Mark Phythian

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Work in progress - a novel method of creating an academic content repository

by Shirley E Reushle, Mark Phythian, and Alexander A Kist

2009 39th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 2009

This paper outlines a project aimed at addressing the issue of the scalability of online academic... more This paper outlines a project aimed at addressing the issue of the scalability of online academic support. This project is being run during the Autumn semester at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Toowoomba Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Digital Futures Institute. The study attached to the project will use Design-Based Research to evaluate the effectiveness of a simple, but innovative academic content and metadata creation tool referred to as Academic Assist. Academic Assist has been recently developed at USQ, as a plug-in block for the moodle-based Learning Management System employed at USQ for its several hundred online subjects. The pilot project extends over nine subjects, including three consecutive subjects in computer engineering; and covers faculties of Engineering, Education, Business, Science and Arts. Results of the study including acceptance surveys, expert reviews and usage statistics will be presented at FIE 2009.

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Infrastructure for remotely accessible laboratories at the University of Southern Queensland

by Mark Phythian and T. Ahfock

Technological developments during the last two decades have made it possible for educational inst... more Technological developments during the last two decades have made it possible for educational institutions to establish systems for the remote access of hardware and software resources. Teaching staff have come to recognise the benefits of laboratories that can be remotely accessed. Remote access of hardware and software resources is of particular interest to the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) because of its high proportion of distance mode students. Work towards setting up remotely accessible laboratories at USQ started in 2007. This paper reports on the University's remote laboratory communication infrastructure and the reasoning behind its configuration. It also provides details of the various techniques that are being used for interfacing with laboratory hardware. The paper includes a discussion on the initial experience of staff and students using the remote access system and what is being done to improve user experience.

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Robust Speech Coding for the Preservation of Speaker Identity

ABSTRACT Not Available

Hyperlinked concept map enhancements for electronic study materials

The use of topic maps and concept maps has long been encouraged by instructional designers as a m... more The use of topic maps and concept maps has long been encouraged by instructional designers as a means of providing an overview of content in study materials. Educational theory and practice affirm the effectiveness of concept mapping: as a concise summary of a body of knowledge; as a practical means by which students can construct and record their own knowledge; and as a means of evaluating student understanding. This paper presents the aims, methodology and initial findings of a project commenced in Semester 1 2008, to include hyperlinked concept maps as an enhancement to electronic study materials. The project aims to evaluate their effectiveness: in improving student understanding of the concepts in the course; and as a means of navigating and accessing electronic study materials. The course of study is in the field of Microcomputer Design.

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Secondary School Robotics Competition

by Mark Phythian and John Billingsley

While several national and international robotics competitions have been established to cater for... more While several national and international robotics competitions have been established to cater for enthusiasts or experts from universities or research laboratories, few have been developed which operate successfully at the secondary school level. At a time when universities are keen to encourage secondary school students into science and engineering disciplines, and schools are looking to bolster their technology programs, such competitions provide a win-win scenario. The major di#culties in establishing such a competition include #1# devising an inexpensive robot and associated task that challenges the student, #2# raising the skill level of teachers to a point where they are con#dent to run such an activity and #3# establishing a broad base of expertise to support large numbers of participants. In this paper we detail the development, features and outcomes of the Robot Bilby Competition. The use of workshops and school visits to impart the necessary skills to te...

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Speech compression with preservation of speaker identity

1997 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1997

ABSTRACT Although much effort has been directed recently towards speech compression at rates belo... more ABSTRACT Although much effort has been directed recently towards speech compression at rates below 4 kb/s, the primary metric for comparison has, understandably, been the amount of spectral distortion in the decompressed speech. However, an aspect which is becoming important in some applications is the ability to identify the original speaker from the coded speech algorithmically. We investigate here the effect of speech compression using multistage vector quantization of the short-term (formant) filter parameters on text-independent speaker identification. It is demonstrated that in cases where the speech is stored in a compressed database for retrieval, the speaker model should be constructed from the raw speech before spectral compression. Additionally, Gaussian models of sufficiently high order are able to reduce the negative effects of spectral vector quantization upon speaker identification accuracy

Effects of speech coding on text-dependent speaker recognition

TENCON'97. IEEE Region …, 1997

... Table 4: Formant Frequency Deviation - DR1 -27.6 -41.6 LPC I 6.3 I 102.3 I 121.1 I 32.9 Std D... more

Work in progress-a novel method of creating an academic content repository

by Shirley E Reushle and Mark Phythian

Abstract This paper outlines a project aimed at addressing the issue of the scalability of online... more Abstract This paper outlines a project aimed at addressing the issue of the scalability of online academic support. This project is being run during the Autumn semester at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Toowoomba Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Digital Futures Institute. The study attached to the project will use Design-Based Research to evaluate the effectiveness of a simple, but innovative academic content and metadata creation tool referred to as Academic Assist.

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