Scaling up a learning technology strategy: Supporting student/faculty teams in learner‐centred design

Many post‐secondary institutions are experiencing the challenge of scaling up their learning technology initiatives without a matching increase in staff resources. This mismatch is particularly acute at the design stage of projects, where both domain knowledge and instructional design expertise are needed. To address this, we are developing structures and tools for a small cadre of instructional design experts to support a growing number of learning technology projects developed by student/faculty teams. One of these tools, the Learner‐Centred Design Idea Kit, is an interactive WWW‐based resource now in a fourth iteration of use in an undergraduate course, Designing Learning Activities with Interactive Multimedia. The course and the LCD Idea Kit which supports it are part of a larger institutional strategy to introduce technology‐enabled change in the learning process, working ‘bottom‐up’ with individual faculty and using the LCD Idea Kit to scale up the course across multiple university departments. In this paper, we describe the course and the Kit in detail and provide and overview of our current status and lessons learned

Modeling Electronic Commerce: Key Interorganizational Boundaries

This paper presents a market-oriented model of electronic commerce that examines multiple organizational linkages between a firm and its customers, suppliers and business partners. The paper identifies four key linkages: business-to-business, business-to-customer, marketspace, and disintermediation. Benefits, costs, and technologies supporting activities possible in electronic commerce are also discussed

Bio-adhesion and cleanliness in bio-processing

Biofilms are a significant problem for many industries including medical devices, the oil and gas industry, consumer product manufacturers and water distribution systems. Biofilms are communities of microbes that attach and grow on almost any surface. Biofilms are able to establish quickly in a matter of hours and can be very difficult to remove. This thesis was focused on increasing the understanding of biofilm interaction with different substratum materials, for both the initial surface colonisation and for mature biofilm lifecycle stages using a Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) model. The surface energy and the surface roughness, for a number of substratums were investigated in this thesis. The effects of a number of proprietary and non-proprietary surface coatings which primarily changed surface energies and or topography were investigated. This work has confirmed that surface energy is important in Pseudomonas bio-adhesion, with correlations observed in both the initial attachment of microbes, but also in high shear cleaning experiments for mature biofilms. Biofilm-substratum interfacial adhesion remains an important region even in mature biofilms, suggesting that surfaces that exhibit lower colonisation rates may also be easier to clean. Initial attachment studies confirm 1/3 less microbe attachment to polymer surfaces compared to metal surfaces; roughness was not a significant parameter. PTFE-AF coatings on 316 stainless steel showed 88 percent decrease in initial microbe attachment coupled with enhanced cleanability. Industries currently using stainless steel in microbe applications could from benefit this coating; limiting future biofilm colonisation rates and improved cleanability. It is demonstrated that Pseudomonas naturally colonises at low levels on selected transparent polycarbonate surfaces and given its good chemical compatibility and low cost would be an alternative to stainless steel. A range of commercial surface coatings, which are meant to reduce microbial adhesion, were also tested in this thesis; this study could not affirm such claimed performance.Open Acces

The Performance Impact of Information Technology in Specialty Retailing

Generating competitive advantage through the use of information technology is an important part of company strategy. The study examines two different perspectives on the impact of IT on performance within the specialty retailing industry. The Quick Response (QR) perspective looks at specific technologies as driving organizational performance. With QR, retailers deploy a variety of information technologies, including point-of-sale (POS), bar-coding, automated inventory management, electronic data interchange (EDI), and electronic invoicing. The strategic congruence perspective suggests that organizations must align their organizational and IT strategies to improve performance. These perspectives mirror a tension inherent in the literature on IT strategy and firm performance. The QR perspective leads to the first key research question: Is QR effective in every situation or only for a given strategy? The strategic congruence perspective generates the other key research question: Does the alignment of corporate strategy and information technology strategy improve organizational performance

MCMC-ODPR : primer design optimization using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling

Background Next generation sequencing technologies often require numerous primer designs that require good target coverage that can be financially costly. We aimed to develop a system that would implement primer reuse to design degenerate primers that could be designed around SNPs, thus find the fewest necessary primers and the lowest cost whilst maintaining an acceptable coverage and provide a cost effective solution. We have implemented Metropolis-Hastings Markov Chain Monte Carlo for optimizing primer reuse. We call it the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Optimized Degenerate Primer Reuse (MCMC-ODPR) algorithm. Results After repeating the program 1020 times to assess the variance, an average of 17.14% fewer primers were found to be necessary using MCMC-ODPR for an equivalent coverage without implementing primer reuse. The algorithm was able to reuse primers up to five times. We compared MCMC-ODPR with single sequence primer design programs Primer3 and Primer-BLAST and achieved a lower primer cost per amplicon base covered of 0.21 and 0.19 and 0.18 primer nucleotides on three separate gene sequences, respectively. With multiple sequences, MCMC-ODPR achieved a lower cost per base covered of 0.19 than programs BatchPrimer3 and PAMPS, which achieved 0.25 and 0.64 primer nucleotides, respectively. Conclusions MCMC-ODPR is a useful tool for designing primers at various melting temperatures at good target coverage. By combining degeneracy with optimal primer reuse the user may increase coverage of sequences amplified by the designed primers at significantly lower costs. Our analyses showed that overall MCMC-ODPR outperformed the other primer-design programs in our study in terms of cost per covered base

Bayesian evaluation of the southern hemisphere radiocarbon offset during the holocene

While an interhemispheric offset in atmospheric radiocarbon levels from AD 1950–950 is now well established, its existence earlier in the Holocene is less clear, with some studies reporting globally uniform 14C levels while others finding Southern Hemisphere samples older by a few decades. In this paper, we present a method for wiggle-matching Southern Hemisphere data sets against Northern Hemisphere curves, using the Bayesian calibration program OxCal 4.1 with the Reservoir Offset function accommodating a potential interhemispheric offset. The accuracy and robustness of this approach is confirmed by wiggle-matching known-calendar age sequences of the Southern Hemisphere calibration curve SHCal04 against the Northern Hemisphere curve IntCal04. We also show that 5 of 9 Holocene Southern Hemisphere data sets are capable of yielding reliable offset information. Those data sets that are accurate and precise show that interhemispheric offset levels in the Early Holocene are similar to modern levels, confirming SHCal04 as the curve of choice for calibrating Southern Hemisphere samples

Is there any Evidence for Regional Atmospheric 14C Offsets in the Southern Hemisphere?

Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) Tasmanian huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinii) decadal measurements for the interval AD 745–855 suggest a mean interhemispheric radiocarbon offset (20 ± 5 yr), which is considerably lower than the previously reported mean interhemispheric offset for the last 2 millennia (44 ± 17 yr). However, comparable University of Waikato (Wk) New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) measurements show significantly higher values (56 ± 6 yr), suggesting the possibility of a temporary geographic (intrahemispheric) offset between Tasmania, Australia, and Northland, New Zealand, during at least 1 common time interval. Here, we report 9 new Wk Tasmanian huon pine measurements from the decades showing the largest huon/kauri difference. We show statistically indistinguishable Wk huon and Wk kauri 14C ages, thus dispelling the suggestion of a 14C geographic offset between Tasmania and Northland