Sustaining Success Week 5 Task: Peer review guidance

Description of how to conduct a peer review, and guidance on how to submit it as a task. Download and edit this document if you decide to hand in information relating to your peer review exercise.

FY2014-15 Peer Review

READ the guidance notes, then attempt the tasks CONTENTS: Peer review guidance

RTS-3 Task: Peer review guidance

Description of how to conduct a peer review

Peer Tutors in the School of Medicine

Since 2003 the School of Medicine at the Universidad del Rosario in Bogot��, Colombia, offers to the students a program named Peer Tutors. The program���s objectives are: to generate a social interaction mechanism that favors knowledge construction side by side with advanced peers; to promote the development of ethical, moral and coexistence oriented values through an academic experience, and to generate a space to explore specific academic interests and teacher��s potential. This article presents the theoretic frame that supports the importance of social interaction in knowledge construction, as well as some indicators that allow a first appraisal of the program. Several achievements that account for the synergic value of an experience that not only fulfills the function of initiating a process of teaching formation and academic support, but that also builds a proactive attitude before learning, are highlighted.

"Tell me who you hang out with": Classroom peer effects on psychoactive substances consumption

I look for classroom peer effects for psychoactive substance consumption among Colombian high school students and attempt to identify channels that rationalize for these effects. To do so, I use data for Colombian schools from 2011. I identify peer effects using household consumption behavior to instrument average classroom consumption. I find that an increase of 10% in the proportion of classroom users of alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine increases the probability of students to use alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine in 3.14%, 4.29%, and 2.38% respectively. I find no significant effect on cigarette smoking for the full sample but after exploring heterogeneous effects I find suggestive evidence that the effect is positive in some grades. I find some evidence that indicate that peer effects on alcohol, cannabis, and cocaine consumption operate through risk perception and easiness of access to psychoactive substances, meaning that the increase of likelihood of consumption could be explained because it is easier to access to drugs for students that interact with consumers or because a decrease in the risk students perceive of consuming these substances. Finally, through the use of a SUR and a 3SLS estimator I find strong correlations between smoking cigarettes and consuming cannabis (55 %), and cocaine (60 %).

Parental and peer support on physical activity among portuguese children and adolescents

Objetivo: A presente disserta����o de mestrado teve como principal objetivo estudar a associa����o entre o suporte parental e dos pares na atividade f��sica das crian��as e adolescentes dos 10 aos 17 anos de idade. M��todo: Foi efetuada uma revis��o sistem��tica de literatura (RSL) onde se sumarizou o estado da arte sobre a tem��tica. Posteriormente foi realizado um estudo observacional transversal onde se investigou como o suporte dos pais (tang��vel e intang��vel) e dos pares est��o associados com a atividade f��sica entre crian��as e adolescentes, examinando as diferen��as entre g��neros e a sua varia����o com a idade. Participaram no estudo 1876 crian��as e adolescentes, de ambos os sexos, entre os 10 aos 17 anos de idade, participantes do projeto PESSOA. Resultados: Os resultados do estudo transversal corroboram os resultados de alguns estudos da revis��o sistem��tica de literatura uma vez que, apesar das diferen��as metodol��gicas entre os estudos, foram encontradas correla����es significativas entre o suporte parental e o n��vel de atividade f��sica das crian��as e adolescentes. H�� diferen��as entre g��neros no tipo de suporte parental e no suporte dos pares. O estudo transversal demonstrou uma associa����o positiva entre o suporte dos pares e a idade. Esta associa����o destaca-se na transi����o da inf��ncia para a adolesc��ncia. Em ambos os g��neros, o suporte dos pares registou uma maior associa����o �� atividade f��sica do que o suporte dos pais. Conclus��es: A realiza����o deste estudo demonstra que os pais e os pares s��o fatores chave na atividade f��sica das crian��as e adolescentes. Em diferentes fases da inf��ncia e da adolesc��ncia, o papel de cada um deles altera-se de acordo com v��rios fatores do envolvimento f��sico e social. �� necess��rio mais investiga����o nesta ��rea, preferencialmente estudos longitudinais que permitam uma melhor compreens��o de como as diferentes fontes (pais e pares) e os diferentes tipos de suporte (tang��vel e intang��vel) evoluem ao longo da inf��ncia e da adolesc��ncia e qual o seu impacto nos diferentes n��veis de atividade f��sica.

