1,588 research outputs found
Effectiveness of a multicomponent intervention to reduce social isolation and loneliness in community‐dwelling elders: A randomized clinical trial
No full textAbstract Aims To assess the effect of a multicomponent intervention on reducing social isolation and loneliness and improving the quality of life in community‐dwelling older adults. Design A cluster‐randomized controlled clinical trial. Methods A total of 56 older adults participated in the control group and 63 older adults in the experimental group. The intervention consisted of 6 home‐based face‐to‐face sessions, intercalated with 5 telephone calls and was conducted by nursing students and volunteer staff with experience in the subject. The study was conducted between April 2018 and December 2019. In terms of statistical analysis, several procedures were carried out: a statistical analysis per protocol and intention to treat, considering isolation, loneliness and quality of life as endpoints; a comparison of paired means, to analyse the behaviour of the outcome variables at baseline and the end of the study; and finally, a binary logistic regression analysis, considering social support as a dependent variable. Results The study results do not show the effectiveness of the modified CARELINK programme, analysed as a whole, on the decrease in social isolation or loneliness or the improvement in HRQL. However, a detailed analysis of the behaviour of some of the variables during the study indicates some results that deserve to be commented on. Comparing the mean confidential support scores between the experimental and control group at the initial and final stages shows significant differences in the analysis by protocol, and close to statistical significance in the analysis by intention to treat. Comparing the paired means obtained in the experimental group, an improvement in emotional loneliness scores was found. Finally, the variables associated with the social support of the subjects at the end of the follow‐up period were as follows: having people who help them and mobility. Conclusion Although the results obtained do not allow us to affirm that the intervention programme is effective, these same results point to improved confidential support and emotional loneliness in older adults participating in the intervention. Having people to help them and a greater degree of mobility are factors favouring the decrease in social isolation. Impact This study suggested that modified CARELINK, a multicomponent intervention performed by trained volunteers, could improve confidential support in community‐dwelling older adults. It also reports the importance of considering the level of mobility and support networks as determinants of the improvement caused by the intervention
Exploratory talk within collaborative small groups in mathematics
No full textThis report describes one aspect of a wider research study on exploratory talk within collaborative small groups in secondary mathematics lessons. It outlines students’ views of using collaborative activity to learn mathematics. The fuller research study explores the extent to which exploratory talk occurs in collaborative peer groups in secondary mathematics classrooms
Assessment of (computer-supported) collaborative learning
No full textWithin the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CS)CL research community there has been an extensive dialogue on theories and perspectives on learning from collaboration, approaches to scaffold (script) the collaborative process, and most recently research methodology. In contrast, the issue of assessment of collaborative learning has received much less attention. This article discusses how assessment of collaborative learning has been addressed, provides a perspective on what could be assessed, and highlights limitations of current approaches. Since assessment of collaborative learning is a demanding experience for teachers and students alike, they require adequate computer-supported and intelligent tools for monitoring and assessment. A roadmap for the role and application of intelligent tools for assessment of (CS)CL is presented
SemCW: Semantic Collaborative Writing using RST
No full textDuring collaborative writing each author works on a copy of the shared document. These copies are then merged to produce the final document. This asynchronous work is supported by several collaborative writing tools. While these tools are excellent at merging and detecting syntactic conflicts, they are not able to easily recognise semantic inconsistencies. This hinders the coherence of the document because while each individual copy might be well constructed, they may not be after the merge. To address this, we investigate the combination of the Rhetorical Structure Theory with Operational Transformation approach. In this paper, we define a data model, a set of operations to manipulate the RST structures and a set of transformation functions. A validity checker alerts the authors to areas in the text with possible semantic lapses in the merged documents
A narrative-based collaborative writing tool for coherent technical documents
No full textOne important feature of an effective document that makes it easy to read and understand is known as coherence. Technical documents produced collaboratively are often incoherent due to a lack of group consensus and misaligned contributions by the individual authors. However, current document planning techniques and writing tools do not provide explicit support for improving coherence. The goal of this research, therefore, is to develop and evaluate a new technique and tool that helps teams of authors to structure coherent technical documents. The coherence of a document can be attributed to the story (or narrative) it conveys to the reader. If this story is consistent and coherent, the same can be said about the document. A discourse theory such as Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) that has been developed by linguists helps further to analyse and improve a narrative. RST explains the coherence of a text by virtue of relationships (such as “paragraph A justifies paragraph B”) between parts of the text. This research has combined the ideas from these parallel strands of research to develop a new document planning technique called narrative-based writing. The method involves writing down an explicit précis of the story (called a document narrative or DN) and then analysing it using RST. The DN and RST analysis are then used to structure the eventual document. To extend the usability of narrative-based writing to geographically-dispersed authors, I have designed and implemented a collaborative tool that allows co-authors to edit, analyse and review DNs. The thorough design for the tool uses a combination of three models (conceptual, business process and functional) culminating in a set of functions that enable collaborative narrative-based writing. This dissertation discusses how, in the future, these functions could be incorporated in existing collaborative writing tools. Implementing this tool, albeit in its current prototypic state, has been invaluable in understanding the complexities of modelling and manipulating DNs and RST structures. Initial investigations using the new technique and tool have been positive, encouraging me to continue the research and evaluation in this field
