Fluid leadership in a multi-user virtual environment educational project with teenagers: Schome Park

This paper examines leadership practices in a virtual community, the Schome Park project. Schome Park, based at the Open University, UK, was the first European closed (i.e. protected) island in Teen Second Life, a multi-user 3D virtual environment. This fully realised, complex interactive 3D environment has no imposed narrative and offers significant engagement for educational projects. The Schome (‘not school not home’) third space community – i.e. not placed in the first space of home or second space of work/school (Oldenburg, 1989) - was set up with the explicit aim of challenging the instructional models and pedagogic practices of the formal, state educational system. In this disembodied environment identities, represented in the virtual world by personalised avatars, possess usefully ambivalent valences. Often adults will join ‘inworld’ educational events organised and delivered by the younger members of the community. Schome makes flexible use of a wiki (collaboratively designed website), asynchronous discussion fora and other communicative media to support learning processes and enhance the development of a physically distanced yet authentic learning community. The authors propose that the community design in these new spaces created an opportunity for leaders to emerge regardless of contextual hierarchy and to forge a developing culture. The paper makes use of evidence from varied datasets to examine manifestations of leadership in the community and issues arising. Young people have been engaged in proposing, planning, executing and reflecting on teaching and learning and governance without deference to adults. Our analysis contributes to understandings of the development of leadership within carefully designed educational online communities and some of the challenges involved for adults in facilitating an appropriately supportive environment for young people. While aware that this innovative experiment continues to face many challenges, we propose that the design of the project offers much to encourage an approach to education in which collaborative, situated engagement in learning and teaching is perceived as a more fruitful model for the twenty-first century than reproduction of traditional hierarchies of teachers and the taught of conventional classrooms

Optimistic Planning for Markov Decision Processes

International audienceThe reinforcement learning community has recently intensified its interest in online planning methods, due to their relative independence on the state space size. However, tight near-optimality guarantees are not yet available for the general case of stochastic Markov decision processes and closed-loop, state-dependent planning policies. We therefore consider an algorithm related to AO* that optimistically explores a tree representation of the space of closed-loop policies, and we analyze the near-optimality of the action it returns after n tree node expansions. While this optimistic planning requires a finite number of actions and possible next states for each transition, its asymptotic performance does not depend directly on these numbers, but only on the subset of nodes that significantly impact near-optimal policies. We characterize this set by introducing a novel measure of problem complexity, called the near-optimality exponent. Specializing the exponent and performance bound for some interesting classes of MDPs illustrates the algorithm works better when there are fewer near-optimal policies and less uniform transition probabilities

Optimistic Planning for Markov Decision Processes

International audienceThe reinforcement learning community has recently intensified its interest in online planning methods, due to their relative independence on the state space size. However, tight near-optimality guarantees are not yet available for the general case of stochastic Markov decision processes and closed-loop, state-dependent planning policies. We therefore consider an algorithm related to AO* that optimistically explores a tree representation of the space of closed-loop policies, and we analyze the near-optimality of the action it returns after n tree node expansions. While this optimistic planning requires a finite number of actions and possible next states for each transition, its asymptotic performance does not depend directly on these numbers, but only on the subset of nodes that significantly impact near-optimal policies. We characterize this set by introducing a novel measure of problem complexity, called the near-optimality exponent. Specializing the exponent and performance bound for some interesting classes of MDPs illustrates the algorithm works better when there are fewer near-optimal policies and less uniform transition probabilities

The Implicit Price of Urban Public Parks and Greenways: A Spatial-Contextual Approach

This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article submitted for consideration in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Journal of Environmental Planning and Management is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/This paper examines the value residents place on public parks in a mid-sized urban area. The analysis makes a direct contribution to the literature by examining the extent to which spatial and neighborhood context is related to the house price premium or discount associated with public recreational opportunities, natural resource areas, and urban greenways. The analysis shows that the value of public parks and greenways varies across space, neighborhood context, and park type. Community area fixed-effects are included to bolster the findings. The findings indicate that park and greenway investment should be planned and managed contextually in urban areas. Park planners can use these findings to inform public policy debates over park investment and, perhaps, support efforts focused on comprehensive neighborhood planning

