This paper examines the limits of state intervention through the relationship between freedom and equality, the rule of law and social justice, as well as through two highly contradictory concepts regarding the scope of government action – the concepts of minimal state and paternalistic state. Accordingly, we seek to identify a model capable of outlining the extent to which the state can intervene in the light of socially beneficial goals, but without compromising individual freedom. Since we cannot find such a model within the extreme positions of liberalism and socialism, this paper seeks to offer a satisfactory solution by mitigating some of the ideologically exclusive positions. It embraces Aristotle’s teaching about the middle as a virtue and proposes sophisticated neoliberalism as a potential alternative to the status quo. Still, as insisted, the government should never be allowed to assume uncontrollable powers and create conditions for collectivist doctrines that recognize no individual freedom.
Author: Aula Blog Editor
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Several presentations, including “Taking the Lead in SWE: An Asian Perspective.”
Dr. Bhaduri will be presenting at the Society of Women Engineers, with whom she is a Senator. Several events are online for interested persons. Dr. Bhaduri is an accomplished technologist and educator, as well as being excellent speaker and is appreciated for her wit, her precision, and her kindness.
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Book Review: Litigating Artificial Intelligence by Jesse Beatson, Gerold Chan, and Jill R. Presser
It is no longer news that artificial intelligence (AI) is being deployed across the board in the legal industry, although the extent of AI use varies by jurisdiction.
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Artificial intelligence practices in everyday news production: The case of South Africa’s mainstream newsrooms
This article explores artificial intelligence (AI) uptake in selected South African mainstream newsrooms. It seeks to determine the extent to which AI has been adopted and how journalists and editors perceive its appropriation in newsmaking practices. To address these two broad aims, the study used in-depth interviews with journalists and editors. Our findings suggest a slow, varied but methodical uptake of AI practices in South Africa’s mainstream newsrooms. We deduced three uses of AI in these newsrooms. The first is what we call the holistic appropriation of AI. The second one is the exclusively technological appropriation of AI, and the last one is the task-specific appropriation of AI. This varied uptake of AI is taking place against a deep-seated skepticism with this technology.
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Preparing engineering students to find the best job fit: Starting early with the career development process
In spite of the vast amount of literature that focuses on the need for significantly more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates, the importance of a student finding a good career fit, and what makes a student employable, little research exists on undergraduate engineering students’ understanding of the process of how to find, qualify for, and secure a preferred first position after graduation (FPAG). Likewise, it is important for research to consider nuanced distinctions within STEM fields to assist research to practice transitions. Competition in securing jobs upon graduation is expected to continue, including for engineering positions. In fact, even in a market of high demand for STEM graduates, employers need candidates that display the skills, interests, and readiness to be successful employees.
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Work in progress: Coloring Outside the Lines-Exploring the Potential for Integrating Creative Evaluation in Engineering Education
Extant cultures within academic institutions that educate and train the next generations of STEM professionals tend to privilege long-held majority perspectives of knowing, thinking, and doing in science and engineering. To more intentionally recruit and include diverse groups of students into our educational programs, it is imperative that we develop and adopt unique pedagogical and assessment approaches that move beyond didactics, leverage experiential learning, and embrace a variety of student backgrounds and identities. In this paper, we demonstrate how visual methods-based assessments can serve as an impactful alternative to more traditional forms. We start by introducing three examples currently used in STEM curricula, and then by describing how these assessments promote autonomy and creativity as students make meaning of STEM and of themselves as STEM professionals. We conclude the description of each assessment example by identifying key considerations for STEM instructors when attempting to implement such assessments in their own contexts.
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Digital Surveillance in Southern Africa
Surveillance practices are increasingly becoming dynamic and pervasive, spurred on by the ever-mutating changes in technological inventions at a global level. The practice of surveillance has become embedded in our everyday digital communications, public spaces, workplaces, cross-border movements, financial transactions, logging transactions and many other spaces on which citizens interact. What makes the case of southern African region unique is not only the increasing pervasiveness of surveillance, but the acute lack of transparency in the practice, the absence of necessary and proportionate regulations and the politicized nature of surveillance in the region. This is worrisome in a region where constitutionalism is sluggish, democracy is decline and (semi) authoritarian tendencies are becoming more entrenched.
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Board 164: Engineering Interventions in My Science Classroom: What’s My Role?
This work in progress paper draws on data from year one of a multi-year project aimed at integrating engineering into middle-school science classes. The expectation that middle school teachers integrate engineering into their science curriculum may be challenging as engineering related content has not historically been part of teacher preparation. Particularly in rural areas, in service teacher training related to engineering may be absent or difficult to access due to proximity or financial or time costs. Therefore, it is important to develop effective professional development (PD) that works within the actual teaching context and makes few demands on teachers beyond their regular workload. In partnership with teachers and local industry workers in rural and Appalachian areas, the Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (VT-PEERS) project developed extended classroom engineering activities for students that also served as teacher PD related to teaching engineering in locally relevant ways. As part of this work, a qualitative analysis was conducted to understand how teachers, from their perspectives, envisioned their role during the interventions. Data were collected prior to and after interventions (within an academic year) to further understand if, and if so, how, teacher perspectives of their role changed. Results reveal three initial roles; classroom manager, learner, helper, and unsure. The post intervention data revealed all teachers indicated being a “learner”.
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Board 192: Identifying and addressing the barriers to advancement for women in the engineering professoriate: A systematic review of literature
This work-in-progress paper shares ongoing findings from a mixed-methods systematic literature review that seeks to examine the retention of women in the engineering professoriate. We identified literature from EBSCOHost and Engineering Village that discussed women in the engineering professoriate in relation to either retention or persistence or both, as explicitly stated in their abstract. Following an initial review of 191 titles, 48 papers passed our inclusion criteria; further qualitative analysis of abstracts yielded 31 papers, which underwent a full paper review. Our ongoing findings suggest the following: a) research on the retention of women in engineering professoriate is being supported by grants and funding opportunities; b) the reviewed literature documented six barriers faced by women in the engineering professoriate: isolation of women faculty, work/life balance, inequitable distribution of service, underrepresentation of women faculty, implicit bias, and departmental resources; and c) although journal scholarship on this topic is not limited to popular engineering education publishing venues, conference scholarship are mainly from those popular in the field, such as the ASEE Annual Conference and the Frontiers in Education Conference. Future work will share the extent to which the reviewed literature discussed interventions to recruit or retain women in the engineering professoriate, and whether these interventions vary by the type of institution.
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Health chatbots in Africa: scoping review
Background
This scoping review explores and summarizes the existing literature on the use of chatbots to support and promote health in Africa.Objective
The primary aim was to learn where, and under what circumstances, chatbots have been used effectively for health in Africa; how chatbots have been developed to the best effect; and how they have been evaluated by looking at literature published between 2017 and 2022. A secondary aim was to identify potential lessons and best practices for others chatbots. The review also aimed to highlight directions for future research on the use of chatbots for health in Africa.Methods
Using the 2005 Arksey and O’Malley framework, we used a Boolean search to broadly search literature published between January 2017 and July 2022. Literature between June 2021 and July 2022 was identified using Google Scholar, EBSCO information services—which includes the African HealthLine, PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Cochrane, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science databases—and other internet sources (including gray literature). The inclusion criteria were literature about health chatbots in Africa published in journals, conference papers, opinion, or white papers.Results
In all, 212 records were screened, and 12 articles met the inclusion criteria. Results were analyzed according to the themes they covered. The themes identified included the purpose of the chatbot as either providing an educational or information-sharing service or providing a counselling service. Accessibility as a result of either technical restrictions or language …