voyeurism

two papers to be read during the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society

i am thrilled to share that we have been given the opportunity to share our work through two papers to be read at this year's annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society :-)

this year's conference will take place as a hybrid event in London, from the 29th of August till the 1st of September.

Exploring Ornithological Identification with Deep Learning is co-authored with Edwin Ong and Shang Yu Liow. its abstract reads:

Only 4.5 percent of Singapore's land area is set aside as nature reserve. Despite this, Singapore is an important stopover point for more than forty species of migratory birds along both the Central Asian Flyway and the East Asian - Australasian Flyway. The birds are attracted to the wetlands and mudflats of the island-nation. This paper reports an independent research project conducted by a pair of high school students between April 2022 and March 2023, under the mentorship of a senior research scientist at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. It documents the identification and evaluation of Deep Learning Models in ornithological identification. Specifically, the capabilities of two neural network frameworks, VGG16 and InceptionV3, were identified due to their ability to build image classification models. The models were trained on publicly available datasets comprising more than 70000 images, representing more than 400 species. By the end of the project, the iteration of the model achieved a validation accuracy of 73.04% on forty locally sighted species. As an example of misidentification, an image of a juvenile Barred Eagle-Owl was classified as a White-headed Fish Eagle due to the similar white colouration. The bird prediction could be impacted by the lack of a variety of training data which represents the bird at all stages of its life, all while including images of both genders. A web-based service which linked to the external Singapore Birds Project was subsequently designed as a proof of concept for future scaling.

Designing an Autonomous Platform using Hobbyist Robotics Embedded Computing for Performing Geospatial 3D Mapping is co-authored with Christopher Cheng and Yi Xin Ong. its abstract reads:

Typical use cases of geospatial 3D mapping relate to outdoor environments, where virtual navigation platforms are generated via satellite and aerial imagery, and photogrammetry. Much remains to be discovered about mapping indoor environments, where data may not be readily accessible over long periods of time. This paper describes an independent research project conducted by a pair of high school students between April 2022 and March 2023, under the mentorship of a senior research scientist at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. The project investigated remote sensing methods of Light Detection and Ranging sensors (LiDAR), as well as computer vision functionalities of the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, which is a compact microcomputer ideal for machine learning applications. More specifically, through the utilisation of open-source hardware and software, the project aimed to design a mapping device by pairing autonomous robot navigation with map plotting and depth maps. The device organised and interpreted data sourced from Raspberry Pi cameras and a 360° LiDAR fitted onto a mobile platform. Depth perception models and mapping algorithms were explored as precedent for comparing their accuracy in data collection and efficacy in map generation. LiDAR systems - particularly those implemented for large-scale, outdoor scenarios - are costly to maintain. Although a LiDAR system with more available optical power has increased accuracy, it is also more expensive to operate. Nevertheless, autonomous platforms surpass manual labour in 3D mapping. By scheduling timely deployment of the mapping device, up-to-date information and visual representations of a mapped region could be more easily obtained.

invited to share our student project on biodiversity education during the 11th Student Scientific Conference, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen

we are happy and excited to share our students' work on biodiversity education, as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, on the 22nd of April.

my students Edwin Ong and Shang Yu Liow will be sharing our paper Facilitating student inventiveness and inquiry: a case example from STEM, as part of the the 11th Student Scientific Conference, themed on ‘Ecology and the Environment’, in the section ‘Environmental education, Biodiversity, Cell biology, Technology’.

we are very grateful to our friends at the Biology Department for extending the invitation to us :-)

student projects on biodiversity education and sleep quality at the 13th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance

today our team received news that we have been invited to share our students' work on biodiversity education and the investigation of sleep quality during the 13th annual symposium of the Mobiles for Education Alliance in the track on Climate Education. This track focuses on the intersection of STEM education and climate change to enhance students' understanding of climate science, sustainable practices, and the role of technology in addressing environmental challenges.

we thank God for His continued grace and provision.

this year, the symposium is being conducted as an in-person event between the 11th to the 14th of September, with the overarching theme of Inspiring the next generation of STEM leaders - everywhere! 

other teams having representations are from UNESCO, the World Bank, the UNHCR, among others.

The mEducation Alliance was formed by USAID in 2010. It is an international collaborative effort between bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, foundations, private sector partners, and academic researchers. The collective agenda of the alliance is to: highlight and catalyze promising information and communications technology for education (ICT4E) practices and initiatives, particularly in low-resource and developing country context; to reduce duplicative efforts; to promote collective knowledge-sharing, and to identify and support efforts to evaluate and scale promising ICT4E interventions.

:-)

two papers to be read during the 15th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies

we are very happy to share that we have been given the opportunity to share our work through two papers to be read during the 15th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies. The conference will be held in Palma de Mallorca from the 3rd till the 5th of July.

