1,807 research outputs found
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Design for Accessible Collaborative Engagement: Making online synchronous collaborative learning more accessible for students with sensory impairments.
This thesis looks at the accessibility of collaborative learning and the barriers to engagement experienced by blind/visually impaired (BVI) students and deaf/hard of hearing (DHH) students. It focuses specifically on online synchronous collaborative learning after establishing that this format presented the greatest barriers, and that these student groups were not engaging.
Taking a design-based research (DBR) approach, five studies were undertaken to identify these barriers and determine potential interventions. The product of the research, a result of collaborative design by the participants in the study, is a framework for accessible collaborative engagement represented in the form of an interactive website model, the Model for Accessible Collaborative Engagement (MACE).
The studies involved representatives of all stakeholders in the collaborative learning process at the institution (the Open University): students, tutors, modules teams, academics, support staff, and the student union Disabled Students Group. These studies took the form of an online survey of 327 students, 10 interviews with staff and students, 6 staff workshops and a collaborative design focus group. With significant representation of the target groups (BVI and DHH) in all studies, and taking an iterative approach to the design, evaluation and construction of the framework model, the studies established that barriers existed in four main categories covering different themes:
1. Communications: aural, visual, screen reading and navigation, text and captioning, lip reading and non-verbal communications, interpretation and third-party communications, mode control, and synchronisation.
2. Emotional and Social Factors: familiarisation, support networks, self-advocacy, opting out, cognitive load, and stress and anxiety.
3. Provisioning and Technical Factors: dissemination, speed and pacing of sessions, staff training, participation control, group size, technical provisioning, and recordings.
4. Activity and Session Design: Volume of materials, advance materials, accessible materials, accessible activities, and session formats.
Interventions were designed that could reduce the barriers in each of these categories and themes by adjustments and changes from both the student and institutional standpoints. MACE is designed to be utilised by both students and staff to provide guidance and suggestions on how to identify and acknowledge these barriers and implement interventions to reduce them.
This research represents an original and essential contribution to the field of investigation. As well as informing future research inquiry, the model can be used by all participants and stakeholders in online collaborative learning to help reduce barriers for BVI and DHH students and improve inclusivity in synchronous online events
Caribbean cultural heritage and the nation:Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao in a regional context
Centuries of intense migrations have deeply impacted expressions of cultural heritage on the ABC islands: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. This volume queries how cultural heritage on these Dutch Caribbean islands relates to the work of nation building and nation-branding. How does the imagining of a shared political âweâ relates to images deliberately produced to market these islands to a world of capital? The contributing authors in this volume address this leading question in their essays that describe and analyze the expressions of the ABC islands. In doing so they compare and contrast nation building and branding on the ABC islands to those taking place in the wider Caribbean. The expressions of cultural heritage discussed range from the importance of sports, music, literature and visual arts to those related to the political economy of tourism, the work of museums, the activism surrounding the question of reparations, and the politics and policies affecting the Caribbean Diasporas in the North Atlantic. This volume adds to the understanding of the dynamics of nation, culture and economy in the Caribbean
Mapping the structure of science through clustering in citation networks : granularity, labeling and visualization
The science system is large, and millions of research publications are published each year.
Within the field of scientometrics, the features and characteristics of this system are studied
using quantitative methods. Research publications constitute a rich source of information
about the science system and a means to model and study science on a large scale. The
classification of research publications into fields is essential to answer many questions about
the features and characteristics of the science system.
Comprehensive, hierarchical, and detailed classifications of large sets of research publications
are not easy to obtain. A solution for this problem is to use network-based approaches to
cluster research publications based on their citation relations. Clustering approaches have
been applied to large sets of publications at the level of individual articles (in contrast to the
journal level) for about a decade. Such approaches are addressed in this thesis. I call the
resulting classifications âalgorithmically constructed, publications-level classifications of
research publicationsâ (ACPLCs).
The aim of the thesis is to improve interpretability and utility of ACPLCs. I focus on some
issues that hitherto have not received much attention in the previous literature: (1) Conceptual
framework. Such a framework is elaborated throughout the thesis. Using the social science
citation theory, I argue that citations contextualize and position publications in the science
system. Citations may therefore be used to identify research fields, defined as focus areas of
research at various granularity levels. (2) Granularity levels corresponding to conceptual
framework. In Articles I and II, a method is proposed on how to adjust the granularity of
ACPLCs in order to obtain clusters corresponding to research fields at two granularity levels:
topics and specialties. (3) Cluster labeling. Article III addresses labeling of clusters at
different semantic levels, from broad and large to narrow and small, and compares the use of
data from various bibliographic fields and different term weighting approaches. (4)
Visualization. The methods resulting from Articles I-III are applied in Article IV to obtain a
classification of about 19 million biomedical articles. I propose a visualization methodology
that provides overview of the classification, using clusters at coarse levels, as well as the
possibility to zoom into details, using clusters at a granular level.
