Learning analytics to identify exploratory dialogue within synchronous text chat

While generic web analytics tend to focus on easily harvested quantitative data, Learning Analytics will often seek qualitative understanding of the context and meaning of this information. This is critical in the case of dialogue, which may be employed to share knowledge and jointly construct understandings, but which also involves many superficial exchanges. Previous studies have validated a particular pattern of “exploratory dialogue” in learning environments to signify sharing, challenge, evaluation and careful consideration by participants. This study investigates the use of sociocultural discourse analysis to analyse synchronous text chat during an online conference. Key words and phrases indicative of exploratory dialogue were identified in these exchanges, and peaks of exploratory dialogue were associated with periods set aside for discussion and keynote speakers. Fewer individuals posted at these times, but meaningful discussion outweighed trivial exchanges. If further analysis confirms the validity of these markers as learning analytics, they could be used by recommendation engines to support learners and teachers in locating dialogue exchanges where deeper learning appears to be taking place

Towards a social learning space for open educational resources

We identify a number of meanings of “Open”, as part of the motivating rationale for a social media space tuned for learning, called SocialLearn. We discuss why online social learning seems to be emerging so strongly at this point, explore features of social learning, and identify some of the dimensions that we believe characterize the social learning design space, before describing the emerging design concept and implementation

Slicing the Sierpi\'nski gasket

We investigate the dimension of intersections of the Sierpi\'nski gasket with lines. Our first main result describes a countable, dense set of angles that are exceptional for Marstrand's theorem. We then provide a multifractal analysis for the set of points in the projection for which the associated slice has a prescribed dimension.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Visual analytics of academic writing

This paper describes a novel analytics dashboard which visualises the key features of scholarly documents. The Dashboard aggregates the salient sentences of scholarly papers, their rhetorical types and the key concepts mentioned within these sentences. These features are extracted from papers through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, called Xerox Incremental Parser (XIP). The XIP Dashboard is a set of visual analytics modules based on the XIP output. In this paper, we briefly introduce the XIP technology and demonstrate an example visualisation of the XIP Dashboard

Social learning analytics: five approaches

This paper proposes that Social Learning Analytics (SLA) can be usefully thought of as a subset of learning analytics approaches. SLA focuses on how learners build knowledge together in their cultural and social settings. In the context of online social learning, it takes into account both formal and informal educational environments, including networks and communities. The paper introduces the broad rationale for SLA by reviewing some of the key drivers that make social learning so important today. Five forms of SLA are identified, including those which are inherently social, and others which have social dimensions. The paper goes on to describe early work towards implementing these analytics on SocialLearn, an online learning space in use at the UK’s Open University, and the challenges that this is raising. This work takes an iterative approach to analytics, encouraging learners to respond to and help to shape not only the analytics but also their associated recommendations

The Burden of Rabies in Tanzania and Its Impact on Local\ud Communities

Rabies remains a major public health threat in many parts of the world and is responsible for an estimated 55,000 human deaths annually. The burden of rabies is estimated to be around US$20 million in Africa, with the highest financial expenditure being the cost of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). However, these calculations may be substantial underestimates because the costs to households of coping with endemic rabies have not been investigated. We therefore aimed to estimate the household costs, health-seeking behaviour, coping strategies, and outcomes of exposure to rabies in rural and urban communities in Tanzania. Extensive investigative interviews were used to estimate the incidence of human deaths and bite exposures. Questionnaires with bite victims and their families were used to investigate health-seeking behaviour and costs (medical and non-medical costs) associated with exposure to rabies. We calculated that an average patient in rural Tanzania, where most people live on less than US$1 per day, would need to spend over US$100 to complete WHO recommended PEP schedules. High costs and frequent shortages of PEP led to poor compliance with PEP regimens, delays in presentation to health facilities, and increased risk of death. The true costs of obtaining PEP were twice as high as those previously reported from Africa and should be considered in re-evaluations of the burden of rabies

Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) about rabies prevention and control: a community survey in Tanzania

BACKGROUND: Despite being entirely preventable,canine rabies still kills 55,000 people/year in developing countries. Information about local beliefs and practices can identify knowledge gaps that may affect prevention practices and lead to unnecessary deaths. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We investigated knowledge, attitudes and practices related to rabies and its prevention and control amongst a cross-section of households (n = 5,141)in urban and rural areas of central, southern and northern Tanzania. Over 17% of respondents owned domestic dogs (average of 2.3 dogs/household), >95% had heard about rabies, and >80% knew that rabies is transmitted through dog bites. People who (1)had greater education,(2)originated from areas with a history of rabies interventions,(3)had experienced exposure by a suspect rabid animal,(4)were male and(5)owned dogs were more likely to have greater knowledge about the disease. Around 80% of respondents would seek hospital treatment after a suspect bite, but only 5% were aware of the need for prompt wound cleansing after a bite. Although >65% of respondents knew of dog vaccination as a means to control rabies, only 51% vaccinated their dogs. Determinants of dog vaccination included(1)being a male-headed household,(2)presence of children,(3)low economic status,(4)residing in urban areas,(5)owning livestock,(6)originating from areas with rabies interventions and(7)having purchased a dog. The majority of dog-owning respondents were willing to contribute no more than US$0.31 towards veterinary services. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We identified important knowledge gaps related to, and factors influencing the prevention and control of rabies in Tanzania. Increasing knowledge regarding wound washing, seeking post-exposure prophylaxis and the need to vaccinate dogs are likely to result in more effective prevention of rabies; however, greater engagement of the veterinary and medical sectors is also needed to ensure the availability of preventative services