Rafael A Calvo | Imperial College London (original) (raw)
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Papers by Rafael A Calvo
The opportunities provided by eLearning technologies to enhance the student experience are encour... more The opportunities provided by eLearning technologies to enhance the student experience are encouraging universities to systematically invest into new eLearning projects. The implications of this trend for ensuring the quality of the student learning experience are ...
There are ongoing concerns about the discrepancy between graduate engineering students" communica... more There are ongoing concerns about the discrepancy between graduate engineering students" communication skills and those identified as necessary by Government and professional bodies. Communication skills are critical for engineering graduates as surveys of actual work practices indicate that engineers spend 40-60% of their time communicating and an increasing amount of their time writing. However, many engineering students find written assessments challenging and although they may well understand that to advance in their profession requires excellent communication skills, both spoken and written, many remain unconvinced and believe that their skills in other areas such as IT or mathematics will be of greater importance upon graduation. This attitude is often indirectly supported within engineering curricula where teaching writing skills is still considered a low priority and presents faculty staff with a number of challenges such as the ability to articulate how they assess student writing, the capacity to address issues of plagiarism and the provision of timely, relevant and appropriate feedback on writing to bring about improvements. An additional challenge is the diversity of the engineering cohort with large numbers of students from non-English speaking backgrounds, both local and international and that commencing engineering students may have had limited practice in extended writing. A new online resource suitable for embedding writing skill development in the engineering curricula is described in this paper. It contains engineering based instructional materials, authentic writing examples, and eLearning feedback options. This online writing centre (iWrite), a collaboration between learning advisors and engineering faculty, can be mapped onto the CDIO Academy stages to develop writing skills across the undergraduate years.
Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millenia, and has been positioned... more Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millenia, and has been positioned as a critical aspect of both justice and wellbeing. Research in psychology supports this position, providing empirical evidence that autonomy is critical to motivation, personal growth and psychological wellness. Responsible AI will require an understanding of, and ability to effectively design for, human autonomy (rather than just machine autonomy) if it is to genuinely benefit humanity. Yet the effects on human autonomy of digital experiences are neither straightforward nor consistent, and are complicated by commercial interests and tensions around compulsive overuse. This multi-layered reality requires an analysis that is itself multidimensional and that takes into account human experience at various levels of resolution. We borrow from HCI and psychological research to apply a model (“METUX”) that identifies six distinct spheres of technology experience. We demonstrate the value of ...
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: From Keyboard to Clinic, 2018
Mental health forums are online spaces where people can share their experiences anonymously and g... more Mental health forums are online spaces where people can share their experiences anonymously and get peer support. These forums, require the supervision of moderators to provide support in delicate cases, such as posts expressing suicide ideation. The large increase in the number of forum users makes the task of the moderators unmanageable without the help of automatic triage systems. In the present paper, we present a Machine Learning approach for the triage of posts. Most approaches in the literature focus on the content of the posts, but only a few authors take advantage of features extracted from the context in which they appear. Our approach consists of the development and implementation of a large variety of new features from both, the content and the context of posts, such as previous messages, interaction with other users and author's history. Our method has competed in the CLPsych 2017 Shared Task, obtaining the first place for several of the subtasks. Moreover, we also found that models that take advantage of post context improve significantly its performance in the detection of flagged posts (posts that require moderators attention), as well as those that focus on post content outperforms in the detection of most urgent events.
In conversational analyses, humans manually weave multimodal information into the transcripts, wh... more In conversational analyses, humans manually weave multimodal information into the transcripts, which is significantly time-consuming. We introduce a system that automatically expands the verbatim transcripts of video-recorded conversations using multimodal data streams. This system uses a set of preprocessing rules to weave multimodal annotations into the verbatim transcripts and promote interpretability. Our feature engineering contributions are two-fold: firstly, we identify the range of multimodal features relevant to detect rapport-building; secondly, we expand the range of multimodal annotations and show that the expansion leads to statistically significant improvements in detecting rapport-building.
