Web-Mediated Education and Training Environments: A Review of Personalised Interactive Learning.

This chapter reviews the concept of personalised eLearning resources in relation to integrating interactivity into asynchronous learning. Personalised eLearning resources are learning resources which are selected to suit a specific student or trainee’s individual learning requirements. The affordance of personalised eLearning would provide educators with the opportunity to shift away from eLearning content that is retrieved and move towards the provision of personalised interactive content to provide a form of asynchronous learning to suit students at different degree levels. A basic introduction to the concept of ePedagogy in online learning environments is explored and the impacts these systems have on students learning experiences are considered. Issues, controversies, and problems associated with the creation of personalised interactive eLearning resources are examined, and suggested solutions and recommendations to the identified issues, controversies, and problems are reviewed. Personalised interactive asynchronous learning resources could potentially improve students’ learning experiences but more research on the human computer interface of these authoring tools is required before personalised eLearning resources are available for use by non-technical authors

A Review of Personalised E-Learning: Towards Supporting Learner Diversity

The realisation of personalised e-learning to suit an individual learner’s diverse learning needs is a concept which has been explored for decades, at great expense, but is still not achievable by non-technical authors. This research reviews the area of personalised e-learning and notes some of the technological challenges which developers may encounter in creating authoring tools for personalised e-learning and some of the pedagogical challenges which authors may encounter when creating personalised e-learning activities to enhance the learning experience of their students. At present educators who wish to create personalised e-learning activities require the assistance of technical experts who are knowledgeable in the area. Even with the help of an expert the creation of personalised e-learning activities still remains a complex process to authors who are new to the concept of tailoring e-learning to suit learner diversity. Before the successful utilisation of adaptive authoring tools can be realised, academic authors need to learn how to effectively use these tools. All learners come to education with a diverse set of characteristics; educators need to decide which learner characteristic(s) they wish to focus on addressing through the use of personalised e-learning activities. Further investigation, evaluation and analyses of authoring tools is required before personalised e-learning to support learner diversity can be achieved by many academics. Research members of the AMAS (2013) project team are currently involved in developing an authoring tool for adaptive activities for e-learning

Challenges Encountered in Creating Personalised Learning Activities to Suit Students Learning Preferences

This book chapter reviews some of the challenges encountered by educators in creating personalised e-learning activities to suit students learning preferences. Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) alternatively known as e-learning has not yet reached its full potential in higher education. There are still many potential uses as yet undiscovered and other discovered uses which are not yet realisable by many educators. TEL is still predominantly used for e-dissemination and e-administration. This chapter reviews the potential use of TEL to provide personalised learning activities to suit individual students learning preferences. In particular the challenges encountered by educators when trying to implement personalised learning activities based on individual students learning preferences

Academics\u27 Views on Personalised e-Learning in Higher Education

The challenges for academics in meeting the learning requirements of students are many and varied. This research focuses on the concept of personalised learning, where activities are specifically selected to suit the learning requirements of individual students. The creation of personalised learning activities to suit every student’s learning needs, are not easily achieved. A survey was conducted in June 2012 to determine academics awareness of, and views on, the ‘novel teaching approach’ of personalised e-learning in higher education. Forty academics participated in this study. 60% of academic respondents agreed with the statement: “There is a need to personalise e-learning to suit individual student’s learning requirements”. 85% of respondents agreed that e-learning can enhance the learning experience of students, and 70% were of the opinion that the use of personalised e- learning activities would enhance the learning experience of students. 43% of respondents agreed that they would use an authoring tool for personalising e-learning if one was available, and 43% did not know if they would use one or not. ‘Prior knowledge’ was perceived as the most important student characteristic on which to base personalisation and the easiest to achieve, and ‘web navigational behaviour’ was seen as the least important and most difficult to achieve. This study contributes to existing research into the development of authoring tools to facilitate the creation of personalised e-learning activities by non-technical authors

Personalised E-Learning: The Assessment of Students Prior Knowledge in Higher Education

Society’s use of mobile applications that instantaneously dynamically adapt to input has had the effect of users expecting immediate feedback from all applications based on their specific needs. The traditional concept of a one size fits all approach to managing an online learning environment could perhaps be improved by the inclusion of personalised learning experiences for students based on their prior knowledge. The purpose of personalised e-learning is to tailor learning content to the specific learning requirements of individual students. The focus of this chapter is to review the topic of personalised e-learning and discuss the issues and problems educators may encounter in assessing students’ prior knowledge. Information on students’ prior knowledge is required to inform the process to facilitate personalised e-learning experiences based on prior knowledge

