45,910 research outputs found
eStorys: A visual storyboard system supporting back-channel communication for emergencies
This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Journal of Visual Languages & Computing. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2010 Elsevier B.V.In this paper we present a new web mashup system for helping people and professionals to retrieve information about emergencies and disasters. Today, the use of the web during emergencies, is confirmed by the employment of systems like Flickr, Twitter or Facebook as demonstrated in the cases of Hurricane Katrina, the July 7, 2005 London bombings, and the April 16, 2007 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic University. Many pieces of information are currently available on the web that can be useful for emergency purposes and range from messages on forums and blogs to georeferenced photos. We present here a system that, by mixing information available on the web, is able to help both people and emergency professionals in rapidly obtaining data on emergency situations by using multiple web channels. In this paper we introduce a visual system, providing a combination of tools that demonstrated to be effective in such emergency situations, such as spatio/temporal search features, recommendation and filtering tools, and storyboards. We demonstrated the efficacy of our system by means of an analytic evaluation (comparing it with others available on the web), an usability evaluation made by expert users (students adequately trained) and an experimental evaluation with 34 participants.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and
Banco Santander
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Professionalization, Tutor Training, and Service Learning in the Writing Center
In āThe Professionalization of Tutor Training,ā Judy Gill defines professionalization as āintroducing prospective tutors to the professional conversationā (1), which includes instruction in writing center theory featured in the surveyed courses in the form of collections of essays that introduce students to āthe larger institutional, theoretical, and historical context in which [the practice of] tutoring takes placeā (3). In this article, we discuss two important components of tutor training that seemingly do not fall within the scope of professionalization Gill mentions in her article: 1) the use of tutorsā field-specific expertise during their training and 2) tutorsā preparation for administrative positions and responsibilities. In our experience with one of the undergraduate tutoring practicum courses offered by The Writing Lab at Purdue, these two components helped our tutors-in-training professionalize as both professional writing (PW) majors and prospective tutors entering the writing center field. Hence, in our attempt to reconcile our experience at Purdue with the definition Gill provides, we pose this question: Is there more than one form of professionalization that students develop in our tutor-training courses?University Writing Cente
Teaching with Twitter:reflections on practices, opportunities and problems
In recent times there has been an increasing wave of interest in the use of Social Media for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In particular, the micro-blogging platform Twitter has been experimentally used in various Universities world-wide. There are relevant publications reporting on experimentations with Twitter for reaching diverse learning goals, including better engagement, informal learning or collaboration among students. Existing research papers on the use of Twitter however focus exclusively on the positive aspects of experimentations, on what went well in the use of Twitter. In our University we run a small project on the use of Twitter with goals that are similar to those of others: fostering participation and better learning processes. In this paper we report on our project and the strategies and best practices we adopted for using Twitter for teaching. We also reflect that in our experimentation however we encountered a number of practical problems connected for example with use of technology, with the class settings and with spam. In the conclusion we offer some recommendations for Teaching and Learning with Twitter based on our personal experience
An Investigation into the Pedagogical Features of Documents
Characterizing the content of a technical document in terms of its learning
utility can be useful for applications related to education, such as generating
reading lists from large collections of documents. We refer to this learning
utility as the "pedagogical value" of the document to the learner. While
pedagogical value is an important concept that has been studied extensively
within the education domain, there has been little work exploring it from a
computational, i.e., natural language processing (NLP), perspective. To allow a
computational exploration of this concept, we introduce the notion of
"pedagogical roles" of documents (e.g., Tutorial and Survey) as an intermediary
component for the study of pedagogical value. Given the lack of available
corpora for our exploration, we create the first annotated corpus of
pedagogical roles and use it to test baseline techniques for automatic
prediction of such roles.Comment: 12th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational
Applications (BEA) at EMNLP 2017; 12 page
The Hidden Web, XML and Semantic Web: A Scientific Data Management Perspective
The World Wide Web no longer consists just of HTML pages. Our work sheds
light on a number of trends on the Internet that go beyond simple Web pages.
The hidden Web provides a wealth of data in semi-structured form, accessible
through Web forms and Web services. These services, as well as numerous other
applications on the Web, commonly use XML, the eXtensible Markup Language. XML
has become the lingua franca of the Internet that allows customized markups to
be defined for specific domains. On top of XML, the Semantic Web grows as a
common structured data source. In this work, we first explain each of these
developments in detail. Using real-world examples from scientific domains of
great interest today, we then demonstrate how these new developments can assist
the managing, harvesting, and organization of data on the Web. On the way, we
also illustrate the current research avenues in these domains. We believe that
this effort would help bridge multiple database tracks, thereby attracting
researchers with a view to extend database technology.Comment: EDBT - Tutorial (2011
Supporting undergraduate studentsā acquisition of academic argumentation strategies through computer conferencing
Executive Summary
Background
This research grows out of work on the importance of argumentation in developingstudentsā critical abilities. It focuses attention on how students argue in computer mediated conferences as opposed to traditionalwritten assignments, investigating the way in which argumentation is realised within the relatively new context of
computer conferencing which allows extended written discussions to take place overa period of weeks. Such text-based asynchronous conferencing is typically
characterised by features of both spoken and written modes.
Aims
The main aims of the project were:
ā¢ to investigate the argumentation strategies used in asynchronous text-based computer conferences;
ā¢ to compare the argumentation strategies developed through conferencing with those used in the writing of academic assignments;
ā¢ to examine the strategies used by tutors to encourage and facilitate argumentation in text-based computer conferences.
