Key Action Extraction for Learning Analytics

Proceedings of: 7th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2012): 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills. Saarbrücken, Germany, September 18-21, 2012.Analogous to keywords describing the important and relevant content of a document we extract key actions from learners' usage data assuming that they represent important and relevant parts of their learning behaviour. These key actions enable the teachers to better understand the dynamics in their classes and the problems that occur while learning. Based on these insights, teachers can intervene directly as well as improve the quality of their learning material and learning design. We test our approach on usage data collected in a large introductory C programming course at a university and discuss the results based on the feedback of the teachers.Work partially funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 231396 (ROLE project), the Learn3 project (TIN2008-05163/TSI), the eMadrid project (S2009/TIC-1650), and the Acci´on Integrada DE2009-0051.Publicad

Microscopic Treatment of Binary Interactions in the Non-Equilibrium Dynamics of Partially Bose-condensed Trapped Gases

In this paper we use microscopic arguments to derive a nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation for trapped Bose-condensed gases. This is made possible by considering the equations of motion of various anomalous averages. The resulting equation explicitly includes the effect of repeated binary interactions (in particular ladders) between the atoms. Moreover, under the conditions that dressing of the intermediate states of a collision can be ignored, this equation is shown to reduce to the conventional Gross-Pitaevskii equation in the pseudopotential limit. Extending the treatment, we show first how the occupation of excited (bare particle) states affects the collisions, and thus obtain the many-body T-matrix approximation in a trap. In addition, we discuss how the bare particle many-body T-matrix gets dressed by mean fields due to condensed and excited atoms. We conclude that the most commonly used version of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation can only be put on a microscopic basis for a restrictive range of conditions. For partial condensation, we need to take account of interactions between condensed and excited atoms, which, in a consistent formulation, should also be expressed in terms of the many-body T-matrix. This can be achieved by considering fluctuations around the condensate mean field beyond those included in the conventional finite temperature mean field, i.e. Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB), theory.Comment: Resolved some problems with printing of figure

The state and class discipline: European labour market policy after the financial crisis

This paper looks at two related labour market policies that have persisted and even proliferated across Europe both before and after the financial crisis: wage restraint, and punitive workfare programmes. It asks why these policies, despite their weak empirical records, have been so durable. Moving beyond comparative-institutionalist explanations which emphasise institutional stickiness, it draws on Marxist and Kaleckian ideas around the concept of ‘class discipline’. It argues that under financialisation, the need for states to implement policies that discipline the working class is intensified, even if these policies do little to enable (and may even counteract) future stability. Wage restraint and punitive active labour market policies are two examples of such measures. Moreover, this disciplinary impetus has subverted and marginalised regulatory labour market institutions, rather than being embedded within them

Welfare Reform, Precarity and the Re-Commodification of Labour

While welfare reform matters for workers and workplaces, it is peripheral in English-language sociology of work and industrial relations research. This article’s core proposition is that active labour market policies (ALMPs) are altering the institutional constitution of the labour market by intensifying market discipline within the workforce. This re-commodification effect is specified drawing on Marxism, comparative institutionalism, German-language sociology, and English-language social policy analysis. Because of administrative failures and employer discrimination, however, ALMPs may worsen precarity without achieving the stated goal of increasing labour-market participation

Living on the edge: precariousness and why it matters for health

The post-war period in Europe, between the late 1940s and the 1970s, was characterised by an expansion of the role of by the state, protecting its citizens from risks of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity. This security began to erode in the 1980s as a result of privatisation and deregulation. The withdrawal of the state further accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, as countries began pursuing deep austerity. The result has been a rise in what has been termed ‘precariousness’. Here we review the development of the concept of precariousness and related phenomena of vulnerability and resilience, before reviewing evidence of growing precariousness in European countries. It describes a series of studies of the impact on precariousness on health in domains of employment, housing, and food, as well as natural experiments of policies that either alleviate or worsen these impacts. It concludes with a warning, drawn from the history of the 1930s, of the political consequences of increasing precariousness in Europe and North America

Fixing it for PFA Scotland: building union influence out of a transnational project to tackle match-fixing in football

This article deploys frameworks from the fields of trade union theory and professional football governance theory to gain an understanding of the tactics deployed by the Professional Footballers’ Association, Scotland (PFAS) for collectively representing the interests of its members. The article explores how the union used the advantages gained through participation in a counter match-fixing project managed by FIFPro to establish itself as a member of an array of committees, task groups and panels so that it might become the collective ‘voice’ of players at the institutional level in football. The article commences with a review of the industrial relations landscape of professional football and the ‘peculiarities’ of the labour market that have produced equally unique trade union strategies that seek to individualise rather than collectivise wage bargaining. The implications of such a strategy are felt in the lack of appropriate contemporary theories of trade union power that might act as explanatory frameworks to aid an understanding of the tactics deployed by PFAS. The article proposes a return to a political institutional model of trade union power popularised by Sidney and Beatrice Webb in the late nineteenth-century. An analysis of interview data collected from a small cohort of expert informants shows that PFAS has taken advantage of a new body in Scottish professional football, the integrity forum, to establish itself as a credible and trustworthy voice of players within broader governing structures, while acknowledging that its sphere of influence remains constrained within a system dominated by more established institutions