Placing defects at the heart of high quality new homes: a learning perspective

The UK new-build housing sector is facing dual pressures to expand supply, whilst delivering against tougher planning and Building Regulation requirements; predominantly in the areas of sustainability. The sector is currently responding by significantly scaling up production and incorporating new technical solutions into new homes. This trajectory of up-scaling and technical innovation has been of research interest; but this research has primarily focus on the ‘upstream’ implications for house builders’ business models and standardised design templates. There has been little attention, though, to the potential ‘downstream’ implications of the ramping up of supply and the introduction of new technologies for build quality and defects. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ‘downstream’ implications through a synthesis of the current UK defect literature with respect to new-build housing. It is found that the prevailing emphasis in the literature is limited to the responsibility, pathology and statistical analysis of defects (and failures). The literature does not extend to how house builders individually and collectively, in practice, collect and learn from defects information. The paper concludes by describing an ongoing collaborative research programme with the National House Building Council (NHBC) to: (a) understand house builders’ localised defects analysis procedures, and their current knowledge feedback loops to inform risk management strategies; and, (b) building on this understanding, design and test action research interventions to develop new data capture, learning processes and systems to reduce targeted defects.

Contemporary Approaches to Translation in the Classroom : A study of students' Attitudes and Strategies

The purpose of this study is to explore the strategies and attitudes of students towards translation in the context of language learning. The informants come from two different classes at an Upper Secondary vocational program. The study was born from the backdrop of discussions among some English teachers representing different theories on translation and language learning, meeting students endeavoring in language learning beyond the confinement of the classroom and personal experiences of translation in language learning. The curriculum and course plan for English at the vocational program emphasize two things of particular interest to our study; integration of the program outcomes and vocational language into the English course - so called meshed learning – and student awareness of their own learning processes. A background is presented of different contrasting methods in translation and language learning that is relevant to our discussion. However, focus is given to contemporary research on reforms within the Comparative Theory, as expressed in Translation in Language and Teaching (TILT), Contrastive Analysis and “The Third Space”. The results of the students’ reflections are presented as attempts to translate two different texts; one lyric and one technical vocational text. The results show a pragmatic attitude among the students toward tools like dictionaries or Google Translate, but also a critical awareness about their use and limits. They appear to prefer the use of first language to the target language when discussing the correct translation as they sought accuracy over meaning. Translation for them was a natural and problem-solving event worth a rightful place in language teaching.

Languaging in virtual learning sites : studies of online encounters in the language-focused classroom

This thesis focuses upon a series of empirical studies which examine communication and learning in online glocal communities within higher education in Sweden. A recurring theme in the theoretical framework deals with issues of languaging in virtual multimodal environments as well as the making of identity and negotiation of meaning in these settings; analyzing the activity, what people do, in contraposition to the study of how people talk about their activity. The studies arise from netnographic work during two online Italian for Beginners courses offered by a Swedish university. Microanalyses of the interactions occurring through multimodal video-conferencing software are amplified by the study of the courses’ organisation of space and time and have allowed for the identification of communicative strategies and interactional patterns in virtual learning sites when participants communicate in a language variety with which they have a limited experience. The findings from the four studies included in the thesis indicate that students who are part of institutional virtual higher educational settings make use of several resources in order to perform their identity positions inside the group as a way to enrich and nurture the process of communication and learning in this online glocal community. The sociocultural dialogical analyses also shed light on the ways in which participants gathering in discursive technological spaces benefit from the opportunity to go to class without commuting to the physical building of the institution providing the course. This identity position is, thus, both experienced by participants in interaction, and also afforded by the ‘spaceless’ nature of the online environment.

