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Countless historical sites worldwide have become unrecognisable based on their historical context. Many are cultural heritage structures with significant historical and aesthetic importance. The majority have not been well preserved; worse, some were demolished (Stenning, 2015). Furthermore, structures are part of a dynamic and changing environment, and their location within the original landscape is not always clear. People have gradually forgotten cultural traditions as environments where historical stories took place, and the look and feel have been corrupted. Immersive Virtual Reality (V.R.) allows us to relive and explore the past. However, in the Pearl River Delta Region, specifically Macau S.A.R., V.R. is still in its infancy and is not frequently used for reproducing historical sceneries. Our research focuses on reproducing heritage structures and scenery based on scarce historical information. It shows how to incorporate facts and memories into the design and create engaging, immersive experiences in V.R. scenery that takes place, both inside and outside of a cultural heritage site that has lost its original appearance. Following this, a prototype was created with specific parameters relating to past and present sceneries. We partially reproduced an existing building complex currently being used for creative and commercial purposes, but it was a shelter for the poor and a house for old ladies to live in. There were not enough facts or images linked to the inner space in the past. Inadequate information allows audiovisual scene creators to be more imaginative. The prototype focuses on a functional design that integrates cultural traits tied to local industries. The researcher used image processing software, and web 3D tools (A-Frame 1.1.0). Users can navigate by virtually “walking” and starting the visual tour; simultaneously, the story unfolds as the timeline progresses. After entering, the users jump from the present to a specific era in the past. With audio guidance, users enter the private space, shared areas, working space, etc. Users can interact with objects from the virtual scenes while the interface displays relevant audiovisual introductions. Users could utilise the virtual system to learn how the old ladies led their daily lives in the Pearl River Delta Region and grasp the local single ladies’ group lifestyle at a specific time in the past (Kwong, 2020). The interactive experience enhances the users’ interest; additionally, the users become more familiar with the region’s traditional customs. With this approach, we can create old stories using modern technology. A-Frame provides users with great convenience and can be used by any Internet browser without relying on professional V.R. devices. The content from this usage provides a greater understanding of our heritage buildings and their historical context to the wider community. This could be used in other heritage sites worldwide to reproduce and maintain structural qualities over time. This immersive experience could be a means to navigate the past while in the present. This application could benefit exhibition developers, and visitors, notably in exhibition guided tours, virtual tours inside museums, or educational assisted historical storytelling.

Macao SAR, China is one of the more densely-populated territories in the world, and as such necessarily struggles with Soundscape quality. Nonetheless, the territory has already been identified as a unique location for to function as a Soundscape living lab (Cordeiro et al., 2014), since it has a very small manageable area that includes many types of geographical varieties, from extremely high density urban areas to natural environments with dense vegetation highland or varied water front typologies. In addition, Macao has extremely wide multicultural population with a broad range of subjects that have diverse cultural perceptions and thresholds in regards to sonic cognition. The potential impact of this diversity has already been noticed in both tourism (To & Chung, 2019) and research (Chung et al., 2016). The concept of Soundscape itself is garnering increased awareness as a viable alternative to assess the quality of the sonic environment, of use to policy management and legislation, shown not only by the increasing numbers of scientific articles on the subject (Moscoso et al., 2018), but also by recent international standardisation efforts in measuring it (ISO,2018). In this talk we shall give a preliminary description and illustration of the Soundscape in a territory that is rich in diversity and has huge potential for citizen participation. This includes approaches like noise mapping, sound mapping, Soundwalks, grounded theory efforts for detailed descriptions of the environment and use of alternative objective metrics. We will describe how to use the richness of this gathered data in developing artificial-intelligence algorithms to autonomously assess and predict the evaluation of a given Soundscape based on recordings alone. This goal will alleviate the intense human effort in subjective assessment, and may prove to be an effective and substantial diagnostics tool in planning the soundscape for prospective built environments, functioning not only as an analysis and diagnostics tool, but as a design strategy for a sustainable sonic future.

