Real-world Engagement Research Articles

A web-based decision support system for smart dam operations using weather forecasts

Abstract A web-based open-source decision support system (DSS) was developed to facilitate real-world engagement with dam-operating agencies in the decision-making process involving atmospheric modeling, hydrologic modeling, and web technology. The development process was decoupled into the container (frontend) and the modeling framework for the content (backend), to arrive at an intelligent system that improves the productivity and independent reuse of each component. The backend framework uses the weather forecasts from Numerical Weather Prediction models, downscales to a finer resolution, and simulates hydrologic and data-based artificial neural network models to optimize operations. The frontend architecture disseminates the forecasted meteorological variables, reservoir inflow, optimized operations, and retrospective weekly assessment of forecasts and hydropower benefits. The framework is automated and operationalized over the Detroit dam (Oregon) to generate the daily optimized release decisions. However, backend scripts and frontend elements are flexible and customizable enough that the DSS can be reproduced for other dams. The optimization of reservoir operations based on weather forecasts results in significant additional hydropower benefit without compromising other objectives when compared to the conventional operations. More importantly, the platform helps visualize for the dam operator how much more ‘smarter’ operations can be if weather forecasts and open-source technology are used.

The development of ‘Make One Small Change’: an e-health intervention for the workplace developed using the Person-Based Approach

BackgroundThe application of digital health interventions is widespread and many employers are implementing employee e-health programs. Intended to enhance productivity by increasing wellbeing, workplace interventions often lack evidence of effectiveness and have low rates of retention. Use of the person-based approach (PBA) is one solution, which offers a systematic framework for developing effective digital health interventions. This paper describes the application of the PBA to the development of ‘Make one small change’ (Cigna MSC™), an online behaviour change system for lifestyle habits focused on resilience, movement, eating and sleep.Method and resultsThe development of Cigna MSC™ took place over four stages with colleagues (n = 79) across Cigna globally. Application of the PBA entailed using high amounts of qualitative data to inform development and a cyclical process of ‘listening, applying and delivering’ was adhered to throughout. Early stages involved review of current literature and the collection of feedback in relation to existing interventions. Combined, results revealed key intervention development issues that were then used to form guiding principles. Guiding principles ensured intervention objectives translated into relevant design features. The final stages of evaluation included testing images, text and content approaches. Feedback dictated that the intervention should be fun, easy to use and include milestones for self-monitoring. The resulting version was finalised and made ready to pilot so future analysis can be made in relation to real-world engagement and the embedded evaluative content can be used to provide evidence of intervention effectiveness.ConclusionsUsing the PBA, which was evolved specifically to improve development of digital interventions, resulted in a workplace intervention embedded with in-depth user input combined with evidenced-based theory. This paper illustrates how using a rigorous methodology can drive the creation of an effective digital health intervention that uniquely allows for refinement at each stage.

Social media advocacy framework in action: Focusing on the student journey to inspire real world engagement at Quincy College

Quincy College embraced a simple missive and mission in 2017: engage more, delight more and build a network of advocacy across students, staff and faculty. What did this mean for the marketing and communications team at Quincy College? Creating social media campaigns, amplifying community resources, highlighting the student journey beyond classroom and orchestrating delightful experiences that add value both online and in-person. Therefore, in effect, creating a community that is omnipresent, blending the digital space of social media and the real-world campus experience. At every step, Quincy College sought to inspire in-person interactions and build a network of advocates across students, staff and faculty. As a two-year commuter college, Quincy College sought to analyse the typical ‘day in the life’ of a student. Identifying the specific milestones in the student journey helped inform the Quincy College social media strategy. Defining these commonalities provides a point of intersection for students at Quincy College across a diverse population. This paper discusses how to build strategies and campaigns utilising a social media advocacy framework, create social media content within the context of the student journey, utilise community collaboration and enable the greater higher education community to be a voice of advocacy.

