Collaborative Exploration Research Articles

Phencyclidine-Based New Psychoactive Substances.

The serendipitous discovery of phencyclidine (PCP) in 1956 sets the stage for significant research efforts that resulted in a plethora of analogs and derivatives designed to explore the biological effects of this class. PCP soon became the prototypical dissociative agent that eventually sneaked through the doors of clinical laboratories and became an established street drug. Estimations suggest that around 14 PCP analogs were identified as "street drugs" in the period between the 1960s and 1990s. Fast forward to the 2000s, and largely facilitated by advancements in electronic forms of communication made possible through the Internet, a variety of new PCP analogs began to attract the attention of communities interested in the collaborative exploration of these substances. Traditionally, as was the case with the first-generation analogs identified in previous decades, the substances explored represented compounds already known in the scientific literature. As the decade of the noughties unfolded, a number of new PCP-derived substances appeared on the scene, which included some analogs that have not been previously recorded in the published literature. The aim of this chapter is to present a brief introductory overview of substances that have materialized as PCP-derived new psychoactive substances (NPS) in recent years and their known pharmacology. Since N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonism is implicated in mediating the subjective and mind-altering effects of many dissociative drugs, additional data are included from other analogs not presently identified as NPS.

Conversations About Suicide: Strategies for Detecting and Assessing Suicide Risk

When patients disclose suicidal thoughts, clinicians often feel their anxiety rise. The best remedies for clinician anxiety include an understanding of suicide dynamics and a thoughtful and empathic engagement with patients. Engagement with patients typically includes collaborative exploration of eight psychological, interpersonal, and situational dimensions related to suicidality. These dimensions are rooted in suicide theories and empirical research. In this article, specific strategies are described and illustrated, including strategies for initiating conversations about suicide, exploring different dimensions of suicide, and engaging patients in steps to increase their safety.

Collaborative routes to clarifying the murky waters of aqueous supramolecular chemistry.

On planet Earth, water is everywhere: the majority of the surface is covered with it; it is a key component of all life; its vapour and droplets fill the lower atmosphere; and even rocks contain it and undergo geomorphological changes because of it. A community of physical scientists largely drives studies of the chemistry of water and aqueous solutions, with expertise in biochemistry, spectroscopy and computer modelling. More recently, however, supramolecular chemists - with their expertise in macrocyclic synthesis and measuring supramolecular interactions - have renewed their interest in water-mediated non-covalent interactions. These two groups offer complementary expertise that, if harnessed, offer to accelerate our understanding of aqueous supramolecular chemistry and water writ large. This Review summarizes the state-of-the-art of the two fields, and highlights where there is latent chemical space for collaborative exploration by the two groups.

Radio/FADS/IMU integrated navigation for Mars entry

Supposing future orbiting and landing collaborative exploration mission as the potential project background, this paper addresses the issue of Mars entry integrated navigation using radio beacon, flush air data sensing system (FADS), and inertial measurement unit (IMU). The range and Doppler information sensed from an orbiting radio beacon, the dynamic pressure and heating data sensed from flush air data sensing system, and acceleration and attitude angular rate outputs from an inertial measurement unit are integrated in an unscented Kalman filter to perform state estimation and suppress the system and measurement noise. Computer simulations show that the proposed integrated navigation scheme can enhance the navigation accuracy, which enables precise entry guidance for the given Mars orbiting and landing collaborative exploration mission.

“We help each other”: Collaborative exploration of reading by college students of English as a foreign language in China

In this study, college English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in mainland China for the first time explored their reading process through collaborative retrospective miscue analysis (CRMA). In pairs, they interviewed each other about reading interests, beliefs, and strategies; read aloud and retold texts to each other; marked each other's miscues; and talked about how they made those miscues when they read. They read multiple genres of texts in class and discussed their miscues and readings. Through the retrospective conversations for 5 months, they shifted toward reading as meaning making and learned that everybody miscues and not all miscues are mistakes, they became more metacognitive about their reading process and uncovered and named reading strategies, and they learned English language through this language in a social context. Their native language contributed to their English language learning. The CRMA sessions provided an opportunity for Chinese EFL students to listen to each other, encourage exploratory talk, and take ownership of their learning through discovering their reading process with their peers. They valued their reading and themselves as readers through CRMA sessions.

