Evaluating the use of online synchronous communication to enhance learning in statistics

According to social constructivists, learners are active participants in constructing new knowledge in a social process where they interact with others. In these social settings teachers or more knowledgeable peers provide support. This research study investigated the contribution that an online synchronous tutorial makes to support teaching and learning of undergraduate introductory statistics offered by an Australian regional university at a distance. The introductory statistics course which served as a research setting in this study was a requirement of a variety of programs at the University, including psychology, business and science. Often students in these programs perceive this course to be difficult and irrelevant to their programs of study. Negative attitudes and associated anxiety mean that students often struggle with the content. While asynchronous discussion forums have been shown to provide a level of interaction and support, it was anticipated that online synchronous tutorials would offer immediate feedback to move students forward through ―stuck places.‖ At the beginning of the semester the researcher offered distance students in this course the opportunity to participate in a weekly online synchronous tutorial which was an addition to the usual support offered by the teaching team. This tutorial was restricted to 12 volunteers to allow sufficient interaction to occur for each of the participants. The researcher, as participant-observer, conducted the weekly tutorials using the University's interactive online learning platform, Wimba Classroom, whereby participants interacted using audio, text chat and a virtual whiteboard. Prior to the start of semester, participants were surveyed about their previous mathematical experiences, their perceptions of the introductory statistics course and why they wanted to participate in the online tutorial. During the semester, they were regularly asked pertinent research questions related to their personal outcomes from the tutorial sessions. These sessions were recorded using screen capture software and the participants were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the semester. Analysis of these data indicated that the perceived value of online synchronous tutorial lies in the interaction with fellow students and a content expert and with the immediacy of feedback given. The collaborative learning environment offered the support required to maintain motivation, enhance confidence and develop problemsolving skills in these distance students of introductory statistics. Based on these findings a model of online synchronous learning is proposed.

Examining workload models in online and blended teaching

Over the past decade, most Australian universities have moved increasingly towards online course delivery for both undergraduate and graduate programs. In almost all cases, elements of online teaching are part of routine teaching loads. Yet detailed and accurate workload data are not readily available. As a result, institutional policies on academic staff workload are often guided more by untested assumptions about reduction of costs per student unit, rather than being evidence-based, with the result that implementation of new technologies for online teaching has resulted in poorly defined workload expectations. While the academics in this study often revealed a limited understanding of their institutional workload formulas, which in Australia are negotiated between management and the national union through their local branches, the costs of various types of teaching delivery have become a critical issue in a time of increasing student numbers, declining funding, pressures to increase quality and introduce minimum standards of teaching and curriculum, and substantial expenditure on technologies to support e-learning. There have been relatively few studies on the costs associated with workload for online teaching, and even fewer on the more ubiquitous ‘blended’, ‘hybrid’ or ‘flexible’ modes, in which face-to-face teaching is supplemented by online resources and activities. With this in mind the research reported here has attempted to answer the following question: What insights currently inform Australian universities about staff workload when teaching online?

Co-creating knowledge online : approaches for community artists

Forming peer alliances to share and build knowledge is an important aspect of community arts practice, and these co-creation processes are increasingly being mediated by the internet. This paper offers guidance for practitioners who are interested in better utilising the internet to connect, share, and make new knowledge. It argues that new approaches are required to foster the organising activities that underpin online co-creation, building from the premise that people have become increasingly networked as individuals rather than in groups (Rainie and Wellman 2012: 6), and that these new ways of connecting enable new modes of peer-to-peer production and exchange. This position advocates that practitioners move beyond situating the internet as a platform for dissemination and a tool for co-creating media, to embrace its knowledge collaboration potential. Drawing on a design experiment I developed to promote online knowledge co-creation, this paper suggests three development phases – developing connections, developing ideas, and developing agility – to ground six methods. They are: switching and routing, engaging in small trades of ideas with networked individuals; organising, co-ordinating networked individuals and their data; beta-release, offering ‘beta’ artifacts as knowledge trades; beta-testing, trialing and modifying other peoples ‘beta’ ideas; adapting, responding to technological disruption; and, reconfiguring, embracing opportunities offered by technological disruption. These approaches position knowledge co-creation as another capability of the community artist, along with co-creating art and media.

