Learning from ordered sets and applications in collaborative ranking

Ranking over sets arise when users choose between groups of items. For example, a group may be of those movies deemed 5 stars to them, or a customized tour package. It turns out, to model this data type properly, we need to investigate the general combinatorics problem of partitioning a set and ordering the subsets. Here we construct a probabilistic log-linear model over a set of ordered subsets. Inference in this combinatorial space is highly challenging: The space size approaches (N!/2)6.93145N+1 as N approaches infinity. We propose a split-and-merge Metropolis-Hastings procedure that can explore the state-space efficiently. For discovering hidden aspects in the data, we enrich the model with latent binary variables so that the posteriors can be efficiently evaluated. Finally, we evaluate the proposed model on large-scale collaborative filtering tasks and demonstrate that it is competitive against state-of-the-art methods.

Digital oral feedback on written assignments as professional learning for teacher educators: a collaborative self-study

This article reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. Rather than marking written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read each assignment and recorded a sound file of our conversation. We constructed our collaborative marking of each assignment as a “cultural gift” to our own professional learning. We found that we were providing more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than we would have with written feedback prepared individually. We also uncovered tensions in relation to our preferred modalities associated with the digital marking.

The TrueBlue model of collaborative care using practice nurses as case managers for depression alongside diabetes or heart disease: a randomised trial

Objectives:
To determine the effectiveness of collaborative care in reducing depression in primary care patients with diabetes or heart disease using practice nurses as case managers.

Crafts and successful aging: the Découpage Guild Australia

AdaM : adaptive-maximum imputation for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

In the context of collaborative filtering, the well known data sparsity issue makes two like-minded users have little similarity, and consequently renders the k nearest neighbour rule inapplicable. In this paper, we address the data sparsity problem in the neighbourhood-based CF methods by proposing an Adaptive-Maximum imputation method (AdaM). The basic idea is to identify an imputation area that can maximize the imputation benefit for recommendation purposes, while minimizing the imputation error brought in. To achieve the maximum imputation benefit, the imputation area is determined from both the user and the item perspectives; to minimize the imputation error, there is at least one real rating preserved for each item in the identified imputation area. A theoretical analysis is provided to prove that the proposed imputation method outperforms the conventional neighbourhood-based CF methods through more accurate neighbour identification. Experiment results on benchmark datasets show that the proposed method significantly outperforms the other related state-of-the-art imputation-based methods in terms of accuracy.

Differential privacy for neighborhood-based collaborative filtering

As a popular technique in recommender systems, Collaborative Filtering (CF) has received extensive attention in recent years. However, its privacy-related issues, especially for neighborhood-based CF methods, can not be overlooked. The aim of this study is to address the privacy issues in the context of neighborhood-based CF methods by proposing a Private Neighbor Collaborative Filtering (PNCF) algorithm. The algorithm includes two privacy-preserving operations: Private Neighbor Selection and Recommendation-Aware Sensitivity. Private Neighbor Selection is constructed on the basis of the notion of differential privacy to privately choose neighbors. Recommendation-Aware Sensitivity is introduced to enhance the performance of recommendations. Theoretical and experimental analysis are provided to show the proposed algorithm can preserve differential privacy while retaining the accuracy of recommendations.

Transiting with the environment: an exploration of traveller’s reorientations as creative and collaborative practice

Travellers undertake a process of reorientation and realignment that is particular to each destination. This process intensifies when travelling long distances across borders, cultures and climates, as travellers utilise performative, embodied and creative methods that respond to each new environment. Certain destinations, such as those with unique and extreme natural environments, induce a socio-cultural imaginary that primes travellers for what kind of experience they might have. Large, immersive landscapes and climates congeal with expectations of what each destination requires in order to navigate through it. Common bearings of distance and scale are skewed, as travellers are positioned within areas of vastness. In these moments immersive experiences contrast with daily processes, such as the act of packing a bag, as this heightened sensory awareness exacerbates the subtle material and spatial negotiations. Utilising interviews and photographic documentation of travellers to Iceland and Nepal, this paper develops the proposal that certain destinations intensify our attunement to these moments of reorientation, facilitating situated and creative methods.