Embodied display: A critical examination of the biopedagogical experience of wearing health

ABSTRACTWearables, technological devices for promoting health, physical activity, and weight control, have become increasingly popular. However, debates are ongoing in popular and academic settings regarding their health potential and implications. This article contributes to these conversations, offering a reflexive, collaborative exploration into the experiences of four critical health scholars using wearable technology (Fitbits). Using biopedagogies, the authors explore their experiences with body-size, fatness, and physical activity in relation to healthist and dominant “obesity” discourses. The authors contend this approach could support educators to facilitate understanding of power and knowledge dynamics that infuse new media and reinforce weight stigma, fatphobia, and bullying.

Collaborative Exploration of Trees by Energy-Constrained Mobile Robots

We study the problem of exploration of a tree by mobile agents (robots) that have limited energy. The energy constraint bounds the number of edges that can be traversed by a single agent. We use a team of agents to collectively explore the tree and the objective is to minimize the size of this team. The agents start at a single node, the designated root of the tree and the height of the tree is assumed to be less than the energy bound B of the agents. The agents have local vision and communication capabilities; two agents can exchange information only when they are collocated at the same node. We provide an exploration algorithm for visiting all nodes of the unknown tree and we compare our algorithm with the optimal offline algorithm that has complete knowledge of the tree. Our algorithm has a competitive ratio of O(log B), independent of the number of nodes in the tree. We also show that this is the best possible competitive ratio for exploration of unknown trees.

'I can see it and I can feel it, but I can't put my finger on it': A Foucauldian discourse analysis of experiences of relating on psychiatric inpatient units.

Research has shown interpersonal relationships influence experiences of inpatient psychiatric services. This study explored inpatient staff and service users' talk about relating, and consequences on available/limited social actions. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to analyse transcribed semi-structured interviews and focus groups with current inpatient staff members and members of a service-user involvement group. Two focus groups (service users n=10; staff n=6) and five interviews (service users n=2; staff n=3) were held, with participants responding to questions regarding the discursive object of 'experiences of relating on inpatient wards'. A dominant 'medical-technical-legal' discourse was seen, alongside a counter discourse of 'ordinary humane relating'. Through the tensions between these discourses emerged a discourse of 'collaborative exploration'. The medical-technical-legal discourse perpetuates notions of mental illness as impenetrable to relating. Staff fear of causing harm and positions of legal accountability generate mistrust which obstructs relating, whilst patients expect to be asked their opinions on their experiences and to be involved in deciding what treatment to accept, and experience frustration and alienation when this is not forthcoming. Ordinary humane relating was described as vital for service users in regaining a sense of self, although not considered enough in itself to promote recovery/wellness. 'Treatment for my problems' was constructed by service users as emerging through the collaborative exploration discourse, where therapeutic relationships can develop, enabling change and a return to safety. Discourse analysis of how we talk can help us understand the complexities of being, working, and relating on psychiatric inpatient units. Relating as constructed through the medical-technical-legal discourse is seen as the most legitimized but least fulfilling for staff and service users alike. Both staff and service users want purposefully therapeutic, collaborative relationships however, the environment does not currently appear to support these ways of relating emerging with legitimacy. Some simple steps might be taken to begin the shift towards more fulfilling and therapeutic ways of relating being privileged in psychiatric inpatient environments.

Editors’ introduction: A collaborative exploration of reflexivity as a pedagogic bridge towards publication for international postgraduate students

Research conducted by postgraduate students is a significant source of new knowledge in universities. While it is increasingly available in digital databases, it is not frequently published, and thus accessible, in the form of academic journal articles (Kamler, 2008; Kwan, 2010; Lassig, Dillon, & Diezmann, 2013). In this article we explore the notion of an academic writing group as a pedagogical arrangement to scaffold international postgraduate students into writing for publication. We draw from our experiences of facilitating collaborative writing workshops with five international postgraduate students from The University of Waikato. These workshops provided a pedagogic space for international students and academic mentors to collectively bridge the often obscured path between thesis writing and writing for academic publication. We explain how a focus on reflexivity offered a way of foregrounding the ‘backstories’ of each student’s research experiences and established a platform from which scholars could discuss and write. We also give consideration to the linguistic and discoursal resources that supported emerging writers to foreground reflexivity in their published text. Each of the articles in this special section celebrate the outcome of this academic writing group by showcasing the published articles that have been written by the international postgraduate students involved in this collaborative writing project. We conclude this article by offering our experiences of a collaborative writing group as one way to facilitate a pedagogic bridge between thesis writing and writing for publication.

