Lecture recording has become an essential tool for educational institutions to enhance the student learning experience and offer online courses for remote learning programs. Highresolution 4K cameras have gained popularity in these systems due to their affordability and clarity of written content on boards/screens. Unfortunately, at 4K resolution, a typical 45- minute lecture video easily exceeds 2GB. Many video files of this size place a financial burden on institutions and students, especially in developing countries where financial resources are limited. Institutions require costly high-end equipment to capture, store and distribute this ever-increasing collection of videos. Students require a fast internet connection with a large data quota for off-campus viewing, which can be too expensive for many, especially if they use mobile data. This project designs and implements a low-cost presenter and writing detection front-end that can integrate with an external Virtual Cinematographer (VC). Gesture detection was also explored; however, the frame differencing approach used for presenter detection was not sufficiently robust for gesture detection. Our front-end is carefully designed to run on commodity computers without requiring expensive Graphics Processing Units (GPU) or servers. An external VC can use our contextual information to segment a smaller cropping window from the 4K frame, only containing the presenter and relevant boards, drastically reducing the file size of the resultant videos while preserving writing clarity. The software developed as part of this project will be available as open source. Our results show that the front-end module is fit for purpose and sufficiently robust across several challenging lecture venue types. On average, a 2-minute video clip is processed by the front-end in under 60 seconds (or approximately half of the input video duration). The majority (89%) of this time is used for reading and decoding frames from storage. Additionally, our low-cost presenter detection achieves an overall F1-Score of 0.76, while our writing detection achieves an overall F1-Score of 0.55. We also demonstrate a mean reduction of 81.3% in file size from the original 4K video to a cropped 720p video when using our front-end in a full pipeline with an external VC.

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Over the past 50 years, living-learning programs (LLPs) have emerged as a dynamic curricular innovation in higher education. These programs are residentially based, seeking to seamlessly integrate the classroom and residence hall environments and blur the traditional boundaries between the academic and residential experiences for students (Kuh, 1996; Inkelas & Soldner, 2012). However, efforts to implement LLPs at some campuses have been met with resistance; this is not surprising, as institutions of higher education are often charged in part with preserving cultural and social norms, therefore making them naturally resistant to change (Shapiro & Levine, 1999). One of the most common challenges facing colleges and universities that seek change is a tendency for institutional culture dynamics to be potentially divisive and foster internal conflict (Kuh & Whitt, 1988). Such conflict impacts faculty, students, and administrative subcultures. Institutional partnerships that can overcome divisive cultural dynamics have the potential to greatly enhance the campus climate (Nash et al., 2016). This qualitative research study asks the overarching question, "How does institutional culture influence the creation and development of an LLP and, in turn, can an LLP reciprocally shape institutional culture?" This case study examines the internal conflict and cultural implications related to the founding of a comprehensive first-year residential college system at St. Lawrence University -- a small, private liberal arts institution in the Northeast. Utilizing Kuh's & Whitt's (1988) Framework for Analyzing Culture in Higher Education, as well as Schein's (2004) Conceptual Model for Managed Culture Change, this study collected data through historical document analysis, as well as narrative inquiry interviews focusing on the artifacts, values, assumptions, and beliefs of the campus community. In-depth interviews were conducted with faculty and administrators who played key roles in the foundational years of this LLP, as well as with faculty who opposed the program. The findings of this study demonstrate how preexisting cultural conditions heavily influenced the creation and development of the LLP. This study also identifies the ways in which several deeply entrenched cultural conditions changed, indicating this comprehensive LLP fostered a relational capacity to facilitate institutional culture change.

