Feature Guided Image Registration Applied to Phase and Wavelet-Base Optic Flow

Optic Flow algorithms are useful in problems such as computers vision, navigational systems, and robotics. However, current algorithms are computationally expensive or lack the accuracy to be effective compared with traditionally navigation systems. Recently, lower accuracy inertial navigation systems (INS) based on Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology have been proposed to replace more accurate traditional navigation systems

Cultivating a Moral Imagination for Future Teacher Educators: The Dilemma of Teacher Assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic placed a spotlight on the ethical issues of assessment practice across all phases of education but most importantly, in relation to the high-stakes assessment (HSA) at secondary and tertiary stages of schooling. This presentation documents the views of final year BA (Hons) Education Studies students as they critically analyse their position on this topical ethical dilemma in education. As part of their final year undergraduate curriculum, students take a module called ‘Ethics in Education’. Its aim is to encourage students to discuss moral dilemmas that occur within education. During this module, university tutors and students engage in dialogue and reflection around a range of ethical dilemmas faced by teachers and policy makers with the aim to understand the motivations and consequences of the actions resulting from these dilemmas. The aim of the module is to illuminate the complexity of ethical decision making in education. The classroom dialogues seek to enhance student’s critical and creative thinking around the issues while fostering an increased sensitivity to the needs and expectations of others affected in the situations. The dialogues help to prepare the students for their written assessment which requires them to produce a critical analysis of two dilemmas in education, one of which was the planned teacher assessment to replace national examinations in the UK in 2021. The aim of this presentation is two-fold. Firstly, it will present the themes which emerged from 66 student papers and their responses to the temporary change in the assessment practice during COVID-19. Their responses are highly informative around their views on trust and fairness in assessment practice and allude to a moral imagination for new ways of thinking about the value, importance, and methods of high stakes assessment. Secondly, more generally, the presentation will reflect upon the extent to which a module such as this, can prepare future educators to both understand decision making in education and their role within it

Policing “Fake” femininity:Authenticity, accountability, and influencer antifandom

Although social media influencers enjoy a coveted status position in the popular imagination, their requisite career visibility opens them up to intensified public scrutiny and—more pointedly—networked hate and harassment. Key repositories of such critique are influencer “hateblogs”—forums for anti-fandom often dismissed as frivolous gossip or, alternatively, denigrated as conduits for cyberbullying and misogyny. This article draws upon an analysis of a women-dominated community of anti-fans, Get Off My Internets (GOMIBLOG), to show instead how influencer hateblogs are discursive sites of gendered authenticity policing. Findings reveal that GOMI participants wage patterned accusations of duplicity across three domains where women influencers seemingly “have it all”: career, relationships, and appearance. But while antifans’ policing of “fake” femininity may purport to dismantle the artifice of social media self-enterprise, such expressions fail to advance progressive gender politics, as they target individual-level—rather than structural—inequities

Embracing Vulnerability: The Moral Dimensions of Practice within Higher Education

This study is an auto ethnographic inquiry into the moral dimensions of one educator’s practice as a teacher in a UK University. It has long been accepted that teaching is a moral activity (Noddings 1984; Jackson et al 1993; Sockett 1993; Sanger 2001; Rosenberg 2015) because of its unique close interaction between two individuals and because the teacher is actively engaged in changing the behaviours of others. Studies in this area are limited within the context of Higher Education and this study adds a unique insight in to the discourse surrounding moral practice and agency of teachers specifically in this sector. The study had two main objectives. The first was to understand, in-depth ‘how I perceived moral practice and agency in Higher Education. The second was to illuminate, through biographical accounts, ‘how I dealt with moral choices and conflicts. Using the paradigm of positioning theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999), this study adopted an auto ethnographic methodology (Ellis 2004; Chang 2008) to gain a deeper insight into the moral practice of an HE teacher. The primary data source was a written diary alongside artefacts and correspondence from colleagues and students. Thematic analysis (Charmaz 2014; Kim 2016) of the diary entries showed that practice was motivated by building, maintaining and sustaining positive relationships. This illuminated the complexity and the emotional dimensions of teaching in Higher Education. Analysis indicated that the emotions which were prevalent in the interactions of the teacher could be collectively defined as the emotions of vulnerability. The data revealed how the teacher responded to these emotions and noted that instances where the teacher was able to embrace the emotions of vulnerability, practice would be more transformational. This view runs counter to the current perception of vulnerability in society and education where it is seen as weakness and should be resisted and avoided. In its conclusion, the study provides a model for a Pedagogy of Vulnerability which can be used to open up a dialogue with teachers and students in Higher Education about the moral dimensions of practice. It is not intended to show what teachers should do but enable us to think about what we could do in order to resist the transactional and performative culture in higher education towards a more transformative and arguably humanistic one

