Digital oral feedback written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators : a collaborative self-study.

Allan Luke (2008) uses a “pedagogical economy where literacy education is taken as a cultural gift”. This paper reports on the digital oral feedback provided to pre-service teachers in a literacy unit and explores the pedagogical gift this feedback is to the teacher educators marking this work. Rather than mark their written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read the assignment and recorded the sound file of the conversation around each assignment. We then participated in another conversation with a critical friend, which enabled us to explore the impact of this form of assessment on our professional identities as teacher educators. We found these conversations provided a rich context for our professional learning about ourselves as teacher educators, as well as specific content knowledge we both brought to the teaching of this unit. We found we were working as a team to provide more in-depth feedback of the assessment criteria for each assignment than we did with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback we were able to construct the pre-service teachers' assignments as an important textual gift in our collaborative professional learning about assessment, and in exploring our beliefs and practices as teacher educators.

Analysis of asynchronous online discussion forums for collaborative learning

Online discussion forums are well suited for collaborative learning systems. Much of the currently available research indicates that effectively designed collaborative learning systems motivate and enhance learning experiences of the participants which in turn lead to enhanced learning outcomes. This paper develops taxonomy of the asynchronous online discussion forums with the aims of increasing the understanding and awareness of various types of asynchronous discussion forums. The taxonomy is framed by constructivist pedagogical principles of asynchronous online discussion forum. The key attributes of online discussions and the factors influencing the discussion forum’s design are identified. The taxonomy will help increase the online course designers’ ability to design more effective learning experiences for student success and satisfaction. It will also help researchers to understand the various features of the asynchronous discussion forums. The article concludes with implications for pedagogy and suggestions for the direction of future theoretical and empirical research.

Collaborative care skills training workshops : helping carers cope with eating disorders from the UK to Australia

Purpose

The Collaborative Care Skills Training workshops, developed by Treasure and associates aim to improve the well-being, coping strategies and problem-solving skills of carers of someone with an eating disorder. Evidence has demonstrated the effectiveness of the workshops in the UK where it was developed. The aim of this pilot study was to examine whether conducting the workshops in different contexts by facilitators trained in its delivery could lead to similar impact.
Methods

The workshops were conducted with 15 carers in VIC, Australia and delivered by experienced health professionals trained in its content and delivery. A non-experimental research design with repeated measures was implemented. Quantitative data were collected at pre-and post-intervention and 8 weeks after completion of the workshops.
Results

Participation led to significant reductions in carers’ reported expressed emotion, dysfunctional coping, distress, burden and accommodation and enabling of the eating disorder behaviour, which were maintained at the 8-week follow-up.
Conclusion

Results suggest the workshops are effective in reducing carer distress and burden as well as modifying unhelpful emotional interactional styles when caring for family members with an eating disorder. The content of the workshops and its delivery, once experienced facilitators have received training, are transferable to other contexts.

International collaborative project to compare and track the nutritional composition of fast foods

Background
Chronic diseases are the leading cause of premature death and disability in the world with over-nutrition a primary cause of diet-related ill health. Excess quantities of energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt derived from fast foods contribute importantly to this disease burden. Our objective is to collate and compare nutrient composition data for fast foods as a means of supporting improvements in product formulation.
Methods/design
Surveys of fast foods will be done in each participating country each year. Information on the nutrient composition for each product will be sought either through direct chemical analysis, from fast food companies, in-store materials or from company websites. Foods will be categorized into major groups for the primary analyses which will compare mean levels of saturated fat, sugar, sodium, energy and serving size at baseline and over time. Countries currently involved include Australia, New Zealand, France, UK, USA, India, Spain, China and Canada, with more anticipated to follow.
Discussion
This collaborative approach to the collation and sharing of data will enable low-cost tracking of fast food composition around the world. This project represents a significant step forward in the objective and transparent monitoring of industry and government commitments to improve the quality of fast foods.