Philosophical Studies Series, 2020
Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millennia, and has been positione... more Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millennia, and has been positioned as a critical aspect of both justice and wellbeing. Research in psychology supports this position, providing empirical evidence that autonomy is critical to motivation, personal growth and psychological wellness. Responsible AI will require an understanding of, and ability to effectively design for, human autonomy (rather than just machine autonomy) if it is to genuinely benefit humanity. Yet the effects on human autonomy of digital experiences are neither straightforward nor consistent, and are complicated by commercial interests and tensions around compulsive overuse. This multi-layered reality requires an analysis that is itself multidimensional and that takes into account human experience at various levels of resolution. We borrow from HCI and psychological research to apply a model (“METUX”) that identifies six distinct spheres of technology experience. We demonstrate the value of...
Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019
With psychiatric conditions like depression now the leading global causing of disability, the nee... more With psychiatric conditions like depression now the leading global causing of disability, the need for innovative solutions is apparent. The promise of mental health care delivered through technology (eMentalHealth) to provide personalized care offers a promising solution that has galvanized interest worldwide. However, in order to ensure that eMentalHealth is scalable and sustainable, service delivery Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, 2020
In 2019, the IEEE launched the P7000 standards projects intended to address ethical issues in the... more In 2019, the IEEE launched the P7000 standards projects intended to address ethical issues in the design of autonomous and intelligent systems. This move came amidst a growing public concern over the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence (AI), compounded by the lack of an anticipatory process for attending to ethical impact within professional practice. However, the difficulty in moving from principles to practice presents a significant challenge to the implementation of ethical guidelines. Herein, we describe two complementary frameworks for integrating ethical analysis into engineering practice to help address this challenge. We then provide the outcomes of an ethical analysis informed by these frameworks, conducted within the specific context of Internet-delivered therapy in digital mental health. We hope both the frameworks and analysis can provide tools and insights, not only for the context of digital healthcare but also for data-enabled and intelligent technology development more broadly.
BMJ, 2020
Societies are responding to the covid-19 pandemic at breathtaking speed. Many of these ad hoc res... more Societies are responding to the covid-19 pandemic at breathtaking speed. Many of these ad hoc responses will have long lasting consequences, and we must make sure that todayÕs efforts do not threaten our future wellbeing. The most consequential transformations may come from new health surveillance technologies that use machine learning and automated decision making to parse peopleÕs digital footprints, identify those who are potentially infected, trace their contacts, and enforce social distancing. Some have argued that such digital contact tracing could be more effective in
Nature Machine Intelligence, 2020
Human Technology, 2019
This paper presents an investigation into the experiences and perceptions of volunteers and commu... more This paper presents an investigation into the experiences and perceptions of volunteers and community managers of an Australian voluntary-sector organization that supports young help-seeking people. The process focused specifically on the design of a chat tool, a rudimentary version of which was conceptualized and tested during a trial completed prior to this study. The process explored the motivations and experiences of these volunteers using a codesign approach, which led to the development of specific features of the chat tool that were tailored to the nature of their work and organization, as well as the sector-specific ethos. We employed several research methods, which included interviews, focus groups, and participatory design workshops. Thematic analyses were performed on the resultant qualitative data. The methods, motivational themes, and the ensuing design solutions that were implemented are discussed in detail with the aim of encouraging codesign of technology for voluntary-sector organizations.
Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 2010
ABSTRACT: Students' experiences of their learning and the teaching in the su... more ABSTRACT: Students' experiences of their learning and the teaching in the subjects they are studying are one of the more ubiquitous sources of information about the quality of teaching for institutions and individual academics. The results are used in the design of new ...
Journal of medical Internet research, Jan 9, 2018
We describe an initiative to bring mental health researchers, computer scientists, human-computer... more We describe an initiative to bring mental health researchers, computer scientists, human-computer interaction researchers, and other communities together to address the challenges of the global mental ill health epidemic. Two face-to-face events and one special issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research were organized. The works presented in these events and publication reflect key state-of-the-art research in this interdisciplinary collaboration. We summarize the special issue articles and contextualize them to present a picture of the most recent research. In addition, we describe a series of collaborative activities held during the second symposium and where the community identified 5 challenges and their possible solutions.
