Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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The ‘contested enterprise’ of Initial Teacher Education
Get PDFSince 1990 Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in New Zealand has undergone significant change following organisational shifts across the education system. Yet key issues from earlier years are still contested, with ongoing debates over the locus and oversight of ITE, the nature of quality teacher education, and the establishment of national standards for ITE programmes and their graduates. The debates have been underpinned by changing social and cultural expectations, the establishment and development of new regulatory bodies, New Zealand and international research. This paper examines these debates and argues that policy makers and practitioners in ITE face contradictory pressures and challenges such as the continuing pressure for quick fix and uniform solutions and deficit thinking about ITE. Progress depends on ongoing dialogue at both national and local level, rigorous evaluation of new developments, an acknowledgement of complexity, and a need for mutual trust and accountability
Design of the Chassis and Locomotion System for a Mobile Robot
Get PDFMARVIN, the Mobile Autonomous Robotic Vehicle for Indoor Navigation, has undergone a comprehensive transformation. It evolved from a state where essential components were missing, including the drive platform, and central controller. The project's re-use goal focused on integrating existing electronics to fulfil essential functions such as power supply, interfacing with the torso actuators, and sensor integration, and using motors and wheels from a prior implementation. Additionally, an Intel NUC computer running ROS2 was integrated to enable precise control through the use of rotary encoders and a dual-channel motor driver with regenerative braking capabilities. In the software domain, MARVIN's development involved creating dedicated ROS2 nodes for motor control, torso management, and sensor interaction. Notably, the project encountered a challenge with the sensor board due to the absence of available documentation and original code. Consequently, the project required the development of basic firmware based on available datasheets to facilitate its seamless integration. An abstraction layer was introduced to streamline message publication, enhancing adaptability. MARVIN now stands as a versatile platform, poised for applications in security and human-robot interaction research. It encapsulates the project's commitment to advancing robotics technology while showcasing dedication to sustainability through the re-use of existing electronics. This valuable platform offers numerous possibilities for innovation and experimentation across various domains
Diffusion Based Audio Generation
Get PDFGenerating data from complex data distributions has been a long-standing problem in the field of artificial intelligence, with generative models offering many opportunities in rapid content creation, increasing efficiency, and many other use cases. Diffusion models are one class of generative models that have seen great success in recent years. In this work, we look to leverage current state of the art diffusion methods to generate musical audio. By estimating the gradient of an unknown target distribution, diffusion models have the capacity to generate new data samples from complex data distributions. Recent work has seen improvements to diffusion methods, particularly in training and sampling procedures that have allowed for improvements in sampling quality and cost. This project presents the usage of contemporary diffusion techniques for the purpose of musical audio generation and discusses the effectiveness of diffusion models in this setting. The work comprises of converting a dataset of classical piano pieces into a set of spectrogram images that are used within a diffusion-based setup to generate novel spectrogram images. The project converts generated spectrogram images back to raw audio, resulting in short audio sequences that resemble audio from our training set. Finally, the paper discusses opportunities for future work for diffusion methods, particularly in the domain of audio generation
From Pedagogy to Property: Copyright in Teaching Materials
Get PDFSome university intellectual property policies claim the right to use some of the copyright-protected material that has been authored by academics. While the clauses in these policy instruments can vary in detail, the claim to use this material can extend to both traditional scholarly work, such as books and articles, together with teaching materials. This article considers whether the legal foundations for the claim are sound and whether the claim aligns with the characteristics of universities set out in the Education and Training Act 2020
A Wayfinding Mobile Application for Visually Impaired Users in Wellington Regional Hospital
Get PDFHospitals can be very difficult and confusing to navigate, and visitors can get lost easily, resulting in missed appointments. This not only causes inconvenience for patients and visitors, but also consumes valuable staff time as they assist in giving directions. This is especially an issue in the Wellington Regional Hospital where refurbishments and the addition of buildings have only made this more confusing. This problem is particularly acute for visually impaired people who may require additional assistance with wayfinding. This project aims to design and develop an existing wayfinding mobile application to enable interactive wayfinding for both visually-impaired and non-impaired users at the Wellington Regional Hospital. The existing application did not implement turn-by-turn navigation or accurate location detection. The project developed a new mapping service in the existing application, and further built on the application by including turn-by-turn navigation and audio prompts. Improved location detection are achieved by the use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons deployed around the wayfinding area. Evaluation of the mobile application involved visually-impaired and non-impaired individuals navigating to a location in order to determine the feasibility and overall success of the application. This analysis gathered invaluable insights, assessing not only the application's feasibility but also its accuracy, and overall effectiveness in addressing the complex wayfinding challenges faced by both categories of users
