Re-Engineering of the Computing Curriculum: The Case of University of Technology, Jamaica

The current literature on computing education suggests that there is a paradigm shift taking place in the discipline. Evidence of this is in the discipline’s rapid evolution and the volatility in the enrollments. This has prompted university administrations to make important strategic decisions as to how to reengineer their curriculum to remain viable, relevant and reflect innovation. This paper uses a case study approach to describe how the School of Computing and Information Technology (SCIT) at the University of Technology, Jamaica, employed a market orientation approach to reengineer its curriculum. In developing the curriculum, SCIT employed among other things; students views, international industry trends, the Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula 2005, local/regional requirements and recommendations from the School’s Advisory Committee. The intent was to provide a broader portfolio that would attract and retain a wider student population. This model curriculum program can be a blueprint for small computing programs, especially in developing countries with modest resources

Technological and Implementation Issues in Moodle-Based Digital Badge System

Digital badges, touted as a gamification tool that can potentially influence learner motivation, engagement and participation, are being used increasingly in a variety of educational domains to facilitate and motivate learning. Using a badge system design implemented in the Moodle learning management platform, data was collected from four experiments from 2015 to 2017 to examine the effects of gamification with the use of digital badges on introductory programming students' intrinsic motivation. This paper provides an in-depth examination of seldomly discussed technological and implementation issues we encountered in implementing our Moodle-based badge system, worthy of exploration to support future gamification studies in this area. Our gamified implementation is analyzed according to five main factors primarily adopted from an IT implementation framework: (1) assessment of needs, (2) choice of technology, (3) technological infrastructure, (4) system and environmental factors and (5) evaluation. The findings highlight enabling and challenging factors associated with the technology and badge implementation. Our experience shows that badge systems may be influenced by contextual factors such as cost and scale of implementation. We provide recommendations to guide educational stakeholders, particularly those considering Moodle as their badge implementation platform

Technological and Implementation Issues in Moodle-Based Digital Badge System

Digital badges, touted as a gamification tool that can potentially influence learner motivation, engagement and participation, are being used increasingly in a variety of educational domains to facilitate and motivate learning. Using a badge system design implemented in the Moodle learning management platform, data was collected from four experiments from 2015 to 2017 to examine the effects of gamification with the use of digital badges on introductory programming students' intrinsic motivation. This paper provides an in-depth examination of seldomly discussed technological and implementation issues we encountered in implementing our Moodle-based badge system, worthy of exploration to support future gamification studies in this area. Our gamified implementation is analyzed according to five main factors primarily adopted from an IT implementation framework: (1) assessment of needs, (2) choice of technology, (3) technological infrastructure, (4) system and environmental factors and (5) evaluation. The findings highlight enabling and challenging factors associated with the technology and badge implementation. Our experience shows that badge systems may be influenced by contextual factors such as cost and scale of implementation. We provide recommendations to guide educational stakeholders, particularly those considering Moodle as their badge implementation platform

Raspberry Pi nest cameras: An affordable tool for remote behavioral and conservation monitoring of bird nests.

Funder: Cardiff UniversityFunder: Project CASE partner ‐ Eco‐explore Community Interest CompanyBespoke (custom-built) Raspberry Pi cameras are increasingly popular research tools in the fields of behavioral ecology and conservation, because of their comparative flexibility in programmable settings, ability to be paired with other sensors, and because they are typically cheaper than commercially built models.Here, we describe a novel, Raspberry Pi-based camera system that is fully portable and yet weatherproof-especially to humidity and salt spray. The camera was paired with a passive infrared sensor, to create a movement-triggered camera capable of recording videos over a 24-hr period. We describe an example deployment involving "retro-fitting" these cameras into artificial nest boxes on Praia Islet, Azores archipelago, Portugal, to monitor the behaviors and interspecific interactions of two sympatric species of storm-petrel (Monteiro's storm-petrel Hydrobates monteiroi and Madeiran storm-petrel Hydrobates castro) during their respective breeding seasons.Of the 138 deployments, 70% of all deployments were deemed to be "Successful" (Successful was defined as continuous footage being recorded for more than one hour without an interruption), which equated to 87% of the individual 30-s videos. The bespoke cameras proved to be easily portable between 54 different nests and reasonably weatherproof (~14% of deployments classed as "Partial" or "Failure" deployments were specifically due to the weather/humidity), and we make further trouble-shooting suggestions to mitigate additional weather-related failures.Here, we have shown that this system is fully portable and capable of coping with salt spray and humidity, and consequently, the camera-build methods and scripts could be applied easily to many different species that also utilize cavities, burrows, and artificial nests, and can potentially be adapted for other wildlife monitoring situations to provide novel insights into species-specific daily cycles of behaviors and interspecies interactions

The views and experiences of suicidal children and young people of mental health support services: A meta-ethnography.