Utilising deep learning in Singapore primary school mathematical word problems is co-authored with Jing Zeng and James D Tan. its abstract reads:

In the regularly held Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys, Singapore has performed consistently well. Singapore Math is a teaching approach originally developed by the country's Ministry of Education in the 1980s for its public schools. Since then, Singapore Math has been widely adopted in various forms around the world over the past twenty years.This paper describes an independent research project conducted by a pair of high school students under the mentorship of a senior research scientist from the National Institute of Education, Singapore, from April 2022 till March 2023. It describes a deep neural solver which the students designed and trained to solve Singapore mathematics word problems and to provide equations as explanation. In contrast to common approaches of plainly using the Math23K dataset, we translated the large dataset into English and inserted Singaporean Mathematics word problems that came from test papers and assessment books. By using an Encoder-Decoder model which uses recurrent neural networks (RNN), we fed the processed datasets into the model and evaluated the performance of the model based on different question types. Within the timeframe mandated by the research project, we were able to achieve an accuracy of the model for the Math23K dataset of 37.4%. The accuracy was lower for Singapore Mathematical word problems. The lower accuracy can be attributed to the model learning mainly Mathematical problems from a dataset derived from a non-Singaporean context, with the consequence that it was not able to sufficiently identify the new question types. The model performed best with “More than, Less than, As many as” questions, achieving an accuracy of 35%.

Music Mystery: learning music theory through escape room puzzles is co-authored with Kim Mai Truong and Yuxuan Wu. its abstract reads:

Music theory is essential for one to understand how a music piece is constructed. It is not only theoretical but also practical, providing the fundamentals for playing and composing music. For novices who are learning music, music theory poses a challenge due to the large corpus of potential information to be learned, and its technical nature. Thus, despite the benefits, novice learners can be demotivated and refrain from learning and understanding music theory, which is a challenge for educators. This paper describes an independent research study conducted by a pair of high school students under the mentorship of a senior research scientist from the National Institute of Education, Singapore, from April 2022 till March 2023. The study explored the use of escape room puzzles and instructional scaffolding in teaching novice learners about basic music theory. This study used Shaffer's (2005) epistemic frames in games as the basis for its experiment, combined with the use of technology-based scaffolding. The escape room, “Melody Mystery'', was made and conducted using Scratch, a website for creating games. Puzzles in the form of escape rooms were used due to their role-playing elements, which served to advance the in-game narrative of ‘novice-as-expert’. We examined how effective it was to engage and motivate novice learners when they were made to appropriate the role of an expert in music and solve problems using knowledge and skills from the domain. We found positive responses from participants’ attitudes toward music theory and their ability to retain knowledge of the subject, as well as evidence that suggests games can have significant effects on motivation in the learning process.

invited to co-teach the inaugural Certificate Programme in STEM Curriculum Development

my team and i are happy and excited to share that we have been invited to be part of the teaching team of the National Institute of Education's Certificate Programme in STEM Curriculum Development, in its inaugural semester later this year.

specifically, we will co-teach part of INS4423, a 4 AU course titled Approaches and Emerging Technologies in STEM Education. INS4423 is designed to help participants to acquire some basic knowledge about emerging technologies in STEM fields and ways to integrate them into the design of STEM lessons in their capstone project.

the course description of INS4423 reads: STEM curriculum should ideally provide learning contexts for students to acquire cross-disciplinary knowledge in authentic and applied contexts. STEM inventions and innovations are constantly emerging and evolving and hence, having current knowledge of emerging technologies in STE fields will be useful in STEM curriculum design, teaching and assessment. In this course, participants will acquire basic knowledge about emerging technologies in STEM fields and apply them to the design of integrated STEM lessons. They will explore different types of cognitive processes in STEM inquiry to create problem-, solution- and user-centric STEM curriculum for students.

the STEM Curriculum Development certification is hosted by meriSTEM@NIE.

The objectives of the Certificate in STEM Curriculum Development are to provide professional development for teachers to:
- strengthen teacher readiness to teach integrated STEM lessons by equipping them with theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to design and enact cross disciplinary STEM lessons in an authentic and applied manner; and
- establish a team of STEM educators who take leadership in supporting and nurturing other STEM educators to develop STEM curricular and teaching competencies in formal and informal learning contexts.

we give thanks to God for this opportunity.

:-)

“They are just 2D pixels” Understanding the Motivation behind Gacha Gamers: a Final Year Project

i am thrilled to share the following, on behalf of my student Tan Yi Hong, from the School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University:

*****

“They are just 2D pixels” Understanding the Motivation behind Gacha Gamers

I recently completed my psychology undergraduate final year project and am excited to share about my findings. This is a topic close to my heart and I hope the findings can help provide further insight into gacha games and gacha gamers.

The entire project took about a year (including literature review) and I would like to thank my supervisors Associate Professor Joyce Pang and Dr Kenneth Y T Lim for their continuous guidance and supervision.

If you are interested in reading, you may access it in the Digital Repository of NTU. If you are unable to access, feel free to message or email me, I can send you a copy for reading.

Its abstract reads:

Gacha games are a form of video games that have grown in popularity in recent years. Considerable research has been done on the gambling aspect of gacha mechanisms, with some criticising it as exploitative. However, these studies tend to portray gacha gamers as passive consumers and fail to recognise the different reasons for gaming. This paper seeks to investigate the motivation behind gacha gaming. Study 1 examines whether the identity of a gacha gamer would influence their gaming habits and found that gacha gamers are neither stereotyped nor stigmatised. Studies 2 and 3 apply self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) to examine motivations for gacha gaming. Study 2 utilised a quantitative study and found that playing gacha games satisfies the three needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, these needs are not satisfied by in-game gacha mechanics. Study 2 also found that connection with other players and the formation of parasocial relationships with in-game characters satisfy the need for relatedness. Study 3 utilised a qualitative interview study and found similar results through the lived experiences of gacha gamers. Together, these findings help to explain the motivations behind gacha gaming and provide foundations for future research.