Orientador: José Armando Valente / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T17:13:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paula_BrunoHenriquede_M.pdf: 4362042 bytes, checksum: 6f3afbfc8ebe39bb7d3985f8ff4bf5d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: Nos últimos anos, nota-se um grande aumento do interesse quanto ao uso de jogos digitais na Educação. Esta aproximação se dá especialmente como uma tentativa para modificar o processo educacional, de modo a conectá-lo às tecnologias digitais, tão ubíquas na atualidade. Contudo, não se pode imaginar que a integração entre videogames e Educação seja trivial: é preciso conhecer as especificidades destes artefatos para então poder explorar ao máximo seu potencial educacional. Da mesma forma, esta integração pode ser realizada de diferentes maneiras, das mais tradicionais, utilizando jogos educativos ou comerciais em contextos escolares, ou através de uma nova abordagem, que propõe que os educandos criem seus próprios jogos e, com isso, possam construir conhecimento e desenvolverem habilidades importantes para a vida contemporânea nesse processo. Destaca-se ainda como essa última abordagem é ainda pouco explorada no Brasil. Através deste projeto, pretende-se refletir tanto sobre as características específicas de um jogo digital, bem como sobre as maneiras nas quais a integração entre jogos digitais e Educação podem ser realizadas, suas potencialidades e dificuldades, com especial atenção ao uso pedagógico da criação de jogos digitais. Dessa forma, espera-se produzir referencial teórico que seja capaz de auxiliar educadores interessados no uso de jogos digitais, bem como disseminar, através de uma experiência de aplicação, a abordagem pedagógica que defende a criação de jogos digitais por parte dos educandos. / Abstract: In recent years, there has been a great interest in the use of digital games in Education. This could be analysed as an attempt to modify the educational process, in order to connect it to digital technologies, which are becoming even more pervasive nowadays. However, one cannot imagine this integration between games and education as trivial: the specific features of these artefacts must be understood to explore their educational potential. Likewise, this integration can be accomplished in different ways, from the most traditional ones, like those which propose the use of commercial or educational games in schools, to new ones, such as students producing their own games and, through this production, construct knowledge and develop relevant skills and competences. It is important to remark that there has been little exploration of this latter approach (game production by students) in Brazil. Through this project, I intend to reflect both on the specific characteristics of a digital game, as well as the ways in which the integration between digital games and education can be carried out, their strengths and difficulties, with special attention to the pedagogical use of game-making. By doing so, I expect to produce a theoretical framework that would assist educators interested in using digital games, as well as to disseminate, through an applied experience, the pedagogical approach which advocates for the creation of digital games by students / Mestrado / Artes Visuais / Mestre em Artes Visuais

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M.Tech. / This study is based on the premise that awareness of active citizenship among South African citizens should be encouraged and can be developed through specific educational and skills interventions embedded in Visual Art learning programmes. South Africa‟s developing democracy requires active citizens with the capacity to disseminate values of equality, dignity, liberty and social justice, amongst other constitutional rights. Our country‟s history in the struggle for liberation encompasses a legacy of resistance, and screen-printed protest posters played an important role in communicating dissent towards the apartheid state (Seidmann 2009, Peffer 2009). My research examines the role of screen-printing as a particular graphic medium which is an organising tool to create awareness and communication. The project uses co-operative enquiry as a participatory action research method to facilitate the application of hand-made fine art screen-printed artworks and posters that support skills development, an understanding of self-identity and a sharing of skills that contribute to active citizenship. I present three visual art screen-printing projects that I facilitated from 2010 to 2011 at Artist Proof Studio (APS), an art centre in Johannesburg, whose mission is to inculcate aspects of active citizenship among the participating learners. I contend that the combination of all three screen-print projects presented to the group of students, leads to skills-development, awareness of personal identity and participation in community engagement projects which may enhance their ability to participate as active citizens and which in turn supports the mission statement of the education unit at APS. Such an intervention serves as a learning model that can further contribute to social, educational and economic redress among the participants at APS.

According to Inkelas et al. (2008), Living Learning Programs (LLPs) that are collaboratively led by academic affairs and student affairs units tend to have a significant impact on student learning, when compared to students who participate in LLPs that are operated by one unit (Inkelas et al., 2008). Despite evidence that co-authored LLPs are beneficial to enhancing the LLP student experience, there is little to no research that explores how administrators facilitate collaboration between the units used to co-author the LLP student experience. For this reason, the focus of this study was to explore how administrators facilitate collaboration between academic affairs and students affairs units in the context of LLPs. A sequential explanatory mixed methods approach revealed that collaboration between both units is facilitated through a series of four factors; (a) Mutually supportive relationships, (b) LLP coordinators, (c) collaborative networks and (d) mechanisms for collaboration. In addition, LLP administrators throughout the study demonstrated a high effort of collaboration on co-curricular programming and slightly less of an effort to collaborate on items related to curricular or judicial engagement of LLP students.

