The iTEC Technical Artefacts, Architecture and Educational Cloud

This chapter introduces the technical artefacts of the iTEC project in the context of a cloud architecture. The rationale for the technology developed in the iTEC project follows from its overall aim to re-engineer the uptake of ICT in schools. To that end, iTEC focused (a) on some important barriers for the uptake of ICT such the effort that teachers must make in redesigning their teaching and fi nding the right resources for that, and (b) on enablers for the uptake of ICT, such as providing engaging experiences both for the learner and teacher. The technical innovations are centred around three themes: innovations in the support of learning design, innovations by using a-typical resources, and innovations in the integration and management of learning services and resources. Next this chapter presents the cloud architecture adopted by all technology providers, including a shared user management and control system, the shared data models and interoperability solutions. The technical artefacts and then further elaborated in the ensuing chapters

Taking over someone else's design: implications for the tutor's role in networked learning

The experience of taking over an already designed Web-based course helps us to investigate the claims in the literature about the role that tutors have more generally in networked learning. This paper addresses this issue through a case study and brings together the tutor's experience and her reflective diary, as well as the interview data from a JISC/CALT phenomenographic study of tutors' and students' experiences. This particular case study raises issues about the tutors' role, teaching activity, design and the value of content resources and knowledge representation. Finally the paper reflects on the implications for the tutor in this situation and provides suggestions for future practice

A Simulation Model Articulation of the REA Ontology

This paper demonstrates how the REA enterprise ontology can be used to construct simulation models for business processes, value chains and collaboration spaces in supply chains. These models support various high-level and operational management simulation applications, e.g. the analysis of enterprise sustainability and day-to-day planning. First, the basic constructs of the REA ontology and the ExSpect modelling language for simulation are introduced. Second, collaboration space, value chain and business process models and their conceptual dependencies are shown, using the ExSpect language. Third, an exhibit demonstrates the use of value chain models in predicting the financial performance of an enterprise

Analysis and Detection of Information Types of Open Source Software Issue Discussions

Most modern Issue Tracking Systems (ITSs) for open source software (OSS) projects allow users to add comments to issues. Over time, these comments accumulate into discussion threads embedded with rich information about the software project, which can potentially satisfy the diverse needs of OSS stakeholders. However, discovering and retrieving relevant information from the discussion threads is a challenging task, especially when the discussions are lengthy and the number of issues in ITSs are vast. In this paper, we address this challenge by identifying the information types presented in OSS issue discussions. Through qualitative content analysis of 15 complex issue threads across three projects hosted on GitHub, we uncovered 16 information types and created a labeled corpus containing 4656 sentences. Our investigation of supervised, automated classification techniques indicated that, when prior knowledge about the issue is available, Random Forest can effectively detect most sentence types using conversational features such as the sentence length and its position. When classifying sentences from new issues, Logistic Regression can yield satisfactory performance using textual features for certain information types, while falling short on others. Our work represents a nontrivial first step towards tools and techniques for identifying and obtaining the rich information recorded in the ITSs to support various software engineering activities and to satisfy the diverse needs of OSS stakeholders.Comment: 41st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE2019

HELIN Consortium OPAC Report

Report of the HELIN OPAC Task Force, a group appointed by the HELIN Directors to review the Innovative Interfaces online public access catalog under 2006 release driven by WebPAC Pro. The task force met during the fall of 2006

Redesigning the Education Workforce: A Design Thinking Approach Background Paper: Transforming the Education Workforce

The Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) was established in response to a recommendation from the Education Commission’s Learning Generation report to explore new ways of diversifying and strengthening the education workforce. The Transforming the Education Workforce report is one of EWI’s key contributions to catalyzing this thinking. It draws on recent evidence and provides thought leadership on how to rethink the education workforce. For the full report and other supporting documents, please visitEducationWorkforce.org. The Transforming the Education Workforce report was originally commissioned as a set of sequential background papers and thus each paper infuenced and references the others. The background papers are written by different authors and cover the rationale for rethinking the education workforce, the design of the education workforce, how it can be strengthened, and political economy and fnancial considerations. This background paper focuses on redesigning the education workforce using a design thinking approach to propose design options for the workforce needed now and in the future

Building the HIVe: disrupting biomedical HIV and AIDS research with gay men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgenders

Networked and digital technologies now mediate the sexual behaviors of many gay men, other men that have sex with men and transgenders, challenging the effectiveness of biomedical HIV/AIDS research and prevention practices. Driven by the normative positivist philosophy of science, these approaches—while paramount to fighting the epidemic—have neglected to rethink their ontological and epistemological assumptions when confronting the social drivers of HIV. Building the HIVe responds by forefronting community-based and led sociological HIV/AIDS research and prevention that addresses digitally mediated and driven sexual behaviors. The HIVe disrupts biomedical approaches by building an accessible and dynamic social science research community engaged in reflexive performativity to improve the health and human rights of marginalized communities disproportionately at risk of HIV/AIDS

Development through Globalization?

globalization, development, policy space, initial conditions, institutions, markets, state, democracy, governance

Creating the strategic learning environment at City University London

Purpose: This paper describes the creation of a new approach to the implementation of educational technologies at a UK Higher Education Institution. Driven by changes in technology, an evaluation of the virtual learning environment (VLE) provided the opportunity to reassess the application of technology to the curriculum. However, such an evaluation and subsequent implementation is not about technology but a social process of negotiation and stakeholder engagement. The narrative of the evaluation is explored to offer lessons to other institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes a story telling approach as this enables greater emotional engagement with the reader as well as the description of the social and organisational aspects of such a VLE evaluation. This approach enables the difficulty of change in complex organisations, such as a University, to be addressed more fully. Findings: Key lessons from the evaluation of the VLE and resulting creation of the strategic learning environment (SLE) are drawn which can be of use to other institutions. The main finding is the fact that such evaluations and implementation of educational technologies are not about technical factors but about opportunities and threats presented by such technologies to the educational experience. These findings also inform future development of the SLE at the institution. Originality/value: This paper will be of interest to institutions that are undertaking evaluation exercises of their educational technology provision as well as those that are implementing new technologies or considering large scale organisational change