Insights from ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory can underpin a philosophy of coaching

The aim of this paper is to show how principles of ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory can underpin a philosophy of coaching practice in a nonlinear pedagogy. Nonlinear pedagogy is based on a view of the human movement system as a nonlinear dynamical system. We demonstrate how this perspective of the human movement system can aid understanding of skill acquisition processes and underpin practice for sports coaches. We provide a description of nonlinear pedagogy followed by a consideration of some of the fundamental principles of ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory that underpin it as a coaching philosophy. We illustrate how each principle impacts on nonlinear pedagogical coaching practice, demonstrating how each principle can substantiate a framework for the coaching process.

Intelligent urban management systems : online decision support systems for ubiquitous cities

A successful urban management support system requires an integrated approach. This integration includes bringing together economic, socio-cultural and urban development with a well orchestrated, transparent and open decision making mechanism. The chapter emphasizes the importance of integrated urban management to better tackle the climate change, and to achieve sustainable urban development and sound urban growth management. This chapter introduces recent approaches on urban management systems, such as intelligent urban management systems, that are suitable for ubiquitous cities. The chapter discusses the essential role of online collaborative decision making in urban and infrastructure planning, development and management, and advocates transparent, fully democratic and participatory mechanisms for an effective urban management system that is particularly suitable for ubiquitous cities. This chapter also sheds light on some of the unclear processes of urban management of ubiquitous cities and online collaborative decision making, and reveals the key benefits of integrated and participatory mechanisms in successfully constructing sustainable ubiquitous cities.

Asynchronicity and the ‘time envelope’ of online annotation : the case of the photosharing website, Flickr

This paper examines a sequence of asynchronous interaction on the photosharing website, Flickr. In responding to a call for a focus on the performative aspects of online annotation (Wolff & Neuwirth, 2001), we outline and apply an interaction order approach to identify temporal and cultural aspects of the setting that provide for commonality and sharing. In particular, we study the interaction as a feature of a synthetic situation (Knorr Cetina, 2009) focusing on the requirements of maintaining a sense of an ongoing discussion online. Our analysis suggests that the rhetorical system of the Flickr environment, its appropriation by participants as a context for bounded activities, and displays of commonality, affiliation, and shared access provide for a common sense of participation in a time envelope. This, in turn, is argued to be central to new processes of consociation (Schutz, 1967; Zhao, 2004) occurring in the life world of Web 2.0 environments.

The understanding of avatar design : various types and styles of avatars and the design considerations

People have adopted various formats of media such as graphics, photo and text (nickname) in order to represent themselves when communicate with others online. Avatar is known as a visual form representing a user oneself and one's identity wished. Its form can vary from a two-dimensional model to a three-dimensional model, and can be visualised with various visual forms and styles. In general, two-dimensional images including an animated image are used in online forum communities and live chat software; while three-dimensional models are often used in computer games. Avatar design is often regarded as a graphic designer's visual image creation or a user's output based on one's personal preference, yet it often causes the avatar design having no consideration of its practical visual design and users' interactive communication experience aspects. This paper will review various types and styles of avatar and discuss about avatar design from visual design and online user experience perspectives. It aims to raise a design discourse in avatar design and build up a well-articulated set of design principles for effective avatar design.

Online nail art application : proceeding of the project development

Online Nail Artist (ONA) project aims to create a web-based application for nail salon customers. The application will help customers to customize their hands virtually and find suitable nail colors. The main research question is to reconfigure user experience in relation to product service in terms of customization of user needs. As results, the key function of the application will be to customize a virtual hand image by selecting a matched skin tone, a nail length, and a nail shape in accordance with their hands. The objectives of the project proceeding are to 1) identify customers’ experience in relation to the product features through preliminary research on existing products; 2) create a conceptual framework of the project development in order to reflect the user experience identified; and 3) present a mock up which include key features of the ONA for the future development.

Ourplace : the convergence of locative media and online participatory culture

The trans-locative potential of the Internet has driven the design of many online applications. Online communities largely cluster around topics of interest, which take precedence over participants’ geographical locations. The site of production is often disregarded when creative content appears online. However, for some, a sense of place is a defining aspect of creativity. Yet environments that focus on the display and sharing of regionally situated content have, so far, been largely overlooked. Recent developments in geo-technologies have precipitated the emergence of a new field of interactive media. Entitled locative media, it emphasizes the geographical context of media. This paper argues that we might combine practices of locative media (experiential mapping and geo-spatial annotation) with aspects of online participatory culture (uploading, file-sharing and search categorization) to produce online applications that support geographically ‘located’ communities. It discusses the design considerations and possibilities of this convergence,making reference to an example, OurPlace 3G to 3D, which has to date been developed as a prototype.1 It goes on to discuss the benefits and potential uses of such convergent applications, including the co-production of spatial- emporal narratives of place.

Action learning of online marketing via a global contest

Introduction: The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global competition in which student teams run advertising campaigns for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) using AdWords, Google’s text-based advertisements. In 2008, its inaugural year, over 8,000 students and 300 instructors from 47 countries representing over 200 schools participated. The Challenge ran in undergraduate and graduate classes in disciplines such as marketing, tourism, advertising, communication and information systems. Combining advertising and education, the Challenge gives student hands-on experience in the increasingly important field of online marketing, engages them with local businesses and motivates them through the thrill of a global competition. Student teams receive US$200 in AdWords credits, Google’s premier advertising product that offers cost-per-click advertisements. The teams then recruit and work with a local business to devise an effective online marketing campaign. Students first outline a strategy, run a series of campaigns, and provide their business with recommendations to improve their online marketing. Teams submit two written reports for judging by 14 academics in eight countries. In addition, Google AdWords experts judge teams on their campaign statistics such as success metrics and account management. Rather than a marketing simulation against a computer or hypothetical marketing plans for hypothetical businesses, the Challenges has student teams develop and manage real online advertising campaigns for their clients and compete against peers globally.