Estimates of Avian Mortality Attributed to Vehicle Collisions in Canada

Although mortality of birds from collisions with vehicles is estimated to be in the millions in the USA, Europe, and the UK, to date, no estimates exist for Canada. To address this, we calculated an estimate of annual avian mortality attributed to vehicular collisions during the breeding and fledging season, in Canadian ecozones, by applying North American literature values for avian mortality to Canadian road networks. Because owls are particularly susceptible to collisions with vehicles, we also estimated the number of roadkilled Barn owls (Tyto alba) in its last remaining range within Canada. (This species is on the IUCN red list and is also listed federally as threatened; Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada 2010, International Union for the Conservation of Nature 2012). Through seven Canadian studies in existence, 80 species and 2,834 specimens have been found dead on roads representing species from 14 orders of birds. On Canadian 1 and 2-lane paved roads outside of major urban centers, the unadjusted number of bird mortalities/yr during an estimated 4-mo (122-d) breeding and fledging season for most birds in Canada was 4,650,137 on roads traversing through deciduous, coniferous, cropland, wetlands and nonagricultural landscapes with less than 10% treed area. On average, this represents 1,167 birds killed/100 km in Canada. Adjusted for scavenging, this estimate was 13,810,906 (3,462 dead birds/100 km). For barn owls, the unadjusted number of birds killed annually on 4-lane roads during the breeding and fledging season, within the species geographic range in southern British Columbia, was estimated as 244 owls and, when adjusted for scavenging and observer bias (3.6 factor), the total was 851 owls.

Effectiveness of landmark analysis for establishing locality in p2p networks

Locality to other nodes on a peer-to-peer overlay network can be established by means of a set of landmarks shared among the participating nodes. Each node independently collects a set of latency measures to landmark nodes, which are used as a multi-dimensional feature vector. Each peer node uses the feature vector to generate a unique scalar index which is correlated to its topological locality. A popular dimensionality reduction technique is the space filling Hilbert���s curve, as it possesses good locality preserving properties. However, there exists little comparison between Hilbert���s curve and other techniques for dimensionality reduction. This work carries out a quantitative analysis of their properties. Linear and non-linear techniques for scaling the landmark vectors to a single dimension are investigated. Hilbert���s curve, Sammon���s mapping and Principal Component Analysis have been used to generate a 1d space with locality preserving properties. This work provides empirical evidence to support the use of Hilbert���s curve in the context of locality preservation when generating peer identifiers by means of landmark vector analysis. A comparative analysis is carried out with an artificial 2d network model and with a realistic network topology model with a typical power-law distribution of node connectivity in the Internet. Nearest neighbour analysis confirms Hilbert���s curve to be very effective in both artificial and realistic network topologies. Nevertheless, the results in the realistic network model show that there is scope for improvements and better techniques to preserve locality information are required.

The effects of maternal depression and parental conflict on children's peer play

Background Little is known about the relative effects of exposure to postnatal depression and parental conflict on the social functioning of school-aged children. This is, in part, because of a lack of specificity in the measurement of child and parental behaviour and a reliance on children's reports of their hypothetical responses to conflict in play. Methods In the course of a prospective longitudinal study of children of postnatally depressed and well women, 5-year-old children were videotaped at home with a friend in a naturalistic dressing-up play setting. As well as examining possible associations between the occurrence of postnatal depression and the quality of the children's interactions, we investigated the influence of parental conflict and co-operation, and the continuity of maternal depression. The quality of the current mother-child relationship was considered as a possible mediating factor. Results Exposure to postnatal depression was associated with increased likelihood, among boys, of displaying physical aggression in play with their friend. However, parental conflict mediated the effects of postnatal depression on active aggression during play, and was also associated with displays of autonomy and intense conflict. While there were no gender effects in terms of the degree or intensity of aggressive behaviours, girls were more likely to express aggression verbally using denigration and gloating whereas boys were more likely to display physical aggression via interpersonal and object struggles. Conclusions The study provided evidence for the specificity of effects, with strong links between parental and child peer conflict. These effects appear to arise from direct exposure to parental conflict, rather than indirectly, through mother-child interactions.

Are you thinking what I���m thinking? Peer group similarities in adolescent hostile attribution tendencies

A bias towards attributing hostile intent to others has been linked to aggression. In an adolescent sample, we investigated whether peer group homophily exists in the tendency towards attributing hostile intent. We assessed hostile attribution tendencies and self-reported aggressive behaviours in a normative sample of 910 adolescents, and computed average peer group scores based on nominated friend scores. Results indicated that adolescents showed significant correlations between their own level of hostile attributions and that of their peer group. Further analyses indicated that this effect occurred specifically in reciprocal friendships, and was retained even once own and peer group level of aggression were controlled.

