A semi-automated security advisory system to resist cyber-attack in social networks

Social networking sites often witness various types of social engineering (SE) attacks. Yet, limited research has addressed the most severe types of social engineering in social networks (SNs). The present study investigates the extent to which people respond differently to different types of attack in a social network context and how we can segment users based on their vulnerability. In turn, this leads to the prospect of a personalised security advisory system. 316 participants have completed an online-questionnaire that includes a scenario-based experiment. The study result reveals that people respond to cyber-attacks differently based on their demographics. Furthermore, people’s competence, social network experience, and their limited connections with strangers in social networks can decrease their likelihood of falling victim to some types of attacks more than others

Teaching technology-mediated collaborative learning for trainee teachers

In a knowledge driven society, secondary education should let students develop appropriate and meaningful skills to live, think and work. To this aim, teachers require specific knowledge and competences about technology-mediated collaborative learning strategies while overcoming preconceptions and general sense of inadequacy towards these learning approaches. This exploratory study focuses on a learning path based on the “Trialogical” Learning Approach to consider the role of technology mediated collaborative learning in the educational development and classroom practices of trainee teachers. A multi-methods approach was used to analyse the collected data. Results indicate a good level of active participation in the activities leading to a general perception of effective learning. Participants report having acquired knowledge and skills, which will improve their professional practice. The positive value of introducing collaboration and technology in the learning path is highlighted

Group Singing as a Resource for the Development of a Healthy Public

A growing body of evidence points to a wide range of benefits arising from participation in group singing. Group singing requires participants to engage with each other in a simultaneous musical dialogue in a pluralistic and emergent context, creating a coherent cultural expression through the reflexive negotiation of (musical) meaning manifest in the collective power of the human voice. As such, group singing might be taken – both literally and figuratively – as a potent form of ‘healthy public’, creating an ‘ideal’ community which participants can subsequently mobilise as a positive resource for everyday life. The experiences of a group of singers (n=78) who had participated in an outdoor singing project were collected and analysed using a three-layer research design consisting of: distributed data generation and interpretation, considered against comparative data from other singing groups (n=88); a focus group workshop (n=11); an unstructured interview (n=2). The study confirmed an expected perception of the social bonding effect of group singing, highlighting affordances for interpersonal attunement and attachment alongside a powerful individual sense of feeling ‘uplifted’. This study presents a novel perspective on group singing, highlighting the importance of participant experience as a means of understanding music as a holistic and complex adaptive system. It validates findings about group singing from previous studies - in particular the stability of the social bonding effect as a less variant characteristic in the face of environmental and other situational influences, alongside its capacity for mental health recovery. It establishes a subjective sociocultural and musical understanding of group singing, by expanding on these findings to centralise the importance of individual experience, and the consciousness of that experience as descriptive self-awareness. The ways in which participants describe and discuss their experiences of group singing and its benefits points to a complex interdependence between a number of musical, neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms which might be independently and objectively analysed. An emerging theory is that at least some of the potency of group singing is as a resource where people can rehearse and perform ‘healthy’ relationships, further emphasising its potential as a resource for healthy publics

The impact of lecture chunking format on university student vigilance: implications for classroom pedagogy

Consistent with capacity theories of attention, attention can be sustained to the extent that spare mental resources remain available. The traditional lecture in higher education has received criticism for being too long to hold a student’s attention. This is based on several author’s claims that there is a measurable decrement in student attention after approximately 10-15 minutes of sustained content delivery. The present research aimed to investigate if providing small, separate units of an asynchronous lecture is able to enhance motivation for task engagement through perceived achievability of the learning outcomes, and consequently, enhance sustained attention amongst postgraduate university students. Utilising a quasi-experimental design, 51 postgraduate psychology students were recruited by opportunistic sampling from a cognitive psychology lecture on an MSc Psychology course, and given the option to watch either a long, single-video version of a lecture, or the same lecture delivered as smaller separate video chunks. Key findings indicate that presenting the material as smaller separate video units increased the perceived achievability of the learning outcomes and reduced the number of attention lapses experienced, but not the duration of those lapses, all measured via self-report single-item measures. The shorter separate videos condition also saw greater levels of break taking compliance. Looking at the sample as a whole using a hierarchical regression analysis, whilst controlling for student mind wandering tendencies as measured by the Mind Excessively Wandering Scale (MEWS), taking breaks was a significant negative predictor of attention lapses. Taken together, this suggests taking breaks is an integral part of sustained attention, and that chunking lectures into separate video units increases break taking compliance. Therefore, when designing online asynchronous learning material, lecturers should consider the value of chunking learning material for its potential direct and indirect effect on sustained attention