The use of YouTube Analytics of Video Lecture Capture as a Teaching and Learning Performance Enhancer

Do patterns in the YouTube viewing analytics of Lecture Capture videos point to areas of potential teaching and learning performance enhancement? The goal of this action based research project was to capture and quantitatively analyse the viewing behaviours and patterns of a series of video lecture captures across several computing modules in Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. The research sought to establish if a quantitative analysis of viewing behaviours coupled with a qualitative evaluation of the material provided from the students could be correlated to provide generalised patterns that could then be used to understand the learning experience of students during face to face lectures and, thereby, present opportunities to reflectively enhance lecturer performance and the students’ overall learning experience and, ultimately, their level of academic attainment.

Wide Matching - An Approach to Improving Noise Robustness for Speech Enhancement

It is shown that under certain conditions it is possible to obtain a good speech estimate from noise without requiring noise estimation. We study an implementation of the theory, namely wide matching, for speech enhancement. The new approach performs sentence-wide joint speech segment estimation subject to maximum recognizability to gain noise robustness. Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the new approach with variable noises and SNRs from -5 dB to noise free. It is shown that the new approach, without any estimation of the noise, significantly outperformed conventional methods in the low SNR conditions while retaining comparable performance in the high SNR conditions. It is further suggested that the wide matching and deep learning approaches can be combined towards a highly robust and accurate speech estimator.

Enhancing Student Learning: Study of a Motivational Resource for Educators

This study surveyed practicing classroom teacher’s perceptions of a proposed educational resource “Avatar Academy” designed to enhance students’, particularly young boys, motivation and general attitude towards learning. The Avatar Academy resource is an instructional guide for implementing a classroom reward system based on common game mechanics. The resource emphasizes the modification of current pedagogies to exploit the use of game design to engage boys. A survey of recent literature indicated an opportunity to study teachers’ perceptions of the possible applications of game design mechanics to support the enhancement of student motivation and learning in the classroom. As a result the Avatar Academy handbook and blog resource were developed to assist teachers with the integration and administration of a program designed to enhance student motivation, especially boys, using avatars and a point based reward system. The resources were initially distributed to several practicing teachers for their review, and their feedback formed the basis for revisions of the Avatar Academy resource. After implementing changes to the resource based on initial teacher feedback, an updated Avatar Academy was redistributed and teacher opinions and perceptions of the tool’s possible impacts on classroom learning were collected.

Supporting graduate development through work based learning

The genesis of this innovation lies in the commitment of a national Irish business enterprise to the professional development of its staff in general, and to the enhancement of its Information Technologies (IT) staff specifically, in collaboration with a national Higher Education (HE) provider. A postgraduate degree, awarded by the HE provider, seeks to bring coherence and cohesion to the education and training provision for newly recruited IT graduate staff of the business enterprise, simultaneously acting both as an induction process for new staff and as a professional capacity building exercise, thereby enhancing the enterprise’s organisational learning and collective competence in the areas of information technologies, IT security and technical service management. The curriculum was designed by the HE provider in collaboration with the business enterprise to offer it to circa sixteen IT staff per cycle of delivery through a model known generally as the new apprenticeship for professional practice which uses a combination of college-based, block release taught elements, regular day release seminars and substantial work-based learning, supported by the academic staff of the HE provider and work-based support staff/mentors of the business enterprise. Academic quality assurance, pedagogical, assessment and accreditation responsibilities remain with the HE provider. (...)

Machine learning approaches for modeling spammer behavior

Spam is commonly known as unsolicited or unwanted email messages in the Internet causing potential threat to Internet Security. Users spend a valuable amount of time deleting spam emails. More importantly, ever increasing spam emails occupy server storage space and consume network bandwidth. Keyword-based spam email filtering strategies will eventually be less successful to model spammer behavior as the spammer constantly changes their tricks to circumvent these filters. The evasive tactics that the spammer uses are patterns and these patterns can be modeled to combat spam. This paper investigates the possibilities of modeling spammer behavioral patterns by well-known classification algorithms such as Naïve Bayesian classifier (Naive Bayes), Decision Tree Induction (DTI) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Preliminary experimental results demonstrate a promising detection rate of around 92%, which is considerably an enhancement of performance compared to similar spammer behavior modeling research.

Introducing creative language learning in Japan through educational drama

Educational Drama as a teaching and learning methodology is already widely in use and well accepted by Australian teachers and students. This paper reports on a study in which the author investigated Japanese primary school students' and teachers' responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. The participants had no prior experience of drama in education. Along with the participants' responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The author, as a teacher-researcher, used action research methods for this study. It became evident that educational drama tended to motivate the Japanese students' foreign language learning of English, by providing them with an opportunity for a higher level of engagement and participation in learning. In the study, the students showed enhancement of the skills necessary for learning, including social, communication, linguistic, non-linguistic and problem-solving skills.