Developing a Learning Method in an Open Innovation Project Through Action Research

Based on an action research process, this paper explores how a specific method supporting action learning was implemented in an open innovation project, and mitigated some of the inherent challenges of multi-actor collaboration. Using empirical findings from a collaborative project implementing a collaborative innovation process, in the field of vehicle and traffic safety, and drawing on theories on action learning, a learning method in open innovation, moving from a transactional way of interacting to a transformational way of acting, is outlined. The paper provides rich illustrations of how this learning method enabled a shift from a strategic to a transformational collaboration, as the participants moved from a space of territorial protection to a space for collaborative exploration. Such a learning focus explores what happens at the interface of inter-organizational collaboration. The paper makes a theoretical and a practical contribution by adding to the understanding of learning in networks and how ...

Virtual Valcamonica: Collaborative Exploration of Prehistoric Petroglyphs and Their Surrounding Environment in Multi-User Virtual Reality

Abstract In this article, we present a novel, multi-user, virtual reality environment for the interactive, collaborative 3D analysis of large 3D scans and the technical advancements that were necessary to build it: a multi-view rendering system for large 3D point clouds, a suitable display infrastructure, and a suite of collaborative 3D interaction techniques. The cultural heritage site of Valcamonica in Italy with its large collection of prehistoric rock-art served as an exemplary use case for evaluation. The results show that our output-sensitive level-of-detail rendering system is capable of visualizing a 3D dataset with an aggregate size of more than 14 billion points at interactive frame rates. The system design in this exemplar application results from close exchange with a small group of potential users: archaeologists with expertise in rockart. The system allows them to explore the prehistoric art and its spatial context with highly realistic appearance. A set of dedicated interaction techniques was developed to facilitate collaborative visual analysis. A multi-display workspace supports the immediate comparison of geographically distributed artifacts. An expert review of the final demonstrator confirmed the potential for added value in rock-art research and the usability of our collaborative interaction techniques.

Play in the Museum

Digital games have been found to yield effective and engaging learning experiences across a broad range of subjects. Much of this research has been conducted in laboratory and K-12 classrooms. Recent advances in game technologies are expanding the range of educational contexts where game-based learning environments can be deployed, including informal settings such as museums and science centers. In this article, the authors describe the design, development, and formative evaluation of Future Worlds, a prototype game-based exhibit for collaborative explorations of sustainability in science museums. They report findings from a museum pilot study that investigated the influence of visitors' individual differences on learning and engagement. Results indicate that visitors showed significant gains in sustainability knowledge as well as high levels of engagement in a free-choice learning environment with Future Worlds. These findings point toward the importance of designing game-based learning exhibits that address the distinctive design challenges presented by museum settings.

Developing Mobile Teaching Practice: A Collaborative Exploration Process

The goal of this research was to design a process to support the development of mobile teaching practice, embedded within the teaching and research activities in a Faculty of Education at a research-intensive university. Continuous developments in mobile learning create opportunities for teaching and learning, but also present challenges for educators to harness the possibilities of the medium and for the safe and accountable use of new technologies. This article describes the development of a collaborative exploration process by an interdisciplinary group of education researchers in the mobile teaching and learning field. The process was developed within an Education Living Lab, and was based on the knowledge utilisation theory of action that guides collaborating researchers and practitioners. Education researchers and pre-service student teachers participated in the research, described here as the case study of a project, during which the collaborative exploration process was designed and refined. The elements of the resulting collaborative exploration process are: a relevant driver for the project, and the four phases ‘explore’, ‘learn’, ‘adapt’ and ‘apply’. The driver is the focus topic of the research, and the phases in the process allow for collaborative activities during which the topic is investigated, while at the same time influencing the teaching, learning and research activities in the Faculty. A Faculty of Education can be a safe space where challenging aspects, such as mobile teaching and learning practices, can be investigated and developed. The proposed process can be applied to the practices of the Faculty, thus formalizing support for educators to explore teaching and learning possibilities; and to promote interdisciplinary collaborative research in the field. Future research can investigate the applicability of this collaborative exploration process for other challenging topics in educational practice and research.

