4101 research outputs found
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PROFESSIONALISM AND SOCIAL MEDIA: A PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS
No full textSocial media has become increasingly popular as a tool for teaching and providing support to students in higher education. However, it may have also raised challenges for establishing feasible ethical standards of how it should be utilised. This is potentially the case when considering issues related to privacy, freedom of information or speech, the right of anonymity, equality and diversity. It appears to be a prevalent issue in line with current pedagogical development, which requires an inclusive design that embeds characteristics of a 'smart learning environment' to satisfy the needs of students from diverse backgrounds.
In this pilot study research, we aimed to explore the expectations and understandings of both students and teaching staff, towards their perceptions of what universities do and how well they do it. Questionnaire data and focus groups were collected from students and staff at two UK universities. These students and staff use multiple social media platforms (WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber, YouTube etc.) in their learning and teaching activities. The study focused on their experiences and attitudes towards the use of social media in higher education. Furthermore, institutional social media policies were evaluated according to the expectations and understanding of students and staff. A perceived performance gap can be found in certain areas, such as monitoring students' use of language, avoiding the use of personal information, understanding how the information provided will be used etc. In addition, some misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge towards the use of social media can be found in both students and staff. In relation to this knowledge gap, suggestions were made to improve the protocols or policies concerning the use of social media, as well as recommendations as to what is perceived by students and staff as the best practice
A flexible sensing system capable of sensations imitation and motion monitoring with reliable encapsulation
No full text•An encapsulation method for flexible electronics with excellent reliability is proposed.•A skin like system capable of imitating different sensations of the human skin is proposed.•A robot hand equipped with the flexible system can be used for judging the stiffness and the shape of the grasped subject.
In this work, a flexible multiple sensor system is demonstrated for robotic and prosthetic applications. The system consists of two strain sensors, a microheater, a temperature sensor and a pressure sensor for imitating different sensations of human skin. The strain sensors are designed for monitoring the movement and bending angle of the fingers; while the temperature and pressure sensors are used to collect the information of temperature, grabbing force and stiffness of the objects being grabbed, respectively. Combination of the temperature sensor and microheater mimics the temperature sensation of human skin, allowing measuring temperature and apparent temperature of the objects grasped. Liquid metal with reliable polymer encapsulation is innovatively used to interface the sensor system with peripheral circuits. This allows reliable signal transmission and processing for the flexible sensor system for strains up to 40%. This multiple sensor system is capable of precisely monitoring movement of fingers, providing different sensations and judging some characteristics of objects for a robot hand
Evangelicalism and the Inner Mission Religion, Leisure and Social Service
No full textEvangelicalism has been credited with the invention of the voluntary society; by the end of the nineteenth century, as Pat Thane notes, it was the largest single inspiration of charitable effort. Evangelicalism was a pervasive cross-denominational movement that proclaimed the responsibility of the church to apply the message of the gospel to social problems. Its defining characteristic as a force for voluntary intervention was its emphasis on social ethics and welfare and from the 1830s it inspired a middle-class crusade to infuse social and cultural life with Christian principles, prompting churches and socio-religious organizations to become providers and organizers of leisure. Puritan religion was suspicious of leisure as a source of sin and non-conformist denominations in particular imposed strict limits upon recreation. In the face of the new social problems of urbanization, religious attitudes to leisure changed. The extent to which they did so was varied; leisure remained a potential cause of sin and thus required moral regulation, but might also serve as the basis of a Christian social life
Work-Based Leisure Communities
No full textThe years immediately preceding the First World War were marked by significant industrial unrest with 40.9 million working days lost through strikes in 1912 alone and trade union membership increasing to over four million by 1914. A harmonious relationship between labour and capital was thus a major aim of post-war social reconstruction. Reformers and trade unions demanded shorter hours and a more equal distribution of leisure, both being resisted by employers. However, new Home Office guidelines on factory welfare revived interest in the socialization of workers in factory-based leisure communities. Leisure became an important non-statutory component of welfare as a field for the creation of a social community out of the economic community of the workplace. Although employers construed the leisure of their welfare schemes as an economic and a social good, critics argued it to be a distraction from low wages and trade union activity. However, the welfare provision of leisure could also be interpreted as a moral act; Alfred Zimmern, for example, who had worked in the Ministry of Reconstruction, believed it countered the dehumanization of factory work and Delisle Burns, reflecting the progressive liberal view that the factory was a social institution bound to the common good, suggested welfare could be both economically desirable and a moral good. After the War, as scientific management and industrial psychology devised schemes to bind employees to the corporate identity of the firm, welfare was decreasingly an expression of the paternalism of an individual factory owner. The provision of work-based leisure schemes was voluntary as, in most cases, was the worker’s decision to join them