Bullies and victims in a primary classroom: Scaffolding a collaborative community of practice
No full textThis paper is based on a year long research project that examined changes in participation of 31 students in a Year 4/5 classroom, where bullying was occurring. The teacher (first author and researcher) facilitated authentic learning opportunities to make the social practices explicit during weekly class meetings. A socio cultural perspective and an action research process framed this qualitative study. Data sources included school behaviour records, sociograms, semi-structured interviews, teacher observations and students' reflection logs. Rogoff's planes provided the analytical framework to examine how to scaffold a collaborative community of practice. The case studies of two students, Denis and Nathan, provide exemplars of how the teacher scaffolded students' social understandings within small social groups through collaborative leadership opportunities and values education. Results spanning the school year indicated that Nathan, like many of his peers, developed confidence to make new friends and become more assertive. Although Denis took longer to adopt pro-social goals, by the end of the school year, he refrained from bullying Nathan. The significance of this research supports recent findings that a focus on the social dynamics of the classroom can bring about positive change in student behaviour
Experiences of learning through collaborative evaluation from a masters programme in professional education
No full textThis paper presents findings from a collaborative evaluation project within a masters programme in professional education. The project aimed to increase knowledge of research methodologies and methods through authentic learning where participants worked in partnership with the tutor to evaluate the module which they were studying. The project processes, areas of the course evaluated and the data collection methods are outlined. The findings focus on key themes from evaluating the effectiveness of using a collaborative evaluation approach, including: enhanced student engagement; creativity of the collaborative evaluation approach; equality between the tutor and students; and enhanced research skills. Discussion focuses on the outcomes and effectiveness of the project and tutor reflections on adopting a collaborative approach. This paper highlights lessons from the project relevant to those interested in staff-student partnership approaches and those facilitating postgraduate learning and teaching programmes and educational research courses
The Impact of Group Size on Collaborative Search
No full textCollaborative search, where the activities of multiple users are combined to satisfy their information need, is an effective tool to to handle complex search tasks. People search collaboratively in groups of varying sizes. Various collaborative search systems have been studied in previous work, but they only investigate a fixed group size. Therefore, the impact of group size on retrieval effectiveness in collaborative search is an open research question. We investigate the effect of group size on retrieval effectiveness in collaborative search in a crowdsourced study with a total of 305 participants, in groups varying in size from one to six. We use a web-based system for collaborative search in this study called SearchX. We extended SearchX with two features for algorithmic mediation, which aims to support users in division of labour and sharing knowledge with collaborators. We investigate three variants of our system with and without features for algorithmic mediation to investigate its effect on retrieval effectiveness for groups of varying sizes. Our results show that the group recall increases linearly with group size. In contrast to a previous simulation study by Joho et al. [20] we do not find diminishing returns in group recall with increasing group size, suggesting that larger groups may increase group recall further. We also find that the investigated algorithmic mediation features do not significantly affect retrieval effectiveness. We conclude that the simulation results do not translate to our study, and that future collaborative search systems should be designed while taking the effects of mediation features on real users into account.Information ArchitectureComputer Science | Data Science and Technology | Information Architectur
Paracetamol and antibiotics in childhood and subsequent development of wheezing/asthma: Association or causation?
No full textBackground: Several studies found an association between early administration of paracetamol and antibiotics and development of wheezing. This could be due to confounding: wheeze and asthmatic symptoms in early childhood are difficult to distinguish from respiratory tract infections that are widely treated with these drugs; in case of persistence of symptoms up to school age, this could explain the observed relationship. Methods: We investigated the association between paracetamol and antibiotics use in the first year of life and wheezing phenotypes, i.e. wheezing starting in different time periods (early, persistent and late-onset) in the SIDRIA-2 study, a cross-sectional survey of 16 933 children aged 6-7 years. Directed acyclic graph (DAG) was used to depict the causal structure. Results: Paracetamol and antibiotics administration in the first year were associated with early wheezing (first 2 years of life only) [odds ratio (OR): 2.27; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.98-2.62 and OR = 3.76, 95% CI: 3.31-4.27] and with persistent wheezing (first 2 years + last 12 months) (OR = 1.77, 95% CI: 1.49-2.10 and OR = 3.06, 95% CI: 2.60-3.60), whereas the association with late-onset wheezing (in the last 12 months only) was weak (OR = 1.12, 95% CI: 0.97-1.31 and OR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.02-1.38 for paracetamol and antibiotics, respectively). DAG shows that even in the absence of a direct (causal) arrow from early drugs use to wheezing at school age, the two are associated due to confounding (through the 'infection' node). Conclusions: It is important to take into account different phenotypes in order to disentangle the association of paracetamol and antibiotics with wheezing. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association. © The Author 2011; all rights reserved
About Parallel Programming: Paradigms, Parallel Execution and Collaborative Systems
No full textIn the last years, there were made efforts for delineation of a stabile and unitary frame, where the problems of logical parallel processing must find solutions at least at the level of imperative languages. The results obtained by now are not at the level of the made efforts. This paper wants to be a little contribution at these efforts. We propose an overview in parallel programming, parallel execution and collaborative systems.Parallel Programming, Parallel Execution, Collaborative systems, Collaborative parallel execution
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