What Offline and Online Technologies do Higher Education Students Use to Complete Assessment Tasks?

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system, usually self-constructed, that enables learners to manage their own learning and may include tools, services, online resources and communities. The aim of the project: to determine which technologies students use when they prepare, complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. The participants (n=39): 24 students from Edith Cowan University in WA and 15 students from Avondale in NSW. All students were undergraduate, on-campus students from Education and Arts courses, mainly female, most were aged between 20-24 years. Previous research has defined PLEs (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, (2012), especially in social constructivist contexts using learner-centred pedagogies (van Harmelen, 2008; Wild, Mdritscher, & Sigurdarson, 2008). Gosper et al. (2013; 2014) have outlined the use of technologies for learning in higher education in general. The methodology of the project used a mixed methods approach using a modification of Clark et al.’s (2009) methods: 1) online questionnaire; 2) focus group; and 3) mapping exercise. Students used a moderate range of formal (provided by the institution) and informal (student-selected) technologies that were used in social and individual contexts, but most technology use was informal. The range of locations in which technologies were used was wide, and reflected a high value placed on mobility and Wi-Fi connectivity

What Offline and Online Technologies do Higher Education Students Use to Complete Assessment Tasks?

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system, usually self-constructed, that enables learners to manage their own learning and may include tools, services, online resources and communities. The aim of the project: to determine which technologies students use when they prepare, complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. The participants (n=39): 24 students from Edith Cowan University in WA and 15 students from Avondale in NSW. All students were undergraduate, on-campus students from Education and Arts courses, mainly female, most were aged between 20-24 years. Previous research has defined PLEs (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, (2012), especially in social constructivist contexts using learner-centred pedagogies (van Harmelen, 2008; Wild, Mdritscher, & Sigurdarson, 2008). Gosper et al. (2013; 2014) have outlined the use of technologies for learning in higher education in general. The methodology of the project used a mixed methods approach using a modification of Clark et al.’s (2009) methods: 1) online questionnaire; 2) focus group; and 3) mapping exercise. Students used a moderate range of formal (provided by the institution) and informal (student-selected) technologies that were used in social and individual contexts, but most technology use was informal. The range of locations in which technologies were used was wide, and reflected a high value placed on mobility and Wi-Fi connectivity

Poetic Threshold Moments: From Fledgling to Published Author

This paper presents perspectives from award-winning poets on an initiative where they were involved in publishing with undergraduate students who were completing a creative writing class at a tertiary education institution in NSW, Australia. This initiative provided students with the opportunity to be both taught by and publish with world-class poets. As a culmination of the semester’s class the students also had an opportunity for selected work to be published alongside high profile writers in a collaborative anthology. The recent Wording the World (2010) and Here Not There (2012) poetry anthologies are printed artefacts of this process. While reflecting on their experience of the initiative, the established writers provide interesting insights on the pedagogical value of such a program. It is also of interest to appreciate what motivates these poets to contribute their time and works to a project that assists student-writers to successfully cross a literary threshold. While reflecting on their journeys in achieving literary notoriety, the poets relate how they reached an understanding of threshold concepts associated with their identity as authors, their skills as writers, the way in which they influence other authors, and the way in which the writing community perceives them. One of the key findings that emerges from the study of this initiative, where the experts so generously give of themselves, is that through their experiences of the potentially isolating act of writing poetry when they were younger, they are able provide a sense of inclusivity and opportunity for newly emerging writers wishing to find a shape, voice and publication point for their creativity. Rather than seeing the process of poetry writing as a journey or a path, the data gathered from the established poets in this program indicates that there are a number of threshold points that poets experience as they move from being a fledgling to a published author

A Health Check of Avondale\u27s Distance Education Program: Where Have we Been? Where are we Going Next?

