The impact of indoor plants on well-being in the workplace

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA by coursework and Research Report in the field of Organisational Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. March 2016There is international growing evidence to support the notion that indoor planters positively impact employees’ emotional states, personal health, work engagement as well as their overall perceptions of their work environment and ultimately impacting employee productivity. However this ground-breaking research has never been conducted within a South African Work Environment. Consequently the following study adopts a quasi-experimental study in order to investigate the impact that indoor plants may have on employee physical well-being, psychological well-being, work engagement and their overall perception of their work environment. Furthermore, the researcher aimed to assess whether the employees connectedness to nature influenced the impact the plants had on them, thus assessing how this covariate may impact the relationship between the absence and presence of plants and the above mentioned dependent variables. A Sample of 32 Global Service Management Centre (GSMC) employees from an internationally recognised organisation, Business Connexion, were assessed over a period of 12 weeks. The first assessment was conducted in the no plant condition, while the final assessment was conducted once the plants were installed in the whole office area. Additionally, SE Controls were positioned throughout the office area in order to measure the fluctuations of the air quality once the planters were installed. The results of a series of Wilcoxon Sign Rank Tests as well as Spearman’s Rank Order Correlations indicated no significant results; however upon closer evaluations of the individual scale items the researcher identified several statistically significant results that were unpacked and discussed. The readings from the SE Controls indicated either an improvement or stabalisation of the air quality variables that were being assessed in the current study.GR201

Maximizing learning potential with multimodality : a case study

In today’s increasingly fast-moving digital world, learners are immersed in multimodal online communication environments in their daily life, through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others. This requires educators to reflect the environment in which these learners live, and thus design instructional practices from a multimodal perspective. Multimodality offers new opportunities for digital learners to express themselves, analyze problems and make meaning in multimodal ways as they interpret knowledge differently according to their various educational needs (Kalantzis & Cope, 2015). In this paper we will discuss the significance of integrating multimodality in e-Learning contexts to make meaning and improve learning. The paper will also present a case study of an online course from the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign to show how multimodality works in practice to cater to learner differences by offering a range of activity options and modes of meaning. We will also examine learners’ perceptions of adopting such an approach in the online course. We used survey techniques for data collection and quantitative and qualitative methods for data analysis. Results revealed illuminating insights about the importance of multimodality approach to increase learning potential for digital learners and provided suggestions for future iterations.peer-reviewe

Enriching Online Education through Differentiated Learning

[EN] Online education has been going through numerous transformations as new and innovative technologies influence and shape new e-learning portals. Differentiated e-learning promises to add value and enhance the educational services provided by an academic institution. In this paper we present our online learning model that advocates and endorses differentiated learning as an e-learning affordance that has been facilitated through the development of new learning technologies. We demonstrate how the online portal enables and supports multiple instances whereby differentiated learning is applied and practiced, including through the use of a novel analytics tool that sums up the overall learner effort in one visual. The paper advances the notion of “productive diversity” in learning, replacing the templated sameness characterizing the communicative practices of “didactic pedagogy,” including textbooks, lectures, tests. Today’s computer-mediated, networked learning environments can support differentiated learning on a number of dimensions, where students are able to work at their own pace, choose their own topics within a general disciplinary rubric, and offer each other feedback in such a way that differences in perspective become a valuable resource for learning. The paper concludes by demonstrating a technology that attempts to translate these principles into practice—the CGScholar platform, including the high-level progress visualizations it offers in its learning analytics.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Montebello, M.; Pinheiro, P.; Cope, B.; Kalantzis, M.; Haniya, S.; Tzirides, A.; Amina, T.... (2018). Enriching Online Education through Differentiated Learning. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 489-496. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8019OCS48949

Sentidos sem fronteiras para uma educação linguística transformadora: translinguagem e transposição na era do significado multimodal e mediado digitalmente em tempos pandêmicos

