From mechatronics to the Cloud

At its conception mechatronics was viewed purely in terms of the ability to integrate the technologies of mechanical and electrical engineering with computer science to transfer functionality, and hence complexity, from the mechanical domain to the software domain. However, as technologies, and in particular computing technologies, have evolved so the nature of mechatronics has changed from being purely associated with essentially stand-alone systems such as robots to providing the smart objects and systems which are the building blocks for Cyber-Physical Systems, and hence for Internet of Things and Cloud-based systems. With the possible advent of a 4th Industrial Revolution structured around these systems level concepts, mechatronics must again adapt its world view, if not its underlying technologies, to meet this new challenge

Changing the culture of assessment: the dominance of the summative assessment paradigm

Background Despite growing evidence of the benefits of including assessment for learning strategies within programmes of assessment, practical implementation of these approaches is often problematical. Organisational culture change is often hindered by personal and collective beliefs which encourage adherence to the existing organisational paradigm. We aimed to explore how these beliefs influenced proposals to redesign a summative assessment culture in order to improve students’ use of assessment-related feedback. Methods Using the principles of participatory design, a mixed group comprising medical students, clinical teachers and senior faculty members was challenged to develop radical solutions to improve the use of post-assessment feedback. Follow-up interviews were conducted with individual members of the group to explore their personal beliefs about the proposed redesign. Data were analysed using a socio-cultural lens. Results Proposed changes were dominated by a shared belief in the primacy of the summative assessment paradigm, which prevented radical redesign solutions from being accepted by group members. Participants’ prior assessment experiences strongly influenced proposals for change. As participants had largely only experienced a summative assessment culture, they found it difficult to conceptualise radical change in the assessment culture. Although all group members participated, students were less successful at persuading the group to adopt their ideas. Faculty members and clinical teachers often used indirect techniques to close down discussions. The strength of individual beliefs became more apparent in the follow-up interviews. Conclusions Naïve epistemologies and prior personal experiences were influential in the assessment redesign but were usually not expressed explicitly in a group setting, perhaps because of cultural conventions of politeness. In order to successfully implement a change in assessment culture, firmly-held intuitive beliefs about summative assessment will need to be clearly understood as a first step

The Quantified Moral Self

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be harnessed to create sophisticated social and moral scoring systems – enabling people and organisations to form judgements of others at scale. While this capability has many useful applications – e.g., matching romantic partners who are aligned in their moral principles, it also raises many ethical questions. For example, there is widespread concern about the use of social credit systems in the political domain. In this project, we approach this topic from a psychological perspective. With experimental evidence, we show that the acceptability of moral scoring by AI depends on its perceived accuracy, and that perceived accuracy is compromised by people's tendency to see themselves as morally peculiar, and thus less characterizable by AI. That is, we suggest that people overestimate the peculiarity of their moral profile, believe that AI will neglect this peculiarity, and resist for this reason the introduction of moral scoring by AI