TRACES: Mobile Eye Tracking Captures User Sensory Experience in an Outdoor Walking Tour Environment

This article explores the use of mobile eye tracking to provide insights on the dynamics of haptic (touch/sense) and visual experience. We created a digital cultural walking trail (TRACES), designing an app to explore user experiences of their environment, and as a way to reveal the multilayered interactions between places and technology. Using mobile eye tracker technology to trace a person’s place-based engagements, we show how the design of tablet-friendly apps can enrich experience by guiding viewers through an immersive and interactive environment with valuable information. We also highlight how this activity may negatively impact on experience by demanding attention away from real world engagement.

The Semiotics of Strategy: A Preliminary Structuralist Assessment of the Battle-Map in <em>Patton</em> (1970) and <em>Midway</em> (1976)

This essay offers a preliminary examination of the battle-map as depicted in two films about the Second World War: Franklin J. Shaffner's biopic Patton (1970) and Jack Smight's epic Midway (1976). In these films, maps, charts, or tableaux (the three-dimensional models upon which are plotted the movements of battalions, fleets, and so on) emerge as an expression of both martial and cinematic strategy. It is argued that the battle-map emerges as a crucial isomorphic element. It features as a prop to signify command and to relay otherwise complex strategic plottings, giving audiences a glimpse into how military strategy is formed and tested: a traditional 'reading' of the map. Conversely, the map is a device of foreshadowing and a sign of command's profound limitations. It is thus resolved that the battle-map is as much a sign of the subjective as the objective.

A Sense of Belonging: Pokémon GO and Social Connectedness

The free-to-play mobile game Pokémon GO’s (PGO) use of real-world mapping encourages play in public spaces, opening up the possibility of greater engagement with other players, local communities, and surrounds. This study conducted a series of interviews ( N = 15) and collected online social forum reports of gameplay ( N = 880), in order to determine what the social outcomes of play may be and what mechanisms might be facilitating the social connectedness. Thematic analysis revealed that playing PGO produced a sense of belonging, linked to a sense of place, as well as facilitating conversations with strangers and strengthening social ties. This was due to the use of accessible technology able to be integrated into daily routines, shared passion for the game, and mechanics that encouraged players out of their homes. “Shared passion” was tied to the nostalgic connection many players felt for the franchise. This study shows how gameplay can build social connectedness through real-world engagement.

SA126. Real-World Social Engagement, Trust, and Attachment in Schizophrenia: Reduced Trust in Close Relationships

SA126. Real-World Social Engagement, Trust, and Attachment in Schizophrenia: Reduced Trust in Close Relationships

Real-World Engagement with Controversial Issues in History and Social Studies: Teaching for Transformative Experiences and Conceptual Change.

Controversial issues have been established within the larger framework of civic education as an effective pedagogical approach to developing critical thinking in the classroom, preparing students with intellectual habits necessary for participation in scholarship, civic life and democracy. In this study, we found that a pedagogical intervention, Teaching for Transformative Experience in History, in some cases led to significantly higher engagement with political concepts beyond the classroom, and in other cases, the intervention led to significantly improved conceptual change. The study addresses some of the challenges presented by the research on civic education, providing a potential framework for developing pedagogical practice in history and social studies education that grounds a participatory, meaning-making process in curriculum design and assessment framed by controversial issues.

A Haptic-Audio Simulator Indoor Navigation: To Assist Visually Impaired Environment Exploration

VirtuNav is a haptic-, audio- enabled Virtual Reality (VR) simulator that facilitates persons with visual impairment to explore a 3D computerized model of a real-life indoor location, such as a classroom or hospital. For administrative purposes, the screen displays a 2D overhead view of the map to monitor user progress and location relative to the reconstructed 3D environment. The system offers two unique interfaces: a free-roam interface where a user can freely navigate and interact with the model, and an edit mode where an administrator can manage test users, manage maps and retrieve test data. VirtuNav is developed as a practical application offering several unique features including map design, semi-automatic 3D map reconstruction and object classification from 2D map data. Visual and haptic rendering of real-time 3D map navigation are provided, and automated administrative functions including determination of shortest path taken, comparison with the actual path taken, and assessment of performance indicators relating to time taken for exploration and collision data. VirtuNav is a research tool for investigation of user familiarity developed after repeated exposure to the indoor location, to determine the extent to which haptic and/or sound cues improve a visually impaired user's ability to navigate a room or building with or without occlusion. System testing reveals that spatial awareness and memory mapping improve with user iterations within VirtuNav. The application is for greater real world engagement: to build confidence in real world experiences, enabling persons with sight impairment to more comfortably and readily explore and interact with environments formerly unfamiliar or unattainable to them.