Crime fiction in China emerged in the 1890s in translations of Western works, and evolved from the mere imitation of Western crime fiction to becoming an autonomous literary genre. Despite fluctuations in popularity, the genre of Chinese crime fiction, the plots of which are based on true cases, has retained a reasonably constant presence on the literary scene, and has captured the popular imagination in contemporary China and, more recently, across the world. After the demise of Mao, under whose governance the genre was banned, the government of the early Deng regime began to favor so-called “legal system literature” (fazhi wenxue), and aimed to use it to propagate moral principles and maintain political control in opposition to writers who strived for independence and originality. Since the mid and late 1980s, which were considered the heyday of Chinese crime fiction, and the expansion of the legal system and legal institutions, crime fiction has served to illuminate the role of law and to display new social perceptions. To investigate these attitudes, I focus on works of contemporary Chinese crime fiction by arguing that they are expressions of a confluence of cultural exchange and new trends. Several factors may have contributed to such a change, from the impact of the cinema and television serials in China to the celebrity status of Chinese detectives, lawyers and judges both as crime solvers and writers in the Chinese mainland and amongst the Chinese writing diaspora. An important finding is that besides giving detailed descriptions of legal procedures, all of the works studied have clearly shifted away from the traditional formula of Chinese crime fiction, that is, of the quest of a hero for justice, punishment, and revenge, to focus on the process of solving crime and the rendering of justice through legal processes. It seems that crime fiction is becoming crucial in conveying a new understanding of citizen’s rights in an attempt to fit into ongoing contemporary debates on universalistic notions of justice and the competence of legal institutions to provide justice to increasingly marginalized sectors of contemporary China.

This paper argues for paradigm pluralism in computing education research. The value of mixing paradigms, and the choice of methodological eclecticism and mixed methods is explored using pragmatic knowledge claims. A research study, which focused on the design of an introductory object-oriented programming (OOP) course for undergraduate students, is introduced as an illustration of paradigm pluralism. The study demonstrates methodological eclecticism and use of mixed methods for data collection and analysis. Meaningful outcomes resulting from the choice of the research design are described. A framework that focuses on the research problem and research questions to guide research design is presented as the outcome of the study. Through the discussion and demonstration of paradigm pluralism, this paper contributes to increased awareness of theoretically anchored research in computer science. © 2012, Australian Computer Society, Inc.

Sentiment analysis technologies have a strong impact on financial markets. In recent years there has been increasing interest in analyzing the sentiment of investors. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the current state of the art and synthesize the published literature related to the financial sentiment analysis, especially in investor sentiment for prediction of stock price. Starting from this overview the paper provides answers to the questions about how and to what extent research on investor sentiment analysis and stock price trend forecasting in the financial markets has developed and which tools are used for these purposes remains largely unexplored. This paper represents the comprehensive literature-based study on the fields of the investors sentiment analytics and machine learning applied to analyzing the sentiment of investors and its influencing stock market and predicting stock price.

People with intellectual disabilities need vocational training and support in order to be able to get into the work market and maintain their workplace. In Macau SAR, China, the vocational training ecosystem still operates in fully classic, in-person, fashion, which means it is susceptible to pandemic situations such as COVID-19. This causes a big disruption to the training when isolation measures are in place. Our goal is to study the introduction of serious games for vocational training of people with disabilities in Macau. This work presents a study to assess the training benefits of serious games and usability factors, understand the acceptability and adoption factors/benefits of serious games for vocational training for people with intellectual disabilities and associated stakeholders in Macau.

During the past two years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have created wide interest in the academic world raising both enthusiasm for new opportunities for universities and many concerns for the future of university education. The discussion has mainly appeared in non-scientific forums, such as magazine articles, columns and blogs, making it difficult to judge wider opinions within academia. To collect more rigorous data we surveyed teachers, researchers, and academic managers on their opinions and experiences of MOOCs. In this paper, we present our analysis of responses from the computer science academic community (n=137). Their feelings about MOOCs are highly mixed. Content analysis of open-ended questions revealed that the most often mentioned positive aspects included affordances of MOOCs, freedom of time and location for studying, and the possibility to experience teaching from top-level international teachers/experts. The most common negative aspects included concerns about pedagogical designs of MOOCs, assessment practices, and lack of interaction with the teacher. About half the respondents claimed they had not changed their teaching as a result of MOOCs, a small number used MOOCs as learning resources and very few were engaging with MOOCs in any significant way.