BMJ open, Jan 13, 2018
Depression is the leading cause of life years lost due to disability. Appropriate prevention has ... more Depression is the leading cause of life years lost due to disability. Appropriate prevention has the potential to reduce the incidence of new cases of depression, however, traditional prevention approaches face significant scalability issues. Prevention programmes delivered by via smartphone applications provide a potential solution. The workplace is an ideal setting to roll out this form of intervention, particularly among industries that are unlikely to access traditional health initiatives and whose workplace characteristics create accessibility and portability issues. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a smartphone application designed to prevent depression and improve well-being. The effectiveness of the app as a universal, selective and indicated prevention tool will also be evaluated. A multicentre randomised controlled trial, to determine the effectiveness of the intervention compared with an active mood monitoring control in reducing depressive symptoms (primar...
JMIR mental health, Jan 5, 2018
Given the widespread availability of mental health screening apps, providing personalized feedbac... more Given the widespread availability of mental health screening apps, providing personalized feedback may encourage people at high risk to seek help to manage their symptoms. While apps typically provide personal score feedback only, feedback types that are user-friendly and increase personal relevance may encourage further help-seeking. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of providing normative and humor-driven feedback on immediate online help-seeking, defined as clicking on a link to an external resource, and to explore demographic predictors that encourage help-seeking. An online sample of 549 adults were recruited using social media advertisements. Participants downloaded a smartphone app known as "Mindgauge" which allowed them to screen their mental wellbeing by completing standardized measures on Symptoms (Kessler 6-item Scale), Wellbeing (World Health Organization [Five] Wellbeing Index), and Resilience (Brief Resilience Scale). Participants were randomiz...
Internet Interventions, 2017
A growing number of researchers are using Facebook to recruit for a range of online health, medic... more A growing number of researchers are using Facebook to recruit for a range of online health, medical, and psychosocial studies. There is limited research on the representativeness of participants recruited from Facebook, and the content is rarely mentioned in the methods, despite some suggestion that the advertisement content affects recruitment success. This study explores the impact of different Facebook advertisement content for the same study on recruitment rate, engagement, and participant characteristics. Five Facebook advertisement sets ("resilience", "happiness", "strength", "mental fitness", and "mental health") were used to recruit male participants to an online mental health study which allowed them to find out about their mental health and wellbeing through completing six measures. The Facebook advertisements recruited 372 men to the study over a one month period. The cost per participant from the advertisement sets ranged from 0.55to0.55 to 0.55to3.85 Australian dollars. The "strength" advertisements resulted in the highest recruitment rate, but participants from this group were least engaged in the study website. The "strength" and "happiness" advertisements recruited more younger men. Participants recruited from the "mental health" advertisements had worse outcomes on the clinical measures of distress, wellbeing, strength, and stress. This study confirmed that different Facebook advertisement content leads to different recruitment rates and engagement with a study. Different advertisement also leads to selection bias in terms of demographic and mental health characteristics. Researchers should carefully consider the content of social media advertisements to be in accordance with their target population and consider reporting this to enable better assessment of generalisability.
Journal of medical Internet research, Jul 21, 2017
Synchronous written conversations (or "chats") are becoming increasingly popular as Web... more Synchronous written conversations (or "chats") are becoming increasingly popular as Web-based mental health interventions. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to evaluate and summarize the quality of these interventions. The aim of this study was to review the current evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of online one-on-one mental health interventions that use text-based synchronous chat. A systematic search was conducted of the databases relevant to this area of research (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online [MEDLINE], PsycINFO, Central, Scopus, EMBASE, Web of Science, IEEE, and ACM). There were no specific selection criteria relating to the participant group. Studies were included if they reported interventions with individual text-based synchronous conversations (ie, chat or text messaging) and a psychological outcome measure. A total of 24 articles were included in this review. Interventions included a wide range of mental health targets...
