Using neo-Piagetian theory, formative in-Class tests and think alouds to better understand student thinking : a preliminary report on computer programming

It is acknowledged around the world that many university students struggle with learning to program (McCracken et al., 2001; McGettrick et al., 2005). In this paper, we describe how we have developed a research programme to systematically study and incrementally improve our teaching. We have adopted a research programme with three elements: (1) a theory that provides an organising framework for defining the type of phenomena and data of interest, (2) data on how the class as a whole performs on formative assessment tasks that are framed from within the organising framework, and (3) data from one-on-one think aloud sessions, to establish why students struggle with some of those in-class formative assessment tasks. We teach introductory computer programming, but this three-element structure of our research is applicable to many areas of engineering education research.

Developing authentic professional knowledge through transformative community engagement in an interdisciplinary service learning project

This showcase presents a preliminary analysis of a community service learning project designed to align more authentically with contemporary society and emerging constructs of professional knowledge. As described in the paper, the project involves a multidisciplinary group of students working collaboratively with a community organisation to find creative presponses to challenging issues concerning the organisation's identity, how it interfaces with stakeholders, and how it evidences its inclusive practice. Of particular interest is how the interdisciplinary practice of the students within a service learning context encouraged reconsideration of their world0view and their rols as future professionals. Also highlighted is the need for greater congruence between the goals of the project and the structural elements of the curriculum.

Personalization in tag ontology learning for recommendation making

Due to the explosive growth of the Web, the domain of Web personalization has gained great momentum both in the research and commercial areas. One of the most popular web personalization systems is recommender systems. In recommender systems choosing user information that can be used to profile users is very crucial for user profiling. In Web 2.0, one facility that can help users organize Web resources of their interest is user tagging systems. Exploring user tagging behavior provides a promising way for understanding users’ information needs since tags are given directly by users. However, free and relatively uncontrolled vocabulary makes the user self-defined tags lack of standardization and semantic ambiguity. Also, the relationships among tags need to be explored since there are rich relationships among tags which could provide valuable information for us to better understand users. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for learning tag ontology based on the widely used lexical database WordNet for capturing the semantics and the structural relationships of tags. We present personalization strategies to disambiguate the semantics of tags by combining the opinion of WordNet lexicographers and users’ tagging behavior together. To personalize further, clustering of users is performed to generate a more accurate ontology for a particular group of users. In order to evaluate the usefulness of the tag ontology, we use the tag ontology in a pilot tag recommendation experiment for improving the recommendation performance by exploiting the semantic information in the tag ontology. The initial result shows that the personalized information has improved the accuracy of the tag recommendation.

Solo life to Second Life : the design of physical and virtual learning spaces inspired by the drama classroom

This paper explores the design of virtual and physical learning spaces developed for students of drama and theatre studies. What can we learn from the traditional drama workshop that will inform the design of drama and theatre spaces created in technology-mediated learning environments? The authors examine four examples of spaces created for online, distance and on-campus students and discuss the relationship between the choice of technology, the learning and teaching methods, and the outcomes for student engagement. Combining insights from two previous action research projects, the discussion focuses on the physical space used for contemporary drama workshops, supplemented by Web 2.0 technologies; a modular online theatre studies course; the blogging space of students creating a group devised play; and the open and immersive world of Second Life, where students explore 3D simulations of historical theatre sites. The authors argue that the drama workshop can be used as inspiration for the design of successful online classrooms. This is achieved by focusing on students’ contributions to the learning as individuals and group members, the aesthetics and mise-en-scene of the learning space, and the role of mobile and networked technologies. Students in this environment increase their capacity to become co-creators of knowledge and to achieve creative outcomes. The drama workshop space in its physical and virtual forms is seen as a model for classrooms in other disciplines, where dynamic, creative and collaborative spaces are required.

Eat Cook Grow : Mixing Human-Computer Interactions with Human-Food Interactions

Food has been a major agenda in political, socio-cultural, and environmental domains throughout history. The significance of food has been particularly highlighted in recent years with the growing public awareness of the unfolding impacts of climate change, challenging our understanding, practice, and expectations of our relationship with food. Parallel to this development has been the rise of web applications such as blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing sites, and social networking systems that are arguably more open, collaborative, and personalisable. These so-called ‘Web 2.0’ technologies have contributed to a more participatory Internet experience than what had previously been possible. An increasing number of these social applications are now available on mobile technologies where they take advantage of device-specific features such as sensors, location and context awareness, further expanding potential for the culture of participation and creativity. This international volume assembles a diverse collection of book chapters that contribute towards exploring and better understanding the opportunities and challenges provided by tools, interfaces, methods, and practices of social and mobile technology to enable engagement with people and creativity in the domain of food in contemporary society. It brings together an international group of academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines such as computing and engineering, social sciences, digital media and human-computer interaction to critically examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology, such as social networking, mobile interaction, wikis, twitter, blogging, mapping, shared displays and urban screens, and their impact to foster a better understanding and practice of environmentally, socio-culturally, economically, and health-wise sustainable food culture.

