Category / PG research

This part of the blog features news and information for postgraduate research students and supervisors

Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) are transferring to Jisc

BU research, data management, PG research

Bristol Online Surveys (BOS)

BOS is currently managed by the University of Bristol and provided as a service to the UK HE community.  On 1 August 2017, ownership will be transferred to Jisc.  Following transfer to Jisc it is expected that the ‘look and feel’ of BOS should remain the same.

BOS account access is set up by IT Services who are account administrators.  Researchers wishing to use a BOS survey should put a request through the IT Service Desk (SNOW).

It is important to note that on  1 August 2017, BOS will be unavailable for around 48 hours.  We do not know the exact time period at the moment.  More information is available on the BOS site:

https://www.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/transfer-to-jisc-faqs-and-information/

Transfer to Jisc: FAQs
Transfer to Jisc: FAQs for Primary Contacts

CQR’s Last Seminar for the Year Wed 1pm RLH 201

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

The Centre for Qualitative Research will end the academic year with a final “In Conversation” Seminar this Wednesday at 1 pm in RLH 201.  All are most welcome!

The presenters originally set for this date had to postpone until next year due to ill health. We decided to go ahead with the seminar anyway. It will provide us with a time in which to converse about the year’s seminars, what was helpful, and what people would like to have as topics next year. We also will be discussing the potential of short hands-on taster sessions with arts-based research methods for next year. Perhaps you have a idea for an ‘In Conversation” seminar that you would like to contribute?

Do come along and join in the conversation!  We look forward to spending this time together. CQR Members and non-members equally welcome!

Ground-breaking article by Jones and Fenge

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

Kip Jones and Lee-Ann Fenge are pleased to announce that our article to appear shortly in Creative Approaches to Research, a peer-reviewed open-access journal, “Gift Stories How Do We Retell the Stories that Research Participants Give Us?” is now available on BRIAN.

We passionately believe that as narrative researchers and storytellers we must promote narrative in the content and styles of our publications. To revert to a style of publication or presentation that is counter to this does a disservice to our commitments as narrativists.

We can no longer afford to ignore the great advances made in representation of qualitative data. These have been overwhelmingly demonstrated by the successes achieved in auto-ethnography, poetic enquiry, ethno-drama, film, Performative Social Science and/or other arts-based efforts in research and dissemination.

 

Psychology PGR Sarah Hodge presents at two prestigious USA conferences and wins prize

BU research, PG research, Research Ethics, Research news, student research

Representing the research team from Bournemouth University, Sarah Hodge presented cross-disciplinary PhD research at two conferences in Las Vegas (April) and Denver (May).

The first conference Broadcast Education Association (BEA) included a symposium organised and attended by key academics in the area of psychology and gaming and within this Sarah won top paper in the symposium track and 2nd place student paper. The research presented was funded by the University Student Research Assistant (SRA) scheme, which involved collaboration between departments and faculties. The research involved creating a game to measure in-game moral decisions. The research team included Jacqui Taylor and John McAlaney from the Department of Psychology, Davide Melacca and Christos Gatzidis from the Department of Creative Technology, and Eike Anderson from the National Centre for Computer Animation.

 

At the second conference Computers in Human Interaction (CHI), Sarah had a workshop paper accepted on Ethical Encounters in Human Computer Interaction and this naturally stimulated many interesting questions about ethics in research. Sarah was a student volunteer at the conference. Sarah was a Chair student Volunteer at British HCI 2016 that was held at Bournemouth University last summer and this experience supported being accepted as a Student Volunteer at CHI. From this experience Sarah was assigned the role of Day Captain, which involved supporting and overseeing the other student volunteers with their duties. Sarah found it to be a great experience and highly recommends other students to consider being a student volunteer as a great chance to network and it also helps with funding conferences as the registration fee was waived.

 

Hodge, S. Taylor, J & McAlaney, J (2017). Restricted Content: Ethical Issues with Researching Minors’ Video Game Habits Human in Computer Interaction (CHI) May, Denver USA

If you would like more information about the research please contact: shodge@bournemouth.ac.uk

Lizzie Gauntlett at the International Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) Conference 18th & 19th May 2017

conferences, Events, PG research, student research

Glasgow’s necropolis- the quietest voices of all?

‘Where are we now?’ was the theme of the 2017 International IPA conference this week. The short answer: at Glasgow Caledonian University. The long answer: using a qualitative methodology initially confined to healthcare research but which is now enjoying exponential growth across diverse disciplines. Talks over the two days ranged from advance care planning to museum visitor research, with one particularly innovative study by Hilda Reilly (PhD candidate, University of Glasgow). Her work uses narrative to explore the medical concept of hysteria. Reilly talked about the case of Anna von Lieben, one of Freud’s most significant patients. She demonstrated how accounts such as poetry and diaries left by the deceased can form data for analysis and interpretation.