Journal of medical Internet research, Apr 11, 2017
Although the prevalence of mental illness among young people with asthma is known to be twice the... more Although the prevalence of mental illness among young people with asthma is known to be twice the rate of the wider population, none of the asthma apps reported have acknowledged or attempted to include psychological support features. This is perhaps because user involvement in the development of asthma apps has been scarce. User involvement, facilitated by participatory design methods, can begin to address these issues while contributing insights to our understanding of the psychological experience associated with asthma and how technology might improve quality of life. The goal of this participatory user research study was to explore the experience, needs, and ideas of young people with asthma while allowing them to define requirements for an asthma app that would be engaging and effective at improving their well-being. Young people aged 15-24 years with doctor-diagnosed asthma were invited to participate in a participatory workshop and to complete a workbook designed to elicit th...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
VR Rides is a virtual reality game that aims to engage older adults in physical and cognitive exe... more VR Rides is a virtual reality game that aims to engage older adults in physical and cognitive exercise to reduce their risk of developing dementia. The experience combines a recumbent tricycle, real-world imagery (sourced from Google Streetview), an Oculus Rift headset and a Microsoft Kinect camera, such that the player can navigate real locations in a safe virtual environment. Using this platform, we further developed two game designs: Competitive (ghost/virtual player as opponent to guess visited cities) and affiliative (virtual tour to invoke and share memories). Our immediate goal involves deploying VR Rides into retirement homes, so that it can be evaluated in a realistic setting. The first primary measures of these experiments will focus on engagement and usability of older adults. However, we would also ideally measure the outcomes of using this platform on players' mobility and spatial skills in future.
The opportunities provided by eLearning technologies to enhance the student experience are encour... more The opportunities provided by eLearning technologies to enhance the student experience are encouraging universities to systematically invest into new eLearning projects. The implications of this trend for ensuring the quality of the student learning experience are ...
There are ongoing concerns about the discrepancy between graduate engineering students" communica... more There are ongoing concerns about the discrepancy between graduate engineering students" communication skills and those identified as necessary by Government and professional bodies. Communication skills are critical for engineering graduates as surveys of actual work practices indicate that engineers spend 40-60% of their time communicating and an increasing amount of their time writing. However, many engineering students find written assessments challenging and although they may well understand that to advance in their profession requires excellent communication skills, both spoken and written, many remain unconvinced and believe that their skills in other areas such as IT or mathematics will be of greater importance upon graduation. This attitude is often indirectly supported within engineering curricula where teaching writing skills is still considered a low priority and presents faculty staff with a number of challenges such as the ability to articulate how they assess student writing, the capacity to address issues of plagiarism and the provision of timely, relevant and appropriate feedback on writing to bring about improvements. An additional challenge is the diversity of the engineering cohort with large numbers of students from non-English speaking backgrounds, both local and international and that commencing engineering students may have had limited practice in extended writing. A new online resource suitable for embedding writing skill development in the engineering curricula is described in this paper. It contains engineering based instructional materials, authentic writing examples, and eLearning feedback options. This online writing centre (iWrite), a collaboration between learning advisors and engineering faculty, can be mapped onto the CDIO Academy stages to develop writing skills across the undergraduate years.
Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millenia, and has been positioned... more Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millenia, and has been positioned as a critical aspect of both justice and wellbeing. Research in psychology supports this position, providing empirical evidence that autonomy is critical to motivation, personal growth and psychological wellness. Responsible AI will require an understanding of, and ability to effectively design for, human autonomy (rather than just machine autonomy) if it is to genuinely benefit humanity. Yet the effects on human autonomy of digital experiences are neither straightforward nor consistent, and are complicated by commercial interests and tensions around compulsive overuse. This multi-layered reality requires an analysis that is itself multidimensional and that takes into account human experience at various levels of resolution. We borrow from HCI and psychological research to apply a model (“METUX”) that identifies six distinct spheres of technology experience. We demonstrate the value of ...
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: From Keyboard to Clinic, 2018
Mental health forums are online spaces where people can share their experiences anonymously and g... more Mental health forums are online spaces where people can share their experiences anonymously and get peer support. These forums, require the supervision of moderators to provide support in delicate cases, such as posts expressing suicide ideation. The large increase in the number of forum users makes the task of the moderators unmanageable without the help of automatic triage systems. In the present paper, we present a Machine Learning approach for the triage of posts. Most approaches in the literature focus on the content of the posts, but only a few authors take advantage of features extracted from the context in which they appear. Our approach consists of the development and implementation of a large variety of new features from both, the content and the context of posts, such as previous messages, interaction with other users and author's history. Our method has competed in the CLPsych 2017 Shared Task, obtaining the first place for several of the subtasks. Moreover, we also found that models that take advantage of post context improve significantly its performance in the detection of flagged posts (posts that require moderators attention), as well as those that focus on post content outperforms in the detection of most urgent events.