Enabling authentic collaborative education in an online environment : the QUT Virtual Law Placement

This paper explores an innovative model for work-integrated learning using a virtual paradigm – The Virtual Law Placement Unit at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia. It builds upon the conceptual model previously explored at WACE 2007 and provides an account of the lessons learned from the pilot offering of the unit which was conducted and evaluated in 2008. ----- The Virtual Placement Unit offers students the opportunity to complete an authentic workplace task under the guidance of a real-life workplace supervisor, where student-student communication and student-supervisor communication is all conducted virtually (and potentially asynchronously) to create an engaging but flexible learning environment using a combination of Blackboard and SharePoint technologies. This virtual experience is pioneering in the sense that it enables law students to access an unprecedented range of law graduate destination workplaces and projects, including international and social justice placements, absent the constraints traditionally associated with arranging physical placements. ----- All aspects of this unit have been designed in conjunction with community partners with a view to balancing student learning objectives with community needs through co-operative education. This paper will also explore how the implementation of the project is serving to strengthen those partnerships with the wider community, simultaneously addressing the community engagement agenda of the University and enabling students to engage meaningfully with local, national and international community partners in the real world of work.

Multi-factor password-authenticated key exchange

We consider a new form of authenticated key exchange which we call multi-factor password-authenticated key exchange, where session establishment depends on successful authentication of multiple short secrets that are complementary in nature, such as a long-term password and a one-time response, allowing the client and server to be mutually assured of each other's identity without directly disclosing private information to the other party. Multi-factor authentication can provide an enhanced level of assurance in higher-security scenarios such as online banking, virtual private network access, and physical access because a multi-factor protocol is designed to remain secure even if all but one of the factors has been compromised. We introduce a security model for multi-factor password-authenticated key exchange protocols, propose an efficient and secure protocol called MFPAK, and provide a security argument to show that our protocol is secure in this model. Our security model is an extension of the Bellare-Pointcheval-Rogaway security model for password-authenticated key exchange and accommodates an arbitrary number of symmetric and asymmetric authentication factors.

Generating Flash files of Your Lectures: Good Practice Strategies Helping Students Engage with Their Learning

Our students come from diverse backgrounds. They need flexibility in their learning. First year students tend to worry when they miss lectures or part of lectures. Having the lecture as an on line resource allows students to miss a lecture without stressing about it and to be more relaxed in the lecture, knowing that anything they may miss will be available later. The resource: The Windows based program from Blueberry Software (not Blackberry!) - BB Flashback - allows the simultaneous recording of the computer screen together with the audio, as well as Webcam recording. Editing capabilities include adding pause buttons, graphics and text to the file before exporting it in a flash file. Any diagrams drawn on the board or shown via visualiser can be photographed and easily incorporated. The audio from the file can be extracted if required to be posted as podcast. Exporting modes other than Flash are also available, allowing vodcasting if you wish. What you will need: - the recording software: it can be installed on the lecture hall computer just prior to lecture if needed - a computer: either the ones in lecture halls, especially if fitted with audio recording, or a laptop (I have used audio recording via Bluetooth for mobility). Feedback from students has been positive and will be presented on the poster.

'Try hard' : Attitudes to advertising in online social networks

Advertising has recently entered many new spaces it does not fully understand. The rules that apply in traditional media do not always translate in new media environments. However, their low cost of entry and the availability of hard-to-reach target markets, such as Generation Y, make environments such as online social networking sites attractive to marketers. This paper accumulates teenage perspectives from two qualitative studies to identify attitudes towards advertising in online social network sites and develop implications for marketers seeking to advertising on social network sites.

Structuring free-form tagging in online news

Tagging has become one of the key activities in next generation websites which allow users selecting short labels to annotate, manage, and share multimedia information such as photos, videos and bookmarks. Tagging does not require users any prior training before participating in the annotation activities as they can freely choose any terms which best represent the semantic of contents without worrying about any formal structure or ontology. However, the practice of free-form tagging can lead to several problems, such as synonymy, polysemy and ambiguity, which potentially increase the complexity of managing the tags and retrieving information. To solve these problems, this research aims to construct a lightweight indexing scheme to structure tags by identifying and disambiguating the meaning of terms and construct a knowledge base or dictionary. News has been chosen as the primary domain of application to demonstrate the benefits of using structured tags for managing the rapidly changing and dynamic nature of news information. One of the main outcomes of this work is an automatically constructed vocabulary that defines the meaning of each named entity tag, which can be extracted from a news article (including person, location and organisation), based on experts suggestions from major search engines and the knowledge from public database such as Wikipedia. To demonstrate the potential applications of the vocabulary, we have used it to provide more functionalities in an online news website, including topic-based news reading, intuitive tagging, clipping and sharing of interesting news, as well as news filtering or searching based on named entity tags. The evaluation results on the impact of disambiguating tags have shown that the vocabulary can help to significantly improve news searching performance. The preliminary results from our user study have demonstrated that users can benefit from the additional functionalities on the news websites as they are able to retrieve more relevant news, clip and share news with friends and families effectively.