Class participation as a learning and assessment strategy in law : facilitating students’ engagement, skills development and deep learning

Assessment has widely been described as being ‘at the centre of the student experience’. It would be difficult to conceive of the modern teaching university without it. Assessment is accepted as one of the most important tools that an educator can deploy to influence both what and how students learn. Evidence suggests that how students allocate time and effort to tasks and to developing an understanding of the syllabus is affected by the method of assessment utilised and the weighting it is given. This is particularly significant in law schools where law students may be more preoccupied with achieving high grades in all courses than their counterparts from other disciplines. However, well-designed assessment can be seen as more than this. It can be a vehicle for encouraging students to learn and engage more broadly than with the minimums required to complete the assessment activity. In that sense assessment need not merely ‘drive’ learning, but can instead act as a catalyst for further learning beyond what a student had anticipated. In this article we reconsider the potential roles and benefits in legal education of a form of interactive classroom learning we term assessable class participation (‘ACP’), both as part of a pedagogy grounded in assessment and learning theory, and as a platform for developing broader autonomous approaches to learning amongst students. We also consider some of the barriers students can face in ACP and the ways in which teacher approaches to ACP can positively affect the socio-emotional climates in classrooms and thus reduce those barriers. We argue that the way in which a teacher facilitates ACP is critical to the ability to develop positive emotional and learning outcomes for law students, and for teachers themselves.

Scale adaptive tracking using mean shift and efficient feature matching

The mean shift tracker has achieved great success in visual object tracking due to its efficiency being nonparametric. However, it is still difficult for the tracker to handle scale changes of the object. In this paper, we associate a scale adaptive approach with the mean shift tracker. Firstly, the target in the current frame is located by the mean shift tracker. Then, a feature point matching procedure is employed to get the matched pairs of the feature point between target regions in the current frame and the previous frame. We employ FAST-9 corner detector and HOG descriptor for the feature matching. Finally, with the acquired matched pairs of the feature point, the affine transformation between target regions in the two frames is solved to obtain the current scale of the target. Experimental results show that the proposed tracker gives satisfying results when the scale of the target changes, with a good performance of efficiency.

Adaptive online gradient descent

We study the rates of growth of the regret in online convex optimization. First, we show that a simple extension of the algorithm of Hazan et al eliminates the need for a priori knowledge of the lower bound on the second derivatives of the observed functions. We then provide an algorithm, Adaptive Online Gradient Descent, which interpolates between the results of Zinkevich for linear functions and of Hazan et al for strongly convex functions, achieving intermediate rates between [square root T] and [log T]. Furthermore, we show strong optimality of the algorithm. Finally, we provide an extension of our results to general norms.

Industry-government collaboration : Queensland's IT&T Strategy and the Information Industries Board

This paper presents a field study of the Queensland Information Technology and Telecommunications Industry Strategy (QITIS), and of the Information Industries Board (IIB), a joint industry-state government body established in 1992 to oversee the implementation of that strategy for the development of the IT&T Industry in Queensland. The aim of the study was to analyse differing stakeholder perspectives on the strategy and on its implementation by the IIB. The study forms part of a longer-term review which aims to develop methodologies for the selection of appropriate strategies for the IT&T Industry, and for the evaluation of outcomes of strategy.

Is climate change litigation an effective strategy for promoting greater action to address climate change? What other legal mechanisms might be appropriate?

In recent times a widespread consensus on the reality and gravity of anthropogenic climate change has emerged. Perceived inadequacies in the Australian government’s legal and policy responses to climate change issues have resulted in environmental activists increasingly turning to the courts as a strategy to promote greater action to address adverse climate impacts. The efficacy of this strategy for achieving climate goals is limited by the time and expense of litigating, the restrictions inherent in environmental law administrative challenges, and the possibility that judicial decisions may be overruled by the legislature. To date, climate change litigation in Australia has met with varied success, yet its significance extends beyond the court room as an important mechanism for raising public, political and commercial awareness about climate change issues. Ultimately, however, the types of far-reaching changes needed to mitigate and manage adverse climate impacts require strong regulatory backing. The most effective approach to addressing the complex challenges posed by climate change is a coordinated suite of regulatory measures spearheaded by the Federal Government.

