Programming music with Sonic Pi promotes positive attitudes for beginners

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The AuthorProgramming is often misaligned with beginner students' interests and viewed as difficult. However, most students and teachers are not aware that it is possible to utilise domain-specific programming languages that combine programming with other domains like music making. Sonic Pi is one free domain-specific programming platform that enables beginners to code music, which has been designed for and used in schools since its first release in 2012. However, there is a lack of academic research on the Sonic Pi platform about the extent it may affect beginner student attitudes towards programming in a school context. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent Sonic Pi may help to promote positive attitudes towards programming. A mixed-methods case study was developed and trialled in school time with a middle school class, which measured student attitudes with the three subscales of enjoyment, importance, and anxiety. Overall, the results confirmed an alternative hypothesis that all students’ subscales for programming attitude increased significantly. While these findings are not generalisable due to its limited scope, they are very positive to inform the design and use of platforms like Sonic Pi in comparison to similar music coding platforms like EarSketch and TunePad.Peer reviewe

Comparing Concurrent and Retrospective Verbal Protocols for Blind and Sighted Users

International audienceVerbal protocols are widely used in user studies for evaluating websites. This study investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of concurrent and retrospective verbal protocols (CVP and RVP) for both blind and sighted participants, as well as participant workload and attitudes towards these methods. Eight blind and eight sighted participants undertook both protocols in a website evaluation. RVP was more effective as measured by problems encountered for both groups, although it was no more efficient than CVP. The severity of problems identified by both protocols was equivalent. As measured on the NASA TLX, participants found RVP found more demanding than CVP. Sighted participants found rating problems during CVP more disruptive than blind participants. These results show that RVP is a more useful protocol for practitioners and researchers even though it takes more time and is more demanding for participants. It is equally applicable for both blind and sighted participants

Association is not causation: treatment effects cannot be estimated from observational data in heart failure

Aims: Treatment ‘effects’ are often inferred from non-randomized and observational studies. These studies have inherent biases and limitations, which may make therapeutic inferences based on their results unreliable. We compared the conflicting findings of these studies to those of prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in relation to pharmacological treatments for heart failure (HF). Methods and results: We searched Medline and Embase to identify studies of the association between non-randomized drug therapy and all-cause mortality in patients with HF until 31 December 2017. The treatments of interest were: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta-blockers, mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs), statins, and digoxin. We compared the findings of these observational studies with those of relevant RCTs. We identified 92 publications, reporting 94 non-randomized studies, describing 158 estimates of the ‘effect’ of the six treatments of interest on all-cause mortality, i.e. some studies examined more than one treatment and/or HF phenotype. These six treatments had been tested in 25 RCTs. For example, two pivotal RCTs showed that MRAs reduced mortality in patients with HF with reduced ejection fraction. However, only one of 12 non-randomized studies found that MRAs were of benefit, with 10 finding a neutral effect, and one a harmful effect. Conclusion: This comprehensive comparison of studies of non-randomized data with the findings of RCTs in HF shows that it is not possible to make reliable therapeutic inferences from observational associations. While trials undoubtedly leave gaps in evidence and enrol selected participants, they clearly remain the best guide to the treatment of patients

Visitors' Emotions, Touristic or Spiritual Experiences in Historic Churches : The Development of Church Experience Scale (CES)

AbstractIn this paper we describe the development of the Church Experience Scale (CES) that allows us to measure visitor experience in historic churches, both with and without multimedia guides and other technologies. This study was carried out with 272 respondents at three historic churches in York, UK. Respondents for this study were visitors to these churches who were asked to complete a questionnaire immediately after their visit. A full psychometric scale development procedure was used which resulted in the Church Experience Scale (CES) which has five components: Enjoyment, Intellectual Stimulation and Curiosity; Emotional and Spiritual Experience; Immersion; Information Overload; and Knowledge and Learning. The usefulness of the scale in investigating visitors’ experiences in historic churches is explored. An initial comparison between inactive and an active historic church were compared using CES

Understanding and supporting web developers: : design and evaluation of a web accessibility information resource (WebAIR)

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a Web Accessibility Information Resource (WebAIR) for supporting web developers to create and evaluate accessible websites. WebAIR was designed with web developers in mind, recognising their current working practices and acknowledging their existing understanding of web accessibility. We conducted an evaluation with 32 professional web developers in which they used either WebAIR or an existing accessibility information resource, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, to identify accessibility problems. The findings indicate that several design decisions made in relation to the language, organisation, and volume of WebAIR were effective in supporting web developers to undertake web accessibility evaluations