Background: Suicide is amongst the leading causes of death in young people globally and a health priority worldwide. For children and young people (CYP) attempting or considering suicide there is no agreed treatment model. Development of treatment models should be informed by the views and experiences of CYP using services. Methods: Meta-ethnography was used to systematically identify and synthesise studies reporting the views of CYP who used mental health services following suicidal behaviour. Relevant studies were quality appraised. First order (participants) and second order (original author) data were translated to identify common and disconfirming themes and concepts. Translated findings were synthesised and led to a new hypothesis supported by additional ‘linguistic analysis’ of texts to construct a novel third order line-of-argument. Results: Four studies conducted since 2006 in three countries involving 44 young people aged 11-24 years were synthesised. Translation revealed that suicidal CYP do not know where or how to access help, they cannot access help directly and when seen by mental health practitioners they do not feel listened to. Line-of-argument synthesis identified a silence around suicidality within the conversations CYP have with mental health practitioners and within academic research reporting. Use of the term ‘self-harm’ to encompass suicidal behaviours potentially contributes to this silence by avoiding the word ‘suicide’. Conclusions: CYP who are suicidal need to have easy access to mental health services. When using services, they want to feel listened to and have suicidal feelings acknowledged. This involves professionals referring explicitly to suicide not just self-harm

An observational study to assess if automated diabetic retinopathy image assessment software can replace one or more steps of manual imaging grading and to determine their cost-effectiveness.

BACKGROUND: Diabetic retinopathy screening in England involves labour-intensive manual grading of retinal images. Automated retinal image analysis systems (ARIASs) may offer an alternative to manual grading. OBJECTIVES: To determine the screening performance and cost-effectiveness of ARIASs to replace level 1 human graders or pre-screen with ARIASs in the NHS diabetic eye screening programme (DESP). To examine technical issues associated with implementation. DESIGN: Observational retrospective measurement comparison study with a real-time evaluation of technical issues and a decision-analytic model to evaluate cost-effectiveness. SETTING: A NHS DESP. PARTICIPANTS: Consecutive diabetic patients who attended a routine annual NHS DESP visit. INTERVENTIONS: Retinal images were manually graded and processed by three ARIASs: iGradingM (version 1.1; originally Medalytix Group Ltd, Manchester, UK, but purchased by Digital Healthcare, Cambridge, UK, at the initiation of the study, purchased in turn by EMIS Health, Leeds, UK, after conclusion of the study), Retmarker (version 0.8.2, Retmarker Ltd, Coimbra, Portugal) and EyeArt (Eyenuk Inc., Woodland Hills, CA, USA). The final manual grade was used as the reference standard. Arbitration on a subset of discrepancies between manual grading and the use of an ARIAS by a reading centre masked to all grading was used to create a reference standard manual grade modified by arbitration. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Screening performance (sensitivity, specificity, false-positive rate and likelihood ratios) and diagnostic accuracy [95% confidence intervals (CIs)] of ARIASs. A secondary analysis explored the influence of camera type and patients' ethnicity, age and sex on screening performance. Economic analysis estimated the cost per appropriate screening outcome identified. RESULTS: A total of 20,258 patients with 102,856 images were entered into the study. The sensitivity point estimates of the ARIASs were as follows: EyeArt 94.7% (95% CI 94.2% to 95.2%) for any retinopathy, 93.8% (95% CI 92.9% to 94.6%) for referable retinopathy and 99.6% (95% CI 97.0% to 99.9%) for proliferative retinopathy; and Retmarker 73.0% (95% CI 72.0% to 74.0%) for any retinopathy, 85.0% (95% CI 83.6% to 86.2%) for referable retinopathy and 97.9% (95% CI 94.9 to 99.1%) for proliferative retinopathy. iGradingM classified all images as either 'disease' or 'ungradable', limiting further iGradingM analysis. The sensitivity and false-positive rates for EyeArt were not affected by ethnicity, sex or camera type but sensitivity declined marginally with increasing patient age. The screening performance of Retmarker appeared to vary with patient's age, ethnicity and camera type. Both EyeArt and Retmarker were cost saving relative to manual grading either as a replacement for level 1 human grading or used prior to level 1 human grading, although the latter was less cost-effective. A threshold analysis testing the highest ARIAS cost per patient before which ARIASs became more expensive per appropriate outcome than human grading, when used to replace level 1 grader, was Retmarker £3.82 and EyeArt £2.71 per patient. LIMITATIONS: The non-randomised study design limited the health economic analysis but the same retinal images were processed by all ARIASs in this measurement comparison study. CONCLUSIONS: Retmarker and EyeArt achieved acceptable sensitivity for referable retinopathy and false-positive rates (compared with human graders as reference standard) and appear to be cost-effective alternatives to a purely manual grading approach. Future work is required to develop technical specifications to optimise deployment and address potential governance issues. FUNDING: The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme, a Fight for Sight Grant (Hirsch grant award) and the Department of Health's NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Ophthalmology at Moorfields Eye Hospital and the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology