Convergence and translation: attitudes to inter-professional learning and teaching of creative problem-solving among medical and engineering students and staff

Background: Healthcare worldwide needs translation of basic ideas from engineering into the clinic. Consequently, there is increasing demand for graduates equipped with the knowledge and skills to apply interdisciplinary medicine/engineering approaches to the development of novel solutions for healthcare. The literature provides little guidance regarding barriers to, and facilitators of, effective interdisciplinary learning for engineering and medical students in a team-based project context. Methods: A quantitative survey was distributed to engineering and medical students and staff in two universities, one in Ireland and one in Belgium, to chart knowledge and practice in interdisciplinary learning and teaching, and of the teaching of innovation. Results: We report important differences for staff and students between the disciplines regarding attitudes towards, and perceptions of, the relevance of interdisciplinary learning opportunities, and the role of creativity and innovation. There was agreement across groups concerning preferred learning, instructional styles, and module content. Medical students showed greater resistance to the use of structured creativity tools and interdisciplinary teams. Conclusions: The results of this international survey will help to define the optimal learning conditions under which undergraduate engineering and medicine students can learn to consider the diverse factors which determine the success or failure of a healthcare engineering solution.

Design and Implementation of Tools for STM Studies in UHV and at the Solid-Liquid Interface

This thesis presents details of the design and development of novel tools and instruments for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), and may be considered as a repository for several years' worth of development work. The author presents design goals and implementations for two microscopes. First, a novel Pan-type STM was built that could be operated in an ambient environment as a liquid-phase STM. Unique features of this microscope include a unibody frame, for increased microscope rigidity, a novel slider component with large Z-range, a unique wiring scheme and damping mechanism, and a removable liquid cell. The microscope exhibits a high level of mechanical isolation at the tunnel junction, and operates excellently as an ambient tool. Experiments in liquid are on-going. Simultaneously, the author worked on designs for a novel low temperature, ultra-high vacuum (LT-UHV) instrument, and these are presented as well. A novel stick-slip vertical coarse approach motor was designed and built. To gauge the performance of the motor, an in situ motion sensing apparatus was implemented, which could measure the step size of the motor to high precision. A new driving circuit for stick-slip inertial motors is also presented, that o ffers improved performance over our previous driving circuit, at a fraction of the cost. The circuit was shown to increase step size performance by 25%. Finally, a horizontal sample stage was implemented in this microscope. The build of this UHV instrument is currently being fi nalized. In conjunction with the above design projects, the author was involved in a collaborative project characterizing N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Au(111) films. STM was used to characterize Au substrate quality, for both commercial substrates and those manufactured via a unique atomic layer deposition (ALD) process by collaborators. Ambient and UHV STM was then also used to characterize the NHC/Au(111) films themselves, and several key properties of these films are discussed. During this study, the author discovered an unexpected surface contaminant, and details of this are also presented. Finally, two models are presented for the nature of the NHC-Au(111) surface interaction based on the observed film properties, and some preliminary theoretical work by collaborators is presented.

Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) a tool for real-time authoring of roleplay simulations for learning

The use of serious games in education and their pedagogical benefit is being widely recognized. However, effective integration of serious games in education depends on addressing two big challenges: the successful incorporation of motivation and engagement that can lead to learning; and the highly specialised skills associated with customised development to meet the required pedagogical objectives. This paper presents the Westminster Serious Games Platform (wmin-SGP) an authoring tool that allows educators/domain experts without games design and development technical skills to create bespoke roleplay simulations in three dimensional scenes featuring fully embodied virtual humans capable of verbal and non-verbal interaction with users fit for specific educational objectives. The paper presents the wmin-SGP system architecture and it evaluates its effectiveness in fulfilling its purpose via the implementation of two roleplay simulations, one for Politics and one for Law. In addition, it presents the results of two types of evaluation that address how successfully the wmin-SGP combines usability principles and game core drives based on the Octalysis gamification framework that lead to motivating games experiences. The evaluation results shows that the wmin-SGP: provides an intuitive environment and tools that support users without advanced technical skills to create in real-time bespoke roleplay simulations in advanced graphical interfaces; satisfies most of the usability principles; and provides balanced simulations based on the Octalysis framework core drives. The paper concludes with a discussion of future extension of this real time authoring tool and directions for further development of the Octalysis framework to address learning.