Phenomenography is a well-known empirical research approach that is often used to investigate students' ways of learning programming. Phenomenographic pedagogy is an instructional approach to plan learning and teaching activities. This theoretical paper gives an overview of prior research in phenomenographic studies of programming and shows how the results from these research studies can be applied to course design. Pedagogic principles grounded in the phenomenographic perspective on teaching and learning are then presented that consider how to tie students' experiences to the course goals (relevance structure) and how to apply variation theory to focus on the desired critical aspects of learning. Building on this, an introductory object-oriented programming course is described as an example of research-based course design. The insights gained from the experience of running the course are shared with the community of computer science educators, as also the benefits and responsibilities for those who wish to adopt the phenomenographic perspective on learning to plan their teaching. The development of an increased awareness of the variation in students' ways of experiencing programming and the need to broaden the context of the programming course are discussed.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently become a hot topic in the academic world, launching a wide ranging discussion on a number of issues. In this research, we surveyed academics' awareness, attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of MOOCs. We received responses from 236 academics from 23 countries, who were working in different roles such as teachers, researchers, managers, and pedagogical developers. Participants were invited to answer questions concerning their awareness and attitudes towards MOOCs. For participants with some knowledge of MOOCs, we requested their experiences and their observations of the impact of MOOCS on their students, teaching colleagues, and within their institutions. We found the most common reaction to MOOCs amongst the academics was concern but many were positive about the phenomenon. The academics claimed their students could be motivated to take MOOCs because of flexibility and no cost involved. While many academics were not aware of their students taking a MOOC and had not observed any changes to teaching programs at their institutions because of MOOCs, there was evidence of some activity and future plans for engagement in MOOCs.

This paper starts to address the affect and side-effects of social media on people’s live in a pure contemplation perspective. Social networks are revised and some issues regarding its impact on education was not forgotten such as the teacher role in the digital classroom, formal versus informal learning or Web 2.0 tools use. Since Moodle is the first Learning Management System whilst Facebook is the first social network in the world, a survey was accomplished with two independent classes of e-business students at University of Saint Joseph, Macao, China, on their attitudes toward both online services in a learning framework. In general, the results confirms to a certain extent others previous studies on the question of whether using Facebook as an educational tool is more effective than Moodle.

To what extent is students' understanding of computer science culturally situated? This, possibly philosophical question, has come to the surface at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, where many Chinese students study computer science together with the local students. We did an exploratory study using email interviews to see if our intuitions could be relied on. We collected data from Chinese students studying in master programs and analysed the data using a phenomenographic perspective. A complex intertwined relationship between the content of their learning (the WHAT), the ways in which they went about studying (the HOW), the aims of their studies (the WHY), and the competencies developed from the intercultural context they studied in (the WHERE) was observed. In this paper we offer some insights from the results of the pilot study and discuss how they have shaped our on-going study in the field.

Broadly, on-line communication platforms are online resources that allow the exchange of information using the Internet. They include Email, Instant Messaging, Online Open Forums, Online Blogging and Social Networking Sites. All these platforms have their own specialties and properties. In education, there are great advantages for high-schools to utilize these online communication platforms, especially Online Open Forums and Social Networking Sites. Communication is the backbone of education. Everything from classroom teaching to school policy making depends on effective communication [1]. With these new communication platforms at hand, schools can develop more adaptable and friendly channels among students, teachers and management (only the first two interveners are covered under this study). Various components of the schools will essentially work together in a more collaborative and regenerative way [2]. This research paper analyses how online communication platforms are changing the internal nature of education. It takes sample populations from two schools in Macao (Pre-University of the University of Saint Joseph, USJ, and Colégio Diocesano de São José, CDSJ) with different backgrounds such as medium of language, level of degree, professor's background and style of teaching. Teachers of these schools are communicated first for their opinion on key elements to improve learning with online communication platforms. These factors are implemented in a platform such as Social Networking Sites. As expected, students are instructed to utilize this platform (Facebook) to enhance their learning practice and experience. The result of this utilization is assessed in terms of student opinions and feedback.

In the last decade, the progress of internet technologies has led to a significant increase in security and privacy issues for users. This study aims to investigate how computer science students perceive computer network security. Thirty three students participated in the study in which we gathered data through a questionnaire. In this paper, we present an analysis that is inspired by the phenomenographic approach. Our conclusion is that the students have different levels of understanding of computer network security depending on their usage of the concepts they have learned, their theoretical or practical orientation to the subject, and their interest in the field.

In an international study, experts reflected on their national state of computer science education in school, and the associated situation and education of computer science teachers. While these situations are shaped by local circumstances, they are also shaped by changes in the discipline. The results of the study showed a number of recurrent themes and patterns such as curriculum difficulties, training and support for teachers, as well as the understanding (e.g. computer science vs. information technology) and relevance of computer science. The study also draws attention to initiatives that are being undertaken at the local and international levels to solve these problems. Finally, the study points out trends which are -- according to the experts asked -- likely to occur within the next few years.