What if you're really different? Case studies of children with high functioning autism participating in the Get REAL programme who had atypical learning trajectories.

Evaluation of the Get REAL programme in an inclusive primary school setting has indicated its effectiveness in promoting pro-social behaviour for children with high functioning Autism. However, two children with co-morbid diagnoses and complex personal circumstances showed less consistent improvements. In order to explain their unique trajectories, not readily derived from quantitative studies, an exploratory case study approach was used to examine contextual influences on patterns of progress. Multiple data sources included coded video footage from the Get REAL programme, school reports on conduct, and parents and classroom teacher reports using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. While results provide support for the efficacy of the Get REAL programme for the two children, they also highlight the value of co-ordinated strategies and collaborative individualised approaches in more complex cases. This paper outlines the Get REAL intervention and a range of other school and support agency strategies impacting progress.

Getting the point : the role of gesture in managing intersubjectivity in a design activity

This paper illustrates the complexity of pointing as it is employed in a design workshop. Using the method of interaction analysis, we argue that pointing is not merely employed to index, locate, or fix reference to an object. It also constitutes a practice for reestablishing intersubjectivity and solving interactional trouble such as misunderstandings or disagreements by virtue of enlisting something as part of the participants’ shared experience. We use this analysis to discuss implications for how such practices might be supported with computer mediation, arguing for a “bricolage” approach to systems development that emphasizes the provision of resources for users to collaboratively negotiate the accomplishment of intersubjectivity ra- ther than systems that try to support pointing as a specific gestural action.

Faculty mentoring, evidence-based assessment, and student learning : an Australian exploration of American initiatives

There have been many improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s. However, given the recent drive for assuring the achievement of identified academic standards, more progress needs to be made, particularly in the area of evidence-based assessment. This paper reports on initiatives gathered from the literature and engineering academics in the USA, through an Australian National Teaching Fellowship program. The program aims to establish a process to help academics in designing and implementing evidence-based assessments that meet the needs of not only students and the staff that teach them, but also industry as well as accreditation bodies. The paper also examines the kinds and levels of support necessary for engineering academics, especially early career ones, to help meet the expectations of the current drive for assured quality and standards of both research and teaching. Academics are experiencing competing demands on their time and energy with very high expectations in research performance and increased teaching responsibilities, although many are researchers who have not had much pedagogic training. Based on the literature and investigation of relevant initiatives in the USA, we conducted interviews with several identified experts and change agents who have wrought effective academic cultural change within their institutions and beyond. These reveal that assuring the standards and quality of student learning outcomes through evidence-based assessments cannot be appropriately addressed without also addressing the issue of pedagogic training for academic staff. To be sustainable, such training needs to be complemented by a culture of on-going mentoring support from senior academics, formalised through the university administration, so that mentors are afforded resources, time, and appropriate recognition.

Learning hierarchical prototypes of motion time series for interactive systems

Abstract. For interactive systems, recognition, reproduction, and generalization of observed motion data are crucial for successful interaction. In this paper, we present a novel method for analysis of motion data that we refer to as K-OMM-trees. K-OMM-trees combine Ordered Means Models (OMMs) a model-based machine learning approach for time series with an hierarchical analysis technique for very large data sets, the K-tree algorithm. The proposed K-OMM-trees enable unsupervised prototype extraction of motion time series data with hierarchical data representation. After introducing the algorithmic details, we apply the proposed method to a gesture data set that includes substantial inter-class variations. Results from our studies show that K-OMM-trees are able to substantially increase the recognition performance and to learn an inherent data hierarchy with meaningful gesture abstractions.

Teamworking for security : the collaborative approach

Collaborative methods are promising tools for solving complex security tasks. In this context, the authors present the security overlay framework CIMD (Collaborative Intrusion and Malware Detection), enabling participants to state objectives and interests for joint intrusion detection and find groups for the exchange of security-related data such as monitoring or detection results accordingly; to these groups the authors refer as detection groups. First, the authors present and discuss a tree-oriented taxonomy for the representation of nodes within the collaboration model. Second, they introduce and evaluate an algorithm for the formation of detection groups. After conducting a vulnerability analysis of the system, the authors demonstrate the validity of CIMD by examining two different scenarios inspired sociology where the collaboration is advantageous compared to the non-collaborative approach. They evaluate the benefit of CIMD by simulation in a novel packet-level simulation environment called NeSSi (Network Security Simulator) and give a probabilistic analysis for the scenarios.