In conclusion, I have improved interpretability and utility of ACPLCs by providing a
conceptual framework, adjusting granularity of clusters, labeling clusters and, finally, by
visualizing an ACPLC in a way that provides both overview and detail. I have demonstrated
how these methods can be applied to obtain ACPLCs that are useful to, for example, identify
and explore focus areas of research
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Sonic heritage: listening to the past
History is so often told through objects, images and photographs, but the potential of sounds to reveal place and space is often neglected. Our research project âSonic Palimpsestâ1 explores the potential of sound to evoke impressions and new understandings of the past, to embrace the sonic as a tool to understand what was, in a way that can complement and add to our predominant visual understandings. Our work includes the expansion of the Oral History archives held at Chatham Dockyard to include womenâs voices and experiences, and the creation of sonic works to engage the public with their heritage. Our research highlights the social and cultural value of oral history and field recordings in the transmission of knowledge to both researchers and the public. Together these recordings document how buildings and spaces within the dockyard were used and experienced by those who worked there. We can begin to understand the social and cultural roles of these buildings within the community, both past and present
Validating a group oral task in a university entry test:Interactional competence as a target construct in an academic context
Increasing seminar-style teaching and assessment diversification in higher education mean that group assessments have become part of degree assessments in many university contexts. In principle, therefore, group oral tasks seem a meaningful task type for university entry tests. However, limited research is available on the validity of such tasks, particularly for local university entrance tests such as the Malaysian University English Test (MUET), of which the scores are used to demonstrate meeting Malaysian university entry requirements. Therefore, this study investigated the interactional features elicited during a group oral task for a university entry test (MUET) and compared them to the interactional features of group oral assessments in the target domain (degree-level study), to shed light on the context validity of MUETâs group oral task. To gain insights into the construct tested by the MUET group oral task versus by degree-level group assessments, video recordings were made of four MUET simulation tests and of two groups of first-year and two groups of final-year students completing assessed group academic discussions in an English language and an IT course, respectively. After transcribing the recordings, Applied Conversation Analysis was conducted to identify the interactional features during group oral performances in the three settings (MUET, English course, IT course). The analyses of the talk revealed differences between the turn and topic management features of the group oral performances in the three contexts with a focus on MUET versus English and IT, and to a lesser extent between groups within the same context. More specifically, differences were found in general features of turn-taking (e.g., organisation of talk in terms of specific strategies used during the initiation, maintaining, and ending of the group interaction), turn length, number of turns, and turn allocations. Topic management features such as opening, topic initiation, extension and closing also differed. In addition, an evaluation of the MUET materials by a group of ten expert language testers suggested that the MUET group interaction task did not lend itself to eliciting all the intended features listed in the MUET test specifications and rating scale. All in all, these findings indicate important shortcomings to the validity of the MUET group oral task. The significance of the study lies in the insights gained into the context validity of the MUET group interaction task and their implications for this high-stakes test. The study also offers insights into the nature of turn and topic management microfeatures in academic group interactions more generally
INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 10 (I/2023)
Having in mind the foundational idea not only of our Journal but also the INSAM Institute itself, the main theme of this issue is titled âTechnological Aspects of Contemporary Artistic and Scientific Researchâ. This theme was recognized as important, timely, and necessary by a number of authors coming from various disciplines.
The (Inter)Views section brings us three diverse pieces; the issue is opened by Aida AdĆŸoviÄâs interview with the legendary Slovene act Laibach regarding their performance of the Wir sing das Volk project at the Sarajevo National Theater on May 9, 2023. Following this, Marija MitroviÄ prepared an interview with media artist Leon Eckard, concerning this artistâs views on contemporary art and the interaction between technology and human sensitivity. An essay by Alexander Liebermann on the early 20th-century composer Erwin Schulhoff, whose search for a unique personal voice could be encouraging in any given period, closes this rubric.
The Main theme section contains seven scientific articles. In the first one, Filipa MagalhĂŁes, InĂȘs Filipe, Mariana Silva and Henrique Carvalho explore the process and details of technological and artistic challenges of reviving the music theater work FE...DE...RI...CO... (1987) by Constança Capdeville. The second article, written by Milan MilojkoviÄ, is dedicated to the analysis of historical composer Vojislav VuÄkoviÄ and his ChatGPT-generated doppelganger and opera. The fictional narrative woven around the actual historical figure served as an example of the current possibilities of AI in the domain of musicological work. In the next paper, LuĂs Arandas, Miguel Carvalhais and Mick Grierson expand on their work on the film Irreplaceable Biography, which was created via language-guided generative models in audiovisual production. Thomas Moore focuses on the Belgium-based Nadar Ensemble and discusses the ways in which the performers of the ensemble understand the concept of the integrated concert and distinguish themselves from it, specifying the broadening of performersâ competencies and responsibilities. In her paper, Dana Papachristou contributes to the discussion on the politics of connectivity based on the examination of three projects: the online project Xenakis Networked Performance Marathon 2022, 2023Eleusis Mystery 91_Magnetic Dance in Elefsina European Capital of Culture, and Spaces of Reflection offline PirateBox network in the 10th Berlin Biennale. The penultimate article in the section is written by Kenrick Ho and presents us with the authorâs composition Flou for solo violin through the prism of the relationship between (historically present) algorithmic processes, the composer, and the performer. Finally, Rijad KaniĆŸa adds to the critical discourse on the reshaping of the musical experience via technology and the understanding of said technology using the example of musique concrĂšte.
In the final Review section, Bakir MemiĆĄeviÄ gives an overview of the 13th International Symposium âMusic in Societyâ that was held in Sarajevo in December 2022
Machine Learning Algorithm for the Scansion of Old Saxon Poetry
Several scholars designed tools to perform the automatic scansion of poetry in many languages, but none of these tools
deal with Old Saxon or Old English. This project aims to be a first attempt to create a tool for these languages. We
implemented a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) model to perform the automatic scansion of Old Saxon
and Old English poems. Since this model uses supervised learning, we manually annotated the Heliand manuscript, and
we used the resulting corpus as labeled dataset to train the model. The evaluation of the performance of the algorithm
reached a 97% for the accuracy and a 99% of weighted average for precision, recall and F1 Score. In addition, we tested
the model with some verses from the Old Saxon Genesis and some from The Battle of Brunanburh, and we observed that
the model predicted almost all Old Saxon metrical patterns correctly misclassified the majority of the Old English input
verses
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