Intercultural usability of language learning websites

Website usability can be defined as the ease of use of websites. General usability, pedagogical usability, technical usability and intercultural usability can be considered and examined for the understanding of the usability of language learning websites, which requires a discipline-specific approach. In the field of computer-assisted language learning, usability issues have been addressed mainly in terms of evaluation criteria and have been commonly discussed in relation to user expectations and user experiences. In spite of a growing interest in intercultural language learning, however, little research on intercultural usability of language learning websites has been published yet. There is a need to answer the question of how language learning websites integrate the target language and culture for the development of intercultural sensitivity and competence. This article explores intercultural aspects of language learning websites and presents usability guidelines for designing intercultural language learning websites.

Using neo-Piagetian theory, formative in-Class tests and think alouds to better understand student thinking : a preliminary report on computer programming

It is acknowledged around the world that many university students struggle with learning to program (McCracken et al., 2001; McGettrick et al., 2005). In this paper, we describe how we have developed a research programme to systematically study and incrementally improve our teaching. We have adopted a research programme with three elements: (1) a theory that provides an organising framework for defining the type of phenomena and data of interest, (2) data on how the class as a whole performs on formative assessment tasks that are framed from within the organising framework, and (3) data from one-on-one think aloud sessions, to establish why students struggle with some of those in-class formative assessment tasks. We teach introductory computer programming, but this three-element structure of our research is applicable to many areas of engineering education research.

Educational accountability tests, social and legal inclusion approaches to discrimination for students with disability : a national case study from Australia

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD) promotes equal and full participation by children in education. Equity of educational access for all students, including students with disability, free from discrimination, is the first stated national goal of Australian education (MCEETYA 2008). Australian federal disability discrimination law, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA), follows the Convention, with the federal Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE) enacting specific requirements for education. This article discusses equity of processes for inclusion of students with disability in Australian educational accountability testing, including international tests in which many countries participate. The conclusion drawn is that equitable inclusion of students with disability in current Australian educational accountability testing in not occurring from a social perspective and is not in principle compliant with law. However, given the reluctance of courts to intervene in education matters and the uncertainty of an outcome in any court consideration, the discussion shows that equitable inclusion in accountability systems is available through policy change rather than expensive, and possibly unsuccessful, legal challenges.

Flexural-torsional buckling tests of cold-formed steel compression members at elevated temperatures

Current design standards do not provide adequate guidelines for the fire design of cold-formed steel compression members subject to flexural-torsional buckling. Eurocode 3 Part 1.2 (2005) recommends the same fire design guidelines for both hot-rolled and cold-formed steel compression members subject to flexural-torsional buckling although considerable behavioural differences exist between cold-formed and hot-rolled steel members. Past research has recommended the use of ambient temperature cold-formed steel design rules for the fire design of cold-formed steel compression members provided appropriately reduced mechanical properties are used at elevated temperatures. To assess the accuracy of flexural-torsional buckling design rules in both ambient temperature cold-formed steel design and fire design standards, an experimental study of slender cold-formed steel compression members was undertaken at both ambient and elevated temperatures. This paper presents the details of this experimental study, its results, and their comparison with the predictions from the current design rules. It was found that the current ambient temperature design rules are conservative while the fire design rules are overly conservative. Suitable recommendations have been made in relation to the currently available design rules for flexural-torsional buckling including methods of improvement. Most importantly, this paper has addressed the lack of experimental results for slender cold-formed steel columns at elevated temperatures.

Detecting conversing groups of chatters : a model, algorithms, and tests

Chatrooms, for example Internet Relay Chat, are generally multi-user, multi-channel and multiserver chat-systems which run over the Internet and provide a protocol for real-time text-based conferencing between users all over the world. While a well-trained human observer is able to understand who is chatting with whom, there are no efficient and accurate automated tools to determine the groups of users conversing with each other. A precursor to analysing evolving cyber-social phenomena is to first determine what the conversations are and which groups of chatters are involved in each conversation. We consider this problem in this paper. We propose an algorithm to discover all groups of users that are engaged in conversation. Our algorithms are based on a statistical model of a chatroom that is founded on our experience with real chatrooms. Our approach does not require any semantic analysis of the conversations, rather it is based purely on the statistical information contained in the sequence of posts. We improve the accuracy by applying some graph algorithms to clean the statistical information. We present some experimental results which indicate that one can automatically determine the conversing groups in a chatroom, purely on the basis of statistical analysis.