Methods
Data was collected over two years for the distance undergraduate course āPerspectives on Complementary and Alternative Medicineā at the Open University.Qualitative data was obtained through interviews with the course chair, tutors and students, and through a student questionnaire. Assignments and computer-mediated
tutorials were collected for textual analysis, although the timing of the assignments meant that analysis has only just begun on the essay data. To analyse the argumentation in the computer conferences and assignments a method of
categorising, coding and tracking argumentative discourse was developed building on earlier work by the authors. In addition, computational searches were carried out to compare linguistic features across conference and assignment data.
Results
In tutorial conferences, student discussion tended to take the form of collaborative co-construction of an argument through exchanging information and experience to
substantiate a position. However, students were also prepared to challenge other viewpoints. In both cases, they frequently drew on personal and professional
experience to support argument claims. The use of these strategies suggests that text-based conferencing lends itself to the collective combining of diverse sources of
information, experiences and ideas.
Conference discussions were often personalised with fewer explicit logical links marking argument structure. They were also marked by complexity of argument strands, many of which reached no conclusion. Preliminary analysis of argumentation in assignments suggests that this did not, however, adversely affect studentsā ability to create a more traditional, linear argument in their essays. Further analysis will be undertaken to compare argumentation strategies across the two sets of data. Tutors expressed concern about levels of participation in the tutorial conferences, which varied quite considerably. They also felt uncertain about their own knowledge of appropriate pedagogic strategies which would encourage students to participate in a collaborative yet critical way, and tended to rely on strategies from face-to-face teaching. Analysis of the conference discussion showed that tutors made fewer claims than students and were also less likely to provide information in support of their claims. There was, therefore, little modelling by tutors of the basic type of argumentation that would be expected in formal written assignments.Despite these concerns, student responses indicated that having a tutor and a group
of peers to interact with, or just to observe, was valued as a supportive feature of this form of distance learning. No clear picture arose of how to make conferencing more
interactive for more students, and this reinforces the sense gained from the tutor interviews of the difficulty of proposing a model of tutoring in computer conferences
that will necessarily engage all students or raise the level of discussion and debate.
Conclusions
Our study suggests that text-based conferencing has an important role to play in developing studentsā argumentation strategies and understanding of academic
discourse and conventions. In view of its hybrid nature, somewhere between spontaneous speech and formal academic writing, course designers and tutors should aim to take advantage of both aspects ā on the one hand, the informal
dialogic exchange of opinions and co-construction of knowledge, and on the other,the opportunity for consolidation, reflection and re-positioning.
Our findings reinforce the view that studentsā willingness to exchange ideas freely and openly is partly a consequence of how personally engaged, at ease and
confident students feel with one another and their tutor. In particular, it seems that there is a role for the interpersonal and, to some extent, the chat and the frivolity, which in some other studies discussed in the literature review have been regarded as negative influences.
Recommendations
To facilitate studentsā development of argumentation and learning more generally,tutors need greater awareness of the ways in which academic argumentation operates in computer conferencing as compared to written assignments. Since pedagogic strategies developed in other contexts may not transfer well to computer conferencing, there is a need for targeted professional development, focussing in
particular on:
ā¢ Choosing topics for discussion and designing effective task prompts;
ā¢ Supporting weaker students;
ā¢ Encouraging challenging of ideas;
ā¢ Finding the right tone to facilitate peer discussions.
Some specific suggestions are made within the report, but our recommendations at this stage remain tentative as we still have to complete the analysis of the assignment data and draw conclusions about the impact of the computer
conferencing on the quality of written argumentation within this more formal context
External pressures on teaching
[FIRST PARAGRAPHS]
The primary role of the PRS-LTSN is to improve the quality of
education by encouraging the sharing of good practice and
innovation, and the discussion of common problems. However, there
are other forces at play, which are pursuing the same end by different
means. The purpose of this article is to explain what these forces are,
and how the PRS-LTSN can help departments to satisfy their demands.
The first set of pressures comes from the Government via the
funding councils, namely the requirement for higher education
institutions (HEIs) to be publicly accountable for the services they
provide with Government funding. The assumption is that the two main
activities of HEIs are teaching and research:
ā The Research Assessment Exercise2 (RAE) is conducted by the
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf
of the other funding councils, and research ratings have a major
influence on funding.
ā The assessment of the quality of teaching and of institutional quality
assurance mechanisms is the responsibility of the Quality Assurance
Agency (QAA) (see Appendix), which is an independent body funded
jointly by the funding councils, Universities UK (UUK) and the
Standing Conference of Principals (SCoP). Ratings do not affect
funding, except that there is the ultimate sanction of withdrawal of
funding for persistently unsatisfactory programmes of study.
ā More recently, the Transparency Review commissioned by the
funding councils evaluates the extent to which funding for research
is actually spent on research, and funding for teaching is actually
spent on teaching
Implementation of quality improvement techniques for management and technical processes in the ACRV project
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a cooperative form of doing business that relies on the talents of everyone in an organization to continually improve quality and productivity, using teams and an assortment of statistical and measurement tools. The objective of the activities described in this paper was to implement effective improvement tools and techniques in order to build work processes which support good management and technical decisions and actions which are crucial to the success of the ACRV project. The objectives were met by applications in both the technical and management areas. The management applications involved initiating focused continuous improvement projects with widespread team membership. The technical applications involved applying proven statistical tools and techniques to the technical issues associated with the ACRV Project. Specific activities related to the objective included working with a support contractor team to improve support processes, examining processes involved in international activities, a series of tutorials presented to the New Initiatives Office and support contractors, a briefing to NIO managers, and work with the NIO Q+ Team. On the technical side, work included analyzing data from the large-scale W.A.T.E.R. test, landing mode trade analyses, and targeting probability calculations. The results of these efforts will help to develop a disciplined, ongoing process for producing fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide the ACRV organization
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