Issues encountered in development of enzymelinked immunosorbent assay for use in detecting \u3ci\u3eInfluenza A virus\u3c/i\u3e subtype H5N1 exposure in swine

A potential mechanism by which highly pathogenic avian Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 could more readily infect human beings is through the infection of and adaptation in pigs. To detect the occurrence of such infection, monitoring of pig populations through serological screening would be highly desirable. In the current study, hemagglutination inhibition assays were able to detect antibodies against H5N1 developed in pigs, but because of antigenic variation between clades, the use of multiple virus strains were required. Whole recombinant virus and recombinant hemagglutinin antigen enzymelinked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) were generated that could detect antibody against multiple H5N1 strains, but which also detected antibody against endemic swine influenza viruses. A recombinant hemagglutinin antigen-based ELISA was as effective as the whole virus antigen ELISAs in detecting antibody against the H5N1 virus strains used and eliminated nearly all of the cross-reactivity with non-H5N1 virus antibody. The current study also highlighted the difficulty in establishing a decision (cutoff) value that would effectively counterbalance nonspecific reactivity against sensitivity. The results provide important information and considerations for the development of serological screening assays for highly pathogenic avian H5N1 viruses

An investigation of susceptibility to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus between two genetically diverse commercial lines of pigs

The objective of this study was to determine whether host genetics play a role in susceptibility to the respiratory disease in growing pigs caused by the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV). Based on a previous study, 2 genetically diverse commercial lines of pigs that also were divergent in the susceptibility of monocyte-derived macrophages to PRRSV infection in vitro were selected for an in vivo challenge study. Based on the average percentage of infected macrophages for each line, a line derived from the Large White breed was characterized as fluorescence-activated cell sortinghi (FACShi), and a line derived from Duroc and Pietrain breeds was characterized as FACSlo. Pigs from each line were challenged at 6 wk of age with PRRSV VR-2385 and necropsied at 10 or 21 d after infection. Data collected included clinical evaluation of disease, virus titration in serum and lung lavage fluid, macroscopic lung lesion scores, and microscopic lung lesion scores. The FACSlo line had consistently more severe clinical disease compared with the FACShi line in the early stages of infection. Differences between line means were significant (P \u3c 0.05) at 10 d after infection for all variables just described, and the FACSlo line showed more severe signs of disease. By 21 d after infection, clinical signs and lesions were resolving, and the differences between lines were significant (P \u3c 0.04) only for microscopic lung lesion scores but approached significance (P \u3c 0.08) for virus titer in serum. At 21 d after infection, the relationship between the lines reversed; the FACShi line had higher serum virus titers than the FACSlo line. This report provides evidence that strongly suggests the existence of a host genetic component in disease susceptibility to PRRSV and indicates that further study is warranted to define the cellular mechanisms that affect disease susceptibility

Vertical‑Surface Navigation in the Neotropical Whip Spider \u3ci\u3eParaphrynus laevifrons\u3c/i\u3e (Arachnida: Amblypygi)

Studies on whip spider navigation have focused on their ability to locate goal locations in the horizontal plane (e.g., when moving along the ground). However, many species of tropical whip spiders reside and move along surfaces in the vertical plane (e.g., trees). Under controlled laboratory conditions, the current study investigated the ability of the tropical whip spider, Paraphrynus laevifrons, to return to a home shelter on a vertical surface in the presence of numerous, similar, and competing refuge sites, as well as the distribution of navigational errors in the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal plane. We also assessed the relative importance of sensory cues originating from a previously occupied home shelter compared to the position of a previously occupied shelter in guiding shelter choice. It was found that P. laevifrons displays robust fidelity in relocating a home shelter on a vertical surface. When navigational errors did occur, they were not significantly different in all three directions. Additionally, cue-conflict test trials revealed that cues associated with an original home shelter, likely self-deposited chemical signals, were more important than sources of positional information in guiding the shelter choice of P. laevifrons

Veritas and Copyright: The Public Library in Peril

A response to the decision of Wiley Global to "disappear" 1,300+ of their ebooks in the ProQuest catalog at the beginning of the Fall 2022 term without any communication to university libraries at all, thus taking libraries by surprise and indicating Wiley's move away from libraries as repositories and lenders of their ebooks, passing on costs to students via increases in their student fees, described as "inclusive access" by Wiley, a troubling scenario indeed. This essay frames this aggressive move of Wiley's within the long history of copyright, the always successful litigious efforts of commercial publishers and even university presses & self-described "radical" presses to protect their copyrights against shadow libraries, so vital to the Global South, the life and death of Aaron Swartz and MIT's report on their potential responsibility for Swartz's prosecution and suicide, the current lawsuit led by Wiley against the Internet Archive, and the assaults on local libraries via book banning