Airborne collision scenario flight tests : impact of angle measurement errors on reactive vision-based avoidance control

The future emergence of many types of airborne vehicles and unpiloted aircraft in the national airspace means collision avoidance is of primary concern in an uncooperative airspace environment. The ability to replicate a pilot’s see and avoid capability using cameras coupled with vision based avoidance control is an important part of an overall collision avoidance strategy. But unfortunately without range collision avoidance has no direct way to guarantee a level of safety. Collision scenario flight tests with two aircraft and a monocular camera threat detection and tracking system were used to study the accuracy of image-derived angle measurements. The effect of image-derived angle errors on reactive vision-based avoidance performance was then studied by simulation. The results show that whilst large angle measurement errors can significantly affect minimum ranging characteristics across a variety of initial conditions and closing speeds, the minimum range is always bounded and a collision never occurs.

Ontology-based feature modeling for construction information extraction from a building information model

A building information model (BIM) provides a rich representation of a building's design. However, there are many challenges in getting construction-specific information from a BIM, limiting the usability of BIM for construction and other downstream processes. This paper describes a novel approach that utilizes ontology-based feature modeling, automatic feature extraction based on ifcXML, and query processing to extract information relevant to construction practitioners from a given BIM. The feature ontology generically represents construction-specific information that is useful for a broad range of construction management functions. The software prototype uses the ontology to transform the designer-focused BIM into a construction-specific feature-based model (FBM). The formal query methods operate on the FBM to further help construction users to quickly extract the necessary information from a BIM. Our tests demonstrate that this approach provides a richer representation of construction-specific information compared to existing BIM tools.

Improving the usability of standard schemas

Due to the development of XML and other data models such as OWL and RDF, sharing data is an increasingly common task since these data models allow simple syntactic translation of data between applications. However, in order for data to be shared semantically, there must be a way to ensure that concepts are the same. One approach is to employ commonly usedschemas—called standard schemas —which help guarantee that syntactically identical objects have semantically similar meanings. As a result of the spread of data sharing, there has been widespread adoption of standard schemas in a broad range of disciplines and for a wide variety of applications within a very short period of time. However, standard schemas are still in their infancy and have not yet matured or been thoroughly evaluated. It is imperative that the data management research community takes a closer look at how well these standard schemas have fared in real-world applications to identify not only their advantages, but also the operational challenges that real users face. In this paper, we both examine the usability of standard schemas in a comparison that spans multiple disciplines, and describe our first step at resolving some of these issues in our Semantic Modeling System. We evaluate our Semantic Modeling System through a careful case study of the use of standard schemas in architecture, engineering, and construction, which we conducted with domain experts. We discuss how our Semantic Modeling System can help the broader problem and also discuss a number of challenges that still remain.

Usability and security of gaze-based graphical grid passwords

We present and analyze several gaze-based graphical password schemes based on recall and cued-recall of grid points; eye-trackers are used to record user's gazes, which can prevent shoulder-surfing and may be suitable for users with disabilities. Our 22-subject study observes that success rate and entry time for the grid-based schemes we consider are comparable to other gaze-based graphical password schemes. We propose the first password security metrics suitable for analysis of graphical grid passwords and provide an in-depth security analysis of user-generated passwords from our study, observing that, on several metrics, user-generated graphical grid passwords are substantially weaker than uniformly random passwords, despite our attempts at designing schemes to improve quality of user-generated passwords.

Timed Up and Go Tests in cardiac rehabilitation : reliability and comparison with the 6-minute walk test

PURPOSE: To test the reliability of Timed Up and Go Tests (TUGTs) in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) and compare TUGTs to the 6-Minute Walk Test (6MWT) for outcome measurement. METHODS: Sixty-one of 154 consecutive community-based CR patients were prospectively recruited. Subjects undertook repeated TUGTs and 6MWTs at the start of CR (start-CR), postdischarge from CR (post-CR), and 6 months postdischarge from CR (6 months post-CR). The main outcome measurements were TUGT time (TUGTT) and 6MWT distance (6MWD). RESULTS: Mean (SD) TUGTT1 and TUGTT2 at the 3 assessments were 6.29 (1.30) and 5.94 (1.20); 5.81 (1.22) and 5.53 (1.09); and 5.39 (1.60) and 5.01 (1.28) seconds, respectively. A reduction in TUGTT occurred between each outcome point (P ≤ .002). Repeated TUGTTs were strongly correlated at each assessment, intraclass correlation (95% CI) = 0.85 (0.76–0.91), 0.84 (0.73–0.91), and 0.90 (0.83–0.94), despite a reduction between TUGTT1 and TUGTT2 of 5%, 5%, and 7%, respectively (P ≤ .006). Relative decreases in TUGTT1 (TUGTT2) occurred from start-CR to post-CR and from start-CR to 6 months post-CR of −7.5% (−6.9%) and −14.2% (−15.5%), respectively, while relative increases in 6MWD1 (6MWD2) occurred, 5.1% (7.2%) and 8.4% (10.2%), respectively (P < .001 in all cases). Pearson correlation coefficients for 6MWD1 to TUGTT1 and TUGTT2 across all times were −0.60 and −0.68 (P < .001) and the intraclass correlations (95% CI) for the speeds derived from averaged 6MWDs and TUGTTs were 0.65 (0.54, 0.73) (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Similar relative changes occurred for the TUGT and the 6MWT in CR. A significant correlation between the TUGTT and 6MWD was demonstrated, and we suggest that the TUGT may provide a related or a supplementary measurement of functional capacity in CR.

