791 research outputs found
Group Inquiry
Group agents can act, they can have knowledge. How should we understand the species of collective action which aims at knowledge? In this paper, I present an account of group inquiry. This account faces two challenges: making sense of how large-scale distributed activities might be a kind of group action, and understanding the division of labour involved in group inquiry. In the first part of the paper, I argue that existing accounts of group action face problems dealing with large-scale group actions, and propose a minimal alternative account. In the second part of the paper, I draw on an analogy between inquiry and conversation, arguing that work by Robert Stalnaker and Craige Roberts helps us to think about the division of epistemic labour. In the final part of the paper I put the accounts of group action and inquiry together, and consider how to think about group knowledge, deep ignorance, and the different kinds of division of labour
Pirate plunder: game-based computational thinking using scratch blocks
Policy makers worldwide argue that children should be taught how technology works, and that the âcomputational thinkingâ skills developed through programming are useful in a wider context. This is causing an increased focus on computer science in primary and secondary education.
Block-based programming tools, like Scratch, have become ubiquitous in primary education (5 to 11-years-old) throughout the UK. However, Scratch users often struggle to detect and correct âcode smellsâ (bad programming practices) such as duplicated blocks and large scripts, which can lead to programs that are difficult to understand. These âsmellsâ are caused by a lack of abstraction and decomposition in programs; skills that play a key role in computational thinking. In Scratch, repeats (loops), custom blocks (procedures) and clones (instances) can be used to correct these smells. Yet, custom blocks and clones are rarely taught to children under 11-years-old.
We describe the design of a novel educational block-based programming game, Pirate Plunder, which aims to teach these skills to children aged 9-11. Players use Scratch blocks to navigate around a grid, collect items and interact with obstacles. Blocks are explained in âtutorialsâ; the player then completes a series of âchallengesâ before attempting the next tutorial. A set of Scratch blocks, including repeats, custom blocks and clones, are introduced in a linear difficulty progression. There are two versions of Pirate Plunder; one that uses a debugging-first approach, where the player is given a program that is incomplete or incorrect, and one where each level begins with an empty program.
The game design has been developed through iterative playtesting. The observations made during this process have influenced key design decisions such as Scratch integration, difficulty progression and reward system. In future, we will evaluate Pirate Plunder against a traditional Scratch curriculum and compare the debugging-first and non-debugging versions in a series of studies
Intrinsic fantasy: motivation and affect in educational games made by children
The concept of intrinsic fantasy has been considered central to the aim of usefully applying the positive affect of computer games to learning. Games with intrinsic fantasy are defined as having âan integral and continuing relationship with the instructional content being presentedâ, and are claimed as âmore interesting and more educationalâ than extrinsic fantasy games [1]. Studies of children making educational games have shown they usually create extrinsic games for curriculum learning content. In this study, children were encouraged to create non-curriculum games, more easily distanced from the extrinsic preconceptions of formal schooling. Forty, 7-11 year olds took part in this study (17 boys and 23 girls), designing and making their own games at an after-school club. Despite non-curriculum learning content, no more intrinsic games were created than in previous studies. The children failed to create their own pedagogical models for non-curriculum content and did not see the educational value of intrinsic fantasy games. The implications for transfer and learning in intrinsic games are discussed whilst the definition of intrinsic fantasy itself is questioned. It is argued that the integral relationship of fantasy is unlikely to be the most critical means of improving the educational effectiveness of digital games
The effects of tissue-specific proteinase activated receptor-2 (PAR-2) ablation on remodelling events found in bone and cartilage, using a murine destabilisation of the medical meniscus (DMM) model
PhD ThesisOsteoarthritis (OA) is a common musculoskeletal disease, associated with significant cost
to the National Health Service (NHS) and physical consequences to the sufferer. It is
known that cartilage degradation and subchondral sclerosis are hallmark features of OA.
However, it is not known in which tissue pathological changes occur first. By identifying
this, future therapeutics could be guided more accurately to maximise their benefit.
This study has highlighted significant problems in generating a reliable and reproducible
humanâderived model of cartilage catabolism using human mesenchymal stem cells
(hMSCs). Generating such a model is important, as it will allow assessment of potential
therapies in a physiologically relevant human model, and further work is needed in this
area. However, one significant finding from this work was that the addition of matriptase
to a cytokine stimulus enhanced proteoglycan and collagen degradation from cartilage
discs and macroâpellets. Matriptase is a serine proteinase, and is involved in cartilage
catabolism through activation of proâMMPs and signaling via PARâ2. These findings
therefore support the role of matriptase in OA pathogenesis, specifically cartilage
catabolism.
