Making digital history: The impact of digitality on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research

This thesis investigates tow key questions: firstly, how do two broad groups - academic, family and local historians, and the public - evaluate, use, and contribute to digital history resources? And consequently, what impact have digital technologies had on public participation and scholarly practices in historical research? Analysing the impact of design on participant experiences and the reception of digital historiography by demonstrating the value of methods drawn from human-computer interaction, including heuristic evaluation, trace ethnography and semi-structured interviews. This thesis also investigates the relationship between heritage crowdsourcing projects (which ask the public to help with meaningful, inherently rewarding tasks that contribute to a shared, significant goal or research interest related to cultural heritage collections or knowledge) and the development of historical skills and interests. It situates crowdsourcing and citizen history within the broader field of participatory digital history and then focuses on the impact of digitality on the research practices of faculty and community historians. Chapter 1 provides an overview of over 400 digital history projects aimed at engaging the public or collecting, creating or enhancing records about historical materials for scholarly and general audiences. Chapter 2 discusses design factors that may influence the success of crowdsourcing projects. Following this, Chapter 3 explores the ways in which some crowdsourcing projects encourage deeper engagement with history or science, and the role of communities of practice in citizen history. Chapter 4 shifts our focus from public participation to scholarly practices in historical research, presenting the results of interviews conducted with 29 faculty and community historians. Finally, the Conclusion draws together the threads that link public participation and scholarly practices, teasing out the ways in which the practices of discovering, gathering, creating and sharing historical materials and knowledge have been affected by digital methods, tools and resources

Investigating and Supporting Sensemaking within Online Health Communities

This dissertation focuses on understanding and supporting individual and collective sensemaking within online health communities (OHCs). This major goal was achieved in three aims. In Aim 1, this dissertation contributes a rich descriptive account of collective sensemaking in OHCs forums by describing how it occurs and develops, what triggers it, what elements constitute collective construction of meaning, and what conversational moves positively contribute to this process. Further, it describes how collective sensemaking in OHCs is impacted by the interplay between informational and socio-emotional needs of OHCs members. Moreover, it examines how design of different social computing platforms influences OHCs members’ ability to meet their informational and socio-emotional needs and engage in collective sensemaking. In Aim 2, this dissertation explores the design space of tools for supporting individual sensemaking through optimized information access. Through the design and evaluation of a prototype DisVis it examines the impact of such tools on OHCs members’ ability to understand information within discussion threads. In the final Aim 3, this dissertation proposes a novel approach for meeting the three main needs identified in Aims 1 and 2: promoting individual sensemaking, while at the same time encouraging collective sensemaking, and facilitating development of social awareness and ties among community members. The design and evaluation of the novel solution for visualizing discussion threads that synergistically addresses these three needs—dSense—provides insights for future research and design of interactive solutions for supporting individual and collective sensemaking within OHCs

Classroom assessment in Mauritian primary schools

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 20/06/2002.This thesis explores teachers' current knowledge and practice about classroom assessment processes in the Mauritian primary schools and reports the results of a case study, the data of which were collected during the three terms of the school year in 1998 from four primary schools that included thirty-five teachers. The interest of the case study is not to appraise the teachers' work or the school in any way; rather it is to accurately describe classroom assessment practices within the context of Mauritian primary schools. The research addresses three main questions: why teachers conduct classroom assessment, how it is conducted and what is assessed. The findings of the study indicate that teachers assess their pupils for three main reasons: providing feedback to the pupils and to themselves, reviewing the teaching methods and for diagnostic purposes. Another minor purpose noted is for communicating information to Parents. Questioning and observation are the two methods most common in the conduct of classroom assessment. Questioning techniques are mostly closed ones, with a view to seeking a specific answer from the pupils. Teachers interpret the information collected with reference to three general standards: criterion -referenced, norm-referenced and self-referenced. In general, the findings indicate that teachers' practices are oriented more towards the traditional pedagogy in terms of emphasis on the lower level objectives, whole class teaching and focusing on the product. No provision is made for the able or the less able. All the pupils are treated the same and are given the same tasks. Almost a decade after the introduction and implementation of the Learning Competencies and the scheme for Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation, it is found that Mauritian primary teachers do not have the relevant training in assessment to fully apply the progressive reforms. Despite the education system being very centralised, it seems that teachers assess their pupils independently and without any support from the government. There is no monitoring, moderating or policing of policies. Assessment practices are derived from their habit and ideology rather than from the official directives

Visualizing the Motion Flow of Crowds

In modern cities, massive population causes problems, like congestion, accident, violence and crime everywhere. Video surveillance system such as closed-circuit television cameras is widely used by security guards to monitor human behaviors and activities to manage, direct, or protect people. With the quantity and prolonged duration of the recorded videos, it requires a huge amount of human resources to examine these video recordings and keep track of activities and events. In recent years, new techniques in computer vision field reduce the barrier of entry, allowing developers to experiment more with intelligent surveillance video system. Different from previous research, this dissertation does not address any algorithm design concerns related to object detection or object tracking. This study will put efforts on the technological side and executing methodologies in data visualization to find the model of detecting anomalies. It would like to provide an understanding of how to detect the behavior of the pedestrians in the video and find out anomalies or abnormal cases by using techniques of data visualization