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Background and Context: School principals and school guidance counsellors can be very influential in deciding what subjects are offered on the curriculum, how they are promoted and who they are targeted to. For that reason, exploring their views of Computer Science (CS) as a subject can help unearth potential barriers that may hinder the wider uptake of the subject in schools. Objective: This study aimed to explore school principals and school guidance counsellors' views of CS as a subject at upper second level education in Ireland as part of the launch of a new subject. Method: Using one-to-one semi-structured interviews, the study sought the views of a sample pf 10 school principals and 10 school guidance counsellors from secondary schools in Ireland that had recently introduced the subject of CS on the curriculum. Findings: The study found contradictory views expressed, where the participants emphasised the value of the subject for all students, while at the same time presenting it as more suitable for certain types of students - highlight the tensions between the espoused values and the actual reality of practice.

Gamification is the use of game design elements in nongame contexts and has been shown to be effective in motivating behavior change. By seeing game elements as "motivational affordances," and formalizing the relationship between these elements and motivational affordances, it is the position of this article that gamification can be effectively applied to improve software systems across many different application domains. The research reported here aims to formalize the relationship between game elements and motivation, toward making gamification's use more systematic. The focus is on the development of a framework linking commonly occurring game elements with the components of a psychological motivational model known as the "self-determination theory," coupled with a proposed framework of commonly occurring game elements. The goal is to inform system designers who would like to leverage gamification of the game elements they would need to employ as motivational affordances.

This paper proposes an evaluation framework for assessing students' comprehension of concurrent programs. The need for such a framework is illustrated by a review of various Computer Science Education forums. This review suggests that there is little pedagogical research in the area of concurrent software, particularly with respect to assessing students' knowledge. In particular, the proposed framework attempts to categorize the types of information students seek and the types of information they obtain, as they learn about concurrent software. Thus the framework could be used to guide teaching methods in this area, to hone the representations used to portray concurrent software to students and subsequently, to assess students' performance. (Contains 4 tables.)

Trommons is an open-source, web-based platform administered by The Rosetta Foundation. The Rosetta Foundation has worked since 2009 to eradicate the information gap faced by communities under-served by commercial localisation, by making information accessible in the languages of those communities. In recent years we have conducted several studies into crowdsourced volunteer translation from the perspective of the client organisations. In this paper we are reporting on the finding of those studies, which include two survey questionnaires as well as semi-structured interviews with representatives of the non-profit organisations and staff at the Rosetta Foundation. The studies conducted provide insights into the following questions: Do organisations work with volunteers, and why? What reasons would make them not work with volunteers? What expectations do organisations have of volunteers, as well as a platform like Trommons, and are those expectations being met? What are the interactions between organisations and staff at the Rosetta Foundation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTBackground:The early and effective detection of neurocognitive disorders poses a key diagnostic challenge. We examined performance on common cognitive bedside tests according to differing delirium syndromal status and clinical (motor) subtypes in hospitalized elderly medical inpatients.Methods: A battery of nine bedside cognitive tests was performed on elderly medical inpatients with DSM-IV delirium, subsyndromal delirium (SSD), and no delirium (ND). Patients with delirium were compared according to clinical (motor) subtypes.Results: A total of 198 patients (mean age 79.14 ± 8.26) were assessed with full syndromal delirium (FSD: n = 110), SSD (n = 45), and ND (n = 43). Delirium status was not associated with differences in terms of gender distribution, age, or overall medication use. Dementia burden increased with greater delirium status. Overall, the ability to meaningfully engage with the tests varied from 59% for the Vigilance B test to 85% for Spatial Span Forward test and was lowest in patients with FSD, where engagement ranged from 32% for the Vigilance B test to 77% for the Spatial Span Forwards test. The ND group was distinguished from SSD group for the Months of the year backwards, Vigilance B, global VSP, Clock Drawing test, and Interlocking Pentagons test. The SSD group was distinguished from the FSD group by Vigilance A, Spatial Span Forward, and Spatial Span Backwards. Regarding differences among motor subtypes in terms of percentage engagement and performance, the No subtype group had higher ratings across all tests. Delirious patients with no subtype had significantly lower scores on the DRS-R98 than for the other three subtype categories.Conclusions: Simple bedside tests of attention, vigilance, and visuospatial ability are useful in distinguishing neurocognitive disorders, including SSD from other presentations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]