Assessing the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility.

This study investigated the perceptual contributions of vowels and consonants to Mandarin sentence intelligibility. Mandarin sentences were edited using a noise-replacement paradigm to preserve various amounts of segmental information and presented to normal-hearing listeners to recognize. The vowel-only Mandarin sentences yielded a remarkable 3:1 intelligibility advantage over the consonant-only sentences. This advantage is larger than that obtained with English sentences, suggesting that vowels may have a greater contribution to sentence intelligibility in Mandarin than in English. Although providing information redundant to contributions from vowel centers, a little vowel-consonant boundary transition would significantly improve the intelligibility of the consonant-only Mandarin sentences.

Learning on mobile augmented reality trails of integrity and ethics.

At the heart of university education, there must be an emphasis on students developing academic integrity and ethics (AIE), which is essential for their personal development and future professional careers. This paper reports on a project which employs an augmented reality (AR) interface accessed on mobile devices to bring AIE scenarios alive for students in everyday campus contexts. Mobile learning paths called 'Trails of Integrity and Ethics' (TIEs) have been created on Hong Kong university campuses, with students walking through study locations where ethical dilemmas might arise, and using an AR app to learn about, consider and respond to a range of problematic scenarios. In addition, subject-specific TIEs have been developed in which students face ethical dilemmas specific to their disciplines, and are tasked with responding according to professional norms and standards. After the first 2 years of this 4-year funded project, more than 1000 students have participated in the TIEs. Analysis of data from their mobile device clickstreams, pre- and post-trail reflective texts and user experience surveys has led to encouraging initial findings. There is some early evidence suggesting that the mobile AR trails have helped students to become more active and engaged in their learning of abstract conceptual knowledge about AIE, and that their perspectives on AIE have changed as they have begun to link ethical dilemmas on the TIEs with their everyday realities.