Learning Environments in Design Studio Culture

The paper reports on a study of design studio culture from a student perspective. Learning in design studio culture has been theorised variously as a signature pedagogy emulating professional practice models, as a community of practice and as a form of problem-based learning, all largely based on the study of teaching events in studio. The focus of this research has extended beyond formally recognized activities to encompass the student’s experience of their social and community networks, working places and study set-ups, to examine how these have contributed to studio culture and how there have been supported by studio teaching. Semi-structured interviews with final year undergraduate students of architecture formed the basis of the study using an interpretivist approach informed by Actor-network theory, with studio culture featured as the focal actor, enrolling students and engaging with other actors, together constituting an actor-network of studio culture. The other actors included social community patterns and activities; the numerous working spaces (including but not limited to the studio space itself); the equipment, tools of trade and material pre-requisites for working; the portfolio enrolling the other actors to produce work for it; and the various formal and informal events associated with the course itself. Studio culture is a highly charged social arena: The question is how, and in particular, which aspects of it support learning? Theoretical models of situated learning and communities of practice models have informed the analysis, with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and his interrelated concepts of habitus, field and capital providing a means of relating individually acquired habits and modes of working to social contexts. Bourdieu’s model of habitus involves the externalisation through the social realm of habits and knowledge previously internalised. It is therefore a useful model for considering whole individual learning activities; shared repertoires and practices located in the social realm. The social milieu of the studio provides a scene for the exercise and display of ‘practicing’ and the accumulation of a form of ‘practicing-capital’. This capital is a property of the social milieu rather than the space, so working or practicing in the company of others (in space and through social media) becomes a more valued aspect of studio than space or facilities alone. This practicing-capital involves the acquisition of a habitus of studio culture, with the transformation of physical practices or habits into social dispositions, acquiring social capital (driving the social milieu) and cultural capital (practicing-knowledge) in the process. The research drew on students’ experiences, and their practicing ‘getting a feel for the game’ by exploring the limits or boundaries of the field of studio culture. The research demonstrated that a notional studio community was in effect a social context for supporting learning; a range of settings to explore and test out newly internalised knowledge, demonstrate or display ideas, modes of thinking and practicing. The study presents a nuanced interpretation of how students relate to a studio culture that involves a notional community, and a developing habitus within a field of practicing that extends beyond teaching scenarios.

Unraveling networked learning initiatives: an analytic framework

Networked learning happens naturally within the social systems of which we are all part. However, in certain circumstances individuals may want to actively take initiative to initiate interaction with others they are not yet regularly in exchange with. This may be the case when external influences and societal changes require innovation of existing practices. This paper proposes a framework with relevant dimensions providing insight into precipitated characteristics of designed as well as ‘fostered or grown’ networked learning initiatives. Networked learning initiatives are characterized as “goal-directed, interest-, or needs based activities of a group of (at least three) individuals that initiate interaction across the boundaries of their regular social systems”. The proposed framework is based on two existing research traditions, namely 'networked learning' and 'learning networks', comparing, integrating and building upon knowledge from both perspectives. We uncover some interesting differences between definitions, but also similarities in the way they describe what ‘networked’ means and how learning is conceptualized. We think it is productive to combine both research perspectives, since they both study the process of learning in networks extensively, albeit from different points of view, and their combination can provide valuable insights in networked learning initiatives. We uncover important features of networked learning initiatives, characterize actors and connections of which they are comprised and conditions which facilitate and support them. The resulting framework could be used both for analytic purposes and (partly) as a design framework. In this framework it is acknowledged that not all successful networks have the same characteristics: there is no standard ‘constellation’ of people, roles, rules, tools and artefacts, although there are indications that some network structures work better than others. Interactions of individuals can only be designed and fostered till a certain degree: the type of network and its ‘growth’ (e.g. in terms of the quantity of people involved, or the quality and relevance of co-created concepts, ideas, artefacts and solutions to its ‘inhabitants’) is in the hand of the people involved. Therefore, the framework consists of dimensions on a sliding scale. It introduces a structured and analytic way to look at the precipitation of networked learning initiatives: learning networks. Successive research on the application of this framework and feedback from the networked learning community is needed to further validate it’s usability and value to both research as well as practice.