Proteinaseâactivated receptorâ2 (PARâ2) is known to be involved in OA pathogenesis, with
global ablation of this receptor preventing abnormal remodelling events in the cartilage
and subchondral bone. In this study, tissueâspecific ablation of PARâ2 revealed that loss of
PARâ2 conferred its primary beneficial effect in the bone by preventing subchondral
sclerosis. The debate about whether cartilage or bone changes occur first in OA remains
controversial, but it was apparent from various timeâcourse studies that bone changes
occurred first, followed by cartilage catabolism during OA progression. However, in this
study it was also evident that cartilage damage could occur independently of subchondral
sclerosis, which is in opposition to the long standing view that subchondral sclerosis is a
prerequisite for cartilage damage to occur. Thus, this study highlights that targeting either
the cartilage or bone may be beneficial for therapies, although for ease of use, targeting
the bone may be more clinically useful. Furthermore the importance of PARâ2 expressed
on chondrocytes in the development and maturation of osteophytes was evident in this
study.CIM
Group Knowledge, Questions, and the Division of Epistemic Labour
Discussions of group knowledge typically focus on whether a groupâs knowledge that p reduces to group membersâ knowledge that p. Drawing on the cumulative reading of collective knowledge ascriptions and considerations about the importance of the division of epistemic labour, I argue what I call the Fragmented Knowledge account, which allows for more complex relations between individual and collective knowledge. According to this account, a group can know an answer to a question in virtue of members of the group knowing parts of that answer, when the whole answer is available to group-level action. I argue that this account explains a swathe of central cases of group knowledge, as well as explaining some central features of group knowledge
Multi-class gene expression biomarker panel identification for the diagnosis of paediatric febrile illness
Febrile illness in children can result from infections by diverse viral or bacterial
pathogens as well as inïŹammatory conditions or cancer. The limitations of the
existing diagnostic pipeline, which relies on clinical symptoms and signs, pathogen
detection, empirical treatment and diagnoses of exclusion, contribute to missed or de-
layed diagnosis and unnecessary antibiotic use. The potential of host gene expression
biomarkers measured in blood has been demonstrated for simpliïŹed binary diagnostic
questions however, the clinical reality is that multiple potential aetiologies must be
considered and prioritised on the basis of likelihood and risks of severe disease.
In order to identify a biomarker panel which better reïŹects this clinical reality,
we applied a multi-class supervised learning approach to whole blood transcriptomic
datasets from children with infectious and inïŹammatory disease.
Three datasets were used for the analyses presented here, a single microarray
dataset, a meta-analysis of 12 publicly available microarray datasets and a newly
generated RNA-sequencing dataset. These were used for preliminary investigations
of the approach, discovery of a multi-class biomarker panel of febrile illness and valida-
tion of the biomarker panel respectively. In the merged microarray discovery dataset a
two-stage approach to feature selection and classiïŹcation, based on LASSO and Ridge
penalised regression was applied to distinguish 18 disease classes. Cost-sensitivity was
incorporated in the approach as aetiologies of febrile illness vary considerably in the
risk of severe disease. The resulting 161 transcript biomarker panel could reliably
distinguish bacterial, viral, inïŹammatory, tuberculosis and malarial disease as well
as pathogen speciïŹc aetiologies. The panel was then validated in a newly generated
RNA-Seq dataset and compared to previously published binary biomarker panels.
The analyses presented here demonstrate that a single test for the diagnosis of
acute febrile illness in children is possible using host RNA biomarkers. A test which
could distinguish multiple aetiologies soon after presentation could be used to reduce
unnecessary antibiotic use, improve targetting of antibiotics to bacterial species and
reduce delays in the diagnosis of inïŹammatory diseases.Open Acces
Unpacking effective learning through game analytics
This paper describes how a data-driven design analysis was applied to the iterative development of a tablet-based mathematical game for the RAIDING Project. Detailed analytics were recorded for a class of 7-year old children who used the game once a day over a two-week period. Data was recorded to measure the proportion of time spent effectively engaged with learning content (effective learning time). Average response times and accuracies were recorded at the end of each day and plotted to reveal individual trends. This data alluded towards differences in behaviour which were not predicted by effective learning time, and which have prompted iterative changes in the design of the game
Zombie Division : a methodological case study for the evaluation of game-based learning
This paper discusses the methodological designs and technologies used to evaluate an educational videogame in order to support researchers in the design of their own evaluative research in the field of game-based learning. The Zombie Division videogame has been used to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of a more intrinsically integrated approach to creating educational games. It was specifically designed to deliver interventions as part of research studies examining differences in learning outcomes and motivation predicted by theoretical contrasts in educational design. The game was used in a series of evaluative studies, which employed experimental methodologies based around one or more treatment groups and a control. Multiple choice questions were used to measure knowledge and understanding before and after interventions (pre, post and delayed) and time-on-task was used as a measure of motivation and preference during interventions. Qualitative interview data was also collected and analysed as part of many of the studies in order to help support and explain the findings in more detail.
The experimental methodologies applied in these studies were augmented by a range of bespoke technology systems. This included an automated testing system which could randomly assign participants to treatment groups so that pre-test statistics were closely matched between groups. Large quantities of process data were recorded about playersâ interactions with the game in the form of time-stamped log files, and a stream of compressed controller data was saved allowing an entire playing session to be replayed in a video-like form. This rich set of process data was mined as part of a post-hoc analysis in order to identify evidence to help to enrich the understanding of usersâ interactions with the game.
This paper details the methodological design of both published and unpublished studies, as well as reflecting upon some of the potential pitfalls of classroom-based evaluations in order to illustrate successful and unsuccessful approaches for evaluating game-based learning
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