Creating an environment that encourages both extensive and intense threaded dialogue The growth of discussion threads and the size of the class

The purpose of this research is to investigate the beginning and development of asynchronous discussion threads in various class sizes over the course of 25 graduate-level courses and 22 interviews. The paper also aims to create some recommendations for promoting threaded discourse during the initiation, advancement, summary, and evaluation phases of a discussion thread from pedagogical, technological, and theoretical viewpoints. The statistical analysis revealed that class size did influence the number of threads and the length of threads created by students and instructors, which showed the importance of certain themes in the conversation. The majority of participants said that it was difficult to follow threaded conversations in order to establish meaningful cooperation in huge classrooms. Instructors and graduate students each expressed a preference as to whether they should begin or follow a conversation. Some pedagogical tactics were used by the instructors to facilitate the commencement and growth of discussion threads. This research may have consequences for both practitioners and academics in terms of developing new software features and designing efficient educational tactics in order to produce more successful comprehensive and intense knowledge-building discourse in the classroom.

Doing Better Data Visualization

Methods in data visualization have rapidly advanced over the past decade. Although social scientists regularly need to visualize the results of their analyses, they receive little training in how to best design their visualizations. This tutorial is for individuals whose goal is to communicate patterns in data as clearly as possible to other consumers of science and is designed to be accessible to both experienced and relatively new users of R and ggplot2. In this article, we assume some basic statistical and visualization knowledge and focus on how to visualize rather than what to visualize. We distill the science and wisdom of data-visualization expertise from books, blogs, and online forum discussion threads into recommendations for social scientists looking to convey their results to other scientists. Overarching design philosophies and color decisions are discussed before giving specific examples of code in R for visualizing central tendencies, proportions, and relationships between variables.

Foundation of the Digital Global Economy

A medium to facilitate the exchange of value has been the sole necessity for the mere existence of currency. As the civilization moved from using metals, paper, and plastic to facilitate exchange, our requirements from a currency became refined. Some of those requirements were the prevention of counterfeiting and accountability. As the human civilization moves forward, the solution to some of the problems faced by us are discovered by humans. Cryptocurrency is a decentralized form of currency mined by computers by solving complex equations in exchange for a reward of the very same commodity. This article aims to study the major cryptocurrencies and the concept of blockchain, how they operate, how it will be affecting India, and what are the consequences of banning this form of currency. This research is carried out by evaluating white papers of Bitcoin and Ethereum (the two main cryptocurrencies of present time) along with research papers and news articles found with the help of search engines and online discussion threads.

Identifying User Interests In An Online Discussion Forum With Deep Learning

The probabilistic topic model Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was deployed to model the themes of discourse in discussion threads on the social media aggregation website Reddit. Abstracting discussion threads as vectors of topic weights, these vectors were fed into several neural network architectures, each with a different number of hidden layers, to train machine learning models that could identify which discussion would be of interest for a given user to contribute. Using accuracy as the evaluation metric to determine which model framework achieved the best performance on a given user’s validation set, these selected models achieved an average accuracy of 66.1% on the test data for a sample set of 30 users. Using the predicted probabilities of interest made by these neural networks, recommender systems were further built and analyzed for each user.

Identifying User Interests In An Online Discussion Forum With Deep Learning

The probabilistic topic model Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was deployed to model the themes of discourse in discussion threads on the social media aggregation website Reddit. Abstracting discussion threads as vectors of topic weights, these vectors were fed into several neural network architectures, each with a different number of hidden layers, to train machine learning models that could identify which discussion would be of interest for a given user to contribute. Using accuracy as the evaluation metric to determine which model framework achieved the best performance on a given user’s validation set, these selected models achieved an average accuracy of 66.1% on the test data for a sample set of 30 users. Using the predicted probabilities of interest made by these neural networks, recommender systems were further built and analyzed for each user.

Equine Management in UK Livery Yards during the COVID-19 Pandemic—“As Long As the Horses Are Happy, We Can Work Out the Rest Later”

Approximately 60% of the UK’s leisure horses are kept at livery yards under the management and oversight of a livery yard owner or manager (LYO/M), yet their role has received little research attention. This study used the COVID-19 pandemic as a lens through which to view LYO/Ms’ decisions around equine care and management at a time when changes to usual practice were necessary. Qualitative research methods were used. Up to 3 interviews were conducted with 24 different LYO/Ms over nine months (n = 48). Discussion threads from open-access UK discussion fora were also analysed. All data were anonymised and analysed using a Grounded Theory methodology. Prior to the pandemic, equine care and management practices varied greatly across yards, and yard cultures were a product of LYO/Ms’ construction of good equine care, their business model, and the need to balance human and equine contentment. The role of the LYO/M was to maintain an equilibrium between those interlinked factors. During the pandemic, LYO/Ms adopted new measures designed to influence the movement of horse owners and other people on yards to minimise the risk of COVID-19 transmission. During this time, LYO/Ms reported prioritising equine wellbeing by limiting change to equine routines and management wherever possible. Instead of altering equine management, there was an expectation that the lives of humans would be moulded and re-shaped to fit with the government COVID-19 guidelines. These results highlight the importance of routines, traditions and cultures in each individual yard. Maintaining the standard of care for the horse was prioritised regardless of who provided that care.

“The rebirth of the West begins with you!”—Self-improvement as radicalisation on 4chan

Among the discussion threads devoted to racism, conspiracies, and fascist dogma on 4chan’s notorious ‘Politically Incorrect’ board, there is also a small but significant number of posts on the topic of far-right self-improvement. These posts speak in a style that blends the language of self-help and fitness with far-right propaganda and conspiracies, and are designed to turn the movement from aimless online ‘shitposters’ into survivalists and soldiers. This article describes the unique form of self-improvement advice known on 4chan as the ‘iron pill,’ and considers the role that self-improvement plays in radicalisation among the far right online. It addresses how this plays into the history of fascism, looking in particular at the concept of the ‘New Man’ in Italian fascism, and discusses how a political narrative of conspiracy and resistance to imagined tyranny is used to motivate self-improvement, and how this in turn builds and cements radicalisation.

Designing an interprofessional Facebook discussion group to teach about LGBTQ healthcare disparities and inclusive practices

Objective: Training on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) healthcare and inclusive practice is lacking in curricula across health professions, contributing to health disparities. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an interprofessional learning activity on LGBTQ healthcare disparities and inclusive practices delivered in a closed Facebook group. Design: Asynchronous, online platforms, like social media, offer a simple means of connection and discussion for interprofessional education. Setting: An academic health centre in the Southern USA. Methods: The learning activity consisted of (1) pre- and post-quizzes assessing knowledge about LGBTQ healthcare, (2) content review of required readings and a video and (3) daily discussion threads. Students completed individual reflection essays about interprofessional education and practice and the Quadruple Aim. Results: Two cohorts of interprofessional students completed the activity. Average quiz scores increased post-activity. Both the Facebook discussion threads and reflection essays demonstrated that students recognised the need to incorporate LGBTQ-inclusive practices into their future professional practice, as well as recognised the valuable insight of their interprofessional team members. Students had mixed perspectives about Facebook as a discussion platform for interprofessional education. Conclusion: Facebook groups provide a feasible platform to implement interprofessional education on LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare practice and stimulate student discussion.