Online belongings : female fan experiences in online soccer forums

Introduction: The Paradox at the Heart of Online Interaction

Patron-driven acquisition of online video

Letting the patron choose ebooks has been a successful experience. Why not apply the same purchase model to other formats? This showcase outlines Queensland University of Technology’s experience with a trial of patron driven acquisition (PDA) for online video. The trial commencing in August 2012 provided access to over 700 online videos licensed from Kanopy across a number of discipline areas. As online video publishing is still in the early stages of development, and as the trial is only in the very early stages, it is too early to draw any firm conclusions about the likely suitability of this model for online video selection and acquisition. However, the trial provides some interesting initial comparisons with ebook PDA and existing online video purchase models and prompts further consideration of PDA as a method for online video selection and licensing.

‘Teachers flipping out’ beyond the online lecture : maximising the educational potential of video

While video is recognised as an important medium for teaching and learning in the digital age, many video resources are not as effective as they might be, because they do not adequately exploit the strengths of the medium. Presented here are some case studies of video learning resources produced for various courses in a university environment. This ongoing project attempts to identify pedagogic strategies for the use of video; learning situations in which video has the most efficacy; and what production techniques can be employed to make effective video learning resources.

Australian Screen Producers Survey : online interactive

There is growing scholarly interest in the everyday work undertaken by screen producers in part prompted by disciplinary shifts (the ‘material turn’, the rise of creative industries research) and in part by major transformations in the business of media production and consumption in recent years. However, the production cultures and motivations of screen producers, particularly those working in emergent online and convergent media markets, remain poorly understood. The 2012 Australian Screen Producer survey, building upon research undertaken in the Australian Screen Content Producer Survey conducted in 2009, was a nation-wide survey-based study of screen content producers working in four industry segments: film, television, corporate and new media production. The broad objectives of the 2012 Australian Producer Survey study were to: • Provide deeper and more detailed analysis into the nature of digital media producers and their practices and how these findings compare to the practices of established screen media producers; • Interrogate issues around the pace of industry change, industry sentiment and how producers are adapting to a changing marketplace; and • Offer insight into the transitional pathways of established media producers into production for digital media markets. The Australian Screen Producer Survey Online Interactive provides users (principally filmmakers, scholars and policymakers) with direct access to raw survey data through an interactive website that allows them to customise queries according to particular interests. The Online Interactive therefore provides customisable findings – unlike ‘static’ research outputs – delineating the practices, attitudes, strategies, and aspirations of screen producers working in feature film, television and corporate production as well as those operating in an increasingly convergent digital media marketplace. The survey was developed by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Queensland University of Technology, Deakin University, the Centre for Screen Business at Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and was undertaken in association with Bergent Research. The Online Interactive website (http://screenproducersurvey.com/) was developed with support from the Centre for Memory Imagination and Invention (CMII).

Dispute resolution across platforms : offshore gambling industry & EVE online

Contemporary online environments suffer from a regulatory gap; that is there are few options for participants between customer service departments and potentially expensive court cases in foreign jurisdictions. Whatever form of regulation ultimately fills that gap will be charged with determining whether specific behavior, within a specific environment, is fair or foul; whether it’s cheating or not. However, cheating is a term that, despite substantial academic study, remains problematic. Is anything the developer doesn’t want you to do cheating? Is it only if your actions breach the formal terms of service? What about the community norms, do they matter at all? All of these remain largely unresolved questions, due to the lack of public determination of cases in such environments, which have mostly been settled prior to legal action. In this paper, I propose a re-branding of participant activity in such environments into developer-sanctioned, advantage play, and cheating. Advantage play, ultimately, is activity within the environment in which the player is able to turn the mechanics of the environment to their advantage without breaching the rules of the environment. Such a definition, and the term itself, is based on the usage of the term within the gambling industry, in which advantage play is considered betting with the advantage in the players’ favor rather than that of the house. Through examples from both the gambling industry and the Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game Eve Online, I consider the problems in defining cheating, suggest how the term ‘advantage play’ may be useful in understanding participants behavior in contemporary environments, and ultimately consider the use of such terminology in dispute resolution models which may overcome this regulatory gap.

Constructing the ideal EVE online player

EVE Online, released in 2003 by CCP Games, is a space-themed Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). This sandbox style MMOG has a reputation for being a difficult game with a punishing learning curve that is fairly impenetrable to new players. This has led to the widely held belief among the larger MMOG community that “EVE players are different”, as only a very particular type of player would be dedicated to learning how to play a game this challenging. Taking a critical approach to the claim that “EVE players are different”, this paper complicates the idea that only a certain type of player capable of playing the most hardcore of games will be attracted to this particular MMOG. Instead, we argue that EVE’s “exceptionalism” is actually the result of conscious design decisions on the part of CCP games, which in turn compel particular behaviours that are continually reinforced as the norm by the game’s relatively homogenous player community.