Just a stone’s throw from Glasgow city’s own necropolis or ‘city of the dead’ (pictured), it was a fitting metaphor for one of the key aims of IPA: to make heard the quietest of voices. It let me reflect on the voices which I am working to make heard through my own PhD studentship project; those from successful, persistent students from low-income backgrounds who are under-represented throughout higher education (HE), but have great value in widening participation in HE and as part of a greater commitment to social equality.

Such novel approaches fit well with Dr Michael Larkin’s keynote exploring new developments in design and data collection in IPA research. The lecture and Q&A was particularly relevant to my own research, as it explored less common topic formulations in IPA research; namely when the phenomenon is a background phenomenon or an external theoretical construct (in my case, ‘resilience’). The recommendation to use explicitly narrative and reflective strategies rang true with my own approach to data collection.

Likewise, Professor Jonathan Smith delivered his keynote on personal experience of depression, offering rich, textured accounts of participants. He urged us as researchers to ‘dig deeper’ and ‘mine’ our participant data. In interviews, he reminded us “it is easy to talk to people; it is demanding to get high quality data”. Professor Paul Flowers closed the conference by provoking us to move from questioning ‘where are we now?’ to ‘where do we go from here?’ And, for me at least, this signifies a move towards drawing deep, ‘juicy’ interpretations from my data, to maximise the potential impact of my research.

 

Lizzie Gauntlett

Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

egauntlett@bournemouth.ac.uk

http://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/i7642194

 

For more on IPA resources, news and networks of support:

www.ipa.bbk.ac.uk

 

Standing up for Science workshop in June

Events, PG research, Research communication, student research, Training

sense about science logo

Calling all early career researchers- Sense about Science will be running a Standing up for Science media workshop this June.

The workshop will take place on Friday 30 June at the University of Warwick. This free to attend event is a great opportunity for early career researchers and scientists to learn how to make their voices heard in public debates about science.

Attendees will hear from scientists who have engaged with the media, learn from these distinguished scientists about how the media works, how to comment and what journalists expect from scientists. This is a free event and is open to all early career researchers and scientists- PhD students, post-docs or equivalent- in all sciences, engineering and medicine.

The deadline for applications is 14 June. You can find out more information here.

The previous workshop was held in Manchester in April. You can find out what attendees Jade and James thought of the workshop and view photos here.

If  you have any questions please email Joanne from Sense about Science.

Intelligent Transportation Analytical Model for SMEs Coach Operators

BU research, PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Speaker:             Siti Aishah Mohd Selamat

(Bournemouth University PhD student based at County Coaches UK LLP, Luton)

Title:     Intelligent Transportation Analytical Model for SMEs Coach Operators

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 31st May 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

Abstract: The transportation industry is the key economic driver of any country and also an essential component in one’s daily routine. The evolution of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in the last two decades has helped the authorities in solving underpinning traffic challenges such as curbing road congestion, road safety, road surveillance and much more.

 

With the advancement of technology in the 21st Century, data is increasingly collected every hour, every minute and every second causing a data explosion era. The International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast that the volume of data is expected to grow up to 50 Zettabytes globally by the year 2020. Extracting strategical information from the data can revolutionize the development of ITS, by shaping a traditional technology-driven system into a more robust ITS ecosystem.

 

According to Eurostat, the transportation and the storage enterprise made up of 5% of the 22.3 million of the non-financial business economy in 2012.  Despite the momentous potential benefits of big data analytics utilization, the transportation SMEs are lagging behind in their adoption efforts. In a volatile economic environment, SMEs in the transportation sector needs to be proactive in utilizing its data asset at hand to pre-empt future circumstances in order to remain competitive and relevant.

 

We hope to see you there.

Academic Career Pathway to Research Funding – new pages

BU research, Guidance, PG research, Research Training, RKE development framework, student research

I posted last week a whizzy picture demonstrating the academic career pathway to research funding.  This has now been turned into new pages on the blog for each stage of an academics career in research.  The pages highlight the type of funding that you can aim for, what training and development is available to support this (through the RKEDF), and further resources that will support you in applying for external funding.  As well as the main summary page, there is a page for students, research fellows, senior research fellows, associate professors, and professors.

Have a look at what’s available through each stage of an academics career.  Links to these pages are also available in the Research Lifecycle – Your research strategy section and in the Research Toolkit.

If you have any queries about how to get started with your research strategy then please contact your RKEO Research Facilitator.

