2,398 research outputs found
Flexible Process Support for Student Project Management
Student projects m higher education are used to help students prepare themselves for
meeting the challenges they face in real world projects. However, the dynamic nature of a
project had caused it to have ill-defined tasks during the planning process. The use of
emails, face-to-face meetings and project reports to manage student projects do not appear
efficient. The implementation of X CHIPS (a cooperative hypermedia system with flexible
process support) in the EXTERNAL project has suggested that this system is able to
provide efficient project management. This dissertation aims to answer the research
question: "How a cooperative hypermedia based flexible process support approach is able
to support project supervisors and students in managing student project". A case study
approach has been adopted to investigate this phenomenon. In order to provide compelling
evidence to support the answer to our research question, data from different sources was
collected. In addition, triangulation was used to increase the reliability of the study. Our
findings from the case study demonstrated that the cooperative hypermedia based flexible
process support approach can support project supervisors and students to create, monitor
and adapt project plans cooperatively. Project supervisors and students can identify
emerging problems from the project plan and discuss issues in project meetings.
Furthermore, this approach also supports meeting process modifications and unplanned
meeting process. Project meetings between project supervisors and students are facilitated
by synchronous and asynchronous cooperation. Therefore, this approach provides flexible
ways of solving emergent problems in a timely manner. No previous studies on using
cooperative hypermedia based flexible process support in supporting student project
management have been found. Therefore, this study can be taken as a pilot study that is
able to provide invaluable knowledge to researchers who are interested in this field of study
Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems
The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments
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Making Representations Matter: Understanding Practitioner Experience in Participatory Sensemaking
Appropriating new technologies in order to foster collaboration and participatory engagement is a focus for many fields, but there is relatively little research on the experience of practitioners who do so. The role of technology-use mediators is to help make such technologies amenable and of value to the people who interact with them and each other. When the nature of the technology is to provide textual and visual representations of ideas and discussions, issues of form and shaping arise, along with questions of professional ethics. This thesis examines such participatory representational practice, specifically how practitioners make participatory visual representations (pictures, diagrams, knowledge maps) coherent, engaging and useful for groups tackling complex societal and organizational challenges. This thesis develops and applies a method to analyze, characterize, and compare instances of participatory representational practice in such a way as to highlight experiential aspects such as aesthetics, narrative, improvisation, sensemaking, and ethics. It extends taxonomies of such practices found in related research, and contributes to a critique of functionalist or techno-rationalist approaches to studying professional practice. It studies how fourteen practitioners using a visual hypermedia tool engaged participants with the hypermedia representations, and the ways they made the representations matter to the participants. It focuses on the sensemaking challenges that the practitioners encountered in their sessions, and on the ways that the form they gave the visual representations (aesthetics) related to the service they were trying to provide to their participants. Qualitative research methods such as grounded theory are employed to analyze video recordings of the participatory representational sessions. Analytical tools were developed to provide a multi-perspective view on each session. Conceptual and normative frameworks for understanding the practitioner experience in participatory representational practice in context, especially in terms of aesthetics, ethics, narrative, sensemaking, and improvisation, are proposed. The thesis places these concerns in context of other kinds of facilitative and mediation practices as well as research on reflective practice, aesthetic experience, critical HCI, and participatory design
Practical Strategies for Integrating a Conversation Analyst in an Iterative Design Process
We present a case study of an iterative design process that includes a
conversation analyst. We discuss potential benefits of conversation analysis
for design, and we describe our strategies for integrating the conversation
analyst in the design process. Since the analyst on our team had no previous
exposure to design or engineering, and none of the other members of our team
had any experience with conversation analysis, we needed to build a foundation
for our interaction. One of our key strategies was to pair the conversation
analyst with a designer in a highly interactive collaboration. Our tactics have
been effective on our project, leading to valuable results that we believe we
could not have obtained using another method. We hope that this paper can serve
as a practical guide to those interested in establishing a productive and
efficient working relationship between a conversation analyst and the other
members of a design team.Comment: 11 page
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Charting new territory for organizational ethnography : Insights from a team-based video ethnography
Purpose: Increasing complexity, fragmentation, mobility, pace, and technological intermediation of organizational life make “being there” increasingly difficult. Where do ethnographers have to be, when, for how long, and with whom to “be there” and grasp the practices, norms, and values that make the situation meaningful to natives? These novel complexities call for new forms of organizational ethnography. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues.
Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors respond to these calls for innovative ethnographic methods in two ways. First, the paper reports on the practices and ethnographic experiences of conducting a year-long team-based video ethnography of reinsurance trading in London.
Findings: Second, drawing on these experiences, the paper proposes a framework for systematizing new approaches to organizational ethnography and visualizing the ways in which they are “expanding” ethnography as it was traditionally practiced.
Originality/value: The paper contributes to the ethnographic literature in three ways: first, the paper develops a framework for charting new approaches to ethnography and highlight its different dimensions – site, instrument, and fieldworker. Second, the paper outlines the opportunities and challenges associated with these expansions, specifically with regard to research design, analytical rigour, and communication of results. Third, drawing on the previous two contributions, the paper highlights configurations of methodological expansions on the aforementioned dimensions that are more promising than others in leveraging new technologies and approaches to claim new territory for organizational ethnography and enhance its relevance for understanding today's multifarious organizational realities
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