Designing Massive Open Online Learning Processes: The importance of the social element

This is a pre-print for personal use only. Please refer to the Springer website for the official, published version http://www.springer.com/978-3-662-52923-2

Shared Education in contested spaces: How collaborative networks improve communities and schools

Societies which suffer from ethnic and political divisions are often characterised by patterns of social and institutional separation, and sometimes these divisions remain even after political conflict has ended. This has occurred in Northern Ireland where there is, and remains, a long-standing pattern of parallel institutions and services for the different communities. A socially significant example lies in the education system where a parallel system of Catholic and Protestant schools has been in place since the establishment of a national school system in the 1830s. During the years of political violence in Northern Ireland a variety of educational interventions were implemented to promote reconciliation, but most of them failed to create any systemic change. This paper describes a post-conflict educational initiative known as Shared Education which aims to promote social cohesion and school improvement by encouraging sustained and regular shared learning between students and broader collaboration between teachers and school leaders from different schools. The paper examines the background to work on Shared Education, describes a ‘sharing continuum’ which emerged as an evaluation and policy tool from this work and considers evidence from a case study of a Shared Education school partnership in a divided city in Northern Ireland. The paper will conclude by highlighting some of the significant social and policy impact of the Shared Education work.

Exploring the mobile structural assessment tool: Concept maps for learning website: Concept Maps for Learning Website

In this paper, we describe how the pathfinder algorithm converts relatedness ratings of concept pairs to concept maps; we also present how this algorithm has been used to develop the Concept Maps for Learning website (www.conceptmapsforlearning.com) based on the principles of effective formative assessment. The pathfinder networks, one of the network representation tools, claim to help more students memorize and recall the relations between concepts than spatial representation tools (such as Multi- Dimensional Scaling). Therefore, the pathfinder networks have been used in various studies on knowledge structures, including identifying students’ misconceptions. To accomplish this, each student’s knowledge map and the expert knowledge map are compared via the pathfinder software, and the differences between these maps are highlighted. After misconceptions are identified, the pathfinder software fails to provide any feedback on these misconceptions. To overcome this weakness, we have been developing a mobile-based concept mapping tool providing visual, textual and remedial feedback (ex. videos, website links and applets) on the concept relations. This information is then placed on the expert concept map, but not on the student’s concept map. Additionally, students are asked to note what they understand from given feedback, and given the opportunity to revise their knowledge maps after receiving various types of feedback.

A Collaborative Multiagent Framework based on Online Risk-Aware Planning and Decision-Making

Planning is an essential process in teams of multiple agents pursuing a common goal. When the effects of actions undertaken by agents are uncertain, evaluating the potential risk of such actions alongside their utility might lead to more rational decisions upon planning. This challenge has been recently tackled for single agent settings, yet domains with multiple agents that present diverse viewpoints towards risk still necessitate comprehensive decision making mechanisms that balance the utility and risk of actions. In this work, we propose a novel collaborative multi-agent planning framework that integrates (i) a team-level online planner under uncertainty that extends the classical UCT approximate algorithm, and (ii) a preference modeling and multicriteria group decision making approach that allows agents to find accepted and rational solutions for planning problems, predicated on the attitude each agent adopts towards risk. When utilised in risk-pervaded scenarios, the proposed framework can reduce the cost of reaching the common goal sought and increase effectiveness, before making collective decisions by appropriately balancing risk and utility of actions. 

Date adjustment tools : Date rollover and Individual date adjustment

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have become a larger part of teaching and learning in the modern world. Therefore has Moodle, a free and open source e-learning tool surfaced and gained a lot of attraction and downloads. A purpose of this study has been to develop a new local plugin in Moodle with guidelines from Magnus Eriksson and Tsedey Terefe. A purpose for this project has also been to build a plugin which has the functions Date rollover and Individual date adjustment. Mid Sweden University (Miun) stated that WebCT/Blackboard was in use before Moodle and some other LMSs and the dissatisfaction with WebCT/Blackboard was rife, however some teachers liked it. Therefore WebCT/Blackboard was abandoned and Moodle was embraced. The methods of gaining information has generally been web based sources and three interviews, likewise called user tests. Programs and other aids that have been used include but are not limited to: Google Drive, LTI Provider, Moodle, Moodle documentation, Notepad++, PHP and XAMPP. The plugin has been implemented as a local plugin. The result has shown that the coded plugin, Date adjustment tools could be improved and that it was changed. In the plugin, support for old American English dates were added and the code for using the two functions “Date rollover” and “Individual date adjustment” were rewritten to not interfere with one another. A conclusion to draw from the result is that the plugin has been improved from Terefe’s implementation, although more work can be made with the plugin Date adjustment tools.

