Learning User Similarity and Rating Style for Collaborative Recommendation

Information filtering is an area getting more important as we have long been flooded with too much information, where product brokering in e-commerce is a typical example. Systems which can provide personalized product recommendations to their users (often called recommender systems) have gained a lot of interest in recent years. Collaborative filtering is one of the commonly used approaches which normally requires a definition of user similarity measure. In the literature, researchers have proposed different choices for the similarity measure using different approaches, and yet there is no guarantee for optimality. In this paper, we propose the use of machine learning techniques to learn the optimal user similarity measure as well as user rating styles for enhancing recommendation acurracy. Based on a criterion function measuring the overall prediction error, several ratings transformation functions for modeling rating styles together with their learning algorithms are derived. With the help of the formulation and the optimization framework, subjective components in user ratings are removed so that the transformed ratings can then be compared. We have evaluated our proposed methods using the EachMovie dataset and succeeded in obtaining significant improvement in recommendation accuracy when compared with the standard correlation-based algorithm.     

Pre‐service teachers’ preconceptions,misconceptions, and concerns about virtual schooling

Over the last decade, online distance education has become a common mode of study in most states in the USA, where it is known as virtual schooling (VS), but many people have misconceptions about it. Pre‐service teachers’ personal histories as students and their preconceptions, misconceptions, and concerns influence pre‐service teacher training experiences. A qualitative study of an introductory field experience course that included this new mode of schooling for the first time analyzed the personal journals and online discussion responses of 65 pre‐service teachers in the USA. Analysis identified that common misconceptions and concerns included career threat, viability of VS, academic dishonesty, reduced interaction, teacher feedback, and lack of rigor. The curriculum innovations in this innovative teacher preparation program were shown to address these misconceptions and concerns and facilitate understanding and acceptance of VS as an alternative form of education by many of these pre‐service teachers.     

Closing the loop: Students,academic libraries,and textbook affordability

This paper will summarize over 400 responses to a student questionnaire used to assess a textbook affordability program at Rutgers University. Students' responses showed that they were concerned about textbook costs, liked their open and affordable course content, and unanimously supported continuing the program. Because the Open and Affordable Textbooks program is administered through the Libraries, the survey also offers a glimpse at how textbook affordability interfaces with key library services, including collection development, teaching and learning, reserves and the visibility, use and discoverability of library resources. This article is intended to bring the conversation full circle and take steps toward defining an ecosystem of library services and activities that support textbook affordability and OER. The goal is to bring more visibility to OER programs and make sure they are integrated in foundational library operations, so that students recognize the libraries' investment in their academic success.     

Three Blind Mice

有话说:这是一首根据英国历史事件创作的著名儿歌。儿歌中,农夫的妻子是指英国的玛丽一世女王,她是一名虔诚的天主教徒。三只瞎老鼠是指三名新教贵族。在玛丽女王执政期间,有三名新教徒反抗玛丽的执政,因此被绑在树上     

Exploring the challenges in obtaining physical activity data from women using hip-worn accelerometers

Quality objective physical activity data are required to inform physical activity-based health improvement initiatives, however, various challenges undermine acquisition of such data. We examined the efficacy and challenges of a hip-worn accelerometry protocol in women. Specific objectives included determining accelerometer-wear-compliance rates and understanding the barriers and acceptability of wearing accelerometers. Healthy New Zealand women (n?=?406) of three ethnicities (Māori (indigenous New Zealander), Pacific, European) aged 16–45 years (30.9?±?8.7 y) wore hip-mounted Actigraph wGT3X+ accelerometers for 7 consecutive days under a 24-h wear protocol. Post hoc, a sub-sample (n?=?45; age: 29.4?±?9.0 y) was interviewed to investigate comfort/convenience and burdens of accelerometer-wear. Wear-compliance (≥10?h/day, ≥4 day) was 86%. European women returned more valid data (92.7%, p?<?.04) than Pacific (73.0%) or Māori women (82.1%). Twenty-two participants (5.4%) had completely missing data; 13 due to lost accelerometers. Burden of accelerometer-wear was greatest during sleeping (66.7%) due to discomfort. Embarrassment of accelerometer visibility through clothing and consequent restricted clothing choices caused high burden in social settings (45.2%). Discomfort during sleeping, embarrassment due to perceived appearance in social settings and ethnicity are key factors affecting the efficacy of collecting physical activity data from women using hip-worn accelerometers. Refining accelerometer design to reduce size and subsequently participant burden should improve acceptability and wear-compliance. Increasing overall participant compliance by reducing burden and ensuring appropriate understanding of study aims and relevance should reduce attrition and improve wear-compliance and data quality when collecting accelerometry data from women of different ethnicities.     

Our Role as Intercultural Scholars,Practitioners, Activists,and Teachers in Addressing These Key Intercultural Urgencies,Issues, and Challenges

As the finale, the participating scholars connect their discussion of key intercultural urgencies, issues, and challenges to our role as intercultural scholars and the pathways for engagement. We all inhabit different and multiple roles for addressing and confronting such urgencies—as researchers, practitioners, activists, teachers, and community members with macro and micro modes of agency, influence, and impact. Discussants grapple with how to envision these roles in contemporary society and actuate meaningful change for multiple constituencies and communities around us.     

Portfolios as evidence of reflective practice: what remains ‘untold’

Addressing recent calls for investigating the specific quality of reflection associated with the uses of portfolios in teacher education, this paper describes and interprets the ‘practice of portfolio construction’ as revealed in the construction and presentation of two kinds of portfolio in two in-service courses for mentors of teachers in Israel: a ‘process’ portfolio and a ‘product’ portfolio. The study revealed that the language of practice and form of reflection bore striking similarities across the two practices of portfolio construction, regardless of their differences in content, purpose, organization and the degree of intervention of the course instructors in its construction. In both types of portfolios, the mentors described their learning mostly at technical levels of reflection. This tendency raises the question of whether the genre of portfolio writing, inevitably bound by institutional constraints, is generically conducive to reflecting on controversial experiences at interpretative, critical levels. The study suggests that within a centralized educational system, as in the case of Israel, the documentation of critical reflection is problematic.