Engineering Commons^™

Introducing Apprentices To Brightspace, Peter O'Farrell

Case studies: Brightspace

Apprentice Tradespeople come to Bolton Street to study the theoretical aspect of their trades in blocks of 10 or 11 weeks. The 11-week block of learning includes 10 weeks of learning and 1 week of exams. The students have consistently given feedback that they find the 10 weeks quite busy with substantial amounts of new material to take in during the classes. These are NFC Level 6 students. The MAMF (Mechanical Automation Maintenance Fitter) apprentices taught in the School of Mechanical Engineering undertake a broad range of subject matter over a 35-hour college week, including technical drawing. There are sixteen …

Gis Cpd Geospatial Skills, Niamh O'Reilly

Case studies: Digital Education

The GIS CPD programme is delivered to people from industry wishing to develop their Geospatial skills in GIS. For many this is an important skill. Many organisations and companies encourage and pay for their staff to attend the programme and get the CPD Students gain important skills for managing, analysing and presenting geospatial data in a GIS environment. certificate. Students come from many different industries including local authorities, semi state bodies, National mapping agency, transport consultant practices, cable companies, environmental companies. The programme has been running for almost 30 years by my former colleague Eamonn Donnelly. Up until the pandemic …

Live Recording Of Lectures, Louise Lynch

Case studies: Digital Education

The final year module, consisting of 2-hour lectures and 2-hour tutorials, focuses on worked examples. To support students, especially those repeating the module, lectures were recorded and uploaded to Brightspace. Due to the difficulty of the subject and the small class size, in-person delivery was prioritised. The IT 360 mic was used for audio only, no video was recorded, calculations were done on OneNote Class Notebook using the pen functionality of the Surface Pro. This method gives students immediate access to worked examples. Open Broadcast Studio (OBS) was employed to manage different programmes without screen sharing interruptions, while maintaining the …

Numbas For Formative Assessment, Louise Lynch

Case studies: Digital Education

Numbas is an open-source e-assessment system aimed at mathematics and other numerate disciplines. It allows for the setup of individual assessments for students, increasing academic integrity. Numbas can autograde attempts, and the use of the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) within Brightspace allows instructors to view attempts, monitor progress, and alter marks where applicable. This adds a valuable element for both formative and summative assessments. In this module, Numbas was used to provide students with individual parameters for the same problems as part of their continuous assessment. These problems would consist of several steps and typically take over 30 minutes to …

Incorporating Screenpal Video To Brightspace Quiz “Hints” Function, Michael O Connor

Case studies: Digital Education

I have used the quiz function in Brightspace for some time as an asynchronous learning support and formative assessment technique for various cohorts from apprentice to UG FT students. Typically, I would create several MCQ quizzes around key learning outcomes (LOs) or “muddiest point” discoveries in the classroom. These quizzes were set up to allow the students unlimited attempts, with results published automatically and all question attempts shown with correct answers. While it was effective and well received (interesting particularly by apprentices whose summative assessment results are often high stakes) I often felt it became a repetitive answer selection exercise …

Building Services Engineering March/April 2025

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Quantifying The Role Of Active Listening And Reassurance In Virtual Health Coach Interactions, Ghulam Hussain, Brian Keegan, Robert Ross

Articles

Conversational Agents have the potential to support healthcare through coaching exercise routines, but are still lacking in demonstrating authentic social behaviours to support engagement. To this end, we present a series of experiments that we conducted in order to investigate how automated health care coaches can be more effective when their interaction style is tailored to demonstrate qualities associated with a good bedside manner, namely active listening and reassurance. To test this, we first developed a dataset of 135 dialogue excerpts from three distinct sources, i.e., original, handcrafted and LLMs, the latter two of which were tuned to demonstrate specific …

A Review Of Chemical Stabilisation Used To Enhance The Mechanical Properties Of Rammed Earth, David Thompson, Charles Augarde, Juan Pablo Osorio