Collaborative Exploration and Sensemaking of Big Environmental Sound Data

Many ecologists are using acoustic monitoring to study animals and the health of ecosystems. Technological advances mean acoustic recording of nature can now be done at a relatively low cost, with minimal disturbance, and over long periods of time. Vast amounts of data are gathered yielding environmental soundscapes which requires new forms of visualization and interpretation of the data. Recently a novel visualization technique has been designed that represents soundscapes using dense visual summaries of acoustic patterns. However, little is known about how this visualization tool can be employed to make sense of soundscapes. Understanding how the technique can be best used and developed requires collaboration between interface, algorithm designers and ecologists. We empirically investigated the practices and needs of ecologists using acoustic monitoring technologies. In particular, we investigated the use of the soundscape visualization tool by teams of ecologists researching endangered species detection, species behaviour, and monitoring of ecological areas using long duration audio recordings. Our findings highlight the opportunities and challenges that ecologists face in making sense of large acoustic datasets through patterns of acoustic events. We reveal the characteristic processes for collaboratively generating situated accounts of natural places from soundscapes using visualization. We also discuss the biases inherent in the approach. Big data from nature has different characteristics from social and informational data sources that comprise much of the World Wide Web. We conclude with design implications for visual interfaces to facilitate collaborative exploration and discovery through soundscapes.

Introduction to Special Section: The SLCE Future Directions Project

The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning (MJCSL) is delighted to invite readers into a project inspired by the 20-year anniversary of our publishing Does Service-Learning Have a Future? (Zlotkowski, 1995). Much of Zlotkowski's envisioned future has been realized in a variety of ways--some anticipated, some unexpected, and some bringing new and exciting challenges--and we are once again at a key moment to think intentionally about the future of our work We are proud to partner in launching the international SLCE Future Directions Project and look forward to seeing where this collaborative exploration takes us in the coming months and years. [JH, Editor] ********** Twenty years ago, having taken a critical look at the state of service-learning (SL) and having thought about what was necessary to move forward, Edward Zlotkowski (1995) issued a warning and a challenge to the movement: Unless we learn soon to respond in a much more differentiated and adequate way to the realities of our institutional and professional contexts, our commitment to social ideals will not generate long-term progress. And without such progress, it is a question if we can--or even should--survive. (p. 15) Many heeded his call, working thoughtfully and collaboratively across campuses and communities to create programs, partnerships, courses, and projects that foregrounded the academic dimensions of the pedagogy. The institutionalization of SL within the academy accelerated, complete with faculty development initiatives, full-time professional positions, internal and external funding, research agendas, and enhanced expectations related to the presence and quality of SL within higher education curricula. Now, in 2015, after the emergence of a plethora of models for community-campus engagement and in light of uncertainty nationally and internationally regarding the nature and goals of higher education in the early 21st century, the movement finds itself at another crossroads. The dedicated leadership of students, community members, faculty, and staff around the world over the last several decades has rendered the earlier question posed by Zlotkowski's title--does SL have a future--largely moot. The richness of what we now understand as service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) and the complexities of how we now position it in local and global social, political, economic, cultural, and ecological contexts give rise to different questions for the coming decades. In general terms: What are our visions now for the future of SLCE, why, and what will it take to get there? With more nuance: How can we best come together around the question of our work's ultimate purposes and focus effectively on what we are trying to achieve? How can we leverage the movement to advance those ends--intentionally, inclusively, and with integrity? What are the points of tension in how we understand and undertake SLCE that we need to hold creatively as we articulate and enact future directions for our work? What fundamental, transformative changes are required to realize our ends and for the associated paradigms and practices to emerge, grow, and be sustained? Such questions prompt us to critically reflect on our practices and their alignment with our goals, on our commitments and the challenges we face in bringing them to fruition, on the possibilities of our partnerships--all with an eye toward deeper understandings of ourselves, our work, and our shared and contested visions for the future and with the intent to build our capacities to work collaboratively as agents of positive change. The nature of the questions themselves as well as the maturation of the movement toward ever-more inclusive generation of knowledge and practice call for the full range of perspectives and experiences to be at the table as we move forward from the current crossroad. The SLCE Future Directions Project is a co-created space for such critical reflection among all who wish to contribute their voices. …

PBrowse: a web-based platform for real-time collaborative exploration of genomic data.

Genome browsers are widely used for individually exploring various types of genomic data. A handful of genome browsers offer limited tools for collaboration among multiple users. Here, we describe PBrowse, an integrated real-time collaborative genome browser that enables multiple users to simultaneously view and access genomic data, thereby harnessing the wisdom of the crowd. PBrowse is based on the Dalliance genome browser and has a re-designed user and data management system with novel collaborative functionalities, including real-time collaborative view, track comment and an integrated group chat feature. Through the Distributed Annotation Server protocol, PBrowse can easily access a wide range of publicly available genomic data, such as the ENCODE data sets. We argue that PBrowse represents a paradigm shift from using a genome browser as a static data visualization tool to a platform that enables real-time human–human interaction and knowledge exchange in a collaborative setting. PBrowse is available at http://pbrowse.victorchang.edu.au, and its source code is available via an open source BSD 3 license at http://github.com/VCCRI/PBrowse.