Machine learning and small robot navigation

Developing successful navigation and mapping strategies is an essential part of autonomous robot research. However, hardware limitations often make for inaccurate systems. This project serves to investigate efficient alternatives to mapping an environment, by first creating a mobile robot, and then applying machine learning to the robot and controlling systems to increase the robustness of the robot system. My mapping system consists of a semi-autonomous robot drone in communication with a stationary Linux computer system. There are learning systems running on both the robot and the more powerful Linux system. The first stage of this project was devoted to designing and building an inexpensive robot. Utilizing my prior experience from independent studies in robotics, I designed a small mobile robot that was well suited for simple navigation and mapping research. When the major components of the robot base were designed, I began to implement my design. This involved physically constructing the base of the robot, as well as researching and acquiring components such as sensors. Implementing the more complex sensors became a time-consuming task, involving much research and assistance from a variety of sources. A concurrent stage of the project involved researching and experimenting with different types of machine learning systems. I finally settled on using neural networks as the machine learning system to incorporate into my project. Neural nets can be thought of as a structure of interconnected nodes, through which information filters. The type of neural net that I chose to use is a type that requires a known set of data that serves to train the net to produce the desired output. Neural nets are particularly well suited for use with robotic systems as they can handle cases that lie at the extreme edges of the training set, such as may be produced by "noisy" sensor data. Through experimenting with available neural net code, I became familiar with the code and its function, and modified it to be more generic and reusable for multiple applications of neural nets.

A comment on "Rational learning lead to nash equilibrium" by professors Ehud Kalai and Ehud Lehrer

Kalai and Lebrer (93a, b) have recently show that for the case of infinitely repeated games, a coordination assumption on beliefs and optimal strategies ensures convergence to Nash equilibrium. In this paper, we show that for the case of repeated games with long (but finite) horizon, their condition does not imply approximate Nash equilibrium play. Recently Kalai and Lehrer (93a, b) proved that a coordination assumption on beliefs and optimal strategies, ensures that pIayers of an infinitely repeated game eventually pIay 'E-close" to an E-Nash equilibrium. Their coordination assumption requires that if players believes that certain set of outcomes have positive probability then it must be the case that this set of outcomes have, in fact, positive probability. This coordination assumption is called absolute continuity. For the case of finitely repeated games, the absolute continuity assumption is a quite innocuous assumption that just ensures that pIayers' can revise their priors by Bayes' Law. However, for the case of infinitely repeated games, the absolute continuity assumption is a stronger requirement because it also refers to events that can never be observed in finite time.

A integração do tutorial interativo TryLogic via IMS Learning Tools Interoperability: construindo uma infraestrutura para o ensino de Lógica através de estratégias de demonstração e refutação

Logic courses represent a pedagogical challenge and the recorded number of cases of failures and of discontinuity in them is often high. Amont other difficulties, students face a cognitive overload to understand logical concepts in a relevant way. On that track, computational tools for learning are resources that help both in alleviating the cognitive overload scenarios and in allowing for the practical experimenting with theoretical concepts. The present study proposes an interactive tutorial, namely the TryLogic, aimed at teaching to solve logical conjectures either by proofs or refutations. The tool was developed from the architecture of the tool TryOcaml, through support of the communication of the web interface ProofWeb in accessing the proof assistant Coq. The goals of TryLogic are: (1) presenting a set of lessons for applying heuristic strategies in solving problems set in Propositional Logic; (2) stepwise organizing the exposition of concepts related to Natural Deduction and to Propositional Semantics in sequential steps; (3) providing interactive tasks to the students. The present study also aims at: presenting our implementation of a formal system for refutation; describing the integration of our infrastructure with the Virtual Learning Environment Moodle through the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability specification; presenting the Conjecture Generator that works for the tasks involving proving and refuting; and, finally to evaluate the learning experience of Logic students through the application of the conjecture solving task associated to the use of the TryLogic

Achieving educational quality: what schools teach us: learning from Chile's P900 primary schools

Includes bibliography

Inclusão digital: estratégia de co-participação de idosos no lazer virtual = Digital inclusion: strategies for elderly co-participation in virtual leisure

Pós-graduação em Ciências da Motricidade - IBRC

Deep learning architecture for gesture recognition

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Mecânica - FEG

Collaborative language learning in Teletandem: a resource for pre-service teacher education

This article presents some of the results of a qualitative research project about the influences of the pedagogic strategies used by a mediator (graduate student in applied linguistics) in the supervision process of a Teletandem partner (undergraduate student in languages) on her pedagogical practice. It was done within the project Teletandem Brazil: foreign language for all. Based on the reflective teaching paradigm and collaborative language learning, with special emphasis on tandem learning, we analyzed the contributions of the collaborative relationship established between the graduate student and the student-teacher in her first teaching experience. The results bring about implications for the field of language teacher education in a perspective of education within practice, evidencing the experience of collaborative learning in teletandem as an opportunity for reflective teacher education of pre-service teachers.

