A survey of music educator's understanding and use of advanced audio technology in their instructional methods and strategies

This study examines the correlation between how certified music educators understand audio technology and how they incorporate it in their instructional methods. Participants were classroom music teachers selected from fifty middle schools in Miami- Dade Public Schools. The study adopted a non-experimental research design in which a survey was the primary tool of investigation. The findings reveal that a majority of middle school music teachers in Miami-Dade are not familiar with advanced audiorecording software or any other digital device dedicated to the recording and processing of audio signals. Moreover, they report a lack of opportunities to develop this knowledge. Younger music teachers, however, are more open to developing up-to-date instructional methodologies. Most of the participants agreed that music instruction should be a platform for preparing students for a future in the entertainment industry. A basic knowledge of music business should be delivered to students enrolled in middle-school music courses.

Design, modelling, simulation and integration of cyber physical systems: methods and applications

The main drivers for the development and evolution of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are the reduction of development costs and time along with the enhancement of the designed products. The aim of this survey paper is to provide an overview of different types of system and the associated transition process from mechatronics to CPS and cloud-based (IoT) systems. It will further consider the requirement that methodologies for CPS-design should be part of a multi-disciplinary development process within which designers should focus not only on the separate physical and computational components, but also on their integration and interaction. Challenges related to CPS-design are therefore considered in the paper from the perspectives of the physical processes, computation and integration respectively. Illustrative case studies are selected from different system levels starting with the description of the overlaying concept of Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPSs). The analysis and evaluation of the specific properties of a sub-system using a condition monitoring system, important for the maintenance purposes, is then given for a wind turbine.

HERMES - High Efficiency Roads with Rerouteing Methods and Traffic Signal Control.

HERMES is one of the projects in the European ATT Programme. The ATT Programme (or DRIVE II as it is frequently referred to) is an application oriented Community Research and Technological Development Programme that has been conceived and implemented with the objective of contributing to the competitiveness of Europe and to its social and economic cohesion. An important means toward this end is the direct collaboration between different European sector actors: road authorities, fleet operators, road user representatives, industry, and research institutions. DRIVE I has already achieved an important step into this direction. DRIVE II aims at providing a framework that encourages even closer cooperation through large scale international pilot projects that will require common functional and technical specifications for the systems to be implemented at least between the partners directly involved in any project. HERMES is one of the so-called "supporting R&D projects" that provides strategies, algorithms and systems for the pilot applications

Pedagogical Appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by West African Educators = Appropriation pédagogique des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) par les éducateurs ouest-africains

Œuvre dédiée à Alioune Camara; merci au Prof. Denis Dougnon de l’Université de Bamako pour le parrainage

Using Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction to Design Technology for Resilience

Research in human computer interaction (HCI) covers both technological and human behavioural concerns. As a consequence, the contributions made in HCI research tend to be aware to either engineering or the social sciences. In HCI the purpose of practical research contributions is to reveal unknown insights about human behaviour and its relationship to technology. Practical research methods normally used in HCI include formal experiments, field experiments, field studies, interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability tests, case studies, diary studies, ethnography, contextual inquiry, experience sampling, and automated data collection. In this paper, we report on our experience using the evaluation methods focus groups, surveys and interviews and how we adopted these methods to develop artefacts: either interface’s design or information and technological systems. Four projects are examples of the different methods application to gather information about user’s wants, habits, practices, concerns and preferences. The goal was to build an understanding of the attitudes and satisfaction of the people who might interact with a technological artefact or information system. Conversely, we intended to design for information systems and technological applications, to promote resilience in organisations (a set of routines that allow to recover from obstacles) and user’s experiences. Organisations can here also be viewed within a system approach, which means that the system perturbations even failures could be characterized and improved. The term resilience has been applied to everything from the real estate, to the economy, sports, events, business, psychology, and more. In this study, we highlight that resilience is also made up of a number of different skills and abilities (self-awareness, creating meaning from other experiences, self-efficacy, optimism, and building strong relationships) that are a few foundational ingredients, which people should use along with the process of enhancing an organisation’s resilience. Resilience enhances knowledge of resources available to people confronting existing problems.

In search of a social science research methods pedagogy for the digital era: the story so far

Presentation given at the 2016 British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference

Pedagogical Appropriation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by West African Educators = Appropriation pédagogique des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) par les éducateurs ouest-africains

Œuvre dédiée à Alioune Camara; merci au Prof. Denis Dougnon de l’Université de Bamako pour le parrainage

The teaching of reading English in a foreign language in Libyan universities: methods and models

