Social media for enriching collaborative open learning and collective knowledge

This paper demonstrates some pedagogical strategies for enriching collaborative open learning - “co-learning” and collective knowledge through social media. The study centres on the e-book Open Educational Resources and Social Networks (oer.kmi.open.ac.uk) developed by the open research network COLEARN during 2012. Its collaborative research question focused on how academic communities could make their work more accessible and reusable as Open Educational Resources using Social Media. A hundred and thirteen participants – researchers, lecturers, supervisors, postgraduates and undergraduates –, from thirty research groups of different universities and countries co-authored thirty-three chapters that draw upon their mainstream research and redesigned the content to make it more reusable and understandable for a broader target audience. The theoretical principles which our qualitative and quantitative analysis are grounded are: participatory media, Commons-Based Peer Production, Mass collaboration. Our outcomes show that through social knowledge media, co-learners can convey their views by sharing questions, information, tools, practices, methods, productions and reflections. They can also rate, tag, review, comment and share others’ collaborations. All of these contribute to the development of new thoughts, research and innovation towards open collective knowledge

3 case studies: a hybrid educational strategy for ART/SCI collaborations

In this paper we report on a transdisciplinary university course designed to bring together fine art/visual communication design and computer science students for the creation and implementation of collaborative visual/audio projects that draw upon the specialized knowledge of both these disciplines. While an overview of the syllabus and the teaching methodologies is undertaken in the introduction, the focus of the paper concentrates upon an in-depth discussion and analysis of 3 specific projects that were developed by 3 distinct teams of students comprised of one artist/designer and one engineer each

The referendum incentive compatibility hypothesis: Some new results using information messages

We report results from a laboratory experiment that allows us to test the incentive compatibility hypothesis of hypothetical referenda used in CV studies through the public or private provision of information messages. One of the main methodological issues about hypothetical markets regards whether people behave differently when bidding for a public good through casting a ballot vote than when they are privately purchasing an equivalent good. This study tried to address the core of this issue by using a good that can be traded both as private and public: information messages. This allows the elimination of confounding effects associated with the specific good employed. In our case information dispels some of the uncertainty about a potential gain from a gamble. So, the approximate value of the message can be inferred once the individual measure of risk aversion is known. Decision tasks are then framed in a systematic manner according to the hypothetical vs real nature of the decision and the public vs private nature of the message. A sample of 536 university students across three countries (I, UK and NZ) participated into this lab experiment. The chosen countries reflect diversity in exposure to the practice of advisory (NZ) and abrogative (Italy) referenda, with the UK not having any exposure to it. Under private provision the results show that the fraction of participants unwilling to buy information is slightly higher in the real treatment than in the hypothetical one. Under public provision, instead, there is no statistical difference between real and hypothetical settings, confirming in part the finding of previous researchers. A verbal protocol analysis of the thought processes during choice highlights that public provision of information systematically triggers concerns and motivations different from those arising under the private provision setting. These findings suggest that the incentive compatibility of public referenda is likely to rely more on affective and psychological factors than on the strategic behaviour assumptions theorised by economists

A Conversation with Seymour Geisser

Seymour Geisser received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the City College of New York in 1950, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematical Statistics at the University of North Carolina in 1952 and 1955, respectively. He then held positions at the National Bureau of Standards and the National Institute of Mental Health until 1961. From 1961 until 1965, he was Chief of the Biometry Section at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, and also held the position of Professorial Lecturer at the George Washington University from 1960 to 1965. From 1965 to 1970, he was the founding Chair of the Department of Statistics at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and in 1971, he became the founding Director of the School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota, remaining in that position until 2001. He held visiting professorships at Iowa State University, 1960; University of Wisconsin, 1964; University of Tel-Aviv (Israel), 1971; University of Waterloo (Canada), 1972; Stanford University, 1976, 1977, 1988; Carnegie Mellon University, 1976; University of the Orange Free State (South Africa), 1978, 1993; Harvard University, 1981; University of Chicago, 1985; University of Warwick (England), 1986; University of Modena (Italy), 1996; and National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), 1998. He was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991, 1994, 1999, and the Schor Scholar, Merck Research Laboratories, 2002-2003. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Statistical Association.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342307000000131 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Weight Stigma, Cognitions, and Disordered Eating

