The Team Balancing Act - Enhancing Knowledge - Building Activity in On-Line Learning Communities

Online learning in the university sector is a given. Constructivist views of learning (often team based) and the notion of knowledge-building, mediated through the use of ICTs seemingly address many of the imperatives to equip individuals for emergent knowledge-age work practice. While teamwork has many perceived advantages, teams also inexplicably fail despite the apparent quality of the participants. Teams are successful when members address what is a relatively narrow range of actions. However, even within this limited range of actions individuals demonstrate definite preferences towards certain activities and roles. This paper reports on the findings from a study that investigated if knowledge-building activity can be enhanced in tertiary education CSCL environments through the use of groups balanced by Team Role Preference (Margerison & McCann, 1995, 1998). The study found that higher quality knowledge-building activity was more likely to occur in balanced groups than in random groups. The analysis of data revealed that a diversity of ideas was more likely to emerge from within balanced groups than from within random groups particularly when the random groups were heavily skewed towards one team role preference. This provided a compelling reason for explaining why balanced groups may lead to better knowledge-building activity

On-Line Portfolio Selection with Moving Average Reversion

On-line portfolio selection has attracted increasing interests in machine learning and AI communities recently. Empirical evidences show that stock's high and low prices are temporary and stock price relatives are likely to follow the mean reversion phenomenon. While the existing mean reversion strategies are shown to achieve good empirical performance on many real datasets, they often make the single-period mean reversion assumption, which is not always satisfied in some real datasets, leading to poor performance when the assumption does not hold. To overcome the limitation, this article proposes a multiple-period mean reversion, or so-called Moving Average Reversion (MAR), and a new on-line portfolio selection strategy named "On-Line Moving Average Reversion" (OLMAR), which exploits MAR by applying powerful online learning techniques. From our empirical results, we found that OLMAR can overcome the drawback of existing mean reversion algorithms and achieve significantly better results, especially on the datasets where the existing mean reversion algorithms failed. In addition to superior trading performance, OLMAR also runs extremely fast, further supporting its practical applicability to a wide range of applications.Comment: ICML201

Building Learning Communities Utilizing Team-Based Learning in an On-line Environment

Colleges and universities today are finding themselves under increasing pressure to change the practices of teaching. Rapid advancements in technology and demands of a knowledge-based society quickly change expectations and standards in higher education. Technology brings alternative ways to organizing and conveying information. The paradigm of predominantly linear process of learning is shifting to set new trends in online education with applications of differing teaching and learning styles. One of the challenges is to create dynamic learning communities that are learner-centered rather than teaching-centered. This paper discusses the importance of rubrics and components of team-based learning in online education utilizing results of a survey that was administered in an undergraduate Marketing class conducted at a Midwest University’s Business Administration Program. The paper proposes strategies for building effective learning communities in online environments by utilizing rubrics and other team-based learning strategies that can improve the online experience. Our contribution is to evaluate the effectiveness of various tools and components of team-based learning to assist faculty creating student-centered learning goals and outcomes to build dynamic online learning communities. Our findings confirm that rubrics and survey results support current literature on the effectiveness of team-based and small-group learning and the importance of rubrics in online education

Developing Leadership in a National Cohort of Secondary Biology Teachers: Uses of an On-Line Course Structure to Develop Geographically Distant Professional Learning Community

This report is a descriptive study of the role that on-line courses might have on the development of Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) that support national leadership initiatives of participating high school biology teachers. The one hundred teachers involved in the Life Sciences for a Global Community (LSGC) Institute are expected not only to deepen their content knowledge, but also impact their district and state biology curricula. Additionally, the dispersion of Institute participants across the country presents a unique opportunity to develop, communicate. and implement a national coherent reform agenda. However, the geographic distance presents a barrier to collaborative design of leadership projects. Therefore, the LSGC Institute designed web-based, distance learning courses as a means for both the instruction and development of distant professional relationships

Genesis of Suicide Terrorm (supporting online material)

Contemporary suicide terrorists from the Middle East are publicly deemed crazed cowards bent on senseless destruction who thrive in poverty and ignorance. Recent research indicates they have no appreciable psychopathology and are as educated and economically well-off as surrounding populations. A first line of defense is to get the communities from which suicide attackers stem to stop the attacks by learning how to minimize the receptivity of mostly ordinary people to recruiting organizations.Terrorism, Middle East History, Religion

An Exploration of Cultural Factors Affecting Use of Communities of Practice

On-line communities of practice are potentially powerful social learning networks that can improve organizational performance. Unfortunately, administrators of on-line communities of practice report that community members do not take full advantage of this potential. This study used Shaw and Tuggle\u27s (2003) factors of knowledge management (KM) culture affecting organizational acceptance of a knowledge management initiative to explore this issue. It was hypothesized that respondents whose communities of practice possessed higher average community use per member would rate KM culture variables higher than respondents whose communities possessed a lower average community use. An analysis of survey data collected from Air Force Knowledge Now communities of practice identified two KM culture variables with a significant relationship between how individuals rated their community on each KM culture variable and use

Creating sustainable communities: conceptualising an interactive toolkit for skills enhancement

The UK policy framework for the development of sustainable communities, dating from the late 1990’s, has involved substantial changes in the working practices of urban development practitioners. The achievement of sustainable outcomes requires a range of professions, organisations, groups and individuals to work towards shared goals. Thus an emphasis on multi-agency and participatory working has become an integral component of the development of sustainable communities. Initial slow progress gave rise to a review of shortfalls in institutional capacity, and deficits in the generic skills required to enable effective multi-agency working were revealed. The policy response to these perceived deficits included initiatives to provide targeted information and training resources – at both a national and regional level – to urban development professionals and communities. This paper discusses research conducted at a regional level to develop a set of on-line resources focussed on the enhancement of generic skills. The research has addressed a wide range of conceptual and practical difficulties: the nature of generic skills; the capacity of online learning to address contextual skills; and the difficulties of integrating on-line learning into everyday working practices. The paper reviews this conceptual framework and its contribution to the design of the on-line skills resource

Families and Communities Against Child Sexual Exploitation (FCASE) : final evaluation report

This is the final evaluation report for the Barnardo’s Families and Communities Against Sexual Exploitation project (FCASE), produced by the International Centre, researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Trafficking at the University of Bedfordshire. The programme was launched in April 2013, funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and concluded in March 2015. The evaluation was undertaken during the same period. The FCASE model has been piloted in three sites, which for the purposes of this report have been anonymised and will be referred to using pseudonyms. It consists of the following elements: a structured programme of six to eight weeks direct work with young people and families where a risk of child sexual exploitation (CSE) has been identified; delivery of CSE training with professionals; and undertaking community awareness raising. The evaluation has been informed by a range of qualitative data. The report identifies the elements that work well and some of the challenges in its implementation. This had been done in order to determine good practice in supporting families and communities and embed more effective practice on protecting children and young people, including those in foster care, from sexual exploitation, harnessing the protective factors within a child’s family and/or foster home. The learning from the project is intended to help other agencies to implement the FCASE model. An on-line learning resource is to be produced in order to facilitate this process