 

Using user-customized touch gesture for fast accessing installed apps on smartphones

BU research, PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

 

Speaker: Chi Zhang (Creative Technology PhD Student)

 

Title:     Using user-customized touch gesture for fast accessing installed apps on smartphones

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 17th May 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract:

 

User-defined touch gesture is a common method for fast interacting with smartphones, it enables a user to define a touch gesture for a particular task, such as, “-” for volume down and “+” for volume up. But, the user-defined touch gesture method is typically provided as a “user-defined touch gesture set” aiming for countable commonly used tasks. These approaches are aiming to build a gesture set, include a limit number of universal gesture-task pairs developed by the users.  Existing user defined touch gesture sets supported a wide range of tasks on the smartphones, however, they: (1) still need learning; (2) cannot cover every task that user wants to active; (3) lack of the evaluation on the speed performance. To overcome these limitations and better understand the speed advantage of user-defined touch gesture method, we presented a novel user-customized touch gesture approach and conducted an experiment to evaluate its speed advantages. The experiment demonstrates a significant speed advantage of using our approach and the accuracy performance is evaluated as well. In particular, our findings include: (1) our approach has a significant speed advantage than traditional interaction method; (2) our approach has no significant accuracy differences between frequent and infrequent used apps; (3) analysed what caused the failure accessing in our experiments. Based on these findings, we offer (1) further evidence of the speed benefits of using user self-defined gesture for accessing tasks; (2) design implications for the future gesture-based interface for fast accessing on smartphones.

 

We hope to see you there.

 

 

Academic Career Pathway to Research Funding

BU research, Guidance, PG research, RKE development framework

The Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework is a programme of training and development opportunities available to all members of staff regardless of what level they have attained in their academic career.  It provides several pathways of opportunity depending on what interests you.  We will soon be launching the 2017/18 programme in time for appraisals.

We’re often asked in RKEO what type of grant should someone apply for depending on their level of experience.   Our Research Facilitators are only too happy to advise and so do get in touch with them.  You may find the below illustration helpful in guiding you to the choices that are right for you (a larger version is available on MyBU).  Also, standard calls for proposals from major funders can be found here.

 

 

Alternative Career Pathways after your PhD – 8 June

BU research, Guidance, PG research, Research communication, Research Training, Training

Live online event on the 8th June 2017

The academic jobs market is becoming more challenging and competitive post-PhD. With the number of PhD holders increasing, there is enormous pressure on the academic job market and declining academic job prospects for doctoral graduates.

What can I do after my PhD? It is a difficult decision for any PhD student on whether to pursue a career in academia, or consider alternative careers. In our dedicated live Q&A we are bringing forth a panel of experts who have moved outside of academia, to share their top tips and advice on alternate career pathways following PhD studies.

To help all those who are considering options after doctoral studies, jobs.ac.uk is holding a FREE 60-minute live video event via a live YouTube Q&A called ‘Alternative Career Pathways After Your PhD’. Find out more and register today.

More details are at: http://bit.ly/altcareersevent

INVITATION TO PGRs – WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 11AM-1PM

Coffee Morning, PG research

TEA AND CAKE AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
Wednesday 10 May, 11am to 1pm

Talbot Campus – Graduate School
Lansdowne Campus – 7th Floor, EBC

 

 

We haven’t seen you for a while! Please come and join us for FREE tea and cake, and pick up your FREE coffee voucher if you have completed the PRES survey. We look forward to seeing you.

Public lecture on ‘Getting the message across about Zika’

BU research, PG research, Research news

Public Lecture by Professor Jane Noyes, Bangor University

Date: Friday 12 May 2017
Time: 10.50 -12:00
Venue: B321, Bournemouth House

Getting the message across about Zika: using qualitative evidence to inform the global WHO risk communication guidelines for public health emergencies, and lessons learned for intervention development.

Jane is the Professor of Health and Social Services Research and Child Health at Bangor University. She specialises in child health and social care research. She is also an expert in methodology, including complex intervention development and evaluation, and qualitative and mixed method systematic review methodology.  Jane is Lead Convenor of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group and Editor of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Jane’s talk will be followed by a short lecture by of Queen’s University Belfast on ‘Social technology solutions to postnatal care in Brazil’.

Fiona is a Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery and the Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation, Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on enhancing maternal and child health and wellbeing. Her expertise includes conducting economic evaluations alongside intervention-based studies.

Complimentary lunch will be served at 12.30pm

Please RSVP to Sam Porter at porters@bournemouth.ac.uk

This lecture is part of the ‘Social technology solutions to postnatal care in Brazil’ project funded by the British Council through the Newton Fund.

Please share with your networks, this Flyer is available to send out.