Articles

Rammed earth is a sustainable construction method with a lower carbon footprint and embodied energy compared to traditional materials like steel and concrete. However, its lower mechanical properties when compared to these forms of construction make it vulnerable to seismic forces. This paper reviews the published literature on enhancing rammed earth's mechanical properties through both chemical stabilisation and fibre reinforcement, with a focus on reusing waste materials. The effectiveness of these techniques are highlighted by comparing experimental results with minimum specifications taken from relevant guidelines and standards for building rammed earth structures in seismic zones. These findings demonstrate that chemical …

Building Services Engineering January/February 2025

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Draft Active Travel & Public Realm Evaluation Framework (Summary), Sarah Rock Dr, Sinead Flavin

Other Resources

This aim of this Draft Summary Framework is to assist Local Authorities & other similar authorities in the monitoring and evaluation of their active travel & public realm interventions. It is intended to allow for flexibility depending on the project objectives and context, and is not intended to be a definitive list of indicators and metrics. The indicators and metrics included seek to strike the balance between what's reasonable, practical and feasible for a Local Authority and associated resources in terms of monitoring & evaluation. Not all projects can be reasonably expected to be fully monitored and evaluated, thus a …

Lessons In Low-Tech: A Handbook For Sustainable Education, Ceri Almrott, Loann Astorino, Sébastien Bette, Benoit Delinchant, Philippe Fortemps, Ulysse Girard, Paul Hendrick, Sacha Hodencq, Fabian Lecron, Julie Lhuissier, Kévin Loesle, Luis Miguel Lopez Santiago, Santiago Perez Rodriguez, Gauthier Renard, Tatiana Reyes, Virginie Vandenbulcke, John Walsh

Other resources

LT4SUSTAIN, an Erasmus+ funded transnational project, is at the forefront of responding to the increasing awareness of environmental and climate challenges. This awareness, particularly among youth, has led to a demand for social justice. With the coordinated work among six institutions, ranging from higher education institutions to private companies and associations, LT4SUSTAIN aims to raise awareness of Lowtech across society.

LT4SUSTAIN is pioneering a unique approach to technology design. By developing “hackathons” and other “hands-on” events, we are engaging students and industry in a way that improves inclusiveness. Our objective is to equip individuals with the skills to embark on …

Numerical And Experimental Investigation Of The Dynamic Behavior Of Vibrating Niti Guidewire, Graham Gavin

Conference Papers

Minimally invasive interventions often utilise slender wires to access and navigate to target sites. These guidewires act as rails, facilitating access for other therapies. In endovascular procedures, the guidewires facilitate angioplasty balloons, stenting and other dilation procedures. Due to their small profile and flexibility, endovascular guidewires have limited ability to transfer forces to their tip and as a result cannot penetrate hard calcified blockages, commonly referred to as chronic total occlusions (CTOs) [1-2]. One method proposed to overcome this limitation is the application of vibrations to the wire. The vibrations are transmitted along the length of the wire to the …

Evaluation Of The Crossing Forces Of A Vibrating Guidewire In Contact With Model Calcified Materials, A. Rezaei, Graham Gavin, S. Raut

Conference Papers

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) affects millions globally, with over 21 million cases reported in the U.S. in 2020. It occurs when leg arteries become narrowed or blocked, leading to complications like critical limb ischemia, where blood flow is severely restricted. Standard treatments, such as bypass surgery and endovascular procedures, aim to restore blood flow. However, advanced chronic total occlusions with calcified plaques, often prevent flexible guidewires crossing into the true lumen of the distal vessel, accounting for approximately 80% of procedural failure. The use of high-frequency (20- 50 kHz) mechanical vibrations (0-50 μm) delivered to the distal tip of specialist …

Securing Iac:Comparing Checkov, Terrascan, And Tfsec On Aws And Azure, Maliha Binte Ruhul Amin, David White

Academic Poster Collection

Securing IaC:Comparing Checkov, Terrascan, and Tfsec on AWS and Azure

Comparison Of Kafka Operators: Strimzi Vs Koperator Vs Confluent: A Comprehensive Industry Analysis, Ankit Anthony, Gary Clynch

Academic Poster Collection

Comparison of Kafka Operators: Strimzi vs Koperator vs Confluent: A Comprehensive Industry Analysis

Analysis Of Impact Of Configuration Choice Upon Azure Service Bus Performance, Brian Skehan, Mary Rose Donnelly

Academic Poster Collection

Analysis of impact of configuration choice upon Azure Service Bus performance.