Digital technologies have reached unimaginable proportions worldwide since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has intensified the use of networks, media and platforms in everyday communication and has led millions of teachers and students to massively to remote teaching. Such social condition forces us to rethink the production of multimodal meanings, so that we can both review concepts related to the field of language studies and to propose terms that can account for this era of digitally mediated multimodal meaning making. Therefore, in this paper, we aim at problematizing the notions of translinguaging and transposition, observing aspects of complementarity between them. Supporting the idea of senses without borders, we go on to present discussions that seek to capture multimodal meanings in their restless fluidity, in order to expand repertoires in Applied Linguistics today.Las tecnologías digitales han alcanzado, a nivel mundial, proporciones inimaginables desde el inicio de la pandemia COVID-19, que ha intensificado el uso de redes, medios y plataformas en la comunicación cotidiana y ha llevado a millones de docentes y estudiantes a migrar en masa a la enseñanza a distancia. Esto nos obliga a repensar la producción de significados multimodales, buscando no solo revisar conceptos relacionados con el estudio del lenguaje, sino también proponer términos que puedan dar cuenta de esta era de construcción de significados multimodal mediada digitalmente. Así, en este artículo problematizamos las nociones de translenguaje y transposición, notando rastros de complementariedad entre ellas. Partiendo de la idea de significados sin fronteras, continuamos presentando discusiones que buscan plasmar significados multimodales en su inquieta fluidez, con el fin de ampliar repertorios en el campo de la lingüística aplicada actual.As tecnologias digitais alcançaram, em nível mundial, proporções inimagináveis desde o início da pandemia de COVID-19, o que tem intensificado o uso de redes, mídias e plataformas na comunicação cotidiana e levado milhões de professores e alunos a migrarem em massa para o ensino remoto. Isso nos força a repensar a produção de sentidos multimodais, procurando não apenas rever conceitos relacionados ao estudo da linguagem, como também propor termos que possam dar conta dessa era de construção de significado multimodal mediado digitalmente. Assim, neste artigo, problematizamos as noções de translinguagem e transposição, observando traços de complementaridade entre ambas. Partindo da ideia de sentidos sem fronteiras, seguimos apresentando discussões que buscam capturar significados multimodais em sua fluidez inquieta, a fim ampliar de repertórios no campo da linguística aplicada na atualidade

Assessment innovation in higher education by integrating learning analytics

With the rise of social networking sites and the arrival of an open education era characterized by Massive Open Online Courses MOOCs, learning is undergoing a paradigm shift which requires new assessment strategies. The boundaries between what we know, how we know it and the ways we assess and evaluate knowledge in formal and informal settings are now blurred [1], [2]. In these environments, students often interact with one another to produce and reproduce knowledge and transfer it into a new context to reach a mastery level of learning [3]. The massive amount of data being generated by learners makes it easier to assess performance than ever before [4], [5]. Every learner action is logged and factored in as a source of evidence to contribute to the overall learner assessment both from a summative perspective, and also in a formative way where immediate feedback is actionable. The integration of learning analytics tools and machine learning techniques can facilitate the process of assessment. In this paper we present a case study to show how the integration of learning analytics benefited learners and improved their performance in an online educational course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, while also holding them accountable for their own learning. The study utilized a survey method for data collection and quantitative and qualitative data analysis to interpret learners’ experiences after taking the course.peer-reviewe

Generative AI: Implications and Applications for Education

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 precipitated a panic among some educators while prompting qualified enthusiasm from others. Under the umbrella term Generative AI, ChatGPT is an example of a range of technologies for the delivery of computer-generated text, image, and other digitized media. This paper examines the implications for education of one generative AI technology, chatbots responding from large language models, or C-LLM. It reports on an application of a C-LLM to AI review and assessment of complex student work. In a concluding discussion, the paper explores the intrinsic limits of generative AI, bound as it is to language corpora and their textual representation through binary notation. Within these limits, we suggest the range of emerging and potential applications of Generative AI in education

Helicobacter pylori CagA Triggers Expression of the Bactericidal Lectin REG3γ via Gastric STAT3 Activation

Background: Most of what is known about the Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) cytotoxin, CagA, pertains to a much-vaunted role as a determinant of gastric inflammation and cancer. Little attention has been devoted to potential roles of CagA in the majority of H. pylori infected individuals not showing oncogenic progression, particularly in relation to host tolerance. Regenerating islet-derived (REG)3c encodes a secreted C-type lectin that exerts direct bactericidal activity against Grampositive bacteria in the intestine. Here, we extend this paradigm of lectin-mediated innate immunity, showing that REG3c expression is triggered by CagA in the H. pylori-infected stomach. Methodology/Principal Findings: In human gastric mucosal tissues, REG3c expression was significantly increased in CagApositive, compared to CagA-negative H. pylori infected individuals. Using transfected CagA-inducible gastric MKN28 cells, we recapitulated REG3c induction in vitro, also showing that tyrosine phosphorylated, not unphosphorylated CagA triggers REG3c transcription. In concert with induced REG3c, pro-inflammatory signalling downstream of the gp130 cytokine coreceptor via the signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT)3 and transcription of two cognate ligands, interleukin(IL)-11 and IL-6, were significantly increased. Exogenous IL-11, but not IL-6, directly stimulated STAT3 activation and REG3c transcription. STAT3 siRNA knockdown or IL-11 receptor blockade respectively abrogated or subdued CagAdependent REG3c mRNA induction, thus demonstrating a requirement for uncompromised signalling via the IL-11/STAT

Random mutagenesis of the mouse genome: A strategy for discovering gene function and the molecular basis of disease

Mutagenesis of mice with N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) is a phenotype-driven approach to unravel gene function and discover new biological pathways. Phenotype-driven approaches have the advantage of making no assumptions about the function of genes and their products and have been successfully applied to the discovery of novel gene-phenotype relationships in many physiological systems. ENU mutagenesis of mice is used in many large-scale and more focused projects to generate and identify novel mouse models for the study of gene functions and human disease. This review examines the strategies and tools used in ENU mutagenesis screens to efficiently generate and identify functional mutations