Online communication and information technology education

Blended Learning, a learning facilitation that incorporates different modes of delivery, models of teaching, and learning styles, introduces multiple media to the dialog between the learner and the facilitator. This paper examines online communication as the link between established theory of learning and literature on e-learning in order to better understand the appropriate use of blended learning in an actual Information Technology course. First, previously defined theoretical constructs that utilize communication as a facilitator for learning are considered. Then, using the Interpretivist standpoint, we examine data gathered from focus groups and interviews to gauge the experience of staff and students who were participants in a Blended Learning course. There are four previously defined theoretical constructs of greatest relevance to blended learning. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development highlights the importance of communication with capable peers who can provide stimuli and feedback to a learning individual. Wegner’s Communities of Practice are groups of individuals who share a common practice interest and rely on a dialogue to facilitate learning. Laurillard’s Conversational Framework includes a pragmatic 12- step model that teachers can use to structure their learning facilitation. Finally, Salmon’s EModeration considers five stages of online communication in terms of how the moderator might facilitate dialogue among learners. These four theoretical models form the basis for understanding the implementation of blended learning discussed here. The course studied was a part-time Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology (IT), delivered using Blended Learning. Students were required to attend one evening per week and make substantial use of Web based learning over a period of five years. Students were mature, some already working in the IT field. Forty students in a first cohort and eighteen students in a second cohort were studied during the first year of their course. While students in the first cohort who succeeded in the course often found the discussion boards to be of considerable value in discussing assignments and sharing learning, the boards also could discourage those with less technical backgrounds. There is data to suggest that a high rate of dropouts and failures among the first cohort after just one year may have been influenced by discouragement felt by those who could not keep up with the technical level of the discussion board posts. As a result of this data, for the second cohort, the number of online communications was reduced to one assessed online discussion that was closely monitored. As a result, discussions were more on-topic; however students reported significantly less sense of community. Again, a high dropout rate resulted. Our results suggest that communication is both a challenge and an enabler for facilitating a successful blended learning course. Blended learning is not simply a matter of the combination of face-to-face and online instruction, but it has to have elements of social interaction. It appears to be important to allow students to bond together and to socialize. Knowing each other eases the communication barriers and reduces the fear of posting messages into an open forum. At its best, online communication can provide study help, social interaction, and a sense of community. We have evidence that when students are required more frequently to cooperate online, they share a common problem and on some level create their own “problem solving” community. However, our data from the first cohort indicates that unguided communication of a Community of Practice can lead to undesirable effects. At the same time, our data from the second cohort indicates that a very structured approach is also undesirable. The ideal situation, it seems, is somewhere in the middle. However, the middle is not easily defined. Because the community depends on the individuals who are the main components of it, it is difficult to predict how the same environment would influence different individuals or different cohorts. Thus, the ultimate responsibility is on the lecturer to listen to the students and engage in continuous dialogue

Studying social media communities : blending methods with netnography

In his work ‘Netnography Redefined’, Kozinets (2015), highlights the massive growth of online communities, calling for new ways of conducting research online. This research explains an application of this approach providing a valuable methodological framework for contemporary Internet based ethnographical research. This case example is derived from an empirical research study of the online communities of a UK football club. This involves the blend of the three qualitative research methods: interview, social network analysis (SNA), and online participant observation. Interviews and participant observation are usual features of ethnographical work but evolving digital tools and social media networks present new research opportunities. The application of netnography and blending of social network analysis therefore presents new opportunities for research. In this case, we describe the tools, techniques and practicalities of applying netnography using blended methods in the digital age. This approach provides a complementary blend for those researchers wishing to study contemporary social media communities. The research application aimed to make an academic and practical contribution to digital marketing, Information Systems (IS) and sport business

Use of computer-aided detection (CAD) tools in screening mammography: a multidisciplinary investigation