A Comparison of Adaptive Strategies and Patterns of Victimization among Homeless Adolescents and Adults

One hundred and fifty-six homeless adolescents and 319 homeless adults interviewed directly on the streets and in shelters were compared for backgrounds of abuse, adaptations to life on the streets, and rates of criminal victimization when on the streets. Homeless adolescents were more likely to be from abusive family backgrounds, more likely to rely on deviant survival strategies, and more likely to be criminally victimized. A social learning model of adaptation and victimization on the streets was hypothesized. Although the model was supported for both homeless adults and adolescents, it was more strongly supported for adolescents than adults, and for males than females regardless of age.

DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND LEARNING OBJECTS REPOSITORIES

Discusses the technological changes that affects learning organizations as well as the human, technical, legal and sustainable aspects regarding learning objects repositories creation, maintenance and use. It presents concepts of information objects and learning objects, the functional requirements needed to their storage at Learning Management Systems. The role of Metadata is reviewed concerning learning objects creation and retrieval, followed by considerations about learning object repositories models, community participation/collaborative strategies and potential derived metrics/indicators. As a result of this desktop research, it can be said that not only technical competencies are critical to any learning objects repository implementation, but it urges that an engaged community of interest be establish as a key to support a learning object repository project. On that matter, researchers are applying Activity Theory (Vygostky, Luria y Leontiev) in order to seek joint perceptions and actions involving learning objects repository users, curators and managers, perceived as critical assets to a successful proposal.

Applying validated quality indicators to surgical antibiotic prophylaxis in a Brazilian hospital: Learning what should be learned

Background: Compliance with the best surgical antibiotic prophylaxis practice is usually low despite many published guidelines. Objective: This study investigated compliance with the Hospital Infection Control Committee guideline for antibiotic prophylaxis in a Brazilian hospital using quality indicators. Methods: A retrospective study was carried out from November 2009 to March 2010. Medical records from adult inpatients undergoing cardiac, neurologic, and orthopedic clean surgeries were included. The full compliance index was considered 100% when the antibiotic prophylaxis showed adequacy in all evaluated attributes. Analyses were conducted with 5% significance. Results: Medical records from 101 cardiac, 128 neurologic, and 519 orthopedic surgical patients were evaluated. The compliance index was 4.9%, and the compliance index according to specialty was 5.8%, 3.1%, and 3.0%, respectively, for orthopedic, neurologic, and cardiac surgeries. The attribute route of administration produced the best outcomes, whereas the attribute duration of antibiotic prophylaxis produced the worst. No association was identified between compliance to the attributes and patient characteristics. Conclusion: This study showed a low level of adherence to Hospital Infection Control Committee guidelines for antibiotic prophylaxis. This suggests that different strategies should be implemented to promote the best possible practice in the field of antibiotic prophylaxis with greater surgeon engagement. Copyright (C) 2012 by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Engineering in Transition. Approaches, strategies and technologies for implementing system innovation towards sustainability

With the aim to provide people with sustainable options, engineers are ethically required to hold the safety, health and welfare of the public paramount and to satisfy society's need for sustainable development. The global crisis and related sustainability challenges are calling for a fundamental change in culture, structures and practices. Sustainability Transitions (ST) have been recognized as promising frameworks for radical system innovation towards sustainability. In order to enhance the effectiveness of transformative processes, both the adoption of a transdisciplinary approach and the experimentation of practices are crucial. The evolution of approaches towards ST provides a series of inspiring cases which allow to identify advances in making sustainability transitions happen. In this framework, the thesis has emphasized the role of Transition Engineering (TE). TE adopts a transdisciplinary approach for engineering to face the sustainability challenges and address the risks of un-sustainability. With this purpose, a definition of Transition Technologies is provided as a valid instruments to contribute to ST. In the empirical section, several transition initiatives have been analysed especially at the urban level. As a consequence, the model of living-lab of sustainability has crucially emerged. Living-labs are environments in which innovative technologies and services are co-created with users active participation. In this framework, university can play a key role as learning organization. The core of the thesis has concerned the experimental application of transition approach within the School of Engineering and Architecture of University of Bologna at Terracini Campus. The final vision is to realize a living-lab of sustainability. Particularly, a Transition Team has been established and several transition experiments have been conducted. The final result is not only the improvement of sustainability and resilience of the Terracini Campus, but the demonstration that university can generate solutions and strategies that tackle the complex, dynamic factors fuelling the global crisis.