Digital communities: context for leading learning into the future?

In 2011, a robust, on-campus, three-element Community of Practice model consisting of growing community, sharing of practice and building domain knowledge was piloted in a digital learning environment. An interim evaluation of the pilot study revealed that the three-element framework, when used in a digital environment, required a fourth element. This element, which appears to happen incidentally in the face-to-face context, is that of reflecting, reporting and revising. This paper outlines the extension of the pilot study to the national tertiary education context in order to explore the implications for the design, leadership roles, and selection of appropriate technologies to support and sustain digital communities using the four-element model

Visualizations for an Explainable Planning Agent

In this paper, we report on the visualization capabilities of an Explainable AI Planning (XAIP) agent that can support human in the loop decision making. Imposing transparency and explainability requirements on such agents is especially important in order to establish trust and common ground with the end-to-end automated planning system. Visualizing the agent's internal decision-making processes is a crucial step towards achieving this. This may include externalizing the "brain" of the agent -- starting from its sensory inputs, to progressively higher order decisions made by it in order to drive its planning components. We also show how the planner can bootstrap on the latest techniques in explainable planning to cast plan visualization as a plan explanation problem, and thus provide concise model-based visualization of its plans. We demonstrate these functionalities in the context of the automated planning components of a smart assistant in an instrumented meeting space.Comment: PREVIOUSLY Mr. Jones -- Towards a Proactive Smart Room Orchestrator (appeared in AAAI 2017 Fall Symposium on Human-Agent Groups

Old Wine in New Bottles? The Actual and Potential Contribution of Civil Society Organisations to Democratic Governance in Europe

Political science literature often claims that the participation of civil society organisations increases the democratic quality of policy-making in international governance arrangements. However, it remains unclear under what conditions such a democratic value can be achieved and how the empirical reality of this participation relates to the alleged democracy-enhancing quality. In recent years, the European initiatives to establish a civil dialogue, to improve the consultation with civil society organizations and above all the White Paper on European Governance have triggered some scientific expectations that the EU seeks to establish a participatory regime which possibly improves the democratic character of EU policy-making

Blogging: Promoting Learner Autonomy and Intercultural Competence through Study Abroad

The current study explores closely how using a combined modalities of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) via blogs and face-to-face (FTF) interaction through ethnographic interviews with native speakers (L1s) supports autonomous learning as the result of reflective and social processes. The study involves 16 American undergraduate students who participated in blogs to develop their intercultural competence over the course of one-semester study abroad. The results show that blogs afforded students the opportunity to work independently (e.g., content creation) and reflect upon cross-cultural issues. Critical reflection, however, relied on the teacher’s guidance and feedback, as most of the students were cognitively challenged by not being able to clearly articulate different points of view. It is likely that students were not accustomed to reflecting. The findings also indicate that task type fostered autonomy in different ways. While free topics gave students more control of their own learning, teacher-assigned topics required them to critically think about the readings. Lack of access to Internet at the host institution and family also contributed to a limited level of social interaction. The study concludes that well-designed tasks, effective metacognitive and cognitive skills, and the accessibility to Internet are essential to maximize the potentials of blogs for learner autonomy and intercultural communication

Looking to the past to understand the present: organizational change in varsity sport

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how varsity football athletes and coaches negotiate meanings when faced with the unmet expectations of a new head coach brought into lead a turnaround process. It also aims to pay particular attention to the role of history in this meaning making process. Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with players and coaches at two points in time. To preserve the richness of their experiences and illuminate the historical aspects of change, it focuses on the stories of three players and one supporting coach. Findings – Numerous symbols of change emerge that have multiple and contradictory meanings. The meanings around success and failure are renegotiated over time as individuals struggle with the unmet expectations of change. Moreover, individuals are unable to shed the failures of the past and move forward. Practical implications – Change is a complex and messy process of managing multiple meanings. Understanding change entails more than a snapshot picture of an organization. New leaders have no control over the past, yet they need to be aware of how individuals experienced the past in order to increase the likelihood of success in the present. Originality/value – Success and failure are experienced as an ongoing process as athletes and coaches experience, reflect on and interact with others. In illuminating the role of history in how change is experienced in the present, the paper demonstrates that the past can serve as both an immobilizing force, as well as a comparative point enabling individuals to rationalize their emotions

New frontiers in QLR: definition, design and display

Research that is attentive to temporal processes and durational phenomena is an important tradition within the social sciences internationally with distinct disciplinary trajectories. Qualitative longitudinal research emerged as a distinct methodological paradigm around the turn of the millennium, named within the UK through journal special issues, literature reviews and funding commitments. In 2012-3 the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods funded a network for methodological innovation to map ’New frontiers of QLR’, bringing together a group of scholars who have been actively involved in establishing QLR as a methodological field. The network provided an opportunity to consolidate the learning that has developed in QLR over a sustained period of investment and to engage critically with what QLR might mean in new times. This paper documents the series of discussions staged by the network involving the definition of QLR, the kinds of relationships and practices it involves and the consequences of these in a changing landscape for social research. The series was deliberately interdisciplinary ensuring that we engaged with the temporal perspectives and norms of different academic and practice traditions and this has both enriched and complicated the picture that has emerged from our deliberations. In this paper we argue that QLR is a methodological paradigm that by definition moves with the times, and is an ongoing site of innovation and experiment. Key issues identified for future development in QLR include: intervening in debates of ‘big data’ with visions of deep data that involve following and connecting cases over time; the potential of longitudinal approaches to reframe the ‘sample’ exploring new ways of connecting the particular and the general; new thinking about research ethics that move us beyond anonymity to better explore the meanings of confidentiality and the co-production of research knowledge; and finally the promotion of a QLR sensibility that involves a heightened awareness of the here and now in the making of knowledge, yet which also connects research biographically over a career, enriched by a reflexive understanding of time as a resource in the making of meaning

Placemaking for Cities : Pilot project on the transfer of good practice in community-led placemaking

This report provides an account of the main outcomes of Placemaking 4 Cities (P4C) project and offers critical evaluation of process as well as content of this pilot project in good practice transfer (GPT). In doing so this report draws together detailed descriptions and assessments of the transfer process from learning logs, the mid-term review and exit interviews with P4C participants. The learning logs and the mid-term review are attached in a separate appendix entitled ‘Supporting Documents’. The first part of the report is concerned with an analysis of the results that were achieved. It begins with a presentation of the good practices and anticipated outcomes defined in the baseline study and compares these to the actual results and outputs achieved. The good practices that were adopted and adapted through the transfer are presented at the end of this section. We then review the methodological approach that was adopted to facilitate the GPT, focusing in particular the preparation and executing of the peer review which was central to the transfer process. This is followed by an attempt to assess the impact of the P4C pilot for participating cities of the medium and longer term and the report concludes with a number of recommendations about the design and delivery of future GPT networks.Final Published versio