We summarise a set of analyses and studies conducted to assess the effects of the use of a computer-aided detection (CAD) tool in breast screening. We have used an interdisciplinary approach that combines: (a) statistical analyses inspired by reliability modelling in engineering; (b) experimental studies of decisions of mammography experts using the tool, interpreted in the light of human factors psychology; and (c) ethnographic observations of the use of the tool both in trial conditions and in everyday screening practice. Our investigations have shown patterns of human behaviour and effects of computer-based advice that would not have been revealed by a standard clinical trial approach. For example, we found that the negligible measured effect of CAD could be explained by a range of effects on experts' decisions, beneficial in some cases and detrimental in others. There is some evidence of the latter effects being due to the experts using the computer tool differently from the intentions of the developers. We integrate insights from the different pieces of evidence and highlight their implications for the design, evaluation and deployment of this sort of computer tool

Predicting the impact of urban flooding using open data

This paper aims to explore whether there is a relationship between search patterns for flood risk information on the Web and how badly localities have been affected by flood events. We hypothesize that localities where people stay more actively informed about potential flooding experience less negative impact than localities where people make less effort to be informed. Being informed, of course, does not hold the waters back; however, it may stimulate (or serve as an indicator of) such resilient behaviours as timely use of sandbags, relocation of possessions from basements to upper floors and/or temporary evacuation from flooded homes to alternative accommodation. We make use of open data to test this relationship empirically. Our results demonstrate that although aggregated Web search reflects average rainfall patterns, its eigenvectors predominantly consist of locations with similar flood impacts during 2014–2015. These results are also consistent with statistically significant correlations of Web search eigenvectors with flood warning and incident reporting datasets

Predicting floods with Flickr tags

Increasingly, user generated content (UGC) in social media postings and their associated metadata such as time and location stamps are being used to provide useful operational information during natural hazard events such as hurricanes, storms and floods. The main advantage of these new sources of data are twofold. First, in a purely additive sense, they can provide much denser geographical coverage of the hazard as compared to traditional sensor networks. Second, they provide what physical sensors are not able to do: By documenting personal observations and experiences, they directly record the impact of a hazard on the human environment. For this reason interpretation of the content (e.g., hashtags, images, text, emojis, etc) and metadata (e.g., keywords, tags, geolocation) have been a focus of much research into social media analytics. However, as choices of semantic tags in the current methods are usually reduced to the exact name or type of the event (e.g., hashtags ‘#Sandy’ or ‘#flooding’), the main limitation of such approaches remains their mere nowcasting capacity. In this study we make use of polysemous tags of images posted during several recent flood events and demonstrate how such volunteered geographic data can be used to provide early warning of an event before its outbreak

Risk of Recurrent Falls after Indoor and Outdoor Falls in the Elderly

Background: Falls are the most common and serious health problems of the elderly. The primary goal of the study is to determine whether risk for recurrent indoor and outdoor falls differ by type of previous falls and by gender. Method: We analyzed data on falls collected in the MOBILIZE Boston prospective cohort study of community-dwelling women and men aged 65 years or older. The participants were followed for up to 4.3 years (median=2.3y). Logistic regression models, clustered by participant, were performed to estimate the probability of a subsequent indoor or outdoor fall after any fall, indoor fall, and outdoor fall. Natural log transformed time since the most recent any fall, time since the most recent indoor fall, and time since the most recent outdoor fall were used to predict probabilities of a subsequent fall of each type. Result: Among 502 participants who reported at least one fall during the follow-up, 330 had at least one reccurent fall during the follow-up period. Men and women differed in their tendencies to fall recurrently as well as in their response to an outdoor fall. Median time to the recurrent any fall since the most recent any fall was 9 weeks (IQR=22) for men and 17 weeks (IQR=30) for women [p= Conclusion: Falls, especially outdoor falls, may have different implications for the subsequent fall risks of men vs. women. Further study should examine whether outdoor falls may be an indicator of robustness for elderly women but for frailty in elderly men