The efficient imputation method for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

As each user tends to rate a small proportion of available items, the resulted Data Sparsity issue brings significant challenges to the research of recommender systems. This issue becomes even more severe for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering methods, as there are even lower numbers of ratings available in the neighborhood of the query item. In this paper, we aim to address the Data Sparsity issue in the context of the neighborhood-based collaborative filtering. Given the (user, item) query, a set of key ratings are identified, and an auto-adaptive imputation method is proposed to fill the missing values in the set of key ratings. The proposed method can be used with any similarity metrics, such as the Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Cosine-based similarity, and it is theoretically guaranteed to outperform the neighborhood-based collaborative filtering approaches. Results from experiments prove that the proposed method could significantly improve the accuracy of recommendations for neighborhood-based Collaborative Filtering algorithms. © 2012 ACM.

The politics of coastal policy, planning and governance in Canada and Australia : business as usual, at a distance, or collaborative?

Canada and Australia are countries with substantial coastal zones which provide significant economic, social and environmental benefits and opportunities. The coastal zones of Canada and Australia also share significant threats such as, pollution, loss of biodiversity, and climate change, while also facing different challenges that are unique to their particular contexts. Effective management of such zones therefore represents a considerable challenge because of the: complexity of biophysical processes; multiple threats faced; uncertainties associated with understandings of such processes and threats, and the multiple jurisdictions and stakeholder viewpoints as to how such environments should be managed. Further, coasts and the sustainability of coastal resources and ecosystems have been argued to represent ‘wicked problems’ such that their governability is called into question. Therefore drawing on recent experiences in coastal policy, planning and governance in Newfoundland, Canada, and Victoria, Australia, this paper assesses the adequacy of current approaches to coastal governance in the two jurisdictions. In doing so we draw on recent policy and governance literature to consider whether coastal policy, planning and governance in Newfoundland and Victoria, reflect a collaborative, neoliberal, or business as usual (ad hoc, top down) approach. Based on such an assessment we consider the prospects for more integrated coastal zone management in each jurisdiction, as well as broader implications for governance and the resilience of coastal systems. It is argued that while both jurisdictions would benefit from a more collaborative approach, the mechanisms for bringing about such an approach would vary and will not come easily in light of institutional and historic barriers.

Learning from ordered sets and applications in collaborative ranking

Ranking over sets arise when users choose between groups of items. For example, a group may be of those movies deemed 5 stars to them, or a customized tour package. It turns out, to model this data type properly, we need to investigate the general combinatorics problem of partitioning a set and ordering the subsets. Here we construct a probabilistic log-linear model over a set of ordered subsets. Inference in this combinatorial space is highly challenging: The space size approaches (N!/2)6.93145N+1 as N approaches infinity. We propose a split-and-merge Metropolis-Hastings procedure that can explore the state-space efficiently. For discovering hidden aspects in the data, we enrich the model with latent binary variables so that the posteriors can be efficiently evaluated. Finally, we evaluate the proposed model on large-scale collaborative filtering tasks and demonstrate that it is competitive against state-of-the-art methods.

Digital oral feedback on written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators: a collaborative self-study

This article reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. Rather than marking written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read each assignment and recorded a sound file of our conversation. We constructed our collaborative marking of each assignment as a “cultural gift” to our own professional learning. We found that we were providing more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than we would have with written feedback prepared individually. We also uncovered tensions in relation to our preferred modalities associated with the digital marking.

The TrueBlue model of collaborative care using practice nurses as case managers for depression alongside diabetes or heart disease: a randomised trial

Objectives:
To determine the effectiveness of collaborative care in reducing depression in primary care patients with diabetes or heart disease using practice nurses as case managers.