As recent developments in the fields of mobilities and tourism draws attention to material interactions during travel, and current ‘new materialism’ movements in theory and practice reveal alternative affective methods of engagement, an exploration of interactions with/in immersive sites is needed in order to evaluate the potential that these kinds of transitions offer everyday experiences of movement. Nigel Thrift’s proposition of Non-Representational Theory provides clarity on the ways in which spatial awareness influences such transitions and environmental experiences. Using his acknowledgement of a more ontologically driven responsiveness to space, this permits a shift away from the presupposed containment of spaces as isolated destinations, toward a relational spatiality that encompasses all actors – including environments – as vital elements in the generative processes of situating our movements.

Creative strategies that afford sensory, aesthetic and embodied performances provide ways to examine these experiences, providing a multitude of possibilities as individual experiences shift towards collective and collaborative performances, as we are immersed within a range of human and non-human actors. This paper explores the transition away from ‘consuming’ environments, and advocates for the need to turn towards a situated collaboration with environments, propelling an awareness of sustainable and creative travel practices. An understanding of affirmative differences is required within travel cultures, rather than expressing transitions as confined within the ‘home’ versus ‘away’ dichotomy that lingers from elite western travel narratives. In order to undertake the many movements required, this paper draws on the theoretical approaches of sustainable nomadism as described by Rosi Braidotti to highlight the linkages of environmental and bodily experiences.

Through multidisciplinary literature, interviews and personal reflections, this paper proposes that certain destinations amplify processes of alignment with the environment, developing affective, embodied and situated experiences that overcome the human/non-human divide.

The role of effective partnerships in an Australian place-based intervention to reduce race-based discrimination

Localities Embracing and Accepting Diversity (LEAD) is an ongoing place-based pilot program aimed at improving health outcomes among Aboriginal and migrant communities through increased social and economic participation. Specifically, LEAD works with mainstream organizations to prevent race-based discrimination from occurring. The partnership model of LEAD was designed to create a community intervention that was evidence-based, effective, and flexible enough to respond to local contexts and needs. LEAD's complex organizational and partnership model, in combination with an innovative approach to reducing race-based discrimination, has necessitated the use of new language and communication strategies to build genuinely collaborative partnerships. Allocating sufficient time to develop strategies aligned with this new way of doing business has been critical. However, preliminary data indicate that a varied set of partners has been integral to supporting the widespread influence of the emerging LEAD findings across partner networks in a number of different sectors.

Souvenirs of the senses: collaborative and cross-artform makings

Souvenir hunters are often limited in their selection of souvenirs to objects that evoke an iconic and/or generic relationship to place. For example, a small-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower might substitute for a whole range of other more personal responses to the sensory experience of being in Paris. This paper reports on a collaborative and cross-artform five-day workshop, “Souvenirs of the Senses”, conducted in Qatar in early 2013 as part of Tasmeem Doha: Hybrid Making, a biennial international art and design conference. Two of the three workshop leaders, Patrick West and Jondi Keane, were Australian-based visitors whereas workshop leader Valerie Jeremijenko is permanently based in Qatar. There were five workshop participants from a diverse range of international and Qatari backgrounds. One of the conference themes, “Made in Qatar”, heightened our attention to what it means to be spending time in, and making things in, one place as opposed to any other place. What did it mean to be making something in a country where so many things have to be imported? Building on this line of thought, the second conference theme, “Hybrid Making”, suggested possibilities for undoing traditional modes of souvenir making as part of the creation of more complex objects that might be sutured to the singular experiences of place that happen when a.) established regimes of tourism are disrupted, and b.) experiences of place are curated via a focused awareness of the operations of the senses as sustained within our collaborative, cross-artform workshop environment. What attracts our attention is how objects ripe for “souveniring”, when they are considered as perceptual systems, suggest new ways of experimenting with the fabrication of objects and of artistic and individual relationships to place, and further, how hybrid souvenirs affect the way in which a place is re-membered (put together) and re-made in memory.

Dancing in suits: a performer's perspective on the collaborative exchange between self, body, motion capture, animation and audience

The motion capture process places unique demands on performers. The impact of this process on the simultaneously artistic/somatic nature of dance practice is profound. This paper explores, from a performer’s perspective, how the process of performing in an optical motion capture system can impact and limit, but also expand and reconfigure a dancer’s somatic practice. This paper argues that working within motion capture processes affects not only the immediate contexts of capture and interactive performance, but also sets up a dialogue between dance practices within and beyond the motion capture studio.