Supporting Sustainable e-learning: A UK National Forum

This article outlines the progress of a national Supporting Sustainable eLearning Forum, funded by the UK Learning and Teaching Support Network Generic Centre. The aim of the forum was to move e-learning on from project innovation to embedded practice, and address questions around the scaleable nature of e-learning. Assimilated views of a wide range of support staff are presented. These include ideas on how to devise strategies for supporting Higher Education lecturers in the design, development and implementation of online courses; disseminate good practice in supporting sustainable approaches to eLearning; and contribute to the ongoing debate in the sharing and reuse of e-learning resources

SilNet : Single- and Multi-View Reconstruction by Learning from Silhouettes

The objective of this paper is 3D shape understanding from single and multiple images. To this end, we introduce a new deep-learning architecture and loss function, SilNet, that can handle multiple views in an order-agnostic manner. The architecture is fully convolutional, and for training we use a proxy task of silhouette prediction, rather than directly learning a mapping from 2D images to 3D shape as has been the target in most recent work. We demonstrate that with the SilNet architecture there is generalisation over the number of views -- for example, SilNet trained on 2 views can be used with 3 or 4 views at test-time; and performance improves with more views. We introduce two new synthetics datasets: a blobby object dataset useful for pre-training, and a challenging and realistic sculpture dataset; and demonstrate on these datasets that SilNet has indeed learnt 3D shape. Finally, we show that SilNet exceeds the state of the art on the ShapeNet benchmark dataset, and use SilNet to generate novel views of the sculpture dataset.Comment: BMVC 2017; Best Poste

Effective Affective User Interface Design in Games

It is proposed that games, which are designed to generate positive affect, are most successful when they facilitate flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1992). Flow is a state of concentration, deep enjoyment, and total absorption in an activity. The study of games, and a resulting understanding of flow in games can inform the design of nonleisure software for positive affect. The paper considers the ways in which computer games contravene Nielsen’s guidelines for heuristic evaluation (Nielsen and Molich 1990) and how these contraventions impact on flow. The paper also explores the implications for research that stem from the differences between games played on a personal computer and games played on a dedicated console. This research takes important initial steps towards defining how flow in computer games can inform affective design

The home range of the signal crayfish in a British lowland river

The signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana), a native of north-western North America, is now a common resident in some British fresh waters following its introduction to England in 1976 (Lowery & Holdich 1988). In 1984, signal crayfish were introduced into the River Great Ouse, the major lowland river in southern central England, where they have established a large breeding population. This study examines two sites near Thornborough Weir. For the measurement and description of home range a new eletronic microchip system and a modified capture-mark-recapture method were employed. Signal crayfish were marked or tagged to see if they gradually moved away from their burrows. This method proved to be successful for estimating population densities when a section of river is divided into several equidistant linear ”locations”

Residual irreducibility of compatible systems

We show that if $\{\rho_{\ell}\}$ is a compatible system of absolutely irreducible Galois representations of a number field then the residual representation $\overline{\rho}_{\ell}$ is absolutely irreducible for $\ell$ in a density 1 set of primes. The key technical result is the following theorem: the image of $\rho_{\ell}$ is an open subgroup of a hyperspecial maximal compact subgroup of its Zariski closure with bounded index (as $\ell$ varies). This result combines a theorem of Larsen on the semi-simple part of the image with an analogous result for the central torus that was recently proved by Barnet-Lamb, Gee, Geraghty, and Taylor, and for which we give a new proof.Comment: 11 page

Learning as researchers and teachers: the development of a pedagogical culture for social science research methods

In light of calls to improve the capacity for social science research within UK higher education, this article explores the possibilities for an emerging pedagogy for research methods. A lack of pedagogical culture in this field has been identified by previous studies. In response, we examine pedagogical literature surrounding approaches for teaching and learning research methods that are evident in recent peer-reviewed literature. Deep reading of this literature (as opposed to systematic review) identifies different but generally complementary ways in which teachers of methods seek to elucidate aspects of the research process, provide hands-on experience and facilitate critical reflection. At a time when the advancement of research capacity is gaining prominence, both in the academy and in reference to the wider knowledge economy, this paper illustrates how teachers of methods are considering pedagogical questions and seeks to further stimulate debates in this area