This study focuses on the learning and teaching of Reading in English as a Foreign Language (REFL), in Libya. The study draws on an action research process in which I sought to look critically at students and teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Libya as they learned and taught REFL in four Libyan research sites. The Libyan EFL educational system is influenced by two main factors: the method of teaching the Holy-Quran and the long-time ban on teaching EFL by the former Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. Both of these factors have affected the learning and teaching of REFL and I outline these contextual factors in the first chapter of the thesis. This investigation, and the exploration of the challenges that Libyan university students encounter in their REFL, is supported by attention to reading models. These models helped to provide an analytical framework and starting point for understanding the many processes involved in reading for meaning and in reading to satisfy teacher instructions. The theoretical framework I adopted was based, mainly and initially, on top-down, bottom-up, interactive and compensatory interactive models. I drew on these models with a view to understanding whether and how the processes of reading described in the models could be applied to the reading of EFL students and whether these models could help me to better understand what was going on in REFL. The diagnosis stage of the study provided initial data collected from four Libyan research sites with research tools including video-recorded classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers before and after lesson observation, and think-aloud protocols (TAPs) with 24 students (six from each university) in which I examined their REFL reading behaviours and strategies. This stage indicated that the majority of students shared behaviours such as reading aloud, reading each word in the text, articulating the phonemes and syllables of words, or skipping words if they could not pronounce them. Overall this first stage indicated that alternative methods of teaching REFL were needed in order to encourage ‘reading for meaning’ that might be based on strategies related to eventual interactive reading models adapted for REFL. The second phase of this research project was an Intervention Phase involving two team-teaching sessions in one of the four stage one universities. In each session, I worked with the teacher of one group to introduce an alternative method of REFL. This method was based on teaching different reading strategies to encourage the students to work towards an eventual interactive way of reading for meaning. A focus group discussion and TAPs followed the lessons with six students in order to discuss the 'new' method. Next were two video-recorded classroom observations which were followed by an audio-recorded discussion with the teacher about these methods. Finally, I conducted a Skype interview with the class teacher at the end of the semester to discuss any changes he had made in his teaching or had observed in his students' reading with respect to reading behaviour strategies, and reactions and performance of the students as he continued to use the 'new' method. The results of the intervention stage indicate that the teacher, perhaps not surprisingly, can play an important role in adding to students’ knowledge and confidence and in improving their REFL strategies. For example, after the intervention stage, students began to think about the title, and to use their own background knowledge to comprehend the text. The students employed, also, linguistic strategies such as decoding and, above all, the students abandoned the behaviour of reading for pronunciation in favour of reading for meaning. Despite the apparent efficacy of the alternative method, there are, inevitably, limitations related to the small-scale nature of the study and the time I had available to conduct the research. There are challenges, too, related to the students’ first language, the idiosyncrasies of the English language, the teacher training and continuing professional development of teachers, and the continuing political instability of Libya. The students’ lack of vocabulary and their difficulties with grammatical functions such as phrasal and prepositional verbs, forms which do not exist in Arabic, mean that REFL will always be challenging. Given such constraints, the ‘new’ methods I trialled and propose for adoption can only go so far in addressing students’ difficulties in REFL. Overall, the study indicates that the Libyan educational system is underdeveloped and under resourced with respect to REFL. My data indicates that the teacher participants have received little to no professional developmental that could help them improve their teaching in REFL and skills in teaching EFL. These circumstances, along with the perennial problem of large but varying class sizes; student, teacher and assessment expectations; and limited and often poor quality resources, affect the way EFL students learn to read in English. Against this background, the thesis concludes by offering tentative conclusions; reflections on the study, including a discussion of its limitations, and possible recommendations designed to improve REFL learning and teaching in Libyan universities.

Big Code Applications and Approaches

The availability of a huge amount of source code from code archives and open-source projects opens up the possibility to merge machine learning, programming languages, and software engineering research fields. This area is often referred to as Big Code where programming languages are treated instead of natural languages while different features and patterns of code can be exploited to perform many useful tasks and build supportive tools. Among all the possible applications which can be developed within the area of Big Code, the work presented in this research thesis mainly focuses on two particular tasks: the Programming Language Identification (PLI) and the Software Defect Prediction (SDP) for source codes. Programming language identification is commonly needed in program comprehension and it is usually performed directly by developers. However, when it comes at big scales, such as in widely used archives (GitHub, Software Heritage), automation of this task is desirable. To accomplish this aim, the problem is analyzed from different points of view (text and image-based learning approaches) and different models are created paying particular attention to their scalability. Software defect prediction is a fundamental step in software development for improving quality and assuring the reliability of software products. In the past, defects were searched by manual inspection or using automatic static and dynamic analyzers. Now, the automation of this task can be tackled using learning approaches that can speed up and improve related procedures. Here, two models have been built and analyzed to detect some of the commonest bugs and errors at different code granularity levels (file and method levels). Exploited data and models’ architectures are analyzed and described in detail. Quantitative and qualitative results are reported for both PLI and SDP tasks while differences and similarities concerning other related works are discussed.

Methods and Participant Characteristics of a Randomized Intervention to Promote Physical Activity and Healthy Eating Among Brazilian High School Students: The Saude na Boa Project

Background: A cross-cultural, randomized study was proposed to observe the effects of a school-based intervention designed to promote physical activity and healthy eating among high school students in 2 cities from different regions in Brazil: Recife and Florianopolis. The objective of this article is to describe the methodology and subjects enrolled in the project. Methods: Ten schools from each region were matched and randomized into intervention and control conditions. A questionnaire and anthropometry were used to collect data in the first and last month of the 2006 school year. The sample (n = 2155 at baseline; 55.7% females; 49.1% in the experimental group) included students 15 to 24 years, attending nighttime classes. The intervention focused on simple environmental/organizational changes, diet and physical activity education, and personnel training. Results: The central aspects of the intervention have been implemented in all 10 intervention schools. Problems during the intervention included teachers' strikes in both sites and lack of involvement of the canteen owners in schools. Conclusions: The Saude no Boa study provides evidence that public high schools in Brazil represent an important environment for health promotion. Its design and simple measurements increase the chances of it being sustained and disseminated to similar schools in Brazil.

Research, knowledge and design

The discussion about relations between research and design has a number of strands, and presumably motivations. Putting aside the question whether or not design or “creative endeavour” should be counted as research, for reasons to do with institutional recognition or reward, the question remains how, if at all, is design research? This question is unlikely to have attracted much interest but for matters external to Architecture within the modern university. But Architecture as a discipline now needs to understand research much better than in the past when ‘research’ was whatever went on in building science, history or people/environment studies. In this paper, I begin with some common assumptions about design, considered in relation to research, and suggest how the former can constitute or be a mode of the latter. Central to this consideration is an understanding of research as the production of publicly available knowledge. The method is that of conceptual analysis which is much more fruitful than is usually appreciated. This work is part of a larger project in philosophy of design, in roughly the analytical tradition.