The Case of Roshonara Choudhry: Implications for Theory on Online Radicalization, ISIS Women, and the Gendered Jihad

As dozens of British women and girls travel to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, there are increasing concerns over female radicalization online. These fears are heightened by the case of Roshonara Choudhry, the first and only British woman convicted of a violent Islamist attack. The university student in 2010 stabbed her Member of Parliament, after watching YouTube videos of the radical cleric Anwar Al Awlaki. Current radicalization theories portray Choudhry as a “pure lone wolf,” a victim of Internet indoctrination, without agency. This article explores how gender factors in her radicalization, to present an alternative to existing theoretical explanations. An engagement with gender reveals its role in Choudhry's radicalization, first, in precluding her from a real-world engagement with Islamism on her terms, pushing her to the Internet; then in increasing her susceptibility to online extremist messages; finally, in fomenting an eventually intolerable dissonance between her online and multiple “real” gendered identities, resulting in violence. The article emphasizes the transgressive nature of this act of female violence in Salafi-Jihadi ideology; also, the importance of this gendered ideology as the foundation of ISIS recruitment online. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the operation of gender in the Jihad's production of violence, and roles for men and women alike.

The Marriage of Sharon and Henry Sawbones: A Forensic Case Illustrating the Use of a Tax Return in a Litigation Advisory Services Context

ABSTRACT This case is designed for use in a forensic accounting curriculum at the undergraduate or graduate level. The case contains no allegations of fraud. Rather, it illustrates the subset of forensic accounting referred to as litigation advisory services and is based upon an actual case that was investigated by the lead author working as a litigation support consultant. The case utilizes the problem-based learning approach wherein students are put in the role of the forensic accountant and must request additional information from the instructor. Students must first review a personal income tax return to develop a list of financial documents that would serve as a discovery request when assisting a family law attorney and his divorcing client. Using the information obtained from their requests, students must then prepare an income exhibit and an asset/liability exhibit that will support the client's need for a division of the marital estate, spousal maintenance, and child support. The process of using a completed income tax return to reconstruct the couple's asset and income profile not only mirrors the real-world engagement, but also complements and reinforces any prior courses in taxation. Student feedback on the case was extremely positive across all dimensions. Students reported having a better understanding of the role of a forensic accountant in the litigation process and enhanced abilities in analyzing a personal income tax return.

Haptic-audio simulator for visually impaired indoor exploration

Purpose – VirtuNav is a haptic-, audio-enabled virtual reality simulator that facilitates persons with visual impairment to explore a 3D computer model of a real-life indoor location, such as a room or building. The purpose of this paper is to aid in pre-planning and spatial awareness, for a user to become more familiar with the environment prior to experiencing it in reality. Design/methodology/approach – The system offers two unique interfaces: a free-roam interface where the user can navigate, and an edit mode where the administrator can manage test users, maps and retrieve test data. Findings – System testing reveals that spatial awareness and memory mapping improve with user iterations within VirtuNav. Research limitations/implications – VirtuNav is a research tool for investigation of user familiarity developed after repeated exposure to the simulator, to determine the extent to which haptic and/or sound cues improve a visually impaired user’s ability to navigate a room or building with or without occlusion. Social implications – The application may prove useful for greater real world engagement: to build confidence in real world experiences, enabling persons with sight impairment to more comfortably and readily explore and interact with environments formerly unfamiliar or unattainable to them. Originality/value – VirtuNav is developed as a practical application offering several unique features including map design, semi-automatic 3D map reconstruction and object classification from 2D map data. Visual and haptic rendering of real-time 3D map navigation are provided as well as automated administrative functions for shortest path determination, actual path comparison, and performance indicator assessment: exploration time taken and collision data.

