Examining The Medium In Which Feedback Is Delivered on Young Drivers’ Speed Management Behavior: An On-Road Study

The aim of the present research was to examine the effect of the medium in which feedback is delivered (verbal, written, graphical) on young drivers’ speed management behavior in two speed zones (i.e., 50km and 80km/h), immediately post-training and one week post-training. Sixty young drivers, randomly allocated to one of four feedback groups (i.e., Control, Verbal feedback, Written feedback, Graphical feedback) completed one training and two test drives using an instrumented vehicle. The results showed that feedback presented graphically was most effective in reducing the maximum speed travelled in the two speed zones under examination. This effect was present immediately following training as well as one week later. These findings have important implications for the development of a new approach to improve young drivers’ speed management behavior.

Fostering Programming Practice through Games

Loss of motivation is one of the most prominent concerns in programming education as it negatively impacts time dedicated to practice, which is crucial for novice programmers. Of the distinct techniques introduced in the literature to engage students, gamification, is likely the most widely explored and fruitful. Game elements that intrinsically motivate students, such as graphical feedback and game-thinking, reveal more reliable long-term positive effects, but those involve significant development effort. This paper proposes a game-based assessment environment for programming challenges, built on top of a specialized framework, in which students develop a program to control the player, henceforth called Software Agent (SA). During the coding phase, students can resort to the graphical feedback demonstrating how the game unfolds to improve their programs and complete the proposed tasks. This environment also promotes competition through competitive evaluation and tournaments among SAs, optionally organized at the end by the teacher. Moreover, the validation of the effectiveness of Asura in increasing undergraduate students’ motivation and, consequently, the practice of programming is reported.

RASSINE: Interactive tool for normalising stellar spectra

Aims. We provide an open-source code allowing an easy, intuitive, and robust normalisation of spectra. Methods. We developed RASSINE, a Python code for normalising merged 1D spectra through the concepts of convex hulls. The code uses six parameters that can be easily fine-tuned. The code also provides a complete user-friendly interactive interface, including graphical feedback, that helps the user to choose the parameters as easily as possible. To facilitate the normalisation even further, RASSINE can provide a first guess for the parameters that are derived directly from the merged 1D spectrum based on previously performed calibrations. Results. For HARPS spectra of the Sun that were obtained with the HELIOS solar telescope, a continuum accuracy of 0.20% on line depth can be reached after normalisation with RASSINE. This is three times better than with the commonly used method of polynomial fitting. For HARPS spectra of α Cen B, a continuum accuracy of 2.0% is reached. This rather poor accuracy is mainly due to molecular band absorption and the high density of spectral lines in the bluest part of the merged 1D spectrum. When wavelengths shorter than 4500 Å are excluded, the continuum accuracy improves by up to 1.2%. The line-depth precision on individual spectrum normalisation is estimated to be ∼0.15%, which can be reduced to the photon-noise limit (0.10%) when a time series of spectra is given as input for RASSINE. Conclusions. With a continuum accuracy higher than the polynomial fitting method and a line-depth precision compatible with photon noise, RASSINE is a tool that can find applications in numerous cases, for example stellar parameter determination, transmission spectroscopy of exoplanet atmospheres, or activity-sensitive line detection.

Computerized Quality of Life Assessment: A Randomized Experiment to Determine the Impact of Individualized Feedback on Assessment Experience (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Quality of life (QoL) assessments, or patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), are becoming increasingly important in health care and have been associated with improved decision making, higher satisfaction, and better outcomes of care. Some physicians and patients may find questionnaires too burdensome; however, this issue could be addressed by making use of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). In addition, making the questionnaire more interesting, for example by providing graphical and contextualized feedback, may further improve the experience of the users. However, little is known about how shorter assessments and feedback impact user experience. OBJECTIVE We conducted a controlled experiment to assess the impact of tailored multimodal feedback and CAT on user experience in QoL assessment using validated PROMs. METHODS We recruited a representative sample from the general population in the United Kingdom using the Oxford Prolific academic Web panel. Participants completed either a CAT version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment (WHOQOL-CAT) or the fixed-length WHOQOL-BREF, an abbreviated version of the WHOQOL-100. We randomly assigned participants to conditions in which they would receive no feedback, graphical feedback only, or graphical and adaptive text-based feedback. Participants rated the assessment in terms of perceived acceptability, engagement, clarity, and accuracy. RESULTS We included 1386 participants in our analysis. Assessment experience was improved when graphical and tailored text-based feedback was provided along with PROMs (Δ=0.22, P<.001). Providing graphical feedback alone was weakly associated with improvement in overall experience (Δ=0.10, P=.006). Graphical and text-based feedback made the questionnaire more interesting, and users were more likely to report they would share the results with a physician or family member (Δ=0.17, P<.001, and Δ=0.17, P<.001, respectively). No difference was found in perceived accuracy of the graphical feedback scores of the WHOQOL-CAT and WHOQOL-BREF (Δ=0.06, P=.05). CAT (stopping rule [SE<0.45]) resulted in the administration of 25% fewer items than the fixed-length assessment, but it did not result in an improved user experience (P=.21). CONCLUSIONS Using tailored text-based feedback to contextualize numeric scores maximized the acceptability of electronic QoL assessment. Improving user experience may increase response rates and reduce attrition in research and clinical use of PROMs. In this study, CAT administration was associated with a modest decrease in assessment length but did not improve user experience. Patient-perceived accuracy of feedback was equivalent when comparing CAT with fixed-length assessment. Fixed-length forms are already generally acceptable to respondents; however, CAT might have an advantage over longer questionnaires that would be considered burdensome. Further research is warranted to explore the relationship between assessment length, feedback, and response burden in diverse populations.

