Semantic browsing of digital collections

Visiting museums is an increasingly popular pastime. Studies have shown that visitors can draw on their museum experience, long after their visit, to learn new things in practical situations. Rather than viewing a visit as a single learning event, we are interested in ways of extending the experience to allow visitors to access online resources tailored to their interests. Museums typically have extensive archives that can be made available online, the challenge is to match these resources to the visitor’s interests and present them in a manner that facilitates exploration and engages the visitor. We propose the use of knowledge level resource descriptions to identify relevant resources and create structured presentations. A system that embodies this approach, which is in use in a UK museum, is presented and the applicability of the approach to the broader semantic web is discussed

From Keyword Search to Exploration: How Result Visualization Aids Discovery on the Web

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney). We also consider the both traditional and novel ways in which these strategies have been evaluated. From our review of cognitive processes, browser design, and evaluations, we reflect on the future opportunities and new paradigms for exploring and interacting with Web search results

E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise: Does Expertise in System Change Management and Information Technology Auditing Mediate E-Commerce Audit Judgment Expertise?

A global survey of 203 E-commerce auditors was conducted to investigate the perceptions about the potential determinants of expertise in E-commerce audits. We hypothesize and find evidence indicating that information technology and communication expertise are positively related to expertise in E-commerce audit judgment. We also find that system change management expertise and information technology audit expertise mediate this relationship.E-commerce Audit Judgment, IT Audit, Structural Equations Modeling

Evaluating the development of wearable devices, personal data assistants and the use of other mobile devices in further and higher education institutions

This report presents technical evaluation and case studies of the use of wearable and mobile computing mobile devices in further and higher education. The first section provides technical evaluation of the current state of the art in wearable and mobile technologies and reviews several innovative wearable products that have been developed in recent years. The second section examines three scenarios for further and higher education where wearable and mobile devices are currently being used. The three scenarios include: (i) the delivery of lectures over mobile devices, (ii) the augmentation of the physical campus with a virtual and mobile component, and (iii) the use of PDAs and mobile devices in field studies. The first scenario explores the use of web lectures including an evaluation of IBM's Web Lecture Services and 3Com's learning assistant. The second scenario explores models for a campus without walls evaluating the Handsprings to Learning projects at East Carolina University and ActiveCampus at the University of California San Diego . The third scenario explores the use of wearable and mobile devices for field trips examining San Francisco Exploratorium's tool for capturing museum visits and the Cybertracker field computer. The third section of the report explores the uses and purposes for wearable and mobile devices in tertiary education, identifying key trends and issues to be considered when piloting the use of these devices in educational contexts

Exploring pathways across stories

This paper describes a method for supporting the exploration of a collection of documents organized as a hypertext by investigating relations between documents along user-specified paths. The approach is demonstrated on a corpus of stories about the World War Two activities of the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Each story is described by one or more events and annotated in terms of domain ontologies. A pathway in the document space is a sequence of events in which adjacent events share common binding concepts. The criteria for selecting the pathway include a measure of the adherence to the user-specified part of the document space and the mutual information between adjacent documents calculated from their annotations

Interactivity and Control: The Case of Dynamic Maps for Navigation in Hypertext

Rich information environments such as online tutorials and web-books pose considerable difficulties for users, of which the most notable is being ‘lost in hypertext’. If these environments are to become commonplace, they must be designed to relieve users of these difficulties. In this paper we study the effects of dynamic navigational maps on orientation and search performance. We designed a conceptual map that tracks the user’s position vis-à-vis the content of the web-book and the history of the user’s visits. We show how these maps improve search performance significantly in terms of efficiency (number of clicks) but only weakly in terms of time or accuracy. We call for more research on how to enhance user control in complex information environments

From print to online world: examining the predictors that influence the level of interactivity of newspaper\u27s World Wide Web pages

The purpose of this study is to examine the predictors that influenced the interactivity of U.S. daily newspapers Web sites, namely the market size of newspapers, newspapers ownership, the number of online newspaper technical staff, length of newspaper Web site existence. Whether a national newspaper has different interactive Web site from a local newspaper is also studied. A content analysis of 106 U.S. daily newspapers Web sites found that market size and length of time newspapers having Internet presence sites are correlated to the interactive level of newspapers Web sites. National newspapers are also found having more interactive Web sites than local newspapers

One Approach to Knowledge Mapping for International Student Portal

* The work is partly supported by RFFI grant 08-07-00062-aKnowledge portal is an approach used to provide view of domain-specific information on the World Wide Web [13]. In this paper, we present one approach by using ontology engineering as a conceptual backbone and relationships for knowledge extracting, structuring and formalizing as a comprehensive way for building knowledge portal. For illustration of a practical ontology development of knowledge portal, the described ideas are implemented in a system design for international student service

Constructivism in online learning : a literature review

The purpose of this paper is to look at the interaction of constructivist-based approaches, adult learning characteristics and six online learning issues. Constructivist learning environments allow learners to build their own meaning and understanding from learning resources and circumstances. Constructivists claim that learners accumulate new knowledge by themselves and use this to pile up previous knowledge and experiences. The learner is the learning focus, and the instructors act as facilitators or guides, which provide appropriate and enriching supplies. This theory supports well the adult style of learning. Based on constructivism, the online instructor is a facilitator to monitor and provide a safe, positive, and motivating online learning environment, and a tutor to provide the supporting skills and knowledge to each individual. Compared to traditional education, online learning has some outstanding features, such as the setting overcomes geographic problems and the learners could go to the virtual classroom anytime and anywhere if they have the accesses to the Internet. This paper focuses on the adult learning group, along with the online learning benefits and some issues that occur among the technologies and human subjects