Adapting Collaborative Learning Tools to Support Group Peer Mentorship

Group peer mentorship is a relatively new addition to the area of collaborative learning. We see an untapped potential in supporting this model of mentorship with the existing collaborative learning tools like peer review and wiki. Therefore, we proposed to use a modified peer review system and a modified wiki system. From our preliminary studies using both peer review and wiki systems, we found that participants preferred the peer-review system to the wiki system in supporting them for mentorship. Therefore, this dissertation specifically addresses how to adapt the peer review system to support group peer mentorship. We proposed a modified peer review system, which comprises seven stages – initial submission of the first draft of the paper by the author, the review of author’s paper by peer reviewers, release of review feedback to the author, back-evaluation of their reviews by the authors, modification of the paper by the author, submission of the final paper and the final stage where both authors and reviewers provide an evaluation of the peer review process with respect to their learning, their perception of the helpfulness of the process, and their satisfaction with the process. We also proposed to use our group matching algorithm, based on some constraints and the principles of the Hungarian algorithm, to achieve a diversified grouping of peers for each peer review session. With these, we conducted six peer review studies with the graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Saskatchewan and teachers in Chile. This dissertation reports on the findings from these studies. We found that peer review, with some modifications, is a good tool to facilitate group peer mentorship. An evaluation of the performance of our group matching algorithm showed an improvement over three other algorithms, with respect to three metrics – knowledge gain of peers, time and space consumption of the algorithm. Finally, this dissertation also shows that wiki has the potential to support group peer mentorship, but needs further research

Crowdsourcing User-Centered Teams

Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly important tool for team formation and collaboration. This thesis investigates how User-Centered Design, an iterative process that prioritizes users and their needs, can be applied to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of crowdsourcing systems for teamwork and team formation. To achieve this, we conducted a series of studies to explore the role of various factors in shaping crowd workers' behaviour and preferences in collaborative contexts. The main findings of our research are as follows. In online team formation settings, crowd workers prefer disclosing overt traits (e.g., age, gender, topical interests) and avoid sharing sensitive information (e.g., ethnicity, depression). However, they are willing to share information regarding their personality and values, typically considered deep-level sensitive traits. Well-defined digital nudging interventions, such as a diversity progress bar, can promote diverse team formation. In contrast, subtler forms of nudging may inadvertently trigger biases working against the intended objectives. Ad-hoc crowd teams working under pressure can benefit from systems that account for differences in personality traits, as these can influence collaboration outcomes and perceptions. Designing crowdsourcing systems for emergency response requires modelling communication tools that aid, assist, and monitor the shared load, considering the strictly cooperative roles and task- and user-dependent communication styles between collaborators. When forming teams, crowd workers tend to balance attributes between and within groups, with a preference for Openness to Experience among the Big-5 personality traits. Based on these findings, we recommend applying a User-Centered approach to design collaborative crowdsourcing systems, considering user needs, behaviour, intents, and perceptions of digital environments. Future research should continue to explore and evaluate innovative strategies for promoting effective collaboration and team formation in crowdsourcing contexts

The end of stigma? Understanding the dynamics of legitimisation in the context of TV series consumption

This research contributes to prior work on stigmatisation by looking at stigmatisation and legitimisation as social processes in the context of TV series consumption. Using in-depth interviews, we show that the dynamics of legitimisation are complex and accompanied by the reproduction of existing stigmas and creation of new stigmas

International mixed marriage in Indonesia and ASEAN:international mixed marriage and its recognition in Indonesia towards one ASEAN community

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”) is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1967. In 1997, the ASEAN Member States in Kuala Lumpur committed to reaching the ASEAN Vision 2020 that led them to engage in closer cooperation, “One ASEAN Community”, concluded in Bali (2003). The implementation of One ASEAN Community was described in ASEAN Community Vision 2025, concluded in Kuala Lumpur in 2015. The unification and or harmonization between such legal systems in preparing for the cooperation amongst the members, is essential. In light of this, this research addresses a particular field of law, namely marriage establishment under the family law; focuses on the topic of marriage formation or marriage establishment and its recognition. As a result of contact between differing legal systems in a marriage between different nationalities, Private International Law (“PIL”), is of considerable importance. Firstly, PIL decides the applicable law to determine the capacities of each of the husband and wife. Secondly, PIL will decide the applicable law to solemnize the marriage or the authorized forum for the marriage. Thirdly, PIL deals with the issue of acknowledgment or recognition of a marriage. This research examines the nature of marriage within the national laws of the ASEAN Member States, in Indonesian perspective. It will start with a comparison of marriage law of ten ASEAN Member States. The result of comparison becomes the basis of recommendation to Indonesia, its Marriage Act, and ASEAN in relation to the recognition of marriage

Evaluation of the new Design Summer Year weather data using parametrical buildings

The Charted Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) updated the near extreme weather (Design Summer Year – DSY) for all 14 locations in the UK in 2016. This new release attempts to address the underlying shortcomings of the previous definition where the averaged dry bulb temperature was the sole metric to choose DSY among source weather years. The aim of this research is to evaluate whether the new definition of the probabilistic DSYs can consistently represent near extreme condition. London historical weather data and their correspondent DSYs were used in this research. Dynamic thermal modelling using EnergyPlus was carried out on large number single zone offices (parametric study) which represent a large portion of cellular offices in the UK. The predicted indoor warmth from the sample building models show that these new definitions are not always able to represent near extreme conditions. Using multiple years as DSY is able to capture different types of summer warmth but how to use one or all of these DSYs to make informed judgement on overheating is rather challenging. The recommended practice from this research is to use more warm years for the evaluation of overheating and choose the near extreme weather from the predicted indoor warmt