Hydrotherapy as a recovery strategy after exercise: A pragmatic controlled trial

Background Our aim was to evaluate the recovery effects of hydrotherapy after aerobic exercise in cardiovascular, performance and perceived fatigue. Methods A pragmatic controlled repeated measures; single-blind trial was conducted. Thirty-four recreational sportspeople visited a Sport-Centre and were assigned to a Hydrotherapy group (experimental) or rest in a bed (control) after completing a spinning session. Main outcomes measures including blood pressure, heart rate, handgrip strength, vertical jump, self-perceived fatigue, and body temperature were assessed at baseline, immediately post-exercise and post-recovery. The hypothesis of interest was the session*time interaction. Results The analysis revealed significant session*time interactions for diastolic blood pressure (P=0.031), heart rate (P=0.041), self perceived fatigue (P=0.046), and body temperature (P=0.001); but not for vertical jump (P=0.437), handgrip (P=0.845) or systolic blood pressure (P=0.266). Post-hoc analysis revealed that hydrotherapy resulted in recovered heart rate and diastolic blood pressure similar to baseline values after the spinning session. Further, hydrotherapy resulted in decreased self-perceived fatigue after the spinning session. Conclusions Our results support that hydrotherapy is an adequate strategy to facilitate cardiovascular recovers and perceived fatigue, but not strength, after spinning exercise. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01765387 Keywords: Hydrotherapy; Heart rate; Fatigue; Strength; Blood pressure; Body temperature

Toward the adaptive generation of bespoke game content

In this chapter, we explore methods for automatically generating game content—and games themselves—adapted to individual players in order to improve their playing experience or achieve a desired effect. This goes beyond notions of mere replayability and involves modeling player needs to maximize their enjoyment, involvement, and interest in the game being played. We identify three main aspects of this process: generation of new content and rule sets, measurement of this content and the player, and adaptation of the game to change player experience. This process forms a feedback loop of constant refinement, as games are continually improved while being played. Framed within this methodology, we present an overview of our recent and ongoing research in this area. This is illustrated by a number of case studies that demonstrate these ideas in action over a variety of game types, including 3D action games, arcade games, platformers, board games, puzzles, and open-world games. We draw together some of the lessons learned from these projects to comment on the difficulties, the benefits, and the potential for personalized gaming via adaptive game design.

Managing moose harvests by the seat of your pants

Moose populations are managed for sustainable yield balanced against costs caused by damage to forestry or agriculture and collisions with vehicles. Optimal harvests can be calculated based on a structured population model driven by data on abundance and the composition of bulls, cows, and calves obtained by aerial-survey monitoring during winter. Quotas are established by the respective government agency and licenses are issued to hunters to harvest an animal of specified age or sex during the following autumn. Because the cost of aerial monitoring is high, we use a Management Strategy Evaluation to evaluate the costs and benefits of periodic aerial surveys in the context of moose management. Our on-the-fly "seat of your pants" alternative to independent monitoring is management based solely on the kill of moose by hunters, which is usually sufficient to alert the manager to declines in moose abundance that warrant adjustments to harvest strategies. Harvests are relatively cheap to monitor; therefore, data can be obtained each year facilitating annual adjustments to quotas. Other sources of "cheap" monitoring data such as records of the number of moose seen by hunters while hunting also might be obtained, and may provide further useful insight into population abundance, structure and health. Because conservation dollars are usually limited, the high cost of aerial surveys is difficult to justify when alternative methods exist. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

In silico biology : making the most of parallel computing

Biological systems are typically complex and adaptive, involving large numbers of entities, or organisms, and many-layered interactions between these. System behaviour evolves over time, and typically benefits from previous experience by retaining memory of previous events. Given the dynamic nature of these phenomena, it is non-trivial to provide a comprehensive description of complex adaptive systems and, in particular, to define the importance and contribution of low-level unsupervised interactions to the overall evolution process. In this chapter, the authors focus on the application of the agent-based paradigm in the context of the immune response to HIV. Explicit implementation of lymph nodes and the associated lymph network, including lymphatic chain structure, is a key objective, and requires parallelisation of the model. Steps taken towards an optimal communication strategy are detailed.

The culture of young women's drinking: Implications for developing effective policing strategies. Report to National Drug Strategy Law Enforcement Committee

Alcohol-related mortality and morbidity represents a substantial financial burden on communities across the world. Adolescence and young adulthood is a peak period for heavy episodic alcohol consumption, with over a third of all people aged 14-19 years having been at risk of acute alcoholrelated harm at least once in the previous 12 months (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2011). Excessive alcohol consumption has long been seen as a male problem; however, a gradual shift towards a social acceptance of female drunkenness has narrowed the gap in drinking quantity and style between men and women (Grucza, Bucholz, Rice, & Bierut, 2008). The presented data point to the vulnerability of women to the consequences of acute alcohol intoxication and indicate that alcohol-related offending by women is on the rise. Taken together, these findings reveal that alcohol-related harms and aggression for young women are becoming more prevalent and problematic. This report addressed these issues from a policing perspective...

