 years,probably much longer, to complete, at a cost of over £150 million. Online participation isone of the many ways in which this community is being engaged but as we will show, itis beginning to act as a catalyst. The kinds of networks which are evolving aroundsystems like these will change the nature of participation itself, the ways we need to thinkabout it, and the ways we need to respond. Before the experiment is described, we set thecontext by describing the wide range of digital media for communicating plans andplanning which suggests a new typology for web participation consistent with this fastemerging network culture
MOOCs in language education and professional teacher development: possibilities and potential
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) developed from the traditions of distance and selfaccess
learning, and are growing in popularity. As a new and exciting area of education, the
potential of MOOCs to transform education by allowing free access to courses for anyone with
the access to technology and the internet has potential for teachers and learners to benefit from
the courses offered. In this short article, three different perspectives on using MOOCs in
educational contexts within Japan are discussed. The first describes a collaborative project in
which one of the authors participated in a MOOC alongside a group of language learners. In the
next, individual students pursuing self-directed language learning chose MOOCs to meet their
various goals of knowledge and skill development as they prepared to study abroad. Finally, this
article considers the role of MOOCs in professional teacher development through the reflections
from a teacher participant. All three discussions relate their ideas to the themes of possibility and
potential, while considering practical issues for language learners and educators
Quality Frameworks for MOOCs
The hype surrounding MOOCs has been tempered by scepticism about the quality of MOOCs. The possible flaws of MOOCs include the quality of the pedagogies employed, low completion rates and a failure to deliver on the promise of inclusive and equitable quality education for all. On the other hand, MOOCs that have given a boost to open and online education have become a symbol of a larger modernisation agenda for universities, and are perceived as tools for universities to improve the quality of blended and online education—both in degree education and Continuous Professional Development. MOOC provision is also much more open to external scrutiny as part of a stronger globalising higher education market. This has important consequences for quality frameworks and quality processes that go beyond the individual MOOC. In this context, different quality approaches are discussed including possible measures at different levels and the tension between product and process models. Two case studies are described: one at the institutional level (The Open University) and one at a MOOC platform level (FutureLearn) and how they intertwine is discussed. The importance of a national or international quality framework which carries with it a certification or label is illustrated with the OpenupEd Quality label. Both the label itself and its practical use are described in detail. The examples will illustrate that MOOCs require quality assurance processes tailored to e-learning and open education, embedded in institutional frameworks. The increasing unbundling of educational services may require additional quality processes
Foreign objects? Web content management systems, journalistic cultures and the ontology of software
Research on ‘digital’ journalism has focused largely on online news, with comparatively less interest in the longer-term implications of software and computational technologies. Drawing upon a six-year study of the Toronto Star, this paper provides an account of TOPS, an in-house web content management system (CMS) which served as the backbone of thestar.com for six years. For some, TOPS was a successful software innovation, while for others, a strategic digital ‘property’. But for most journalists, it was slow, deficient in functionality, aesthetically unappealing and cumbersome. Although several organizational factors can explain TOPS’ obstinacy, I argue for particular attention to the complex ontology of software. Based on an outline of this ontology, I suggest software be taken seriously as an object of journalism, which implies: acknowledging its partial autonomy from human use or authorization; accounting for its ability to mutate indefinitely; and analyzing its capacity to encourage forms of ‘computational thinking
Plotly-Resampler: Effective Visual Analytics for Large Time Series
Visual analytics is arguably the most important step in getting acquainted
with your data. This is especially the case for time series, as this data type
is hard to describe and cannot be fully understood when using for example
summary statistics. To realize effective time series visualization, four
requirements have to be met; a tool should be (1) interactive, (2) scalable to
millions of data points, (3) integrable in conventional data science
environments, and (4) highly configurable. We observe that open source Python
visualization toolkits empower data scientists in most visual analytics tasks,
but lack the combination of scalability and interactivity to realize effective
time series visualization. As a means to facilitate these requirements, we
created Plotly-Resampler, an open source Python library. Plotly-Resampler is an
add-on for Plotly's Python bindings, enhancing line chart scalability on top of
an interactive toolkit by aggregating the underlying data depending on the
current graph view. Plotly-Resampler is built to be snappy, as the reactivity
of a tool qualitatively affects how analysts visually explore and analyze data.
A benchmark task highlights how our toolkit scales better than alternatives in
terms of number of samples and time series. Additionally, Plotly-Resampler's
flexible data aggregation functionality paves the path towards researching
novel aggregation techniques. Plotly-Resampler's integrability, together with
its configurability, convenience, and high scalability, allows to effectively
analyze high-frequency data in your day-to-day Python environment.Comment: The first two authors contributed equally. Accepted at IEEE VIS 202
Engaged learning in MOOCs: a study using the UK Engagement Survey
This study sets out to answer the question: how can we know what learning is taking place in MOOCs? From this starting point, the study then looks to identify MOOCs’ potential for future use in HE? Using a specially-adapted version of the HEA’s UK Engagement Survey (UKES) 2014, the research team at the University of Southampton asked participants who had completed one of two MOOCs delivered through the FutureLearn platform and designed and run at the university about their experiences as learners and their engagement with their respective MOOC. The results also show that both of the MOOCs were successful in enabling many participants to feel engaged in intellectual endeavours such as forming new understandings, making connections with previous knowledge and experience, and exploring knowledge actively, creatively and critically. In response to the open access approach – in which no one taking part in a MOOC is required to have a minimum level of previous educational achievement - the report shows that persistent learners engaged, regardless of prior educational attainment
Parallels and Interactions between Videogames and Literature: Analyzing Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
AbstractMany people argue that stories can be experienced by audiences through very specific mediums such as films or books. This paper will diverge from the beaten track and introduce its readers to the contemporary and interactive medium of videogames, hopefully establishing it as a form of art in their consciousness. In an attempt to prove the academic, as well as philosophical, value of videogames; this paper will compare Harlan Ellison’s award winning short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967) with its 1995 videogame adaptation, in terms of plot, characters, narrative and the ability to convey feelings. Last but not least, we will analyse the hidden philosophy of videogames, shedding light on the different ways they can be “read” and the conflict that rages on about it, but more importantly answer the fundamental question: “Why do we play videogames?
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