Mastering medical terminology online workbook

Key Features: "Aligns to Mastering Medical Terminology: Australia and New Zealand. Self-test to practise and revise combining forms, word roots, prefixes and suffixes. Crossword puzzles, anagrams and label-the-diagram exercises Also available iOS/Android app featuring audio glossary, flashcards and MCQs."--publisher website

Going online : young children and teachers accessing knowledge through web interactions

Children accessing and using internet-connected technology is a relatively recent phenomenon, and rapidly having an impact on their experiences and activities in homes and early childhood classrooms. Technology refers to devices such as computers, smart phones and tablets - many capable of being connected to the internet - and the products, such as websites, games, and interactive stories (Plowman and McPake, 2013). These activities can be played, created, watched, listened to and read, and incorporated into traditional everyday activities. This article provides suggestions for strategies for teachers to consider when incorporating technology into early childhood education.

The impact of social media features on print media firms’ online business models

Many newspapers and magazines have added “social media features” to their web-based information services in order to allow users to participate in the production of content. This study examines the specific impact of the firm’s investment in social media features on their online business models. We make a comparative case study of four Scandinavian print media firms that have added social media features to their online services. We show how social media features lead to online business model innovation, particularly linked to the firms’ value propositions. The paper discusses the repercussions of this transformation on firms’ relationship with consumers and with traditional content contributors. The modified value proposition also requires firms to acquire new competences in order to reap full benefit of their social media investments. We show that the firms have been unable to do so since they have not allowed the social media features to affect their online revenue models.

A shared reading intervention with parents to enhance young children’s early literacy skills

Parental reading to children from an early age has been shown to enhance children’s emergent literacy skills. A pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) was used to investigate the effects of two forms of shared reading interventions on children’s language and literacy skills. Parents of 80 preparatory year children from outer suburban schools of an Australian metropolitan city were trained to use shared reading strategies in an eight-week home intervention. Families were assigned to one of three groups: Dialogic Reading (DR), Dialogic Reading with the addition of Print Referencing (DR + PR), or an attention-matched control group. The sample comprised 42 boys and 38 girls ranging in age from 4.9 years to 6.3 years (M = 5.5, SD = 0.3). Data were collected at pre, post, and at three months follow-up. Measures assessed children’s oral language (receptive and expressive vocabulary), phonological awareness (rhyme, word completion), alphabet knowledge, and concepts about print. Analyses of change from pre to post showed significant effects for the DR and DR + PR groups compared to the control group on three of the six measures: expressive language, rhyme, and concepts about print. At 3-month follow-up assessment, the two intervention groups maintained significantly better performance on the measure of concepts of print only. At both time points, there were no group differences between the DR and DR+PR conditions. These findings illustrate the potential of a brief home focused intervention on promoting children’s emergent literacy.

The transformation of Sweden from a haven for online pirates to the hope of the digital music industry [Musikbranschens föregångsland]

1974 was the year when the Swedish pop group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton and when Blue Swede reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Although Swedish pop music gained some international success even prior to 1974, this year is often considered as the beginning of an era in which Swedish pop music had great success around the world. With brands such as ABBA, Europe, Roxette, The Cardigans, Ace of Base, In Flames, Robyn, Avicii, Swedish House Mafia and music producers Stig Andersson, Ola Håkansson, Dag Volle, Max Martin, Andreas Carlsson, Jorgen Elofsson and several others have the myth of the Swedish music miracle kept alive for nearly more than four decades. Swedish music looks to continue reap success around the world, but since the millennium, Sweden's relationship with music has been more focused on relatively controversial Internet-based services for music distribution developed by Swedish entrepreneurs and engineers rather than on successful musicians and composers. This chapter focusses on the music industry in Sweden. The chapter will discuss the development of the Internet services mentioned above and their impact on the production, distribution and consumption of recorded music. Ample space will be given in particular to Spotify, the music service that quickly has fundamentally changed the music industry in Sweden. The chapter will also present how the music industry's three sectors - recorded music, music licensing and live music - interact and evolve in Sweden.