Let's get personal

Philip Butler has worked as an e-Learning adviser in post-16 education for 19 years. Here he describes his experiences and outlines what he believes to be the challenges faced by the NH

Personalised Learning: Developing a Vygotskian Framework for E-learning

Personalisation has emerged as a central feature of recent educational strategies in the UK and abroad. At the heart of this is a vision to empower learners to take more ownership of their learning and develop autonomy. While the introduction of digital technologies is not enough to effect this change, embedding the affordances of new technologies is expected to offer new routes for creating personalised learning environments. The approach is not unique to education, with consumer technologies offering a 'personalised' relationship which is both engaging and dynamic, however the challenge remains for learning providers to capture and transpose this to educational contexts. As learners begin to utilise a range of tools to pursue communicative and collaborative actions, the first part of this paper will use analysis of activity logs to uncover interesting trends for maturing e-learning platforms across over 100 UK learning providers. While personalisation appeals to marketing theories this paper will argue that if learning is to become personalised one must ask what the optimal instruction for any particular learner is? For Vygotsky this is based in the zone of proximal development, a way of understanding the causal-dynamics of development that allow appropriate pedagogical interventions. The second part of this paper will interpret personalised learning as the organising principle for a sense-making framework for e-learning. In this approach personalised learning provides the context for assessing the capabilities of e-learning using Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development as the framework for assessing learner potential and development

Timely Correction of Misplaced Endotracheal Tubes: A Model for Studying Critical Radiology Result Communication

Clinical management of misplaced endotracheal tubes provides a compelling model to study the communication of critical radiology results: abnormal findings are clearly defined, require a narrow range of actions, and can be followed in subsequent radiographs. In this study, we assessed rates of endotracheal tube correction following misplacement and correlated those rates with communication practices. A manual screen was done of radiology reports from 11/2008-6/2009 at Yale New Haven to identify patients with endotracheal tube misplacement. Patients were included in the study if misplacement was verified by image measurement, if there was evidence of endotracheal tube placement for more than 24 hours following misplacement, and if they had radiographic follow-up. An endotracheal tube was determined to be corrected by image measurement on subsequent chest x-rays within 30 hours. 21,277 chest x-ray reports were screened and 224 patients with endotracheal tube misplacement were identified. 119 patients had misplacement on initial intubation; 69 (58.0%) had evidence of correction within 30 hours. 105 patients had misplacements subsequently in the ICU; 59 (56.2%) had evidence of correction within 30 hours. Correction rates were not associated with explicit recommendations in the report text [OR=1.36, 95% CI=0.65-2.86, p=0.45 for initial misplacement, OR=1.36, 95% CI=0.63-2.94, p=0.55 for subsequent misplacement] or with additional radiologist-clinician communication [OR=1.36, 95% CI=0.65-2.86, p=0.45 for initial misplacement, OR=1.36, 95% CI=0.63-2.94, p=0.55 for subsequent misplacement]. We describe the rates of timely correction of misplaced endotracheal tubes at a large university hospital. Correction rates were not influenced by additional communication from the interpreting radiologist or by explicit recommendations in the report text

Recovering the Ontological Foundations of the Grounded Theory Method

Researchers have identified several problems with the Grounded Theory Method, which include fundamental concerns about its ontological foundations and epistemological stance. Many IS researchers consider such issues unproblematic or are unaware of them. This situation is compounded by the fact it is employed selectively as part of positivist, post-positivist or interpretivist research approaches; indeed, some researchers argue that the method is paradigmatically neutral. Accordingly, there have been recent calls in reference disciplines for researchers to address the method’s problematic ontological and epistemological grounding. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to help IS researchers understand better these issues. The paper draws on phenomenological hermeneutics to achieve this aim. This essay therefore makes a contribution to IS research through its constructive analysis of the Grounded Theory Method, by identifying the method’s strengths and weaknesses, and by providing insights into how the latter can be strengthened in interpretivist studies using phenomenological hermeneutics

Which Radial Velocity Exoplanets Have Undetected Outer Companions?