Front-End for a Semi-Automated Grading Tool
Get PDFMotivated by the shift towards online teaching, an application which semi-automates the grading of long-form questions would not only save time but could be more accurate. The education sector frequently grapples with the challenge of efficiently grading a large volume of student submissions. Addressing this challenge, this project developed the front-end interface of a semi-automated grading tool that promises to streamline the grading process, thereby enhancing efficiency and reducing potential biases. The foundation of this tool's evaluation mechanism is built upon the utilization of four distinct distance metrics, each meticulously selected to calculate the disparity between student submissions. Questions and submissions can be imported directly into the application, and once the grading has been completed, they can be downloaded and exported. To cater to a dynamic and interactive user experience, the project leverages the capabilities of Next.js, a robust React framework known for its performance and scalability. This framework was selected not only for its rich set of features but also for its server-rendering capabilities, which will facilitate the real-time processing of data, critical for instantaneous feedback during the grading process. This application provides an education tool that can be used by lecturers to help better utilise their time, spending less time marking and more time teaching
Constructive Trusts and Theft
Get PDFThe Theft Act 1968 (UK) marked a major reform of United Kingdom criminal law resulting in numerous offences being superseded by a broad crime of theft. The Act explicitly provided that theft extended to interferences with equitable property rights. While the extension of the offence to express trusts might be largely unproblematic, the possibility of it applying to trusts arising by operation of law has been more controversial. This article suggests that the issue is likely to arise less often than is commonly supposed. Many rights enforced by way of a constructive trust can only properly be regarded as initially giving rise to a mere equity that will mature into a full proprietary interest only following the exercise of a power of election and/or the intervention of a court. It follows that, prior to such steps being taken, assets affected by such an equity will not be "property belonging to another" for the purposes of the definition of theft under the Act. Nonetheless, the concerns regarding the extension of theft to constructive trusts are well founded. The reasons for providing that equitable proprietary rights arise by operation of law have little to do with sound rationales for characterising conduct as theft
What Would it Take to Successfully Introduce Compulsory Te Reo Māori in all Schools in Aotearoa New Zealand? A future focused policy analysis
Get PDFWhile considerable ground has been made in education policy promoting te reo Māori, no government has yet been willing to implement this as a requirement for all schools in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this article I undertake a ‘future-focused’ policy analysis to consider what it might take to implement this by drawing on recent research involving key advocates and stakeholders. I propose a ‘radical incrementalism’ approach that increasingly normalises and values te reo Māori across all sectors of society and that is supported by the resourcing of teachers and teachers’ college institutions and their leadership
DRAKVUF Malware Sandbox
Get PDFA sandbox is a system that provides a safe environment for analysis and deployment of malware samples while all the activities of the malware are captured and logged. DRAKVUF is an open-source black box analysis sandbox based on the popular Cuckoo sandbox system, which allows for safe execution of malware samples in various operating systems. The current implementation of DRAKVUF has shortcomings in terms of the web user interface which restricts user customisation of the analysis environment variables. This project extends the DRAKVUF sandbox web user interface to allow new capabilities such as: support for selection of multiple operating systems with various configurations, easy selection, and assigning environment variables that are currently hidden within the DRAKVUF configuration files or command line interface. The queuing system of DRAKVUF was also extended to allow for multiple samples to be analysed at once. A reporting component was also significantly improved by implementing the capability to generate and send comprehensive reports to a given email address provided by the user during submission. The reporting interface also provides historical data on previously submitted malware samples. The improved DRAKVUF system was hosted on an ECS server, accessible to staff and students to submit and analyse potentially malicious samples. The success of this project ws determined through a successful deployment and fully operational malware sandbox of DRAKVUF Sandbox instance and a developed web interface with several different operating systems and associated configurations
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