Citation and peer review of data: moving towards formal data publication

This paper discusses many of the issues associated with formally publishing data in academia, focusing primarily on the structures that need to be put in place for peer review and formal citation of datasets. Data publication is becoming increasingly important to the scientific community, as it will provide a mechanism for those who create data to receive academic credit for their work and will allow the conclusions arising from an analysis to be more readily verifiable, thus promoting transparency in the scientific process. Peer review of data will also provide a mechanism for ensuring the quality of datasets, and we provide suggestions on the types of activities one expects to see in the peer review of data. A simple taxonomy of data publication methodologies is presented and evaluated, and the paper concludes with a discussion of dataset granularity, transience and semantics, along with a recommended human-readable citation syntax.

An experimental investigation of peer influences on hostile attributions in adolescents

Aggression in young people has been associated with a bias towards attributing hostile intent to others; however, little is known about the origin of biased social information processing. The current study explored the potential role of peer contagion in the emergence of hostile attribution in adolescents. 134 adolescents were assigned to one of two manipulated ���chat-room��� conditions, where they believed they were communicating with online peers (e-confederates) who endorsed either hostile or benign intent attributions. Adolescents showed increased hostile attributions following exposure to hostile e-confederates and reduced hostility in the benign condition. Further analyses demonstrated that social anxiety was associated with a reduced tendency to take on hostile peer attitudes. Neither gender nor levels of aggression influenced individual susceptibility to peer influence, but aggressive adolescents reported greater affinity with hostile e-confederates.

Competing edge networks

We introduce a model for a pair of nonlinear evolving networks, de���ned over a common set of vertices, sub ject to edgewise competition. Each network may grow new edges spontaneously or through triad closure. Both networks inhibit the other���s growth and encourage the other���s demise. These nonlinear stochastic competition equations yield to a mean ���eld analysis resulting in a nonlinear deterministic system. There may be multiple equilibria; and bifurcations of di���erent types are shown to occur within a reduced parameter space. This situation models competitive peer-to-peer communication networks such as BlackBerry Messenger displacing SMS; or instant messaging displacing emails.

Fault tolerant decentralised K-Means clustering for asynchronous large-scale networks

The K-Means algorithm for cluster analysis is one of the most influential and popular data mining methods. Its straightforward parallel formulation is well suited for distributed memory systems with reliable interconnection networks, such as massively parallel processors and clusters of workstations. However, in large-scale geographically distributed systems the straightforward parallel algorithm can be rendered useless by a single communication failure or high latency in communication paths. The lack of scalable and fault tolerant global communication and synchronisation methods in large-scale systems has hindered the adoption of the K-Means algorithm for applications in large networked systems such as wireless sensor networks, peer-to-peer systems and mobile ad hoc networks. This work proposes a fully distributed K-Means algorithm (EpidemicK-Means) which does not require global communication and is intrinsically fault tolerant. The proposed distributed K-Means algorithm provides a clustering solution which can approximate the solution of an ideal centralised algorithm over the aggregated data as closely as desired. A comparative performance analysis is carried out against the state of the art sampling methods and shows that the proposed method overcomes the limitations of the sampling-based approaches for skewed clusters distributions. The experimental analysis confirms that the proposed algorithm is very accurate and fault tolerant under unreliable network conditions (message loss and node failures) and is suitable for asynchronous networks of very large and extreme scale.

Design patterns for promoting peer interaction in discussion forums in MOOCs

Design patterns are a way of sharing evidence-based solutions to educational design problems. The design patterns presented in this paper were produced through a series of workshops, which aimed to identify Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) design principles from workshop participants��� experiences of designing, teaching and learning on these courses. MOOCs present a challenge for the existing pedagogy of online learning, particularly as it relates to promoting peer interaction and discussion. MOOC cohort sizes, participation patterns and diversity of learners mean that discussions can remain superficial, become difficult to navigate, or never develop beyond isolated posts. In addition, MOOC platforms may not provide sufficient tools to support moderation. This paper draws on four case studies of designing and teaching on a range of MOOCs presenting seven design narratives relating to the experience in these MOOCs. Evidence presented in the narratives is abstracted in the form of three design patterns created through a collaborative process using techniques similar to those used in collective autoethnography. The patterns: ���Special Interest Discussions���, ���Celebrity Touch��� and ���Look and Engage���, draw together shared lessons and present possible solutions to the problem of creating, managing and facilitating meaningful discussion in MOOCs through the careful use of staged learning activities and facilitation strategies.