Self-determination theory as applied to the design of a software learning system using whole-body controls

Whole-body computer control interfaces present new opportunities to engage children with games for learning. Stomp is a suite of educational games that use such a technology, allowing young children to use their whole body to interact with a digital environment projected on the floor. To maximise the effectiveness of this technology, tenets of self-determination theory (SDT) are applied to the design of Stomp experiences. By meeting user needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness our aim is to increase children's engagement with the Stomp learning platform. Analysis of Stomp's design suggests that these tenets are met. Observations from a case study of Stomp being used by young children show that they were highly engaged and motivated by Stomp. This analysis demonstrates that continued application of SDT to Stomp will further enhance user engagement. It also is suggested that SDT, when applied more widely to other whole-body multi-user interfaces, could instil similar positive effects.

Collaborative 3D BPMN process modeller

A video detailing our new virtual world BPMN process modelling tool developed by Erik Poppe. Enables better situational awareness via use of remotely connected avatars and a shared 3D process diagram.

A conceptual model for reflecting on expected learning vs. demonstrated student performance

Educators are faced with many challenging questions in designing an effective curriculum. What prerequisite knowledge do students have before commencing a new subject? At what level of mastery? What is the spread of capabilities between bare-passing students vs. the top performing group? How does the intended learning specification compare to student performance at the end of a subject? In this paper we present a conceptual model that helps in answering some of these questions. It has the following main capabilities: capturing the learning specification in terms of syllabus topics and outcomes; capturing mastery levels to model progression; capturing the minimal vs. aspirational learning design; capturing confidence and reliability metrics for each of these mappings; and finally, comparing and reflecting on the learning specification against actual student performance. We present a web-based implementation of the model, and validate it by mapping the final exams from four programming subjects against the ACM/IEEE CS2013 topics and outcomes, using Bloom's Taxonomy as the mastery scale. We then import the itemised exam grades from 632 students across the four subjects and compare the demonstrated student performance against the expected learning for each of these. Key contributions of this work are the validated conceptual model for capturing and comparing expected learning vs. demonstrated performance, and a web-based implementation of this model, which is made freely available online as a community resource.

'Going live' : establishing the creative attributes of the live multi-camera television professional

In my capacity as a television professional and teacher specialising in multi-camera live television production for over 40 years, I was drawn to the conclusion that opaque or inadequately formed understandings of how creativity applies to the field of live television, have impeded the development of pedagogies suitable to the teaching of live television in universities. In the pursuit of this hypothesis, the thesis shows that television degrees were born out of film studies degrees, where intellectual creativity was aligned to single camera production, and the 'creative roles' of producers, directors and scriptwriters. At the same time, multi-camera live television production was subsumed under the 'mass communication' banner, leading to an understanding that roles other than producer and director are simply technical, and bereft of creative intent or acumen. The thesis goes on to show that this attitude to other television production personnel, for example, the vision mixer, videotape operator and camera operator, relegates their roles to that of 'button pusher'. This has resulted in university teaching models with inappropriate resources and unsuitable teaching practices. As a result, the industry is struggling to find people with the skills to fill the demands of the multi-camera live television sector. In specific terms the central hypothesis is pursued through the following sequenced approach. Firstly, the thesis sets out to outline the problems, and traces the origins of the misconceptions that hold with the notion that intellectual creativity does not exist in live multi-camera television. Secondly, this more adequately conceptualised rendition, of the origins particular to the misconceptions of live television and creativity, is then anchored to the field of examination by presentation of the foundations of the roles involved in making live television programs, using multicamera production techniques. Thirdly, this more nuanced rendition of the field sets the stage for a thorough analysis of education and training in the industry, and teaching models at Australian universities. The findings clearly establish that the pedagogical models are aimed at single camera production, a position that deemphasises the creative aspects of multi-camera live television production. Informed by an examination of theories of learning, qualitative interviews, professional reflective practice and observations, the roles of four multi-camera live production crewmembers (camera operator, vision mixer, EVS/videotape operator and director's assistant), demonstrate the existence of intellectual creativity during live production. Finally, supported by the theories of learning, and the development and explication of a successful teaching model, a new approach to teaching students how to work in live television is proposed and substantiated.

Checking-in at the library : designing an ambient media system for social learning and collaboration opportunities

The knowledge economy of the 21st century requires skills such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration (Partnership for 21st century skills, 2011) – skills that cannot easily be learnt from books, but rather through learning-by-doing and social interaction. Big ideas and disruptive innovation often result from collaboration between individuals from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. Public libraries, as facilitators of education and knowledge, have been actively seeking responses to such changing needs of the general public...