Avondale College of Higher Education has been offering tertiary courses for over 120 years. In the past two decades, this institution has extended its programs to include distance courses for students who opt to study online or are not able to attend on-campus courses at Avondale’s Lake Macquarie and Sydney campuses. While all of the institutions courses are evaluated on a regular basis, no formal evaluation had ever been undertaken of the distance education program as a whole. During 2017, a mixed methods research project was conducted to gather evaluative data from recent and current distance students using questionnaires and focus groups. The results of the study provide insight into the extent to which the distance education program at the College provides a space in which learning relationships can develop in online communities. Also, suggestions for future improvement and further research recommendations are provided. Findings of this study may be of interest to educators and administrators who incorporate online components in their curricula

FPGA implementation of a memory-efficient Hough Parameter Space for the detection of lines

The Line Hough Transform (LHT) is a robust and accurate line detection algorithm, useful for applications such as lane detection in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. For real-time implementation, the LHT is demanding in terms of computation and memory, and hence Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are often deployed. However, many small FPGAs are incapable of implementing the LHT due to the large memory requirement of the Hough Parameter Space (HPS). This paper presents a memory-efficient architecture of the LHT named the Angular Regions - Line Hough Transform (AR-LHT). We present a suitable FPGA implementation of the AR-LHT and provide a performance and resource analysis after targeting a Xilinx xc7z010-1 device. Results demonstrate that, for an image of 1024x1024 pixels, approximately 48% less memory is used than the Standard LHT. The FPGA architecture is capable of processing a single image in 9.03ms

100GBit/s RF sample offload for RFSoC using GNU Radio and PYNQ

Modern software-defined radio systems are capable of multi-gigabit-per-second sampling rates producing unprecedented amounts of digitised RF data. In applications such as wideband spectrum sensing and machine learning algorithms for cognitive radio, prototyping, and instrumentation, it is often impractical to process the acquired data locally in real time. This motivates the need for a high-speed connection to offload data to an accelerator application running on a secondary processing resource. In this paper, we present a novel hardware and software co-design using the AMD RFSoC 4x2 platform, PYNQ and GNU Radio projects. The demonstrated system is capable of continuous 80GBit/s offload in a 100GBit/s channel, utilising GPU acceleration to rapidly process the Fast Fourier Transforms of a full 2GHz bandwidth RF signal at 60 frames per second

Higher Education Student\u27s Use of Technologies for Assessment Within Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

Higher education students\u27 use of technologies has been documented over the years but their specific use of technologies for assessment-related tasks has yet to be fully investigated. Researchers at two higher education institutions recently conducted a study which sought to discover the technologies most commonly used by students within their Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A specific aim of the study was to determine which of these technologies the students used when they complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. Results from questionnaires, focus groups and mapping exercises are reported and the implications of the findings for developing institutional infrastructure to engage students and support their learning are highlighted

Higher Education Student\u27s Use of Technologies for Assessment Within Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)

Higher education students\u27 use of technologies has been documented over the years but their specific use of technologies for assessment-related tasks has yet to be fully investigated. Researchers at two higher education institutions recently conducted a study which sought to discover the technologies most commonly used by students within their Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). A specific aim of the study was to determine which of these technologies the students used when they complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. Results from questionnaires, focus groups and mapping exercises are reported and the implications of the findings for developing institutional infrastructure to engage students and support their learning are highlighted

Spectrum monitoring and analysis with the AMD RFSoC

The Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum is a finite resource that requires strict regulation to prevent illegitimate use and unauthorised transmissions. Spectrum monitoring (measurement and analysis) is key to supporting regulation by determining usage and occupancy in real-time as well as establishing temporal trends. Spectrum monitoring technology can also enable Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) solutions, which improve the efficiency of the radio spectrum by autonomously adjusting wireless communication networks in real-time. DSA techniques require knowledge of real-time spectrum occupancy and a historical database of past usage. Engineers from the University of Strathclyde and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have developed an innovative spectrum monitoring solution that aims to improve spectrum regulation and enable real-time DSA techniques. This solution features an open-source software stack and hardware design to measure the power of ambient radio signals and record the frequency spectrum over time. The system is also able to combine spectrum measurements alongside a local database of frequency band allocations published by Ofcom (UK regulator). Thus, the spectrum monitoring solution can identify in-use frequency bands and the organisation(s) that can legitimately use them. The solution is implemented entirely on AMD’s Radio Frequency System on Chip (RFSoC) device, which features high-speed data converters for accurately performing wide-bandwidth measurements of the frequency spectrum. Autonomous vehicles, media and broadcast technologies, and smart manufacturing environments increasingly require DSA to overcome wireless communication congestion. DSA techniques are essential to improve the efficient allocation of the RF spectrum. This spectrum monitoring solution addresses the challenge of implementing DSA techniques by providing a cost-effective, real-time solution for efficiently measuring and recording the ambient radio spectrum. For example, the spectrum monitor can be deployed alongside a 4G/5G mobile base station and can probe the local radio spectrum to inform the base station as to the most suitable frequency bands for wireless communication