AdaM : adaptive-maximum imputation for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

In the context of collaborative filtering, the well known data sparsity issue makes two like-minded users have little similarity, and consequently renders the k nearest neighbour rule inapplicable. In this paper, we address the data sparsity problem in the neighbourhood-based CF methods by proposing an Adaptive-Maximum imputation method (AdaM). The basic idea is to identify an imputation area that can maximize the imputation benefit for recommendation purposes, while minimizing the imputation error brought in. To achieve the maximum imputation benefit, the imputation area is determined from both the user and the item perspectives; to minimize the imputation error, there is at least one real rating preserved for each item in the identified imputation area. A theoretical analysis is provided to prove that the proposed imputation method outperforms the conventional neighbourhood-based CF methods through more accurate neighbour identification. Experiment results on benchmark datasets show that the proposed method significantly outperforms the other related state-of-the-art imputation-based methods in terms of accuracy.

Differential privacy for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

As a popular technique in recommender systems, Collaborative Filtering (CF) has received extensive attention in recent years. However, its privacy-related issues, especially for neighborhood-based CF methods, can not be overlooked. The aim of this study is to address the privacy issues in the context of neighborhood-based CF methods by proposing a Private Neighbor Collaborative Filtering (PNCF) algorithm. The algorithm includes two privacy-preserving operations: Private Neighbor Selection and Recommendation-Aware Sensitivity. Private Neighbor Selection is constructed on the basis of the notion of differential privacy to privately choose neighbors. Recommendation-Aware Sensitivity is introduced to enhance the performance of recommendations. Theoretical and experimental analysis are provided to show the proposed algorithm can preserve differential privacy while retaining the accuracy of recommendations.

Transiting with the environment: an exploration of traveller’s reorientations as creative and collaborative practice

Travellers undertake a process of reorientation and realignment that is particular to each destination. This process intensifies when travelling long distances across borders, cultures and climates, as travellers utilise performative, embodied and creative methods that respond to each new environment. Certain destinations, such as those with unique and extreme natural environments, induce a socio-cultural imaginary that primes travellers for what kind of experience they might have. Large, immersive landscapes and climates congeal with expectations of what each destination requires in order to navigate through it. Common bearings of distance and scale are skewed, as travellers are positioned within areas of vastness. In these moments immersive experiences contrast with daily processes, such as the act of packing a bag, as this heightened sensory awareness exacerbates the subtle material and spatial negotiations. Utilising interviews and photographic documentation of travellers to Iceland and Nepal, this paper develops the proposal that certain destinations intensify our attunement to these moments of reorientation, facilitating situated and creative methods.

As recent developments in the fields of mobilities and tourism draws attention to material interactions during travel, and current ‘new materialism’ movements in theory and practice reveal alternative affective methods of engagement, an exploration of interactions with/in immersive sites is needed in order to evaluate the potential that these kinds of transitions offer everyday experiences of movement. Nigel Thrift’s proposition of Non-Representational Theory provides clarity on the ways in which spatial awareness influences such transitions and environmental experiences. Using his acknowledgement of a more ontologically driven responsiveness to space, this permits a shift away from the presupposed containment of spaces as isolated destinations, toward a relational spatiality that encompasses all actors – including environments – as vital elements in the generative processes of situating our movements.

Creative strategies that afford sensory, aesthetic and embodied performances provide ways to examine these experiences, providing a multitude of possibilities as individual experiences shift towards collective and collaborative performances, as we are immersed within a range of human and non-human actors. This paper explores the transition away from ‘consuming’ environments, and advocates for the need to turn towards a situated collaboration with environments, propelling an awareness of sustainable and creative travel practices. An understanding of affirmative differences is required within travel cultures, rather than expressing transitions as confined within the ‘home’ versus ‘away’ dichotomy that lingers from elite western travel narratives. In order to undertake the many movements required, this paper draws on the theoretical approaches of sustainable nomadism as described by Rosi Braidotti to highlight the linkages of environmental and bodily experiences.

Through multidisciplinary literature, interviews and personal reflections, this paper proposes that certain destinations amplify processes of alignment with the environment, developing affective, embodied and situated experiences that overcome the human/non-human divide.