Weight stigma experiences affect people of all weights and have many negative consequences; despite this, weight stigma is still an acceptable prejudice in our society. Research has established that weight stigma is predictive of disordered eating (DE) cognitions, which are, in turn, predictive of DE behaviors. The current study explored the unique contribution DE cognitions make to DE behaviors while controlling for other DE cognitions. The DE cognitions examined in the current study were drive for thinness, weight bias internalization, and perfectionism. The DE behaviors examined were emotional eating, restrained eating, inappropriate compensatory behaviors, and binge-eating. Weight bias internalization and drive for thinness were the only DE cognitions found to make unique contributions to distinct DE behaviors. The DE cognitions were further found to be significant mediators of the relation between weight stigma experiences and the related DE behaviors. Implications with respect to prevention and treatment are discussed

DeWitt Wallace Library Annual Report 2014-2015

Summary of library and media services activities for 2014-201

A Conversation with Yuan Shih Chow

Yuan Shih Chow was born in Hubei province in China, on September 1, 1924. The eldest child of a local militia and political leader, he grew up in war and turmoil. His hometown was on the front line during most of the Japanese invasion and occupation of China. When he was 16, Y. S. Chow journeyed, mostly on foot, to Chongqing (Chung-King), the wartime Chinese capital, to finish his high school education. When the Communist party gained power in China, Y. S. Chow had already followed his university job to Taiwan. In Taiwan, he taught mathematics as an assistant at National Taiwan University until he came to the United States in 1954. At the University of Illinois, he studied under J. L. Doob and received his Ph.D. in 1958. He served as a staff mathematician and adjunct faculty at the IBM Watson Research Laboratory and Columbia University from 1959 to 1962. He was a member of the Statistics Department at Purdue University from 1962 to 1968. From 1968 until his retirement in 1993, Y. S. Chow served as Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Columbia University. At different times, he was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Heidelberg (Germany) and the National Central University, Taiwan. He served as Director of the Institute of Mathematics of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and Director of the Center of Applied Statistics at Nankai University, Tianjin, China. He was instrumental in establishing the Institute of Statistics of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. Y. S. Chow is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a member of the International Statistical Institute and a member of Taiwan's Academia Sinica. He has numerous publications, including Great Expectations: The Theory of Optimal Stopping (1971), in collaboration with Herbert Robbins and David Siegmund, and Probability Theory (1978), in collaboration with Henry Teicher. Y. S. Chow has a strong interest in mathematics education. He taught high school mathematics for one year in 1947 and wrote a book on high school algebra in collaboration with J. H. Teng and M. L. Chu. In 1992, Y. S. Chow, together with I. S. Chang and W. C. Ho, established the Chinese Institute of Probability and Statistics in Taiwan. This conversation took place in the fall of 2003 in Dobbs Ferry, New York.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342304000000224 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A Conversation with Eugenio Regazzini

Eugenio Regazzini was born on August 12, 1946 in Cremona (Italy), and took his degree in 1969 at the University "L. Bocconi" of Milano. He has held positions at the universities of Torino, Bologna and Milano, and at the University "L. Bocconi" as assistant professor and lecturer from 1974 to 1980, and then professor since 1980. He is currently professor in probability and mathematical statistics at the University of Pavia. In the periods 1989-2001 and 2006-2009 he was head of the Institute for Applications of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Italian National Research Council (C.N.R.) in Milano and head of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Pavia, respectively. For twelve years between 1989 and 2006, he served as a member of the Scientific Board of the Italian Mathematical Union (U.M.I.). In 2007, he was elected Fellow of the IMS and, in 2001, Fellow of the "Istituto Lombardo---Accademia di Scienze e Lettere." His research activity in probability and statistics has covered a wide spectrum of topics, including finitely additive probabilities, foundations of the Bayesian paradigm, exchangeability and partial exchangeability, distribution of functionals of random probability measures, stochastic integration, history of probability and statistics. Overall, he has been one of the most authoritative developers of de Finetti's legacy. In the last five years, he has extended his scientific interests to probabilistic methods in mathematical physics; in particular, he has studied the asymptotic behavior of the solutions of equations, which are of interest for the kinetic theory of gases. The present interview was taken in occasion of his 65th birthday.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-STS362 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org