Lines of descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the emergence of identity

W. E. B. Du Bois never felt so at home as when he was a student at the University of Berlin. But Du Bois was also American to his core, scarred but not crippled by the racial humiliations of his homeland. In Lines of Descent, Kwame Anthony Appiah traces the twin lineages of Du Bois' American experience and German apprenticeship, showing how they shaped the great African-American scholar's ideas of race and social identity.At Harvard, Du Bois studied with such luminaries as William James and George Santayana, scholars whose contributions were largely intellectual. But arriving in Berlin in 1892, Du Bois came under the tutelage of academics who were also public men. The economist Adolf Wagner had been an advisor to Otto von Bismarck. Heinrich von Treitschke, the historian, served in the Reichstag, and the economist Gustav von Schmoller was a member of the Prussian state council. These scholars united the rigorous study of history with political activism and represented a model of real-world engagement that would strongly influence Du Bois in the years to come.With its romantic notions of human brotherhood and self-realization, German culture held a potent allure for Du Bois. Germany, he said, was the first place white people had treated him as an equal. But the prevalence of anti-Semitism allowed Du Bois no illusions that the Kaiserreich was free of racism. His challenge, says Appiah, was to take the best of German intellectual life without its parochialism--to steal the fire without getting burned.

The Conflicts of Crisis: Critical Reflections on Feminist Ethnography and Anthropological Activism

Anthropologists who work with marginalized and disenfranchised communities frequently find themselves in the midst of shortand long-term crises. Ongoing poverty and systemic discrimination, abrupt changes in entitlement programs and other policies, natural and human-made disasters, and profit-minded development initiatives can all threaten the lives and livelihoods of those we study. As practitioners of a methodology that emphasizes personal attachment, our first instinct is to leap headlong into crisis. In recent years, calls for engaged, public, and activist anthropology have ignited the discipline, making such interventions not only accepted but often expected (see Mullings 2013). At the same time, the realities of real-world engagement are messy, and our roles are rarely clear-cut. In this section, we grapple with some of the tough questions and unfinished business that arise in our own work as we navigate the predicaments, uncertainties, and internal crises and juggle our roles as activists, scholars, teachers, and humans. Frank interrogations of our engagements are essential in a discipline fraught with a legacy of collaborating with empire and colonialism, including Cold War counterinsurgency and the more recent Human Terrain System. For instance, critical scholars such as Kamala Visweswaran have suggested that ethnographers are often uninvited guests or traffickers of “the voiceless” (Visweswaran 1994:69). Others, however, hold that ethnographers have a “responsibility to use counter-story telling as a discursive practice or mobilizing tool” (Harrison 2013:x). In the examples here, we explicitly allied with the social justice struggles of our research participants, and they encouraged us to contribute to their causes as both activists and scholars. But those encouragements came with expectations that were sometimes problematic. Our purpose here is to discuss both the expectations and implications that such scholarship generates. We began this conversation as participants in an Association for Feminist Anthropology roundtable for the 2012

Neural mechanisms of impulse control in sexually risky adolescents

The consequences of risky sexual behavior are of public concern. Adolescents contribute disproportionately to negative consequences of risky sexual behavior. However, no research has examined the neural correlates of impulse control and real-world engagement in risky sexual behavior in this population. The aim of the present study was to examine this question. Twenty sexually active adolescents performed an impulse control task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan and risky sexual behaviors were assessed through self-report. Sexual riskiness ratings were negatively associated with activation in the prefrontal cortex during response inhibition. These results suggest that diminished engagement of impulse control circuitry may contribute to sexual riskiness in adolescents.