In conversational analyses, humans manually weave multimodal information into the transcripts, wh... more In conversational analyses, humans manually weave multimodal information into the transcripts, which is significantly time-consuming. We introduce a system that automatically expands the verbatim transcripts of video-recorded conversations using multimodal data streams. This system uses a set of preprocessing rules to weave multimodal annotations into the verbatim transcripts and promote interpretability. Our feature engineering contributions are two-fold: firstly, we identify the range of multimodal features relevant to detect rapport-building; secondly, we expand the range of multimodal annotations and show that the expansion leads to statistically significant improvements in detecting rapport-building.
Philosophical Studies Series, 2020
Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millennia, and has been positione... more Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millennia, and has been positioned as a critical aspect of both justice and wellbeing. Research in psychology supports this position, providing empirical evidence that autonomy is critical to motivation, personal growth and psychological wellness. Responsible AI will require an understanding of, and ability to effectively design for, human autonomy (rather than just machine autonomy) if it is to genuinely benefit humanity. Yet the effects on human autonomy of digital experiences are neither straightforward nor consistent, and are complicated by commercial interests and tensions around compulsive overuse. This multi-layered reality requires an analysis that is itself multidimensional and that takes into account human experience at various levels of resolution. We borrow from HCI and psychological research to apply a model (“METUX”) that identifies six distinct spheres of technology experience. We demonstrate the value of...
Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019
With psychiatric conditions like depression now the leading global causing of disability, the nee... more With psychiatric conditions like depression now the leading global causing of disability, the need for innovative solutions is apparent. The promise of mental health care delivered through technology (eMentalHealth) to provide personalized care offers a promising solution that has galvanized interest worldwide. However, in order to ensure that eMentalHealth is scalable and sustainable, service delivery Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, 2020
In 2019, the IEEE launched the P7000 standards projects intended to address ethical issues in the... more In 2019, the IEEE launched the P7000 standards projects intended to address ethical issues in the design of autonomous and intelligent systems. This move came amidst a growing public concern over the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence (AI), compounded by the lack of an anticipatory process for attending to ethical impact within professional practice. However, the difficulty in moving from principles to practice presents a significant challenge to the implementation of ethical guidelines. Herein, we describe two complementary frameworks for integrating ethical analysis into engineering practice to help address this challenge. We then provide the outcomes of an ethical analysis informed by these frameworks, conducted within the specific context of Internet-delivered therapy in digital mental health. We hope both the frameworks and analysis can provide tools and insights, not only for the context of digital healthcare but also for data-enabled and intelligent technology development more broadly.
BMJ, 2020
Societies are responding to the covid-19 pandemic at breathtaking speed. Many of these ad hoc res... more Societies are responding to the covid-19 pandemic at breathtaking speed. Many of these ad hoc responses will have long lasting consequences, and we must make sure that todayÕs efforts do not threaten our future wellbeing. The most consequential transformations may come from new health surveillance technologies that use machine learning and automated decision making to parse peopleÕs digital footprints, identify those who are potentially infected, trace their contacts, and enforce social distancing. Some have argued that such digital contact tracing could be more effective in
Nature Machine Intelligence, 2020
Human Technology, 2019
This paper presents an investigation into the experiences and perceptions of volunteers and commu... more This paper presents an investigation into the experiences and perceptions of volunteers and community managers of an Australian voluntary-sector organization that supports young help-seeking people. The process focused specifically on the design of a chat tool, a rudimentary version of which was conceptualized and tested during a trial completed prior to this study. The process explored the motivations and experiences of these volunteers using a codesign approach, which led to the development of specific features of the chat tool that were tailored to the nature of their work and organization, as well as the sector-specific ethos. We employed several research methods, which included interviews, focus groups, and participatory design workshops. Thematic analyses were performed on the resultant qualitative data. The methods, motivational themes, and the ensuing design solutions that were implemented are discussed in detail with the aim of encouraging codesign of technology for voluntary-sector organizations.
Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 2010
ABSTRACT: Students' experiences of their learning and the teaching in the su... more ABSTRACT: Students' experiences of their learning and the teaching in the subjects they are studying are one of the more ubiquitous sources of information about the quality of teaching for institutions and individual academics. The results are used in the design of new ...