Preserving Comics Programming During Times of Institutional Change

Library comics conventions are opportunities to build community, promote collections, and cultivate joy. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon State University’s Valley Library had just started exploring ways to connect our campus with the Pacific Northwest’s vibrant comics scene. Although we scrapped our original plans, we were able to adapt by researching alternative programming, strengthening our community relationships, and planning for the future. Valley Library’s comic book programming was further impacted by a hiring freeze and the departure of several major comics programming boosters. Ultimately, we continued the collection development project that was previously intended to launch on Free Comic Book Day. We also investigated online conventions and continued to review literature for advice on creating the best possible in-person events for the future. While the last few years severely challenged the limits of normal, making space for joy and community has provided a helpful boost for students, faculty, and librarians

Radiation modeling in the Earth and Mars atmospheres using LRO/CRaTER with the EMMREM Module

Abstract We expand upon the efforts of Joyce et al. (2013), who computed the modulation potential at the Moon using measurements from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft along with data products from the Earth-Moon-Mars Radiation Environment Module (EMMREM). Using the computed modulation potential, we calculate galactic cosmic ray (GCR) dose and dose equivalent rates in the Earth and Mars atmospheres for various altitudes over the course of the LRO mission. While we cannot validate these predictions by directly comparable measurement, we find that our results conform to expectations and are in good agreement with the nearest available measurements and therefore may be used as reasonable estimates for use in efforts in risk assessment in the planning of future space missions as well as in the study of GCRs. PREDICCS (Predictions of radiation from REleASE, EMMREM, and Data Incorporating the CRaTER, COSTEP, and other solar energetic particles measurements) is an online system designed to provide the scientific community with a comprehensive resource on the radiation environments of the inner heliosphere. The data products shown here will be incorporated into PREDICCS in order to further this effort and daily updates will be made available on the PREDICCS website (http://prediccs.sr.unh.edu). Key Points We model GCR dose and dose equivalent rates in Earth and Mars atmospheres Dose rates are in reasonable agreement with nearby measurements Data products will soon be made available on PREDICCS website

Bridging the Communication Gap: Real Estate Developers and the Local Community: A Look at Online Platforms Used for Community Engagement in Real Estate Development

This thesis contributes to the growing planning effort to address negotiations between real estate developers and local residents. The study addresses the lack of communication that often exists between these two groups during the early stages of the real estate development process. As technology is often used to connect and improve communication between various parties, the researcher sought to understand how online platforms could be used to address this growing gap. Three case studies served as examples of real estate development firms who have recently used crowdsourcing and social-networking sites to reduce opposition and garner support for their projects. These are discussed and evaluated with respect to effective levels of community engagement. The study found that although social-networking sites can be used to engage community members they result in mostly gathering support for a project and not effectively including the input of the community. It is determined that crowd-source placemaking platforms, that include feedback meetings, allow for a meaningful partnership between these two groups to be formed. By providing a space for local residents and real estate developers to negotiate outcomes the community is delegated the power to be a dominant decision maker in the real estate development process for their community

Beyond markets: envisions of expanding public events in markets

The municipal markets network in Barcelona is unique in the world. It is made up of 39 food markets and 4 non-food markets. However, the traditional markets they represent are now facing the challenges of a new era. Today, less residents go to the markets for the promotion of supermarkets and shopping online. Moreover, the limited open time of markets also has influence. The article tries to explore more possibilities of the old municipal markets network in Barcelona. For the specific function of these buildings, they are arranged to be accessible for most of the residence in the city. This is valuable and a key factor for being public space. Therefore, if they are not efficiently used for trading, what else can they be used for? A proposal for renovating an old market and planning a new market is presented, which tries to mix more function for public use with the markets and make it the center of community again. Furthermore, these mix-used buildings can also be the urban catalysts which activate the neighbourhood space