The need for ‘representative task design’ in evaluating efficacy of skills tests in sport : a comment on Russell, Benton and Kingsley (2010)

Russell, Benton and Kingsley (2010) recently suggested a new association football test comprising three different tasks for the evaluation of players' passing, dribbling and shooting skills. Their stated intention was to enhance ‘ecological validity’ of current association football skills tests allowing generalisation of results from the new protocols to performance constraints that were ‘representative’ of experiences during competitive game situations. However, in this comment we raise some concerns with their use of the term ‘ecological validity’ to allude to aspects of ‘representative task design’. We propose that in their paper the authors confused understanding of environmental properties, performance achievement and generalisability of the test and its outcomes. Here, we argue that the tests designed by Russell and colleagues did not include critical sources of environmental information, such as the active role of opponents, which players typically use to organise their actions during performance. Static tasks which are not representative of the competitive performance environment may lead to different emerging patterns of movement organisation and performance outcomes, failing to effectively evaluate skills performance in sport.

Power of QTL detection using association tests with family controls

The power of testing for a population-wide association between a biallelic quantitative trait locus and a linked biallelic marker locus is predicted both empirically and deterministically for several tests. The tests were based on the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and on a number of transmission disequilibrium tests (TDT). Deterministic power predictions made use of family information, and were functions of population parameters including linkage disequilibrium, allele frequencies, and recombination rate. Deterministic power predictions were very close to the empirical power from simulations in all scenarios considered in this study. The different TDTs had very similar power, intermediate between one-way and nested ANOVAs. One-way ANOVA was the only test that was not robust against spurious disequilibrium. Our general framework for predicting power deterministically can be used to predict power in other association tests. Deterministic power calculations are a powerful tool for researchers to plan and evaluate experiments and obviate the need for elaborate simulation studies.

Regression and hypothesis tests for multivariate GNSS state time series

A satellite based observation system can continuously or repeatedly generate a user state vector time series that may contain useful information. One typical example is the collection of International GNSS Services (IGS) station daily and weekly combined solutions. Another example is the epoch-by-epoch kinematic position time series of a receiver derived by a GPS real time kinematic (RTK) technique. Although some multivariate analysis techniques have been adopted to assess the noise characteristics of multivariate state time series, statistic testings are limited to univariate time series. After review of frequently used hypotheses test statistics in univariate analysis of GNSS state time series, the paper presents a number of T-squared multivariate analysis statistics for use in the analysis of multivariate GNSS state time series. These T-squared test statistics have taken the correlation between coordinate components into account, which is neglected in univariate analysis. Numerical analysis was conducted with the multi-year time series of an IGS station to schematically demonstrate the results from the multivariate hypothesis testing in comparison with the univariate hypothesis testing results. The results have demonstrated that, in general, the testing for multivariate mean shifts and outliers tends to reject less data samples than the testing for univariate mean shifts and outliers under the same confidence level. It is noted that neither univariate nor multivariate data analysis methods are intended to replace physical analysis. Instead, these should be treated as complementary statistical methods for a prior or posteriori investigations. Physical analysis is necessary subsequently to refine and interpret the results.

Usability of small crisis data sets in the absence of big data

Big data is big news in almost every sector including crisis communication. However, not everyone has access to big data and even if we have access to big data, we often do not have necessary tools to analyze and cross reference such a large data set. Therefore this paper looks at patterns in small data sets that we have ability to collect with our current tools to understand if we can find actionable information from what we already have. We have analyzed 164390 tweets collected during 2011 earthquake to find out what type of location specific information people mention in their tweet and when do they talk about that. Based on our analysis we find that even a small data set that has far less data than a big data set can be useful to find priority disaster specific areas quickly.