Journal of medical Internet research, Jan 9, 2018
We describe an initiative to bring mental health researchers, computer scientists, human-computer... more We describe an initiative to bring mental health researchers, computer scientists, human-computer interaction researchers, and other communities together to address the challenges of the global mental ill health epidemic. Two face-to-face events and one special issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research were organized. The works presented in these events and publication reflect key state-of-the-art research in this interdisciplinary collaboration. We summarize the special issue articles and contextualize them to present a picture of the most recent research. In addition, we describe a series of collaborative activities held during the second symposium and where the community identified 5 challenges and their possible solutions.
BMJ open, Jan 13, 2018
Depression is the leading cause of life years lost due to disability. Appropriate prevention has ... more Depression is the leading cause of life years lost due to disability. Appropriate prevention has the potential to reduce the incidence of new cases of depression, however, traditional prevention approaches face significant scalability issues. Prevention programmes delivered by via smartphone applications provide a potential solution. The workplace is an ideal setting to roll out this form of intervention, particularly among industries that are unlikely to access traditional health initiatives and whose workplace characteristics create accessibility and portability issues. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a smartphone application designed to prevent depression and improve well-being. The effectiveness of the app as a universal, selective and indicated prevention tool will also be evaluated. A multicentre randomised controlled trial, to determine the effectiveness of the intervention compared with an active mood monitoring control in reducing depressive symptoms (primar...
JMIR mental health, Jan 5, 2018
Given the widespread availability of mental health screening apps, providing personalized feedbac... more Given the widespread availability of mental health screening apps, providing personalized feedback may encourage people at high risk to seek help to manage their symptoms. While apps typically provide personal score feedback only, feedback types that are user-friendly and increase personal relevance may encourage further help-seeking. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of providing normative and humor-driven feedback on immediate online help-seeking, defined as clicking on a link to an external resource, and to explore demographic predictors that encourage help-seeking. An online sample of 549 adults were recruited using social media advertisements. Participants downloaded a smartphone app known as "Mindgauge" which allowed them to screen their mental wellbeing by completing standardized measures on Symptoms (Kessler 6-item Scale), Wellbeing (World Health Organization [Five] Wellbeing Index), and Resilience (Brief Resilience Scale). Participants were randomiz...
Internet Interventions, 2017
A growing number of researchers are using Facebook to recruit for a range of online health, medic... more A growing number of researchers are using Facebook to recruit for a range of online health, medical, and psychosocial studies. There is limited research on the representativeness of participants recruited from Facebook, and the content is rarely mentioned in the methods, despite some suggestion that the advertisement content affects recruitment success. This study explores the impact of different Facebook advertisement content for the same study on recruitment rate, engagement, and participant characteristics. Five Facebook advertisement sets ("resilience", "happiness", "strength", "mental fitness", and "mental health") were used to recruit male participants to an online mental health study which allowed them to find out about their mental health and wellbeing through completing six measures. The Facebook advertisements recruited 372 men to the study over a one month period. The cost per participant from the advertisement sets ranged from 0.55to0.55 to 0.55to3.85 Australian dollars. The "strength" advertisements resulted in the highest recruitment rate, but participants from this group were least engaged in the study website. The "strength" and "happiness" advertisements recruited more younger men. Participants recruited from the "mental health" advertisements had worse outcomes on the clinical measures of distress, wellbeing, strength, and stress. This study confirmed that different Facebook advertisement content leads to different recruitment rates and engagement with a study. Different advertisement also leads to selection bias in terms of demographic and mental health characteristics. Researchers should carefully consider the content of social media advertisements to be in accordance with their target population and consider reporting this to enable better assessment of generalisability.
Journal of medical Internet research, Jul 21, 2017
Synchronous written conversations (or "chats") are becoming increasingly popular as Web... more Synchronous written conversations (or "chats") are becoming increasingly popular as Web-based mental health interventions. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to evaluate and summarize the quality of these interventions. The aim of this study was to review the current evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of online one-on-one mental health interventions that use text-based synchronous chat. A systematic search was conducted of the databases relevant to this area of research (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online [MEDLINE], PsycINFO, Central, Scopus, EMBASE, Web of Science, IEEE, and ACM). There were no specific selection criteria relating to the participant group. Studies were included if they reported interventions with individual text-based synchronous conversations (ie, chat or text messaging) and a psychological outcome measure. A total of 24 articles were included in this review. Interventions included a wide range of mental health targets...