Three stages of student engagement in a flipped- classroom environment : Appendix 1: Areas and Volumes
No full textAim: To link the mathematical formulae associated with area and volume to tangible concepts, for example, the number of rooms in a multi-story building.Preparedness = 0 X Number of Type 1 pages + 1 X Number of Type 2 pages + ½ X Number of Type 3 pages =
Playing work, or gamification as stultification
No full textThe contrast between work and play as activities collapses if play is seen, following anthropologist Thomas Malaby, as a disposition towards the indeterminate. Once play is positioned as a state of mind, activities that constitute work need not be disjunct from playful behavior. Yet for most workers, work is rarely if ever playful, and attempts to import play behavior into the workplace (‘gamification’) do not result in greater playfulness. Part of this problem results from specific aesthetic values for games having dominated both work and play. As Roger Caillois warned half a century ago, sport-like values have increasingly saturated the culture of the overdeveloped world. Meanwhile, gamification processes have only been able to export task-focussed reward structures from the domain of play – practices that descend from Dungeons & Dragons, but that have been denuded of their playful qualities. In parallel to the gamification of work has been the gamification of games, namely an increasing emphasis on tasks to structure video game play (e.g., achievements), and thus make them more compelling yet less playful. In so much as this entails forcing particular patterns of understanding onto both players and workers, this makes gamification a parallel to Jacques Rancière's stultification in education: a binding of wills instead of an emancipation. If we want a world where work could be more playful, we must begin by breaking the cultural dominance of sport-like and task-like aesthetics of play, and endeavour to overcome the underlying fears that prevent work from being played
Measuring the strength of human–animal bonds in zoos
No full textRepeated interactions within individual human and animal dyads can lead to the establishment of human–animal relationships (HARs), which may vary in quality from good to bad, defined in terms of the positivity (e.g., friendly contact, play) or negativity (e.g., aggression) of the interactions on which they are based. Particularly good HARs can be regarded as Human– Animal Bonds (HABs) if they are reciprocal and promote wellbeing in both parties. Although there is extensive evidence of the effects of HARs in agricultural animals and HABs in companion animals, there has been less investigation of these relationships in zoos, even though the development of HARs/HABs between zoo animals and their keepers could have important consequences for the welfare of both. Here we apply a modified version of the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS) in a zoo setting to quantify the strength of attachment of a sample of 22 keepers to the animals in their care at the zoo (ZA), in comparison with their attachment to their companion animals at home (PA). Results showed that mean PA scores (47.54 ± 3.6) were significantly higher than mean ZA scores (32.89 ± 2.6; t = –5.16, df = 13, p < 0.001), indicating stronger attachment to the companion animals. PA scores were lower in keepers who thought it inappropriate to have a bond with a zoo animal, compared with those who deemed it appropriate. Thus, HABs do appear to occur in the zoo context, though they are weaker than those developed in the home. This work also shows that a modified LAPS questionnaire is a suitable instrument for further investigation of HABs in zoos
An exploratory study to examine big data application on services and SCM
No full textThis research study aims to examine the importance of Big Data applications with a specific focus towards services and supply chain management, then just the standard dimension focus on marketing. Although big data is generally accepted as still being in its infancy, it has many applications. For instance, in Logistics, Healthcare, Banking & Finance and it has changed the way of traditional operation in these fields. The paper aims to use literature studies as a knowledge platform in investigating the use of Big Data and Big Data Analytics within services and supply chain environments. The value of this research study is to examine the concept of Big Data within the dimension of supply chain and service management. This study is at its preliminary stages of the research project, and the researcher aims to further investigate the use of big data adoption within service/supply chain manufacturing industry. The findings and early analysis of this research study can be referred by researchers when addressing the use of Big Data adoption within Supply Chain environments
Students as partners in e-content creation
No full textFor students born in the digital age of computers and considered as ‘digital natives’, I feel the current curriculum design on a module I teach provides insufficient scope to explore and challenge students ‘digital bravery’ abilities.Most students in the current higher education context use technology to access online learning materials. However, relatively few students claim to be digital content creators although many own a web-enabled electronic device with easy access to various useful digital tools that allows for the creation of these online learning materials (Jones, Johnson and Gruszczynska, 2015).Educators can nurture power-sharing relationship with students over online content creation and help learners ’take control of their learning needs and enhance student engagement by treating students as partners (SaP) as an approach to curriculum design. The concept of SaP emphasizes on engagement as an active process by engaging students as co-creators, co-designers, co-inquirers, coproducers and collaborators in partnership learning communities thus enabling the skills development process of both staff and students alike through learning partnerships (Healey et al., 2016; McPherson and Heggie, 2015; Mercer- Mapstone et al; 2017)
