Administrating Integration: The Principles of Integrated Communication in the Institutional Setting

As an emerging paradigm for communication management, integrated communication, also referred to as integrated marketing communication (IMC), poses challenges to communication administration, particularly when institutes of higher learning face a departmentalized context that may impede integration efforts. This article outlines the principles of integrated communication and illustrates them in a university’s integrated communication efforts. Integration may function as an organic process of interpersonal and social connected

Emotional Facial Expressions in Synthesised Sign Language Avatars: a Manual Evaluation.

This research explores and evaluates the contribution that facial expressions might have regarding improved comprehension and acceptability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish sign language (ISL), the Deaf (the uppercase ‘‘D’’ in the word ‘‘Deaf’’ indicates Deaf as a culture as opposed to ‘‘deaf’’ as a medical condition) community’s responsiveness to sign language avatars is examined. The hypothesis of this is as follows: augmenting an existing avatar with the seven widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman (Basic emotions: handbook of cognition and emotion. Wiley, London, 2005) to achieve underlying facial expressions will make that avatar more human-like and improve usability and understandability for the ISL user. Using human evaluation methods (Huenerfauth et al. in Trans Access Comput (ACM) 1:1, 2008), an augmented set of avatar utterances is compared against a baseline set, focusing on two key areas: comprehension and naturalness of facial configuration. The approach to the evaluation including the choice of ISL participants, interview environment, and evaluation methodology is then outlined. The evaluation results reveal that in a comprehension test there was little difference between the baseline avatars and those augmented with emotional facial expression. It was also found that the avatars are lacking various linguistic attributes

Accuracy of Wrist-Worn Monitors while Walking in Lower Limb Prosthetic Users

TACSM Abstract Accuracy of Wrist-Worn Monitors while Walking in Lower Limb Prosthetic Users BRIAN G. BURKHOLDER and JOHN D. SMITH Department of Counseling, Health, & Kinesiology, Texas A&M University-San Antonio, San Antonio, TX Category: Undergraduate Advisor / Mentor: Smith, John ([email protected]) ABSTRACT Wrist-worn activity monitors are extremely popular among the general population. These monitors are used to track activity for purposes to lose weight, get healthy, improve performance, and other reasons. While many studies have looked at the accuracy of these monitors in individuals without amputations, there has yet to be any that have examined these monitors in those who use lower-limb prosthetics. PURPOSE: to determine the accuracy of wrist-worn activity monitors in individuals using lower-limb prosthetics. METHODS: Thirty-four men and women (Age: 48.8±14.2 yrs, Ht: 176.9±11.5 cm, Wt: 88.3±21.1 kg, BMI: 28.3±5.3) with right-, left-leg, or bilateral above and below the knee amputations were fitted with a Polar Loop (PL) and a Fitbit ChargeTM (FC) on the left wrist, and an Omron HJ-112 (OM) pedometer on the left hip. After resetting the monitors, they then walked 140m at a self-selected pace followed by the investigator who counted steps with a standard lab hand-tally counter for actual counts (AC). At the conclusion of the walk, step counts were recorded from all devices. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine differences in counts registered by the monitors and those registered by AC. Single measure intraclass correlation (ICC) from a two-way random effects ANOVA was used to assess the agreement between AC and monitor counts, with ≥ 0.90 considered high agreement, 0.80 to 0.89 moderate agreement, and ≤ 0.79 low agreement. Bland-Altman plots of AC vs. counts registered by the monitors were used to provide an indication of over/under representation of steps and agreement between the measures. Percent error was calculated as [(counts detected by monitor – AC) / AC] x 100. Alpha was set at .05 for all statistical tests. RESULTS: There was a significant difference between counts, F(3, 30)=8.8, p=.001, with pairwise comparisons indicating PL was significantly lower than AC, p=.001. There was no significant difference between AC and FC (p\u3e.05) or between AC and OM (p\u3e.05). Agreement according to ICC between AC and PL was low (α=.71, ICC=.42 to .86), between AC and FC was moderate (α =.81, ICC=.61 to .90), and between AC and OM was high (α =.93, ICC=.86 to .97). Bland Altman plots indicate lowest agreement between AC and PL, and with highest agreement between AC and OM. Percent error was greatest with PL (16±12%), lower with FC (8.9±8.9%), and least with OM (4.1±7.3%). CONCLUSION: It seems that for this population who might consider wearing either the PL or the FC, the FC would be a better choice given its greater accuracy. Interestingly, the OM is the superior device for counting steps

Emotional Facial Expressions in Synthesised Sign Language Avatars: A Manual Evaluation

This research explores and evaluates the contribution that facial expressions might have regarding improved comprehension and acceptability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish Sign Language (ISL), we examine the Deaf 1 community’s responsiveness to sign language avatars. The hypothesis of this is: Augmenting an existing avatar with the 7 widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman [1] to achieve underlying facial expressions, will make that avatar more human-like and improve usability and understandability for the ISL user. Using human evaluation methods [2] we compare an augmented set of avatar utterances against a baseline set, focusing on 2 key areas: comprehension and naturalness of facial configuration. We outline our approach to the evaluation including our choice of ISL participants, interview environment and evaluation methodology. The evaluation results reveal that in a comprehension test there was little difference between the baseline avatars and those augmented with emotional facial expression also we found that the avatars are lacking various linguistic attributes