Learning by gaming:ANT and critical making

Relationships among theory, gaming, learning and socio-technical design are explored in the two contributions which compose the section. The theory in question is ANT, re-interpreted through critical making - an umbrella term for various distinctive practices that link traditional scholarship in the humanities and social sciences to forms of material engagement. Sergio Minniti describes an ongoing project called Game of ANT, which draws upon the critical making approach to design an interactive technology and a workshop experience through which scholars and students can conceptually-materially engage with ANT, hence exploring and approaching it from novel points of view. Game of ANT adopts the Latourian vision of technoscience as war and physically embodies this idea by proposing a sort of war game during which participants play the roles of human or non-human actors engaging with the competitive dynamics of socio-technical life. The commentary by Stefano De Paoli proposes new directions to develop the project, by deepening the concept of game and its value for design and learning processes.</p

Designing of a Community-based Translation Center

Interfaces that support multi-lingual content can reach a broader community. We wish to extend the reach of CITIDEL, a digital library for computing education materials, to support multiple languages. By doing so, we hope that it will increase the number of users, and in turn the number of resources. This paper discusses three approaches to translation (automated translation, developer-based, and community-based), and a brief evaluation of these approaches. It proposes a design for an online community translation center where volunteers help translate interface components and educational materials available in CITIDEL.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Framing quality improvement tools and techniques in healthcare: the case of Improvement Leaders' Guides

The paper presents a study of how quality improvement tools are framed within healthcare settings.\ud \ud The paper employs an interpretive approach to understand how quality improvement tools and techniques are mobilised and legitimated using a case study of the NHS Modernisation Agency Improvement Leaders’ Guides.\ud \ud Improvement Leaders’ Guides were framed within a service improvement approach encouraging the use of quality improvement tools and techniques within healthcare settings. Their use formed part of enacting tools and techniques across different contexts. Whilst this enactment was believed to support the mobililsation of tools and techniques, the experience also illustrated the challenges in distributing such approaches.\ud \ud The paper provides a contribution to our understanding of framing the 'social act' of quality improvement. Given the ongoing emphasis on quality improvement and the persistent challenges involved, it also provides information for healthcare leaders globally in seeking to develop, implement or modify similar tools and distribute leadership within health and social care settings.\ud \ud \u

Connectionist Theory Refinement: Genetically Searching the Space of Network Topologies

An algorithm that learns from a set of examples should ideally be able to exploit the available resources of (a) abundant computing power and (b) domain-specific knowledge to improve its ability to generalize. Connectionist theory-refinement systems, which use background knowledge to select a neural network's topology and initial weights, have proven to be effective at exploiting domain-specific knowledge; however, most do not exploit available computing power. This weakness occurs because they lack the ability to refine the topology of the neural networks they produce, thereby limiting generalization, especially when given impoverished domain theories. We present the REGENT algorithm which uses (a) domain-specific knowledge to help create an initial population of knowledge-based neural networks and (b) genetic operators of crossover and mutation (specifically designed for knowledge-based networks) to continually search for better network topologies. Experiments on three real-world domains indicate that our new algorithm is able to significantly increase generalization compared to a standard connectionist theory-refinement system, as well as our previous algorithm for growing knowledge-based networks.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Self reliant groups from India to Scotland: lessons from south to north

There is a move towards partnership working across the global north and south but there remain questions about how to do it most effectively. This paper reports on the findings from a project that built a partnership between women in Scotland and India in order to transfer knowledge about Indian Self Help Groups. By creating peer to peer relationships that challenged traditional roles of 'teacher' and 'learner', the project was effective in transferring learning from south to north and generating meaningful outcomes for those involved. Despite the contextual differences, the successful transfer of key components of the model, savings, and loans, has led to a sense of empowerment in the Scottish women that is comparable to their Indian counterparts. As the project continues, it will be important that the dialogue between the partners continues, so there is ongoing learning as the Scottish groups expand and develop