The development and evolution of transactive memory system over time in MUVEs

CSCW in education is a topic that drew a lot of attention over the years, and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are one of the tools utilized by many educators to support their teaching objectives. MUVEs enable students to connect, immerse and interact with their peers and the environment, and synchronously engage and collaborate in learning activities. Effective communication and collaboration contributes to student learning, and the topic of Transactive Memory System (TMS) within working groups has been found to be very beneficial. TMS relates to the representation of the knowledge possessed by the members of a team that allows identifying who knows what, providing efficiency in collaboration. While the use of educational MUVEs has been thoroughly investigated in the literature, little is known about the use of such environments to support TMS and their relationship with working group dynamics. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the development and evolution of a TMS between groups within a MUVE, in order to better understand the dynamics that need to be considered when using MUVEs to support teaching and learning

The Development of Transactive Memory Systems in Collaborative Educational Virtual Worlds

The use of 3D virtual worlds in the form of cyber campuses has been introduced in higher education over the past decade to support and enhance stu- dents’ online learning experiences. Considering that students learn in socially constructed ways and through peer collaboration, the development of Transac- tive Memory System - the collective awareness of the group’s specialization, coordination, and credibility - is found to be beneficial for educational purposes. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the extent to which a TMS can be developed within a 3D virtual world educational setting

Experiences of collaborating and learning through Collab3DWorld

Collaboration is an activity that is considered important during the learning process. Good communication between group members is essential to achieve quality output. Recently, virtual worlds gained excessive popularity in educational settings and more and more lecturers are incorporating live activity or lecturing sessions in environments like Second Life (SL). In this work we are investigating how students of a conventional university perceive collaboration, communication and attending lectures in a 3D virtual environment. Initial results show high perception and students’ openness to the 3D world’s experiences

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Intelligent Support for Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities

Virtual communities where people with common interests and goals communicate, share resources, and construct knowledge, are currently one of the fastest growing web environments. A common misconception is to believe that a virtual community will be effective when people and technology are present. Appropriate support for the effective functioning of online communities is paramount. In this line, personalisation and adaptation can play a crucial role, as illustrated by recent user modelling approaches that support social web-groups. However, personalisation research has mainly focused on adapting to the needs of individual members, as opposed to supporting communities to function as a whole. In this research, we argue that effective support tailored to virtual communities requires considering the wholeness of the community and facilitating the processes that influence the success of knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are focusing on closely knit communities that operate in the boundaries of organisations or in the educational sector. Following research in organisational psychology, we have identified several processes important for effective team functioning which can be applied to virtual communities and can be examined or facilitated by analysing community log data. Based on the above processes we defined a computational framework that consists of two major parts. The first deals with the extraction of a community model that represents the whole community and the second deals with the application of the model in order to identify what adaptive support is needed and when. The validation of this framework has been done using real virtual community data and the advantages of the adaptive support have been examined based on the changes happened after the interventions in the community combined with user feedback. With this thesis we contribute to the user modelling and adaptive systems research communities with: (a) a novel framework for holistic adaptive support in virtual communities, (b) a mechanism for extracting and maintaining a semantic community model based on the processes identified, and (c) deployment of the community model to identify problems and provide holistic support to a virtual community. We also contribute to the CSCW community with a novel approach in providing semantically enriched community awareness and to the area of social networks with a semantically enriched approach for modeling change patterns in a closely-knit VC

Towards a Holistic Personalised Support for Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Learning Communities

Abstract. Virtual learning communities bring together people from diverse backgrounds and provide the basis for knowledge construction and sharing. Important processes for the community to function as a whole have been identified and examined through existing systems. Although existing systems attempt to support these processes, the absence of a complete community model, and the personalisation and adaptation to the individual rather than the community compose the main obstacles to their holistic success. A computational framework is proposed, to support the community to function as an entity rather than concentrating to the individual person

Fairness in Proprietary Image Tagging Algorithms: A Cross-Platform Audit on People Images

There are increasing expectations that algorithms should behave in a manner that is socially just. We consider the case of image tagging APIs and their interpretations of people images. Image taggers have become indispensable in our information ecosystem, facilitating new modes of visual communication and sharing. Recently, they have become widely available as Cognitive Services. But while tagging APIs offer developers an inexpensive and convenient means to add functionality to their creations, most are opaque and proprietary. Through a cross-platform comparison of six taggers, we show that behaviors differ significantly. While some offer more interpretation on images, they may exhibit less fairness toward the depicted persons, by misuse of gender-related tags and/or making judgments on a person’s physical appearance. We also discuss the difficulties of studying fairness in situations where algorithmic systems cannot be benchmarked against a ground truth