1,748 research outputs found
Recalibrating machine learning for social biases: demonstrating a new methodology through a case study classifying gender biases in archival documentation
This thesis proposes a recalibration of Machine Learning for social biases to minimize harms from existing approaches and practices in the field. Prioritizing quality over quantity, accuracy over efficiency, representativeness over convenience, and situated thinking over universal thinking, the thesis demonstrates an alternative approach to creating Machine Learning models. Drawing on GLAM, the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and Design, the thesis focuses on understanding and communicating biases in a specific use case. 11,888 metadata descriptions from the University of Edinburgh Heritage Collections' Archives catalog were manually annotated for gender biases and text classification models were then trained on the resulting dataset of 55,260 annotations. Evaluations of the models' performance demonstrates that annotating gender biases can be automated; however, the subjectivity of bias as a concept complicates the generalizability of any one approach.
The contributions are: (1) an interdisciplinary and participatory Bias-Aware Methodology, (2) a Taxonomy of Gendered and Gender Biased Language, (3) data annotated for gender biased language, (4) gender biased text classification models, and (5) a human-centered approach to model evaluation. The contributions have implications for Machine Learning, demonstrating how bias is inherent to all data and models; more specifically for Natural Language Processing, providing an annotation taxonomy, annotated datasets and classification models for analyzing gender biased language at scale; for the Gallery, Library, Archives, and Museum sector, offering guidance to institutions seeking to reconcile with histories of marginalizing communities through their documentation practices; and for historians, who utilize cultural heritage documentation to study and interpret the past. Through a real-world application of the Bias-Aware Methodology in a case study, the thesis illustrates the need to shift away from removing social biases and towards acknowledging them, creating data and models that surface the uncertainty and multiplicity characteristic of human societies
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The impact of enterprise social networking on knowledge sharing between academic staff in higher education
This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonHigher education institutions have always considered knowledge sharing critical for research excellence and finding proper methods for sharing knowledge across academic staff has therefore been a major issue for universities and knowledge management research. Recent evidence shows that many universities have embraced enterprise social networking tools to improve communication, relationships, partnerships, and knowledge sharing. To date, there is little understanding of the critical factors for online knowledge sharing behaviour between academic staff, and the impact of these factors on work benefits for academic staff which differ between consumptive users and contributive users in higher education. This study employed the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to examine factors affecting knowledge sharing about the consumptive use and contributive use of enterprise social network (ESN) behaviour. The study adopts a critical realism philosophical approach and employed a grounded theory mixed methods. The conceptual model was validated through structural equation modelling based on an online survey of 254 academic staff using enterprise social networking as a part of their work in the United Kingdom. The findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers and policy makers. The research has developed a cohesive ESN use model by extending and modifying the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. The findings indicate significant differences around factors affecting consumptive and contributive usage patterns within ESNs. Due to advances in communication technologies, this research argues that a previous model suggested by Venkatesh et al. (2003) is no longer fit for purpose and the new communication tools can lead to improved knowledge in higher education. This research also makes valuable contributions to universities from a managerial viewpoint, suggesting that universities could help their scholars find a more comprehensive range of funding sources matching scholars' ideas
A study on ways to strengthen the skills in media and information literacy education of librarians dispatched to developing countries through the Delphi method
Advances in technology and communication have brought various opportunities, conveniences, and benefits to human society. With the development of information and
communication technology around the world, people can connect with each other in real time, regardless of location. Globalization is also accelerating the movement of people and goods. By making the flow of people, capital, information, and goods relatively free from border restrictions, globalization and informatization have fundamentally changed
education. The educational paradigm is shifting in various directions. First, the role of non-formal education has become more prominent as education centered on knowledge acquisition, which was appropriate in the era of the Industrial Revolution, has transformed to a pattern in which learners mostly learn on their own. Second, governments and international organizations including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have been stressing that the acquisition and use of information and communication technology (ICT) is an essential condition for people to lead prosperous lives. Third, education policies and curricula developed by countries, which used to target only the domestic education system, are now beginning to address the effects of globalization on education, global citizenship, and digital citizenship.