Where to after Drink Rite: An evaluation of opportunities for police and community promotion of an anti-drink driving message in the licensed venue setting. Report to the National Drug Strategy Law Enforcement Funding Committee

Estimating the prevalence of drink driving is a difficult task. Self‐reported drink driving indicates that drink driving is far more common than official statistics suggest. In order to promote a responsible attitude towards alcohol consumption and drink driving within the Queensland community, the Queensland Police Service, Queensland Health and Queensland Transport developed the ‘Drink Rite’ program (Queensland Police Service information sheet, 2009). However, the feasibility of the program is now in doubt as the National Health and Medical Research Council’s guidelines for alcohol consumption changed in 2009 to state “For healthy men and women, drinking no more than four standard drinks on a single occasion reduces the risk of alcohol‐related injury arising from that occasion” (NHMRC Publication, 2009, p. 51). As such, adhering to the NHMRC guidelines places restrictions on how the existing Drink Rite program can be operated (i.e. by reducing the number of standard drinks provided to participants from eight to four). It is arguable that a reduction in the number of alcoholic drinks provided to participants in the program will result in a large reduction in observed BAC readings. This, in turn, will lead to a potential loss of message content when discussing the variation in the effects of alcohol.

Adaptive compliance control of a multi‐legged stair‐climbing robot based on proprioceptive data

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative compliance control architecture for hybrid multi‐legged robots. The approach was verified on the hybrid legged‐wheeled robot ASGUARD, which was inspired by quadruped animals. The adaptive compliance controller allows the system to cope with a variety of stairs, very rough terrain, and is also able to move with high velocity on flat ground without changing the control parameters. Design/methodology/approach – The paper shows how this adaptivity results in a versatile controller for hybrid legged‐wheeled robots. For the locomotion control we use an adaptive model of motion pattern generators. The control approach takes into account the proprioceptive information of the torques, which are applied on the legs. The controller itself is embedded on a FPGA‐based, custom designed motor control board. An additional proprioceptive inclination feedback is used to make the same controller more robust in terms of stair‐climbing capabilities. Findings – The robot is well suited for disaster mitigation as well as for urban search and rescue missions, where it is often necessary to place sensors or cameras into dangerous or inaccessible areas to get a better situation awareness for the rescue personnel, before they enter a possibly dangerous area. A rugged, waterproof and dust‐proof corpus and the ability to swim are additional features of the robot. Originality/value – Contrary to existing approaches, a pre‐defined walking pattern for stair‐climbing was not used, but an adaptive approach based only on internal sensor information. In contrast to many other walking pattern based robots, the direct proprioceptive feedback was used in order to modify the internal control loop, thus adapting the compliance of each leg on‐line.

Not learning from the past: Adaptive governance challenges for Australian natural resource management

Australia’s governance arrangements for NRM have evolved considerably over the last thirty years. The impact of changes in governance on NRM planning and delivery requires assessment. We undertake a multi-method program evaluation using adaptive governance principles as an analytical frame and apply this to Queensland to assess the impacts of governance change on NRM planning and governance outcomes. Data to inform our analysis includes: 1) a systematic review of sixteen audits/evaluations of Australian NRM over a fifteen-year period; 2) a review of Queensland’s first generation NRM Plans; and 3) outputs from a Queensland workshop on NRM planning. NRM has progressed from a bottom-up grassroots movement into a collaborative regional NRM model that has been centralised by the Australian Government. We found that while some adaptive governance challenges have been addressed, others remained unresolved. Results show that collaboration and elements of multi-level governance under the regional model were positive moves, but also that NRM arrangements contained structural deficiencies across multiple governance levels in relation to public involvement in decision-making and knowledge production for problem responsiveness. These problems for adaptive governance have been exacerbated since 2008. We conclude that the adaptive governance framework for NRM needs urgent attention so that important environmental management problems can be addressed.

Can social resilience inform SA/SIA for adaptive planning for climate change in vulnerable regions?

This book represents a landmark effort to probe and analyze the theory and empirics of designing water disaster management policies. It consists of seven chapters that examine, in-depth and comprehensively, issues that are central to crafting effective policies for water disaster management. The authors use historical surveys, institutional analysis, econometric investigations, empirical case studies, and conceptual-theoretical discussions to clarify and illuminate the complex policy process. The specific topics studied in this book include a review and analysis of key policy areas and research priority areas associated with water disaster management, community participation in disaster risk reduction, the economics and politics of ‘green’ flood control, probabilistic flood forecasting for flood risk management, polycentric governance and flood risk management, drought management with the aid of dynamic inter-generational preferences, and how social resilience can inform SA/SIA for adaptive planning for climate change in vulnerable areas. A unique feature of this book is its analysis of the causes and consequences of water disasters and efforts to address them successfully through policy-rich, cross-disciplinary and transnational papers. This book is designed to help enrich the sparse discourse on water disaster management policies and galvanize water professionals to craft creative solutions to tackle water disasters efficiently, equitably, and sustainably. This book should also be of considerable use to disaster management professionals, in general, and natural resource policy analysts.