Mobile devices as support systems for health behaviour change

A Behaviour Change Support System (BCSS) is a socio-technical information system designed to form, alter, or reinforce attitudes, behaviours, or compliance to a regular patterns of activities, and they do so without the use of coercive or deceptive elements. A health BCSS (HBCSS) is then a BCSS aimed at influencing health behaviours and wellbeing in a positive way. Accordingly, mobile devices can represent ideal tools to become the enabler portals for HBCSS. In this research we provide a review of the literature on mobile applications to see if and how they can be classified as HBCSS. We focus our review on Type 1 Diabetes and emphasize on whether persuasive elements are used and, if so, how. This in turn will aid us to assess what is required for mobile devices to become HBCSS

Teaching computer programming with a coaching mindset

Teaching computer programming with the coaching mindset assumes an inherent knowledge on part of the learner. Conversely learning is efficient when novices learn from people who already mastered the craft. In this paper we redefine computing teacher as a Coach, an extension to the cognitive teaching model based on a set of values and practices that emphasize a radical model of student-teacher relationship. The proposed model resulted in a significant improvement in the confidence and skill levels of beginner students which reflected in their pass rate as well as arrested dropout tendencies. Further, we describe the coaching paradigm in the context of cognitive teaching model proposed by Maslow as the most efficient method of teaching programming

ETL tools for data warehousing : an empirical study of open source Talend Studio versus Microsoft SSIS

Relational databases are bound to follow various database integrity rules and constraints that makes the reporting a time consuming process. Data Warehousing has evolved out of the desperate need for easy access to structured storage of quality data that can be used for effective decision making. Data are turned into knowledge and knowledge into plans which are instrumental in profitable business decision making. To serve this purpose, data need to be extracted from various sources, transformed and loaded into the data warehouse which constitute the process of ETL (Extract, Transform and Load). ETL process can be accomplished using various tools both open source and proprietary. In this paper, we provide an empirical study of two ETL tools, an open source Talend Studio and Microsoft SSIS. In spite of the dominance among a vast majority of computer software solutions, open source technologies, as the comparative analysis that this study has undertaken, concludes that open sources tools are yet to evolve in order to be sustainabl

Personalized learning : current status and potential

The term personalized learning has proliferated over recent years especially with the advancement of several educational technologies, conceptual frameworks and mobile and wireless internet technologies. The aim of this paper is to identify an acceptable personalized learning paradigm for educators. A detailed literature review on various aspects of personalized learning is also presented. Eleven participants with moderate to highly-experienced in teaching across eight countries took part for this study. The data is collected via LinkedIn collaborative participation eliminating the possibility of bias towards a particular outcome. This provides both theoretical and empirical aspects of the topic in question. The data collected from the group discussions was analyzed using content analysis techniques and the issues raised by the participants were categorized into emerging themes. This paper concludes with acknowledging the necessity of good combination of teaching and technology for a successful personalized learning paradigm

Effect of quantization on competitive co-evolution algorithm - QCCEA versus CCEA

Quantum inspired Evolutionary Algorithm (QEA) which uses qubits has been the basis for the development of many Quantum Inspired algorithms. Di- verging from this, a new Quantum Inspired Competitive Co-evolution algorithm (QCCEA) has been proposed by quantifying Competitive Co-evolution Algorithm (CCEA) using a new method of representation. In the literature, the performance of QCCEA against CCEA was evaluated for numerical optimization problems. In this paper we have further analysed the performance of QCCEA using Maze problem which server as the primary investigation for combinatorial optimization problems. In the process of evaluating the performance of QCCEA against CCEA, we have performed three different experiments on the Maze problem. The results show that QCCEA has produced more diversified solutions compared to CCEA at the expense of time variable

Engaging children in diabetes education through mobile games

Traditional methods for diabetic education rely heavily on written materials and there is only a limited amount of resources targeted at educating diabetic children. Mobile games can be effective, evidence-based, and motivating tools for the promotion of children's health. In our earlier work, we proposed a novel approach for designing computer games aimed for educating children with diabetes and applied our design strategy to a mobile Android game (Mario Brothers). In this paper, we report the findings of a preliminary evaluation study (n = 12) conducted over 1 week. The initial results showed that the children found the game engaging and improved their knowledge of healthy diet and lifestyle

Evaluating mobile games for diabetes education

Mobile games can be effective, evidence-based, and motivating tools for the promotion of children's health. Traditional method for diabetic education relies heavily on written materials and there is only a limited amount of resources targeted at educating diabetic children. In our earlier work, we proposed a novel approach for designing computer games aimed for educating children with diabetes. In this paper, we apply our game design to a mobile Android game (Mario Brothers). We also introduce three heuristics that are specifically designed for evaluating the mobile game, by adapting traditional usability heuristics. The results of a preliminary evaluation study, conducted for a week, showed that the children found the game engaging and it helped enhanced their knowledge of healthy diet and lifestyle

Leveraging XSEDE HPC resources to address computational challenges with high-resolution topography data

Leveraging service-oriented architectures and taking advantage of the high-performance compute resources provided by XSEDE, we have developed standards-based web services to address the challenges associated with processing large volumes of high resolution topography data. These web services make results from community software packages and other cyberinfrastructure-based applications available to the wider earth sciences community via the OpenTopography Facility and the CyberGIS Gateway