(Abridged) The observed radial velocity (RV) eccentricity distribution for extrasolar planets in single-planet systems shows that a significant fraction of planets are eccentric ($e > 0.1$). Here we investigate the effects on an RV planet's eccentricity produced by undetected outer companions. We have carried out Monte Carlo simulations of mock RV data to understand this effect and predict its impact on the observed distribution. We first quantify the statistical effect of undetected outer companions and show that this alone cannot explain the observed distribution. We then modify the simulations to consist of two populations, one of zero-eccentricity planets in double-planet systems and the other of single planets drawn from an eccentric distribution. Our simulations show that a good fit to the observed distribution is obtained with 45% zero-eccentricity double-planets and 55% single eccentric planets. Matching the observed distribution allows us to determine the probability that a known RV planet's orbital eccentricity has been biased by an undetected wide-separation companion. Our simulations show that moderately-eccentric planets, with $0.1 < e < 0.3$ and $0.1 < e < 0.2$, have a $\sim 13$ and $\sim 19$ probability, respectively, of having an undetected outer companion. We encourage both high-contrast direct imaging and RV follow-up surveys of known RV planets with moderate eccentricities to test our predictions and look for previously undetected outer companions.Comment: 23 pages (12 text, 2 tables, 9 figures). Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal 30 June 200

Cancer cell lines show high heritability for motility but not generation time

Tumour evolution depends on heritable differences between cells in traits affecting cell survival or replication. It is well established that cancer cells are genetically and phenotypically heterogeneous; however, the extent to which this phenotypic variation is heritable is far less well explored. Here, we estimate the broad-sense heritability (H2) of two cell traits related to cancer hallmarks––cell motility and generation time––within populations of four cancer cell lines in vitro and find that motility is strongly heritable. This heritability is stable across multiple cell generations, with heritability values at the high end of those measured for a range of traits in natural populations of animals or plants. These findings confirm a central assumption of cancer evolution, provide a first quantification of the evolvability of key traits in cancer cells and indicate that there is ample raw material for experimental evolution in cancer cell lines. Generation time, a trait directly affecting cell fitness, shows substantially lower values of heritability than cell speed, consistent with its having been under directional selection removing heritable variation

Attitudes of intravenous drug users in London towards the provision of drug consumption rooms

Aims: The study investigated the attitudes of intravenous drug users (IDUs) towards the provision of drug consumption rooms (DCRs) in the UK and their willingness to use DCRs. Methods: Participants were 90 methadone-maintained outpatients recruited from a London clinic. A questionnaire asked about their willingness to use a DCR, their views on various rules commonly-implemented by DCRs, and how they believed DCRs might impact on the drug-taking behaviours of drug users and their peers. Findings: A large majority (89%) expressed willingness to use a DCR and accepted the need for rules such as no drug sharing (84.3%), no assistance with injecting (81.8%), compulsory supervision (76.7%) and compulsory hand washing (92.1%). However, the IDUs were split over whether injection in the neck or groin should be disallowed and whether certain categories of IDUs (e.g. juveniles, pregnant women) should be excluded from DCRs. Majorities thought it unlikely that DCRs would encourage users to try risker drug preparations (76.6%), or encourage non injectors to inject for the first time (74.5%). Conclusions: In a country where DCRs are not available, the study highlights the willingness of IDUs to use a DCR and accept its rules, even for a sample most of whom were not homeless

Carcanet Press Email Preservation Project

Collecting institutions are increasingly facing the challenge of preserving `born digital' material when acquiring recent and contemporary archives. Interim solutions like printing important documents and correspondence to paper are clearly not feasible in the long-term. One of the most important modern archives held by the John Rylands Library is that of Carcanet Press, one of the UK's premier poetry publishing houses. Correspondence with famous poets, critics, editors, translators and artists forms one of the most important elements of this archive. Most of this correspondence is now conducted by email, with the result that the quantity of hard copy correspondence acquired in annual accruals to the archive has diminished significantly. It is therefore vital that libraries like the John Rylands Library are able to preserve these emails in digital form, in order to ensure that this invaluable primary research material is not lost to the archival record. This project aimed to tackle the challenge of capturing and preserving the email archive of Carcanet Press. Basing our work on both traditional archival practice and digital preservation standards, we used this email archive as a test-bed for practical digital preservation. We tested and assessed existing tools for metadata extraction, validation, migration, packaging and ingest. We also explored different long-term preservation formats for email to determine the most appropriate solution for our institutional context. Our preservation planning activities draw and build on the work of the InSPECT Project in identifying the `significant properties' of email. We also established documentation and workflows which can be adapted to deal with similar born-digital archives in the future. Due to data protection, sensitivity and copyright issues, our focus for this project was on preservation rather than access. However, we took into account and explored some of the ways in which researchers might access and use such a body of material in the future. This report sets out the project's findings