Intelligent Image Understanding

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: Intelligent Image Understanding

Speaker: Jing Wang

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 10th May 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

Abstract: Real data are usually complex and contain various components. For example, face images have expressions and genders. Each component mainly reflects one aspect of data and provides information others do not have. Therefore, exploring the semantic information of multiple components as well as the diversity among them is of great benefit to understand data comprehensively and in-depth. However, this cannot be achieved by current nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF)-based methods, despite that NMF has shown remarkable competitiveness in learning parts-based representation of data. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel multi-component nonnegative matrix factorization (MCNMF). Instead of seeking for only one representation of data, MCNMF learns multiple representations simultaneously, with the help of the Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC) as a diversity term. HSIC explores the diverse information among the representations, where each representation corresponds to a component. By integrating the multiple representations, a more comprehensive representation is then established. Extensive experimental results on real-world datasets have shown that MCNMF not only achieves more accurate performance over the state-of-the-arts using the aggregated representation, but also interprets data from different aspects with the multiple representations, which is beyond what current NMFs can offer.

We hope to see you there.

PhD student from Creative Technology got a paper accepted in a premium conference

BU research, PG research

Jing WANG, a PhD student in the department of Creative Technology, SciTech, just got a paper accepted by 26th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAi 2017). IJCAi (http://ijcai-17.org/), is a premier AI conference in the world. Jing’s paper, co-authored with Feng Tian (SciTech), Hongchuan Yu (FMC) and Changhong Liu (SciTech), “Multi-Component Nonnegative Matrix Factorization”, is one of the papers accepted, out of 2540 submissions, after going through an extremely selective review (acceptance rate: ~25%).

Congratulations to Jing, who is currently a 3rd year PhD student. Apart from this paper, she has also published several papers in the journals like IEEE Trans. on Cybernetics, Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, etc. and the top conferences like IJCNN, ICONIP, etc.

Recent Writing from Kip Jones Available on the Internet

BU research, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

 

“Kyle’s photo-montage of black and white clippings, mostly from fashion magazines, Bailey and Avedon, etc., glued to the walls surrounding his bed”.

Kip Jones is pleased to announce that the tripartite story, “True confessions: why I left a traditional liberal arts college for the sins of the big city”, first published in Qualitative Research Journal, is available on Academia.edu.  Jones is particularly pleased that what is now called ‘auto-fiction’ has been accepted for publication by such a major qualitative journal. The three stories in the article conclude with a scene from Jones’ ongoing development of the feature film script for “Copacetica”. All three stories portray aspects of the sexual fumbling and romantic insecurities typical in youth.

“Dirty Frank’s” bar, Philadelphia, where the main characters of “Copacetica” frequently meet.

The second piece of writing consists of the bar scene from “Copacetica”. This is the scene in which all the major characters are introduced and the story sets up the conundrum that the main character will face in the film.

“Copacetica” tells the tale of a gullible youth on a roller coaster ride of loss of innocence and coming out in the flux and instability of 1960s hippy America. Often seen as a period of revolution in social norms, Copacetica’s themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture, or ‘heteronormativity’.  Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity.

In the later gallery scene (not yet published), a minor character explains the meaning of the word, “copacetic”:

VISITOR TWO
What d’he say?

VISTOR ONE
“Everything’s copacetic”! (Beat) 
What does that mean, anyway?

VISITOR THREE
Everything’s cool. Everything’s okay. 
Or “Groovy” as they like to say.

Asked what he enjoyed about writing the script for this film, Jones said, “Definitely revisiting the slang used by youth of the 1960s! It’s virtually its own language. And writing the sex scenes. Exciting and very tiring. Almost like the real thing”.

You can read the opening scene planned for the film on KIPWORLD: “Copacetica” Scene 1. EXT SUBURBAN HOUSE POOL NIGHT

A Cloud-Based Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Sultanate of Oman

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: A Cloud-Based Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Sultanate of Oman.

 

Speaker: Mohammed Al hajri

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 3rd May 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the demand to migrate or to adopt cloud computing into not only companies but also educational institutions. New trends in this promising field have been playing significant and critical roles in delivering educational services and applications to stakeholders.

Oman and other developing countries could benefit from a cloud-based collaborative VLE where students and faculty members could have access to online facilities to collaborate effectively achieving the potential aims of their courses and programs. HEIs especially in Oman spend high portions of their budgets to establish and maintain IT systems while not all HEIs can afford to have their separate IT systems network due to its unaffordable cost.

This research critically assesses the current ICT infrastructure and any cloud-based collaborative initiatives used in Universities and Colleges in Oman and attempt to explore the existing VLEs in HEIs in Oman. Furthermore, the research will develop a framework which will adopt the contribution from analysing any related frameworks and models in the field or in adjacent areas. The proposed framework is aiming to make a unified and collaborative VLE that can be shared and utilised by several HEIs in Oman which will enable them to exchange and share educational resources among themselves and to reduce the cost of IT expenses in software, hardware and technical support. Thus, this research is aiming to get the maximum benefits of cloud computing to be applied in collaborative VLEs and use it as a model to improve the current IT infrastructure implemented in this environment. Also, the proposed framework can be adapted and adopted by similar developing countries.

 

We hope to see you there.