Through the looking glass : teaching and learning in blended immersive multiuser virtual and real world environments

This paper reports on the participation of higher education students and educators in blended immersive multi user virtual (MUVE) environments and real life teaching and learning experiences. Selected next generation technologies engage students and educators within the virtual socially networked elearning landscape of Deakin Arts Education Centre , and support the interaction of communities of learners in multiple modes, ranging from text and images accessed within the Deakin Studies Online learning management system to the "through the looking glass" virtual world in which the user’s creative imagination transports them to the “other side“ of their computer screens.

These constructed environments enable multiple simultaneous participants to access graphically built 3D environments, interact with digital artifacts and various functional tools, and represent themselves through avatars, to communicate with other participants and participate in collaborative art learning.

Designing an e-portfolio for assurance of learning focusing on adoptability and learning analytics

The Assurance of Learning for Graduate Employability framework is a quality assurance model for curriculum enhancement for graduate employability, enabling graduates to achieve "the skills, understandings and personal attributes that make [them] more likely to secure employment and be successful in their chosen occupations to the benefit of themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy" (Yorke, 2006). Of particular note is the framework's dependence on three foundations, including easy access to integrated and accessible tools for staff and student self-management. In other words, this approach to curriculum quality depends on staff and student access to tools that enable them to self-manage their learning. This paper examines two aspects which informed the design of a student e-portfolio system, iPortfolio, intended for students' self-management of their learning, particularly recording evidence of their achievement of capabilities. The paper focuses on two particular considerations in the design of the iPortfolio: adoptability and learning analytics. Adoptability means the phase preceding adoption, whether students have the devices, platforms and technology skills to be able to use such an innovation. The iPortfolio also facilitates learning analytics: it has the capability to gather data related to learning indicators for course quality assurance purposes. Both adoptability and analytics are very dynamic fields: new devices, platforms and applications constantly spark changes in user habits, and policy changes mean institutions need to be able to provide new data, often at short notice. In the conclusion, the paper suggests how tools such as the iPortfolio can be designed for 'future proofing' and sustainability.

Remixing to design learning: social media and peer-to-peer interaction

Social and participatory media offer opportunities to interact and share user-generated content. After some investigation and research, the authors are in their initial stages of using such media to provide a pathway for thinking about learning design in higher education. Using the concept of remixing, the authors aim to creatively blend and manipulate ideas to build a sustainable approach to course/program enhancement. Remixing is touted as one of the most important practices within the field of open educational resources, but it is not mainstream practice in educational thinking or design. This article highlights the authors’ approach and uses their pre-service teacher education program and their previous high school study as an example of remixing. The high school study involved the integration of social and participatory media into the face-to-face classroom; Author 1 was the practitioner researcher in the high school study. This article articulates the use of online social environments at the high school level to highlight concepts of sharing and remixing as a creative and social approach to designing learning in higher education. It also attempts to consider this within a course-wide approach.

Evidencing learning outcomes: a multi-level, multi-dimensional course alignment model

This conceptual framework proposes a multi-level, multi-dimensional course alignment model to implement a contextualised constructive alignment of rubric design that authentically evidences and assesses learning outcomes. By embedding quality control mechanisms at each level for each dimension, this model facilitates the development of an aligned curriculum. The use of rubrics is a crucial theme for many higher education institutions owing to the binding requirement by universities to provide evidence to quality assurance agencies. The success of evidencing learning outcomes through rubrics, however, is only one piece of the puzzle. The other is the contextualised constructive alignment of intertwined factors. Despite the significance of embedding these factors, there has been little, if any, systematic framework in this area. The two key instrumental forces underpinning the conception of this model are: seeking external accreditation and the implementation of programme enhancement thus realising the strategic agenda for an Australian university.

Digitech, remix and design research for course /program-wide thinking and enhancement

This paper describes the initial stage of an exploratory investigation in which the authors aim to build course/program-wide thinking into a process aimed at supporting, documenting and sharing technology-rich practices, innovative teaching and active student learning. The investigation uses a remix lens, in an attempt to creatively consider the manipulation of resources and approaches for reuse, while supporting consistency across subjects/units within a course. The authors are working within Deakin University’s Course Enhancement Process, which is a major university-wide initiative that includes a framework of collaborative teams comprising academic and resourcing specialists working with faculty academic leaders. The Course Enhancement Process is flexible in its implementation and the authors aim to use the process to build a sustainable course-wide sharing and thinking approach within the Business and Law faculty at Deakin University, Australia.

Enhancement of medical named entity recognition using graph-based features

Named Entity Recognition (NER) is a crucial step in text mining. This paper proposes a new graph-based technique for representing unstructured medical text. The new representation is used to extract discriminative features that are able to enhance the NER performance. To evaluate the usefulness of the proposed graph-based technique, the i2b2 medication challenge data set is used. Specifically, the 'treatment' named entities are extracted for evaluation using six different classifiers. The F-measure results of five classifiers are enhanced, with an average improvement of up to 26% in performance.