36,368 research outputs found
The impact of an in-service professional development course on writing teacher attitudes and pedagogy
In education, it is commonly believed that the quality of teachers' learning experiences directly affects the quality of their students' learning experiences. Specifically, teachers' continuing learning may bring about positive effects on student learning. For the past ten years or so, research has emphasized the effects of professional development courses on teachers in hard science disciplines. Little attention has been paid to study the influences of those courses on teachers in the 'soft' sciences, such as English language, especially in the area of teaching of writing. Against this background, I undertook a study to investigate how an in-service professional development course influences the teaching attitudes of writing teachers who enrolled on the course and their teaching practice. I argue that the professional development course empowered the teachers with skills useful for the teaching of writing. I also argue that the course positively changed the attitudes of the teachers towards their practice in the teaching of writing. It is suggested that teachers need to engage in continuing professional development to improve the quality of their teaching
Towards trusted volunteer grid environments
Intensive experiences show and confirm that grid environments can be
considered as the most promising way to solve several kinds of problems
relating either to cooperative work especially where involved collaborators are
dispersed geographically or to some very greedy applications which require
enough power of computing or/and storage. Such environments can be classified
into two categories; first, dedicated grids where the federated computers are
solely devoted to a specific work through its end. Second, Volunteer grids
where federated computers are not completely devoted to a specific work but
instead they can be randomly and intermittently used, at the same time, for any
other purpose or they can be connected or disconnected at will by their owners
without any prior notification. Each category of grids includes surely several
advantages and disadvantages; nevertheless, we think that volunteer grids are
very promising and more convenient especially to build a general multipurpose
distributed scalable environment. Unfortunately, the big challenge of such
environments is, however, security and trust. Indeed, owing to the fact that
every federated computer in such an environment can randomly be used at the
same time by several users or can be disconnected suddenly, several security
problems will automatically arise. In this paper, we propose a novel solution
based on identity federation, agent technology and the dynamic enforcement of
access control policies that lead to the design and implementation of trusted
volunteer grid environments.Comment: 9 Pages, IJCNC Journal 201
The usability of open source software: analysis and prospects
Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability
Usability and open source software.
Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability
Recommended from our members
Learning by volunteer computing, thinking and gaming: What and how are volunteers learning by participating in Virtual Citizen Science?
Citizen Science (CS) refers to a form of research collaboration that engages volunteers without formal scientific training in contributing to empirical scientific projects. Virtual Citizen Science (VCS) projects engage participants in online tasks. VCS has demonstrated its usefulness for research, however little is known about its learning potential for volunteers. This paper reports on research exploring the learning outcomes and processes in VCS. In order to identify different kinds of learning, 32 exploratory interviews of volunteers were conducted in three different VCS projects. We found six main learning outcomes related to different participants' activities in the project. Volunteers learn on four dimensions that are directly related to the scope of the VCS project: they learn at the task/game level, acquire pattern recognition skills, on-topic content knowledge, and improve their scientific literacy. Thanks to indirect opportunities of VCS projects, volunteers learn on two additional dimensions: off topic knowledge and skills, and personal development. Activities through which volunteers learn can be categorized in two levels: at a micro (task/game) level that is direct participation to the task, and at a macro level, i.e. use of project documentation, personal research on the Internet, and practicing specific roles in project communities. Both types are influenced by interactions with others in chat or forums. Most learning happens to be informal, unstructured and social. Volunteers do not only learn from others by interacting with scientists and their peers, but also by working for others: they gain knowledge, new status and skills by acting as active participants, moderators, editors, translators, community managers, etc. in a project community. This research highlights these informal and social aspects in adult learning and science education and also stresses the importance for learning through the indirect opportunities provided by the project: the main one being the opportunity to participate and progress in a project community, according to one's tastes and skills
Patterns of Participation and Motivation in Folding@home: The Contribution of Hardware Enthusiasts and Overclockers
Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which participants run protein folding simulations on their computers. Participants complete work units and are awarded points for their contribution. An investigation into motivations to participate and patterns of participation revealed the significant contribution of a sub-community composed of individuals who custom-build computers to maximise their processing power. These individuals, known as “overclockers” or “hardware enthusiasts,” use distributed computing projects such as Folding@home to benchmark their modified computers and to compete with one another to see who can process the greatest number of project work units. Many are initially drawn to the project to learn about computer hardware from other overclockers and to compete for points. However, once they learn more about the scientific outputs of Folding@home, some participants become more motivated by the desire to contribute to scientific research. Overclockers form numerous online communities where members collaborate and help each other maximise their computing output. They invest heavily in their computers and process the majority of Folding@home’s simulations, thus providing an invaluable (and free) resource
An ontology co-design method for the co-creation of a continuous care ontology
Ontology engineering methodologies tend to emphasize the role of the knowledge engineer or require a very active role of domain experts. In this paper, a participatory ontology engineering method is described that holds the middle ground between these two 'extremes'. After thorough ethnographic research, an interdisciplinary group of domain experts closely interacted with ontology engineers and social scientists in a series of workshops. Once a preliminary ontology was developed, a dynamic care request system was built using the ontology. Additional workshops were organized involving a broader group of domain experts to ensure the applicability of the ontology across continuous care settings. The proposed method successfully actively engaged domain experts in constructing the ontology, without overburdening them. Its applicability is illustrated by presenting the co-created continuous care ontology. The lessons learned during the design and execution of the approach are also presented
empathi: An ontology for Emergency Managing and Planning about Hazard Crisis
In the domain of emergency management during hazard crises, having sufficient
situational awareness information is critical. It requires capturing and
integrating information from sources such as satellite images, local sensors
and social media content generated by local people. A bold obstacle to
capturing, representing and integrating such heterogeneous and diverse
information is lack of a proper ontology which properly conceptualizes this
domain, aggregates and unifies datasets. Thus, in this paper, we introduce
empathi ontology which conceptualizes the core concepts concerning with the
domain of emergency managing and planning of hazard crises. Although empathi
has a coarse-grained view, it considers the necessary concepts and relations
being essential in this domain. This ontology is available at
https://w3id.org/empathi/
- …