From Graceful Adaptations to Jarring Collisions: Oberlin Students’ Experiences Integrating Divergent Conceptions of Gender

This thesis explores the ways in which straight, cisgender Oberlin College students conceive of gender, and is based upon ethnographic data collected from interviews the author conducted with fifteen informants. Oberlin College is known for its acceptance of gay and transgender students, and the ways in which Oberlin College students self-actively challenge gender norms is visible everywhere, from the gender identity oriented course offerings to the all-gender bathrooms common across campus. The overarching conception of gender at Oberlin College that is prevalent and dominant challenges traditional ideas of gender and gender identity as being fixed to the body, biological, and rooted in sexual dimorphism, and instead asserts that gender is fluid, socially and culturally constructed, and one’s own choice. After attending Oberlin College, the author\u27s informants do not subscribe only to the Oberlin conception of gender or the traditional conception of gender, but rather see gender and their own gender identities through dual, competing conceptions. The informants’ experiences integrating such different conceptions of gender range from jarring collisions to graceful adaptations and mixtures of each. These differences in reactions are influenced by their experiences prior to Oberlin—the more familiar they were with the ways gender is presented and discussed on campus prior to coming here, the more likely they are to accept and embrace them. The Oberlin conception and the traditional conception of gender have distinct implications for the ideological formation of male and female informants as pertaining to gender; the male informants tend to feel more comfortable with, and embrace, the traditional conception of gender, while the female informants feel liberated by, and tend to embrace, the Oberlin conception of gender instead. All informants have been affected by their exposure to Oberlin’s ideas about gender, whether or not they embrace them wholeheartedly

From Graceful Adaptations to Jarring Collisions: Oberlin Students’ Experiences Integrating Divergent Conceptions of Gender

This thesis explores the ways in which straight, cisgender Oberlin College students conceive of gender, and is based upon ethnographic data collected from interviews the author conducted with fifteen informants. Oberlin College is known for its acceptance of gay and transgender students, and the ways in which Oberlin College students self-actively challenge gender norms is visible everywhere, from the gender identity oriented course offerings to the all-gender bathrooms common across campus. The overarching conception of gender at Oberlin College that is prevalent and dominant challenges traditional ideas of gender and gender identity as being fixed to the body, biological, and rooted in sexual dimorphism, and instead asserts that gender is fluid, socially and culturally constructed, and one’s own choice. After attending Oberlin College, the author\u27s informants do not subscribe only to the Oberlin conception of gender or the traditional conception of gender, but rather see gender and their own gender identities through dual, competing conceptions. The informants’ experiences integrating such different conceptions of gender range from jarring collisions to graceful adaptations and mixtures of each. These differences in reactions are influenced by their experiences prior to Oberlin—the more familiar they were with the ways gender is presented and discussed on campus prior to coming here, the more likely they are to accept and embrace them. The Oberlin conception and the traditional conception of gender have distinct implications for the ideological formation of male and female informants as pertaining to gender; the male informants tend to feel more comfortable with, and embrace, the traditional conception of gender, while the female informants feel liberated by, and tend to embrace, the Oberlin conception of gender instead. All informants have been affected by their exposure to Oberlin’s ideas about gender, whether or not they embrace them wholeheartedly

The AAF and Shibboleth

The Australian Access Project is a DEST-funded project to implement a trust federation for Australian higher education and research. Macquarie University is leading the Shibboleth component of this project, building on the existing testbed federation and development work conducted in the Meta Access Management System (MAMS) project (also funded by DEST). The Shibboleth software was developed by Internet 2, and provides a mechanism for “Identity Providers” to securely share identity attributes with “Service Providers” to allow for access to protected resources, collaborative workspaces and other shared services. The MAMS project also developed a Shibboleth-based “Virtual Organisation” system (“IAMSuite”) to allow for the creation and management of distributed research teams, including access to protected resources and services. This presentation provides an overview of work conducted within the MAMS project, an update on the progress of the Shibboleth component of the AAF, and the use of virtual organisations (based on IAMSuite) within this trust federation

Fourth-year medical students’ experiences of diagnostic consultations in a simulated primary care setting