Graphical enhancements of the Virtual Programming Lab

It is generally recognised that providing consistent, meaningful written feedback is not an easy task, especially when dealing with large classes. Feedback does needs to be effective, meaning it has to be appropriate and timely and needs to be individual, where possible. Automated feedback within Computer Science has been around since the 1960’s with the main goals in relation to computer programming being to implement an automatic assessment tool to provide consistent feedback and to alleviate examiners' workloads. The Virtual Programming Lab, a plugin for the Virtual Learning Environment Moodle, is one such tool that allows for Automated Feedback on computer code. This paper presents enhancements to the Virtual Programming that have been developed to make interacting with the tool more user-friendly and provide more graphical feedback to teachers. The enhancements developed provide in-depth graphical feedback on assessment grades within a class and also teacher focused graphical views which provide more in-depth analysis of assessment submissions. Discussed feedback shows that the enhancements developed were all positively received with feedback highlighting the benefits of each.

Evaluation of Design Feedback Modality in Design for Manufacturability

The early conceptual design phase often focuses on functional requirements, with limited consideration of the manufacturing processes needed to turn design engineers' conceptual models into physical products. Increasingly, design and manufacturing engineers no longer work in physical proximity, which has slowed the feedback cycle and increased product lead-time. Design for manufacturability (DFM) techniques have been adopted to overcome this problem and are critical for faster convergence to a manufacturable design. DFM tools give feedback in textual and graphical modalities. However, since information modality may affect interpretability, empirical evidence is needed to understand how manufacturability feedback modalities affect design engineers' work. A user study evaluated how novice design engineers' design performance, workload, confidence, and feedback usability were affected by textual, two-dimensional (2D), and three-dimensional (3D) feedback modalities. Results showed that graphical feedback significantly improved performance and reduced mental workload compared to textual and no feedback. Differences between 3D and 2D feedback were mixed. Three-dimensional was generally better on average, but not significantly so. However, the usability of 3D was significantly higher than 2D. Conversely, providing feedback in textual modality was often no better than not providing feedback. The study will benefit manufacturing industries by demonstrating that early 3D manufacturability feedback improves novice design engineers' performance with less mental workload and streamlines the design process resulting in cost-saving and reduction of product lead-time.

Development of educational software for beam loading analysis using pen-based user interfaces

Most engineering software tools use typical menu-based user interfaces, and they may not be suitable for learning tools because the solution processes are hidden and students can only see the results. An educational tool for simple beam analyses is developed using a pen-based user interface with a computer so students can write and sketch by hand. The geometry of beam sections is sketched, and a shape matching technique is used to recognize the sketch. Various beam loads are added by sketching gestures or writing singularity functions. Students sketch the distributions of the loadings by sketching the graphs, and they are automatically checked and the system provides aids in grading the graphs. Students receive interactive graphical feedback for better learning experiences while they are working on solving the problems.

Development of Force-Feedback Technology for Training Clinicians to Deliver Manual Cervical Distraction

Objective: Neck pain is a prevalent musculoskeletal (MSK) complaint and costly societal burden. Doctors of chiropractic (DCs) provide manual therapies for neck pain patients to relieve discomfort and improve physical function. Manual cervical distraction (MCD) is a chiropractic procedure for neck pain. During MCD, the patient lies face down on a specially designed chiropractic table. The DC gently moves the head and neck in a cephalic direction while holding a gentle broad manual contact over the posterior neck, to create traction effects. MCD traction force profiles vary between clinicians making standardization of treatment delivery challenging. This paper reports on a bioengineering technology developed to provide clinicians with auditory and graphical feedback on the magnitude of cervical traction forces applied during MCD to simulated patients during training for a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Methods: The Cox flexion-distraction chiropractic table is designed with a moveable headpiece. The table allows for long axis horizontal movement of the head and neck, while the patient’s trunk and legs rest on fixed table sections. We instrument-modified this table with three-dimensional force transducers to measure the traction forces applied by the doctor. Motion Monitor software collects data from force transducers. The software displays the magnitude of traction forces graphically as a function of time. Real-time audible feedback produces a steady tone when measured traction forces are <20N, no tone when forces range between 20–50N, and an audible tone when forces exceed 50N. Peer debriefing from simulated patients reinforces traction force data from the bioengineering technology. Results: We used audible and graphical feedback to train and certify DCs to apply traction forces to the cervical spine of simulated patients within three specific ranges. This technology supports a RCT designed to assess the ability of clinicians to deliver MCD within specified force ranges to patients randomized to different force dosages as an intervention. Future applications may include training chiropractic students and clinicians to deliver the MCD treatment.