Journal of medical Internet research, Apr 11, 2017
Although the prevalence of mental illness among young people with asthma is known to be twice the... more Although the prevalence of mental illness among young people with asthma is known to be twice the rate of the wider population, none of the asthma apps reported have acknowledged or attempted to include psychological support features. This is perhaps because user involvement in the development of asthma apps has been scarce. User involvement, facilitated by participatory design methods, can begin to address these issues while contributing insights to our understanding of the psychological experience associated with asthma and how technology might improve quality of life. The goal of this participatory user research study was to explore the experience, needs, and ideas of young people with asthma while allowing them to define requirements for an asthma app that would be engaging and effective at improving their well-being. Young people aged 15-24 years with doctor-diagnosed asthma were invited to participate in a participatory workshop and to complete a workbook designed to elicit th...
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
VR Rides is a virtual reality game that aims to engage older adults in physical and cognitive exe... more VR Rides is a virtual reality game that aims to engage older adults in physical and cognitive exercise to reduce their risk of developing dementia. The experience combines a recumbent tricycle, real-world imagery (sourced from Google Streetview), an Oculus Rift headset and a Microsoft Kinect camera, such that the player can navigate real locations in a safe virtual environment. Using this platform, we further developed two game designs: Competitive (ghost/virtual player as opponent to guess visited cities) and affiliative (virtual tour to invoke and share memories). Our immediate goal involves deploying VR Rides into retirement homes, so that it can be evaluated in a realistic setting. The first primary measures of these experiments will focus on engagement and usability of older adults. However, we would also ideally measure the outcomes of using this platform on players' mobility and spatial skills in future.
We present a new, low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) recording system with an ultra-high input imp... more We present a new, low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) recording system with an ultra-high input impedance that enables the use of long-lasting, dry electrodes. The system incorporates a low-power Bluetooth module for wireless connectivity and is designed to be suitable for long-term monitoring during daily activities. The new system using dry electrodes was compared with a clinically approved ECG reference system using gelled Ag/AgCl electrodes and performance was found to be equivalent. In addition, the system was used to monitor an athlete during several physical tasks, and a good quality ECG was obtained in all cases, including when the athlete was totally submerged in fresh water.
Reflective thinking and learning skills are essential for engineers in the knowledge economy. Thi... more Reflective thinking and learning skills are essential for engineers in the knowledge economy. This paper describes an approach to develop these and other transferable skills through individual and collaborative reflective learning using open-source software. The learning activities and an open-source e-portfolio system called Dotfolio were tested by freshman engineering students. Findings from a survey-based study, which investigated students' beliefs about reflective learning and their expectations and experiences related to the task and open-source tool, are reported. From the beginning of the semester the students understood the significance of reflective learning and chose to work with the tool. However, they were less positive about the collaboration with peers during this activity. At the end of the semester, students were significantly more positive about the tool, but even more negative about the collaboration. The main problems encountered by the tutors and learners were plagiarism and a tension between the privacy of students' reflections and knowledge sharing. The open-source modular architecture allowed for the use of student and tutor feedback for the addition of new features that addressed their concerns.
