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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.

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.

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.

The contemporary city is a complex system where a multitude of factors and dwellers interact, creating a multi-layered spatial structure that supports the urban life. To successfully research and intervene in this context, one needs to develop fitting approaches and methods to be able to analyze it in depth.

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.

In this paper, the repertory grid is presented as a technique to explore novice programmers' experiences within the context of an action research project. The theoretical and methodological aspects of the technique are discussed. The findings from the technique that combined quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods are provided. These findings relate to the learning process, learning content, and learning support as experienced by the students in an introductory object-oriented programming course. The repertory grid technique is then appraised for its relevance and usefulness to the project, and for its contribution to the diversity of computer science research methods. Insights gained from the use of the technique are shared with the community of computer science educators.

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.

As an incomparable implication of industrial culture, the industrial heritage has a wide range of historical, technological, social, architectural or scientific values. With the process of large-scale contemporary urban revitalization, abandoned industrial buildings and areas always become the targets of urban renewal and redevelopment due to the ongoing transformation on structural changes of economy and adjustments of plot usage. Although the research and discussion on preservation of industrial heritage have been launched in the fields of theory and practice in China, many former industrial areas and buildings are still undergoing extreme threats and irreversible damages. Taking Iec Long Fireworks Factory which is the only well preserved survivor of industrial heritage in Macao as a case study, this paper presents its historic background, present challenges and future envisions of development. Based on group investigations and SWOT analysis, integrated strategies are proposed to preserve and revitalize the old factory ruins and their landscape settings. The conclusions show the significance to preserve and reuse industrial heritage opened for the urban renewal, which also could be a good contribution for sustainability of history and culture, environment, society and tourism.

Contemporary urban environment is facing big changes caused by a series of synthetic factors on politics, economy, technology, society and culture. Its goals and design concepts have shifted from the fulfillment of the basic function of life into the improvement of whole qualities of cities. Forming the key part of city fabric, urban historical centre helps link scattered individual historical buildings, and retrieve urban fabric. It also takes important roles in preserving history and tradition, keeping social meanings of a place and city's sustainability. This paper briefly analyzed the historic background and current issues in Macao Historic Centre. Meanwhile, strategies and principles are proposed to improve and revitalize public spaces located in dilapidated or misused historical centre so as to provide new scientific and holistic ideas for the creation of a new sustainable environment in China.