Comparative Analysis Of Mysql And Mongodb In A High-Concurrency System, Gabriel Solares, Cormac Keogh

Academic Poster Collection

Comparative Analysis of MySQL and MongoDB in a High-Concurrency System

Analysis Of Functional Programming Languages For Use In Serverless Lambda Functions On Aws Platform, William Spain, Gary Clynch

Academic Poster Collection

Analysis of functional programming languages for use in serverless lambda functions on AWS platform

A Comparison Of Terraform And Bicep Quality Attributes, Colm O'Hara, Kevin Bayliss

Academic Poster Collection

A Comparison of Terraform and BICEP Quality Attributes

Comparing Kubernetes And Nomad For Hosting .Net Legacy Workloads In Azure, Luke Osbourne, Omar Portillo

Academic Poster Collection

Comparing Kubernetes and Nomad for hosting .NET legacy workloads in Azure

Evaluating Kubernetes Security Mechanisms For Dos Prevention: A Comparative Analysis Of Multi-Layer Protection Strategies, Sergej Dikun, Omar Portillo

Academic Poster Collection

Evaluating Kubernetes Security Mechanisms for DOS Prevention: A Comparative Analysis of Multi-layer Protection Strategies

Improving Iac Script Quality: Evaluating Static Analysis Tools And Establishing Best Practices, Isha Rai, Kevin Bayliss

Academic Poster Collection

Improving IaC Script Quality: Evaluating Static Analysis Tools and Establishing Best Practices

Comparative Cost And Capacity Analysis Of Managed Service And Non-Managed Service Api Gateway Architectures On Leading Cloud Platforms, George Brown, Cormac Keogh

Academic Poster Collection

Comparative Cost and Capacity Analysis of Managed Service and Non-Managed Service API Gateway Architectures on Leading Cloud Platforms

The Irish Food Manufacturing Industry’S Preparedness For Nis2 Cybersecurity, Niall Mcgowan, Mary Rose Donnelly

Academic Poster Collection

The Irish Food Manufacturing Industry’s Preparedness for NIS2 Cybersecurity

A Comparison Of Aks And K3s On Vmss, Craig Dillon, Omar Portillo

Academic Poster Collection

A Comparison of AKS and K3s on VMSS

Comparison Of Asynchronous Architectural Patterns On Aws & Gcp Using Terraform, Alan Mcgee, Mary Rose Donnelly

Academic Poster Collection

Comparison of Asynchronous Architectural Patterns on AWS & GCP Using Terraform

Examining Terraform And Bicep: A Comparative Analysis Of Infrastructure As Code Tools For Provisioning Azure Environments, Richard Coffey, Kevin Bayliss

Academic Poster Collection

Examining Terraform and Bicep: A Comparative Analysis of Infrastructure as Code Tools for Provisioning Azure Environments

Nomad Vs. Kubernetes, Alexandru Constantin Cardas, Omar Portillo

Academic Poster Collection

Nomad vs. Kubernetes

Investigation Into Finops Techniques To Optimise Cost In Aws Cloud Deployments, Denis Parker, Kevin Bayliss

Academic Poster Collection

Investigation Into FinOps Techniques To Optimise Cost in AWS Cloud Deployments

The Business-Day Cloud: A Hybrid Kubernetes And Serverless Solution For Sustainable Scaling With Predictable Load Patterns, Brendan Burnside, David White

Academic Poster Collection

The Business-Day Cloud: A Hybrid Kubernetes and Serverless solution for Sustainable Scaling with Predictable Load Patterns