Application of metabolomics to the analysis of ancient organic residues

The grape is arguably one of the oldest cultivated products in human history and the analysis of its main product, wine, reveals clues to trade and associations of previous civilizations. In ancient times, wine was stored in clay amphorae, which, if not properly sealed with resin or pitch allowed the wine to wick into clay matrices, dry, and polymerize producing insoluble, intractable materials that may remain within the matrix for several thousand years. Presently, identification of wine residue is based upon the extraction of these polymeric materials from the ceramic matrix and analyzing/identifying the chemical fingerprints. Two main biomarkers have historically been employed for the identification of wine residue: tartaric and syringic acids. In some cases, the presence of one of these biomarkers has been designated as the confirmatory signature of wine often leading to false positives as amphorae were re-used in antiquity. Herein, a novel approach utilizing metabolomics has been applied to archaeological objects in order to further mine possible biomarkers for a more accurate assessment of the original foodstuff. An untargeted metabolic profiling method was combined with a targeted analytical method resulting in the successful validation of eight representative biomarkers in two separate archaeological sites

(Re)imagining the classroom culture to enable authentic student self-assessment in Higher Education

Curriculum design and pedagogical practice in Higher Education (HE) is placing greater value on activity which fosters student autonomy. Degree outcomes and assessment activity are increasingly designed to allow students more options to choose from in relation to how they learn and perhaps how they choose to demonstrate their learning. Additionally, creating opportunities for students to make informed judgments about the quality of their work have the potential to develop further student autonomy. Interventions for student self-assessment tend to distinguish between formative and summative assessment and allow for varying degrees of student autonomy in each. With the responsibility for summative judgments generally residing with the teacher, this was viewed as the end of the learning process (Sadler & Sambell 2022). The opportunity for students to engage more proactively with their summative feedback and to be able to use it in a formative way to develop the quality of their work was a motivation for this action research study. The study has evaluated the Taras (2015) model for Integrated Student Self-Assessment (ISSA) which was adopted within an undergraduate degree programme. The model was chosen because it has the potential to shift the power dynamic between teacher and student by fostering co-creation at every step of the teaching, learning, assessment, and feedback process. Underpinned by social constructivism and dialogue, it values a shared responsibility towards the process and product of assessment with students equally able to make reliable and trusted judgments on their work. The approach relies upon a commitment to establishing a shared understanding of the assessment criteria which students can use to produce their best work and identify ways to improve it (Sadler, 1989). This paper will first explain how ISSA differs from the standard models of student self-assessment . It will then outline the initial aims and objectives of the UKRI funded action research project, and highlight key learning points from the views of both teachers and students through two cycles of the research process. Data was collected using a mix of methods that would value the voices of students and teachers as they experience assessment together. Narrative accounts, reflections and questionnaires were collected from the teacher and the students to capture their experience of ISSA. This was triangulated with the content of student feedback and achievement and attainment data for the cohort. The findings revealed the assumptions made by the teacher and students in relation to self-assessment and student autonomy and they revealed the limiting factors created by assessment policy and organizational expectations. Findings also highlighted the need for a re-imagining of the classroom culture to enable an authentic shift towards co-creation at every step of the process. The findings also reveal the challenges towards making this pedagogical shift to co-creation. The re-imagining of classroom culture requires a deeper understanding of teacher beliefs, (Biesta, Priestley & Robinson, 2015) student expectations and organizational constraints in relation to assessment practices and student autonomy