This paper reports research into the student experience of learning through discussions in a blen... more This paper reports research into the student experience of learning through discussions in a blended environment. Third year engineering students studying e-commerce engaged in both face-to-face discussions and online asynchronous discussions as key aspects of their learning experience. Adopting a quantitative methodology, questionnaires were completed by students at the end of their learning experience. The results suggest qualitatively different experiences of learning through discussions. The results show that students who have a deep understanding of how the discussions are related to their learning outcomes tend to approach the discussions in more meaningful ways. In the face-to-face context, their approach emphasizes learning through the experience of others and, in the online environment, their approach emphasizes reflecting on the problems discussed from a variety of perspectives. Formation par discussions dans des environnements int{\&}eacute;gr{\&}eacute;s. Une {\&}eacute;tude a {\&}eacute;t{\&}eacute; men{\&}eacute;e sur les exp{\&}eacute;riences d{\&}rsquo;{\&}eacute;tudiants avec la formation par discussions dans un environnement int{\&}eacute;gr{\&}eacute;. Des {\&}eacute;tudiants d{\&}rsquo;ing{\&}eacute;nierie de troisi{\&}egrave;me ann{\&}eacute;e ont engag{\&}eacute; des discussions personnelles et des discussions en ligne diff{\&}eacute;r{\&}eacute;s lors de leurs {\&}eacute;tudes de commerce en ligne repr{\&}eacute;sentant les aspects cl{\&}eacute;s pour leur exp{\&}eacute;rience de formation. En adoptant une m{\&}eacute;thode quantitative, des questionnaires ont {\&}eacute;t{\&}eacute; remplis par des {\&}eacute;tudiants {\&}agrave; la fin de leur exp{\&}eacute;rience de formation. Les r{\&}eacute;sultats sugg{\&}egrave;rent des exp{\&}eacute;riences de formation qualitativement diff{\&}eacute;rentes par discussions. Les r{\&}eacute;sultats montrent que les {\&}eacute;tudiants qui ont une grande connaissance sur le fait que les discussions influent sur leur issue de formation, tendent {\&}agrave; aborder les discussions de mani{\&}egrave;re plus significative. Dans un contexte personnel, cette {\&}eacute;valuation met l{\&}rsquo;accent sur la formation par l{\&}rsquo;exp{\&}eacute;rience d{\&}rsquo;autres, et dans l{\&}rsquo;environnement en ligne, elle met l{\&}rsquo;accent sur la r{\&}eacute;flexion des probl{\&}egrave;mes discut{\&}eacute;s avec une vari{\&}eacute;t{\&}eacute; de perspectives. Lernen durch Diskussionen in integrierten Lernumfeldern. Diese Studie berichtet {\&}uuml;ber die Erfahrungen von Studenten beim Lernen durch Diskussionen innerhalb eines integrierten Lernumfelds. Studenten des Ingenieurwesens im dritten Studienjahr befassten sich w{\&}auml;hrend ihres e-Commerce Studiums sowohl mit pers{\&}ouml;nlichen Diskussionen als auch mit zeitlich versetzt gef{\&}uuml;hrten Online-Diskussionen, die Schl{\&}uuml;sselaspekte f{\&}uuml;r ihre Lernerfahrungen darstellten. Mit einer quantitativen Methode wurden am Ende der Lernerfahrung durch die Studenten Frageb{\&}ouml;gen ausgef{\&}uuml;llt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen qualitativ unterschiedliche Lernerfahrungen durch Diskussionen auf. Sie belegen, dass Studenten, die gute Kenntnisse dar{\&}uuml;ber haben, wie Diskussionen ihren Lernerfolg beeinflussen, bedeutend mehr dazu tendieren, an Diskussionen teilzunehmen. Dieser Ansatz beweist, dass in pers{\&}ouml;nlichen Diskussionen der Lernerfolg durch die Erfahrung anderer erreicht wird, wohingegen bei einer Problemdiskussion innerhalb eines Online-Umfelds der Schwerpunkt auf die Vielf{\&}auml;ltigkeit der Betrachtungsweisen aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln gelegt wird. Dieser Ansatz hebt im pers{\&}ouml;nlichen Kontext das Lernen durch die Erfahrung anderer und in der Online-Umgebung die Betrachtung {\&}uuml;ber die aus vielen Blickwinkeln diskutierten Probleme hervor.
Students studying a third-year e-commerce subject experienced face-to-face and online discussions... more Students studying a third-year e-commerce subject experienced face-to-face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students understanding of what they were learning through discussions, and how they went about engaging in them. Quantitative analyses are used to investigate how the students experience related to their performance. Key outcomes of the study include that the quality of the students experience of learning through discussions is positively related to their performance and that face-to-face and online discussions have qualitatively different benefits for learning.
Technology is changing the way we work, study and engage in society. By mediating activity, techn... more Technology is changing the way we work, study and engage in society. By mediating activity, technology can empower or limit people's lives. This raises a number of ethical challenges for technology designers since their work directly touches on what people consider their 'rights' and their needs for a good life. In this article, we discuss a study of Australians' views (N=1603) on a number of critical 'digital rights' including privacy, free speech, workplace technologies and government surveillance. The data is analysed from a rights perspective, considering and moving beyond classic negative and positive rights accounts. We conclude with a discussion of how such studies could inform HCI research and practice.