Objectives: The aim was to explore the experiences of fourth-year medical students of diagnostic consultations in a simulated primary care setting, in order to gain an insight into the suitability of such simulated consultations for assessing the diagnostic reasoning skills of medical students. Methods: This single-centre study employed a qualitative, cross-sectional design. Twelve fourth-year medical students volunteered to be filmed across 21 simulated, primary care consultations. The setting closely resembled OSCE stations, with a clinician present at each station monitoring the students’ performance using a station-checklist. Upon completion of each station, participants reflected on their experiences using video-stimulated recall. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: The simulated scenarios were often perceived to have limited fidelity with predictable outcomes. At times, preoccupation with the assessment checklist meant that students were more likely to focus on asking questions than interpreting the information they were gaining. Some students felt scrutinized during the consultations, while others struggled to adapt to the time pressure. Overall, the artificial setting seemed to promote a reductionist diagnostic approach and an attitude of ‘ticking boxes’ rather than engaging in active diagnostic reasoning. Conclusions: The present findings call into question the assumption that observation-based assessment of the performance of medical students during simulated consultations can be reliably used to assess their diagnostic skills. Future studies need to explore how current assessment modalities could be better adapted to facilitate active engagement in diagnostic reasoning

Adapting Traffic Simulation for Traffic Management: A Neural Network Approach

Static models and simulations are commonly used in urban traffic management but none feature a dynamic element for near real-time traffic control. This work presents an artificial neural network forecaster methodology applied to traffic flow condition prediction. The spatially distributed architecture uses life-long learning with a novel adaptive Artificial Neural Network based filter to detect and remove outliers from training data. The system has been designed to support traffic engineers in their decision making to react to traffic conditions before they get out of control. We performed experiments using feed-forward backpropagation, cascade-forward back-propagation, radial basis, and generalized regression Artificial Neural Networks for this purpose. Test results on actual data collected from the city of Leicester, UK, confirm our approach to deliver suitable forecasts

Eliciting expert knowledge to inform training design

To determine the elicitation methodologies best placed to uncover and capture the expert operator’s reflective cognitive judgements in complex and dynamic military operating environments (e.g., explosive ordinance disposal) in order to develop the specification for a reflective eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) agent to support the training of domain novices. Approach: A bounded literature review of the latest developments in expert knowledge elicitation was undertaken to determine the ’art-of-the-possible’ in respects to uncovering an expert’s cognitive judgements in complex and dynamic environments. Candidate methodologies were systematically and critically reviewed in order to identify the most promising methodologies for uncovering expert situational awareness and metacognitive evaluations in pursuit of actionable threat mitigation strategies in high-risk contexts. Research outputs are synthesized into an interview protocol for eliciting and understanding the in-situ actions and decisions of experts in high-risk, complex operating environments. Practical implications: Trainees entering high-risk operating environments can benefit from exposure to expert reflective strategies whilst learning the trade. Typical operator training focuses on technical aspects of threat mitigation but often overlooks reflective self-evaluation. The present study represents an initial step towards determining the feasibility of designing a reflective XAI agent to augment the performance of trainees entering high-risk operations. Outputs of the expert knowledge elicitation protocol documented here shall be used to refine a theoretical framework of expert operator judgement, in order to determine decision support strategies of benefit to domain novices

The effects of stereo disparity on the behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of audio-visual motion in depth.

Motion is represented by low-level signals, such as size-expansion in vision or loudness changes in the auditory modality. The visual and auditory signals from the same object or event may be integrated and facilitate detection. We explored behavioural and electrophysiological correlates of congruent and incongruent audio-visual depth motion in conditions where auditory level changes, visual expansion, and visual disparity cues were manipulated. In Experiment 1 participants discriminated auditory motion direction whilst viewing looming or receding, 2D or 3D, visual stimuli. Responses were faster and more accurate for congruent than for incongruent audio-visual cues, and the congruency effect (i.e., difference between incongruent and congruent conditions) was larger for visual 3D cues compared to 2D cues. In Experiment 2, event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected during presentation of the 2D and 3D, looming and receding, audio-visual stimuli, while participants detected an infrequent deviant sound. Our main finding was that audio-visual congruity was affected by retinal disparity at an early processing stage (135 – 160 ms) over occipito-parietal scalp. Topographic analyses suggested that similar brain networks were activated for the 2D and 3D congruity effects, but that cortical responses were stronger in the 3D condition. Differences between congruent and incongruent conditions were observed between 140 – 200 ms, 220 – 280 ms, and 350 – 500 ms after stimulus onset