Using student experience to inform the design of an automated feedback system for essay answers

The SAFeSEA project (Supportive Automated Feedback for Short Essay Answers) aims to develop an automated feedback system to support university students as they write summative essays. Empirical studies carried out in the initial phase of the system’s development illuminated students’ approaches to and understandings of the essay-writing process. Findings from these studies suggested that, regardless of their experience of higher education, students consider essay writing as: 1) a sequential set of activities, 2) a process that is enhanced through particular sources of support and 3) a skill that requires the development of personal strategies. Further data collected from tutors offered insight into the feedback and reflection stages of essay writing. These perspectives offer important considerations for the ongoing, iterative development of this automated feedback system and indeed, for any institution developing tools to support students’ writing

Developing a FACETS digital toolkit.

Fatigue is a highly debilitating symptom experienced by the majority of people with MS and third in the James Lind Alliance ‘Top 10’ research priorities. Over 1500 people with MS in the UK have received FACETS, a group-based fatigue management programme, shown to be effective in a national multi-centre randomised controlled trial. Homework tasks are integral to FACETS, enabling strategies learned to be translated into everyday life. A recommendation from a consultation we undertook with people with MS and healthcare professionals about online delivery models was for the homework elements to be made available as a suite of mobile apps, enabling on-the-go use, real-time symptom monitoring and reminders. We are currently developing this toolkit – for use alone or in combination with FACETS – for Android, with ongoing input from people with MS. We describe progress to date (including scoping, card sorting, wire-framing and usability testing phases), challenges encountered and what’s next

A contiguous de novo genome assembly of sugar beet EL10 (Beta vulgaris L.)

A contiguous assembly of the inbred ‘EL10’ sugar beet (Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris) genome was constructed using PacBio long-read sequencing, BioNano optical mapping, Hi-C scaffolding, and Illumina short-read error correction. The EL10.1 assembly was 540 Mb, of which 96.2% was contained in nine chromosome-sized pseudomolecules with lengths from 52 to 65 Mb, and 31 contigs with a median size of 282 kb that remained unassembled. Gene annotation incorporating RNA-seq data and curated sequences via the MAKER annotation pipeline generated 24,255 gene models. Results indicated that the EL10.1 genome assembly is a contiguous genome assembly highly congruent with the published sugar beet reference genome. Gross duplicate gene analyses of EL10.1 revealed little large-scale intra-genome duplication. Reduced gene copy number for well-annotated gene families relative to other core eudicots was observed, especially for transcription factors. Variation in genome size in B. vulgaris was investigated by flow cytometry among 50 individuals producing estimates from 633 to 875 Mb/1C. Read-depth mapping with short-read whole-genome sequences from other sugar beet germplasm suggested that relatively few regions of the sugar beet genome appeared associated with high-copy number variation

Tweet reach : a research protocol for using Twitter to increase information exchange in people with communication disabilities

Objective: To (a) outline the background to research evaluating Twitter use by people with severe physical and communication disabilities participating actively in online communication forums for increasing information exchange and (b) illustrate a range of potential methods that might be applied in furthering research on the use of social media by people with developmental and acquired communication disabilities. Methods: The literature on communication disabilities, augmentative and alternative communication, and social media research informed the rationale for and design of three studies investigating the use of Twitter by people with communication disabilities. Results: To date, there is little information in the literature about how people with a range of communication disabilities might use Twitter to increase their access to information and help them to feel knowledgeable and in control of their own lives. In this paper, three studies are proposed to investigate the use of Twitter by people with communication disabilities