Designing and Developing Digital and Blended Learning Solutions

The continuous advancement in computing, together with the decline in its cost, has resulted in technology becoming ubiquitous (Arbaugh, 2008, Gros, 2007). Technology is growing and is part of our lives in almost every respect, including the way we learn. Technology helps to collapse time and space in learning. For example, technology allows learners to engage with their instructors synchronously, in real time and also asynchronously, by enabling sessions to be recorded. Space and distance is no longer an issue provided there is adequate bandwidth, which determines the most appropriate format such text, audio or video. Technology has revolutionised the way learners learn; courses are designed; and ‘lessons’ are delivered, and continues to do so. The learning process can be made vastly more efficient as learners have knowledge at their fingertips, and unfamiliar concepts can be easily searched and an explanation found in seconds. Technology has also enabled learning to be more flexible, as learners can learn anywhere; at any time; and using different formats, e.g. text or audio. From the perspective of the instructors and L&D providers, technology offers these same advantages, plus easy scalability. Administratively, preparatory work can be undertaken more quickly even whilst student numbers grow. Learners from far and new locations can be easily accommodated. In addition, many technologies can be easily scaled to accommodate new functionality and/ or other new technologies. ‘Designing and Developing Digital and Blended Learning Solutions’ (5DBS), has been developed to recognise the growing importance of technology in L&D. This unit contains four learning outcomes and two assessment criteria, which is the same for all other units, besides Learning Outcome 3 which has three assessment criteria. The four learning outcomes in this unit are: • Learning Outcome 1: Understand current digital technologies and their contribution to learning and development solutions; • Learning Outcome 2: Be able to design blended learning solutions that make appropriate use of new technologies alongside more traditional approaches; • Learning Outcome 3: Know about the processes involved in designing and developing digital learning content efficiently and what makes for engaging and effective digital learning content; • Learning Outcome 4: Understand the issues involved in the successful implementation of digital and blended learning solutions. Each learning outcome is an individual chapter and each assessment unit is allocated its own sections within the respective chapters. This first chapter addresses the first learning outcome, which has two assessment criteria: summarise the range of currently available learning technologies; critically assess a learning requirement to determine the contribution that could be made through the use of learning technologies. The introduction to chapter one is in Section 1.0. Chapter 2 discusses the design of blended learning solutions in consideration of how digital learning technologies may support face-to-face and online delivery. Three learning theory sets: behaviourism; cognitivism; constructivism, are introduced, and the implication of each set of theory on instructional design for blended learning discussed. Chapter 3 centres on how relevant digital learning content may be created. This chapter includes a review of the key roles, tools and processes that are involved in developing digital learning content. Finally, Chapter 4 concerns delivery and implementation of digital and blended learning solutions. This chapter surveys the key formats and models used to inform the configuration of virtual learning environment software platforms. In addition, various software technologies which may be important in creating a VLE ecosystem that helps to enhance the learning experience, are outlined. We introduce the notion of personal learning environment (PLE), which has emerged from the democratisation of learning. We also review the roles, tools, standards and processes that L&D practitioners need to consider within a delivery and implementation of digital and blended learning solution.

Computational approaches and tools for modeling biomass pyrolysis

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Mapping Learning and Game Mechanics for Serious Games Analysis in Engineering Education

In a world where students are increasing digitally tethered to powerful, ‘always on’ mobile devices, new models of engagement and approaches to teaching and learning are required from educators. Serious Games (SG) have proved to have instructional potential but there is still a lack of methodologies and tools not only for their design but also to support game analysis and assessment. This paper explores the use of SG to increase student engagement and retention. The development phase of the Circuit Warz game is presented to demonstrate how electronic engineering education can be radically reimagined to create immersive, highly engaging learning experiences that are problem-centered and pedagogically sound. The Learning Mechanics–Game Mechanics (LM-GM) framework for SG game analysis is introduced and its practical use in an educational game design scenario is shown as a case study.

Convex Optimization Algorithms and Statistical Bounds for Learning Structured Models

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Collaborative Teacher Educator Professional Development in Europe: Different Voices, One Goal

In this paper we present an embedded case study focussed on the learning activities provided for and by us through our involvement in an international forum focused on the professional development of teacher educators. The aim of this research was to get more insights into the complicated processes of professional learning across national borders. Data included personal narratives about learning and documentary analysis of written accounts of the forums’ activities. Following a collaborative self-study approach we utilised an interactive exploration of the data, using coding techniques derived from grounded theory. We conclude that our professional learning can be seen through two inter-related perspectives. The first perspective is the interplay between our own learning and the ways in which we want to support colleagues in their professional development. The second perspective is the reciprocal effect of working in national as well as in transnational contexts. By studying our professional learning processes we developed insights in how a shared communal international forum can be established without losing individual voices and national perspectives. Moreover, by our involvement in an international forum we also continue to develop our own self-understanding as ‘educators of teacher educators’.