70,829 research outputs found
Weblogs in Higher Education - Why Do Students (Not) Blog?
Positive impacts on learning through blogging, such as active knowledge construction and reflective writing, have been reported. However, not many students use weblogs in informal contexts, even when appropriate facilities are offered by their universities. While motivations for blogging have been subject to empirical studies, little research has addressed the issue of why students choose not to blog. This paper presents an empirical study undertaken to gain insights into the decision making process of students when deciding whether to keep a blog or not. A better understanding of students' motivations for (not) blogging may help decision makers at universities in the process of selecting, introducing, and maintaining similar services. As informal learning gains increased recognition, results of this study can help to advance appropriate designs of informal learning contexts in Higher Education. The method of ethnographic decision tree modelling was applied in an empirical study conducted at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. Since 2004, the university has been offering free weblog accounts for all students and staff members upon entering school, not bound to any course or exam. Qualitative, open interviews were held with 3 active bloggers, 3 former bloggers, and 3 nonâ bloggers to elicit their decision criteria. Decision tree models were developed out of the interviews. It turned out that the modelling worked best when splitting the decision process into two parts: one model representing decisions on whether to start a weblog at all, and a second model representing criteria on whether to continue with a weblog once it was set up. The models were tested for their validity through questionnaires developed out of the decision tree models. 30 questionnaires have been distributed to bloggers, former bloggers and nonâ bloggers. Results show that the main reasons for students not to keep a weblog include a preference for direct (online) communication, and concerns about the loss of privacy through blogging. Furthermore, the results indicate that intrinsic motivation factors keep students blogging, whereas stopping a weblog is mostly attributable to external factors
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AnswerTree â a hyperplace-based game for collaborative mobile learning
In this paper we present AnswerTree, a collaborative mobile location-based educational game designed to teach 8-12 year olds about trees and wildlife within the University of Nottingham campus. The activity is designed around collecting virtual cards (similar in nature to the popular Top TrumpsTM games) containing graphics and information about notable trees. Each player begins by collecting one card from a game location, but then he or she can only collect further cards by answering questions â whose solutions are obtainable through sharing knowledge with other cardholders. This ostensibly allows each player to become a subject expert at the start of the game, encouraging collaborative interaction for the game to be successfully completed. In this initial paper we will outline the structure and background of this location based game. AnswerTree has been authored within the Hyperplace framework, and is a first implementation of a wider process to develop a flexible, multi-purpose platform for both individual and group location-based mobile learning
Map++: A Crowd-sensing System for Automatic Map Semantics Identification
Digital maps have become a part of our daily life with a number of commercial
and free map services. These services have still a huge potential for
enhancement with rich semantic information to support a large class of mapping
applications. In this paper, we present Map++, a system that leverages standard
cell-phone sensors in a crowdsensing approach to automatically enrich digital
maps with different road semantics like tunnels, bumps, bridges, footbridges,
crosswalks, road capacity, among others. Our analysis shows that cell-phones
sensors with humans in vehicles or walking get affected by the different road
features, which can be mined to extend the features of both free and commercial
mapping services. We present the design and implementation of Map++ and
evaluate it in a large city. Our evaluation shows that we can detect the
different semantics accurately with at most 3% false positive rate and 6% false
negative rate for both vehicle and pedestrian-based features. Moreover, we show
that Map++ has a small energy footprint on the cell-phones, highlighting its
promise as a ubiquitous digital maps enriching service.Comment: Published in the Eleventh Annual IEEE International Conference on
Sensing, Communication, and Networking (IEEE SECON 2014
Mining large-scale human mobility data for long-term crime prediction
Traditional crime prediction models based on census data are limited, as they
fail to capture the complexity and dynamics of human activity. With the rise of
ubiquitous computing, there is the opportunity to improve such models with data
that make for better proxies of human presence in cities. In this paper, we
leverage large human mobility data to craft an extensive set of features for
crime prediction, as informed by theories in criminology and urban studies. We
employ averaging and boosting ensemble techniques from machine learning, to
investigate their power in predicting yearly counts for different types of
crimes occurring in New York City at census tract level. Our study shows that
spatial and spatio-temporal features derived from Foursquare venues and
checkins, subway rides, and taxi rides, improve the baseline models relying on
census and POI data. The proposed models achieve absolute R^2 metrics of up to
65% (on a geographical out-of-sample test set) and up to 89% (on a temporal