Limited English proficiency (LEP) amongst non-English-speaking background (NESB) employees is a major concern for the Government, employers and unions in Australia. Due to their low levels of English proficiency, NESB employees are often unable to carry out effectively the required workplace tasks. In the current climate of rapid change in workplaces, as a result of Award Restructuring, NESB employees may also lack the communication skills necessary to undertake skill-based training and, therefore, be further disadvantaged. In light of these concerns, this study investigated the English learning needs of a group of NESB non-academic staff at the University of Canberra (UC). It established that there was a gap between their present levels of English proficiency and the levels required in their current positions. As a result, these employees are unable to engage effectively in all communication tasks required in the workplace. Following a detailed analysis of the current literature on the provision of workplace English training it is recommended that an English in the Workplace (EWP) program be provided at the UC for NESB non-academic employees. Specific recommendations are made regarding the design and implementation of the learning program.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:05:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2816.pdf: 3634540 bytes, checksum: 6fe824000d56b37505cefb028fae6be1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-27 / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / Difficulties in learning how to read and write might bring serious jeopardy to students progression in school. Researches focusing teaching methods for individualized application, based on the paradigm of stimulus equivalence, show that it is possible to significantly improve learning of reading and other skills Although they present good results, these methods have limited range, because the presence of a tutor is not always possible or economically viable. Besides, authoring and management of learning programs based on these methods are complex and demand training of tutors and specialists. Some results have already been reached concerning to informatization, though the solutions presented offer little flexibility, since they focus on teaching topics that are either too specific or too broad, which requires complementary effort for its effective usage. This dissertation explores and evaluates software engineering and distributed computing techniques in an attempt to find a solution that might diminish costs involved in the creation, application and management of individualized programs, besides allowing large scale diffusion of teaching through these methods. A software infrastructure that allows these objectives is proposed, composed by an architecture, modules to perform specific tasks, and recommendations on some patterns of architecture, project and interface in order to help the development or adaptation of new modules. In order to maximize the installed base of the developed modules and also to benefit a larger number of students, the solution promotes interoperability of Web applications, mobile devices and interactive digital television. Aiming the validation of the proposed infrastructure and also to offer an operational codification to the problem of computerized individualized learning, a modular system named GEIC was developed and deployed, being used by researchers of several universities. Despite the initial motivation of this work to offer an infrastructure for the creation of systems specific for teaching reading and writing, the solution proposed here is very broad in scope and supports other domains and learning paradigms. / No processo educacional dificuldades com a alfabetização podem acarretar sérios prejuízos à evolução acadêmica do aluno. Pesquisas com métodos de ensino para aplicação individualizada, baseados no paradigma de equivalência de estímulos, mostram que é possível melhorar significativamente a aprendizagem de leitura com compreensão (e de outras habilidades). Embora apresentem bons resultados, esses métodos têm sua abrangência limitada, pois a participação presencial de um tutor nem sempre é possível ou economicamente viável. Além disso, a autoria e gerenciamento de programas de ensino baseados nesses métodos são complexos e exigem o treinamento de tutores e especialistas de domínio. Alguns resultados já foram alcançados no sentido de informatizar esse processo, porém as soluções apresentadas oferecem pouca flexibilidade, pois são voltadas para o ensino de um assunto específico ou são muito genéricas, exigindo esforço complementar para sua efetiva utilização. Nesta dissertação são exploradas e avaliadas técnicas de engenharia de software e computação distribuída na busca de uma solução que possa proporcionar a redução dos custos envolvidos na criação, aplicação e gerenciamento de programas de ensino individualizados, além de permitir a difusão em larga escala do ensino através desses métodos. É proposta uma infra-estrutura de software que viabiliza a realização desses objetivos, composto de uma arquitetura, módulos para realização de tarefas específicas, e recomendações de padrões de arquitetura, projeto e interface para auxiliar no desenvolvimento ou adaptação de novos módulos. Com o objetivo de maximizar a base instalada dos módulos desenvolvidos e também de permitir que um maior número de alunos seja beneficiado, a solução promove a interoperabilidade de aplicações de ambiente Web, dispositivos móveis e de TV Digital Interativa. A fim de validar a infra-estrutura proposta e também de oferecer uma codificação operacional ao problema do ensino individualizado por computador, foi desenvolvido um sistema modular chamado GEIC, já implantado e em uso por pesquisadores de várias universidades. Apesar da motivação inicial deste trabalho ter sido oferecer uma infra-estrutura para a criação de sistemas para o ensino de escrita e leitura, a solução proposta é bastante abrangente e suporta outros domínios e paradigmas de ensino.