Along with this paradigm shift, the role of the library, which has traditionally been the center of education, society, and culture in the local community, is expanding. Libraries are representative non-formal educational institutions and local cultural venues that provide information, education, and culture services to their users. The composition and needs of libraries vary from country to country. Many developing countries has a history of colonial rule, and as their network infrastructure transforms in a leapfrogging manner directly into wireless internet, they suffer from the rapid widening of inequality in education and access to information. The purpose of this study is to understand the general impacts of this trend and to suggest ways to improve the media information literacy (MIL) competencies of residents in developing countries through the educational role that librarians can play, especially through librarians dispatched to developing countries. To this end, the relationship between library official development assistance (ODA), education in international development cooperation, and library MIL education were VI examined, and existing approaches for strengthening MIL education competency were analyzed through a literature review. In addition, the contents of current library MIL education were derived by analyzing government materials and summarizing the tasks
requested for dispatched librarians to developing countries. After that, in-depth interviews were conducted with librarians dispatched to libraries in developing countries to understand the status of librarians’ work and library education programs in developing countries. In addition, through a Delphi survey with various experts, such as teachers who performed MILeducation, professors specializing in MIL, public officers, training experts in developing countries, and dispatched librarians, a few suggestions on ways to strengthen the competencies of librarians in developing countries for MIL were obtained. The study found that major factors hindering the strengthening of MIL education
competencies in libraries in developing countries include the lack of professional human resources to carry out library ODA projects, understanding in ODA in the library field, and publicity for libraries’ role in sustainable education. There is also a need in developing MIL training materials and teaching methods. In conclusion, to build dispatched librarians’ MIL education knowledge and skills, it is necessary to conduct more research on the MIL education function of libraries and librarians and develop corresponding teaching methods and textbooks. In addition, various forms of MIL education training should be provided to dispatched librarians to enable them to work together consistently and continuously. Understanding the situation of recipient countries and organizations, their cultural environment, conditions, and customs, and their MIL environment are critical for the effective dispatch of librarians. To support smooth and sustainable education through libraries in the future, the need for building productive collaborative partnerships with various institutions is stressed. Among the functions that dispatched librarians perform in libraries in developing countries, improving users’ MIL competencies, providing information access rights, and supporting users’ non-formal learning are important roles that modern society requires libraries to perform. In addition, non-formal education is the most suitable form of education for MIL education, and MIL is a fundamental competency in modern society. If dispatched librarians and librarians in recipient countries can cooperate organically through activities in educational support, cultural program development, and MIL competency improvement, library ODA can head to a new direction that substantially contributes to the well-being of people in both donor and recipient countries
Biased Attention: Do Vision Transformers Amplify Gender Bias More than Convolutional Neural Networks?
Deep neural networks used in computer vision have been shown to exhibit many
social biases such as gender bias. Vision Transformers (ViTs) have become
increasingly popular in computer vision applications, outperforming
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in many tasks such as image
classification. However, given that research on mitigating bias in computer
vision has primarily focused on CNNs, it is important to evaluate the effect of
a different network architecture on the potential for bias amplification. In
this paper we therefore introduce a novel metric to measure bias in
architectures, Accuracy Difference. We examine bias amplification when models
belonging to these two architectures are used as a part of large multimodal
models, evaluating the different image encoders of Contrastive Language Image
Pretraining which is an important model used in many generative models such as
DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Our experiments demonstrate that architecture can
play a role in amplifying social biases due to the different techniques
employed by the models for feature extraction and embedding as well as their
different learning properties. This research found that ViTs amplified gender
bias to a greater extent than CNN
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SCONUL Access: The Open University student experience
This research includes two phases focussing on students at The Open University: an analysis of SCONUL Access membership and the correlation with attainment and a second phase which uncovers what aspects of the SCONUL Access scheme members use (if any) and the impact that the programme has on their studies.
In the data analysis, we found that a higher percentage of students who were members of SCONUL Access gained a distinction (32%) in comparison to students who weren’t a member (22%). This difference is calculated as statistically significant.
In the second phase of our research, most students (62%, n=320) reported that being part of the scheme has a positive impact by supporting their studies and wellbeing
Contextualising Title Pages by Material Culture: Typography & List of Rarities A Case Study Don Saltero’s Coffeehouse Catalogues, 1729 – 1795.
Using A Catalogue of the Rarities to Be Seen at Don Saltero’s Coffeehouse in Chelsea. To Which Is Added, a Compleat List of the Donors Thereof - published in London, England between 1729 and 1795, this case study contextualises the catalogue’s title pages through a change over time examination of the typography and then listed of rarities through strategies from material culture to understand better the intersecting identities floating around the public sphere. What was reflected were characteristics of religion, nationhood, and gender. Don Saltero’s rarities catalogues were a topic of discussion for patrons of Don Saltero’s coffeehouse in London. Catalogues analysed in this research existed in the coffee house environment, private homes, and wherever these catalogues ended up. The catalogues added legitimacy to the collections they accompanied and did so by placing objects within various Enlightenment discussions and tying the listed objects to contemporary cultural knowledge. Additionally, the object’s descriptions allowed spectators and readers to interact with the ‘science’ of the emerging field of natural history. They presented catalogues in a way that emulated emerging scientific works within the academic sphere of the natural world. The sources used here gained further fame and legitimacy through the connection to well-known naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, a physician to the royal family, president of the Royal Society, and founder of the British Museum. Owning rarity collections was often an elite enterprise, but a collection’s stories were deliberately pitched to a much broader audience offering access to the collections and the ideas they represented. Thus, these catalogues add significance to their collections by expanding public discourse on objects known as rarities
Beyond the Stacks Vol 3, Issue 2, Winter/Spring 2023
In this Issue: Teaching Inclusive Research, pgs. 1-2 Message from the Dean, pg. 2 Inclusive Language in Call Numbers, pg. 3 The 2023/23 Student Library Advisory Board, pg. 3 Exhibit Collaborations, pg. 4-5 Campus & Community Engagement by the Numbers, pg. 6 Douglass Day: Spreading Love for Digital Black History, pg. 7 Get to Know our Newest Staff Members, pg. 7 We’re Moving!: Archival Collections Moving to DigitalCommons@Fairfield, pg. 8https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/library-newsletter/1004/thumbnail.jp
Library support for innovative research practice in the social sciences
This report from the Bodleian Libraries provides evidence-based insights and recommendations for the development of library training and guidance for innovative research practice in the Social Sciences Division, University of Oxford
2022 Touro University System Faculty Publications
The 2022 edition of the Faculty Publications Book of the Touro University system. This bibliography contains the published works of affiliated authors during 2022, arranged by academic unit.https://touroscholar.touro.edu/facpubs/1012/thumbnail.jp
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