out-of-sample test set). This proves that, next to the residential population
of an area, the ambient population there is strongly predictive of the area's
crime levels. We deep-dive into the main crime categories, and find that the
predictive gain of the human dynamics features varies across crime types: such
features bring the biggest boost in case of grand larcenies, whereas assaults
are already well predicted by the census features. Furthermore, we identify and
discuss top predictive features for the main crime categories. These results
offer valuable insights for those responsible for urban policy or law
enforcement
IMPROVING SMART GRID SECURITY USING MERKLE TREES
AbstractâPresently nations worldwide are starting to convert their aging electrical power infrastructures into modern, dynamic power grids. Smart Grid offers much in the way of efficiencies and robustness to the electrical power grid, however its heavy reliance on communication networks will leave it more vulnerable to attack than present day grids. This paper looks at the threat to public key cryptography systems from a fully realized quantum computer and how this could impact the Smart Grid. We argue for the use of Merkle Trees in place of public key cryptography for authentication of devices in wireless mesh networks that are used in Smart Grid applications
ViotSOC: Controlling Access to Dynamically Virtualized IoT Services using Service Object Capability
Virtualization of Internet of Things(IoT) is a concept of dynamically
building customized high-level IoT services which
rely on the real time data streams from low-level physical
IoT sensors. Security in IoT virtualization is challenging,
because with the growing number of available (building
block) services, the number of personalizable virtual
services grows exponentially. This paper proposes Service
Object Capability(SOC) ticket system, a decentralized access
control mechanism between servers and clients to effi-
ciently authenticate and authorize each other without using
public key cryptography. SOC supports decentralized
partial delegation of capabilities specified in each server/-
client ticket. Unlike PKI certificates, SOCâs authentication
time and handshake packet overhead stays constant regardless
of each capabilityâs delegation hop distance from the
root delegator. The paper compares SOCâs security bene-
fits with Kerberos and the experimental results show SOCâs
authentication incurs significantly less time packet overhead
compared against those from other mechanisms based on
RSA-PKI and ECC-PKI algorithms. SOC is as secure as,
and more efficient and suitable for IoT environments, than
existing PKIs and Kerberos
Ambient Gestures
We present Ambient Gestures, a novel gesture-based system designed to support ubiquitous âin the environmentâ interactions with everyday computing technology. Hand gestures and audio feedback allow users to control computer applications without reliance on a graphical user interface, and without having to switch from the context of a non-computer task to the context of the computer. The Ambient Gestures system is composed of a vision recognition software application, a set of gestures to be processed by a scripting application and a navigation and selection application that is controlled by the gestures. This system allows us to explore gestures as the primary means of interaction within a multimodal, multimedia environment. In this paper we describe the Ambient Gestures system, define the gestures and the interactions that can be achieved in this environment and present a formative study of the system. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and future applications of Ambient Gestures in ubiquitous computing
The urban screen as a socialising platform: exploring the role of place within the urban space
In this paper we explore shared encounters mediated by technologies in the urban space. We investigate aspects that influence the interactions between people and
people and people and their surroundings when technology is introduced in the urban space. We highlight the importance of space and the role of place in providing temporal and spatial mechanisms facilitating different types of
social interactions and shared encounters.
An emperical experiment was condeucted with a prototype that was implemented in the form of a digital screen, embeded in the physical surrounding in selected
locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows in the heritage City of Bath, UK.
The aim is to create a novel urban experience that triggers shared encounters among friends, observers or strangers. Using the body as an interaface, the screen acted as a non-traditional interface and a facilitator between people and people and people and their surrounding environment.
Here we outline early findings from deploying the digital screen as a socialiasing platform in a city context. We describe the user experience and demonstrate how people move, congregate and socialize around the digital
surface. We illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions in and highlight related issues.
The initial findings indicated that introducing a digital platform as a public interactive installation in the urban space may provide a stage for emergent social interactions among various people and motivate users to actively and
collaboratively play with the media. However, situating the digital platform in various locations, and depending on the context, might generate diverse and unpredicted social behaviours designers might be unaware of. In this respect we
believe that the final experience is shaped by interconnection of structural, social, cultural, temporal and perhaps personal elements. We conclude by mentioning briefly our on going work
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