The Choreography of Conversation: An Exploration of Collaboration and Difficult Discussions in Cross Disciplinary Teacher Discourse Communities

This qualitative study explores three years of data from an ongoing professional development program for alumni of one university’s varied teacher education programs. Participants cross secondary grade levels and disciplines. Researchers examine what transpires when controversial topics are raised within this diverse teacher discourse community. Findings across the data suggest that when faced with more difficult topics such as race and sexual orientation, participants engage in comfortable collaboration rather than critical colleagueship, preferring to provide uncritical, though helpful, support rather than challenge one another. Implications for current teacher education programs include encouraging more open and analytical dialogue that moves students beyond their comfort zones, both inside and outside of their respective grades and disciplines.

A collaborative exploration of the reasons for lower satisfaction with services among Bangladeshi and Pakistani social care users.

This study explored underlying reasons for the expression of dissatisfaction with services among Bangladeshi and Pakistani social care users in England and investigated, using a collaborative approach, how these could be addressed. In-depth interviews were conducted in Birmingham, Leeds and London during 2012-2013 with 63 Bangladeshi, Pakistani and white British service users and 24 social care managers, social workers and care workers. A further 34 cognitive interviews were conducted within the same study. Following data analysis, three collaborative workshops involving service users and providers were held to validate the findings and to draw out policy and practice recommendations. Analysis of the cognitive interviews showed that higher dissatisfaction among Bangladeshi and Pakistani service users reported in social care surveys was not due to questionnaire design. Instead in-depth interviews showed that dissatisfaction across all three groups was expressed along the social care journey, including accessing care, communication with social workers and the nature of care received. While many issues were common to all three groups, cultural differences also emerged as affecting experiences of social care. These included misunderstandings about family roles in care; gender issues, especially relating to women; language and communication barriers, alongside the need for a more nuanced approach to ethnic 'matching'; and continuing limited cultural understanding among care workers. The collaborative workshops identified practical actions that could address some of the issues identified. These covered raising awareness of services within communities; improving support for informal carers; service user input to assessments; consistent and ongoing sharing of information; improving access; and more efforts to diversify and appropriately train the social care workforce. In conclusion, the paper presents the reality of dissatisfaction among these groups and argues for more action involving communities and service providers to address these persistent issues collaboratively.

Discovering Influential Users in Online Social Networks Based on Multi-Features

As online social contact has become the main means of social communication and cooperation, users, as the basic element of social contact, also present multiple characteristics. How to capture the characteristics of users among mass social data and evaluate their influence has gained the attention of many researchers. This paper, based on the improved co-evolutionary algorithm, conducts collaborative exploration on user characteristics and introduces neural network to optimize the algorithm, to improve the accuracy and fault tolerant ability of the algorithm. Based on the improved co-evolutionary algorithm, this paper conducts exploration and empirical analysis on the influence of multi-feature users, and gets a user rating model with good robustness and high accuracy. And through comparing three different algorithms, it conducts sensitivity analysis, showing that the optimized co-evolutionary algorithm has higher adaptability.

Translating Partnerships: How Faculty-Student Collaboration in Explorations of Teaching and Learning Can Transform Perceptions, Terms, and Selves

Linguistic, literary, and feminist studies define translation as a process of rendering a new version of an original with attention to context, power, and purpose. Processes of translation in the context of student-faculty co-inquiry in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offer examples of how this re-rendering can play out in the realm of academic development. In this article, translation serves as a conceptual framework that allows us to bring a fresh interpretation to the collaborative work of participants in a student-faculty pedagogical partnership program based at two colleges in the mid-Atlantic United States. We argue that faculty members and student consultants who participate in this program engage in processes of translation that lead to transformed perceptions of classroom engagement, transformed terms for naming pedagogical practices, and, more metaphorically, transformed selves. Drawing on data from an ongoing action research study of this program and on articles and essays we and other participants in the program have published, we use a form of narrative analysis as it intersects with the conceptual framework offered by translation to illustrate how, through their collaboration, faculty and students engage in never-finished processes of change that enable mental perceptions, linguistic terms, and human selves to be newly comprehended, communicated, and expressed. We touch upon what is lost in translation as well and the necessity of ongoing efforts to make meaning through collaborative explorations, analyses, and re-renderings. Finally, we provide examples of how the changes participants experience and effect endure beyond the time of partnership and in other realms of their lives.