Ecosystem-Wide Characteristics of an ESL Environment in Situ: An Affordance-Semiotics Perspective

Investigating the phenomenon of how a learning environment affords opportunities for individual learners to learn has recently become an increasing interest among researchers of applied linguistics and psychology. Traditional perspective in this regard has tended to limit the phenomenon to the environment’s rigid conditions and novices’ controlled responses; less attention has been given to exploring the potential light that broader strategies from other academic approaches may shed upon emergent relationships between the ever-changing environment and developing actions. With this trend in mind, this paper takes an ecological model based on the theory of affordances and semiotics of signs– a scope of epistemological thinking that conceives the inquiry as a second language (L2) learning ecology or an environmental system to supporting L2 learning actions. Upon this orientation, emphasis is placed on discovering actions situated in their original context (or in situ) and then the emergence of “ecosystem-wide characteristics”. By “ecosystem” it is meant that all interrelated levels of contexts are fundamental to the nature of connecting students to L2 learning. The research focused on a group of four secondary-school students in Hong Kong, in an after-school ESL (English as a second language) program over 12 lessons, examining a range of teaching-learning activities. In this paper, the ecology concerned is of informational signs interlocked for meaning-making purposes; one where signs flowed along direct and immediate perception-action heuristics for achieving L2 learning goals. Drawing upon the notion of “education-friendliness” (i.e., providing students with greater access to diverse sources of information for learning), there are implications for educational practitioners to use real-world engagement that is likely to tap students’ creativity and ignite motivational sparks for using L2 to understand the world more actively and strategically.

Collaborating with the Real World: Opportunities for Developing Skills and Values in Law Teaching

This article describes a broad range of teaching innovations and opportunities that classroom law professors can take advantage of in their own backyards. It presents examples of real-world engagement by faculty who help their students learn the skills, values, and attributes of good professional practice by supplementing what they already are teaching well with opportunities to learn the law in real-world contexts. Classroom professors do not need to become clinical professors or start teaching lawyering skills courses. Instead, they can collaborate with clinical professors, practicing lawyers, and other professionals outside their classrooms in settings that relate to their doctrinal fields. Such collaborations can effectively draw on others' expertise and skills to extend and deepen their students' learning and thereby better prepare them for real-world practice.Learning in context is the most effective way to engender long-lasting learning and genuine understanding. The collaborations discussed in this article offer real-world contexts that promote this deeper engagement in learning. In addition, they allow the integration of the three domains (or apprenticeships) of professional competency and identity that the Carnegie Report advocated be integrated in legal education: (1) knowledge (including cognitive and analytical skills); (2) interactive behavioral skills (including problem-solving, client-oriented, and communication skills); and (3) professional values and ethics. These three domains reflect what competent lawyers should know and how they think, what they should be able to do, and how they should act as professionals. Real-world collaborations like those described in this article help to integrate the three Carnegie apprenticeships in one course, rather than keep them siloed in different courses.

E-Government and Civic Engagement: How is Citizens' Use of City Web Sites Related with Civic Involvement and Political Behaviors?

The current study examined content-specific relationships of citizens' use of city Web sites with civic engagement. A Web-based, volunteer survey of 1,966 citizen users of city Web sites found that surveillance, practical services, and direct democracy features functioned as important conditions for citizens' real-world civic engagement. Results indicated that citizens' use of practical services and direct democracy features of city Web sites were associated with citizens' civic involvement and political behaviors. The findings suggest that the relationships between citizens' use of city Web sites and civic engagement differ according to the purpose for which citizens use the sites. The results of the current study exhibit an indication that city Web sites can promote civic engagement among citizens.

On writing ‘The deviance of women’: observations and analysis

On writing ‘The deviance of women’: observations and analysis

Of flags: Online queer identities, writing classrooms, and action horizons

In this article I argue that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer pedagogies have been too exclusively focused on identity. The problem with these identity-based pedagogies is that they cannot fully account for actual LGBT identities, due in part to a continued multiplication of these identities online. I use LGBT pride flags to illustrate the ways in which these identities have proliferated, presenting a theoretical limit for current understandings of queer and LGBT pedagogy. As an alternative, I introduce the notion of the action horizon, which forms a pedagogy that encourages students to imagine themselves as actors in the public sphere, shaping policies and confronting complex real-world problems. The various LGBT pride flags then serve as material in three examples—an online asynchronous discussion, writing in a computer classroom, and paper assignments—all of which prompt students to enact the action horizon. Despite the possibilities for real-world engagement offered by the action horizon, success with this pedagogy can be limited in terms of LGBT issues, and so I end with some consideration of the implications and limitations of this kind of teaching.