174,873 research outputs found
Development of multiple media documents
Development of documents in multiple media involves activities in three different
fields, the technical, the discoursive and the procedural. The major development problems of
artifact complexity, cognitive processes, design basis and working context are located where these
fields overlap. Pending the emergence of a unified approach to design, any method must allow for
development at the three levels of discourse structure, media disposition and composition, and
presentation. Related work concerned with generalised discourse structures, structured
documents, production methods for existing multiple media artifacts, and hypertext design offer
some partial forms of assistance at different levels. Desirable characteristics of a multimedia
design method will include three phases of production, a variety of possible actions with media
elements, an underlying discoursive structure, and explicit comparates for review
Collaborative trails in e-learning environments
This deliverable focuses on collaboration within groups of learners, and hence collaborative trails. We begin by reviewing the theoretical background to collaborative learning and looking at the kinds of support that computers can give to groups of learners working collaboratively, and then look more deeply at some of the issues in designing environments to support collaborative learning trails and at tools and techniques, including collaborative filtering, that can be used for analysing collaborative trails. We then review the state-of-the-art in supporting collaborative learning in three different areas – experimental academic systems, systems using mobile technology (which are also generally academic), and commercially available systems. The final part of the deliverable presents three scenarios that show where technology that supports groups working collaboratively and producing collaborative trails may be heading in the near future
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Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL
Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N
The emergence of information systems: a communication-based theory
An information system is more than just the information technology; it is the system that emerges from the complex interactions and relationships between the information technology and the organization. However, what impact information technology has on an organization and how organizational structures and organizational change influence information technology remains an open question. We propose a theory to explain how communication structures emerge and adapt to environmental changes. We operationalize the interplay of information technology and organization as language communities whose members use and develop domain-specific languages for communication. Our theory is anchored in the philosophy of language. In developing it as an emergent perspective, we argue that information systems are self-organizing and that control of this ability is disseminated throughout the system itself, to the members of the language community. Information technology influences the dynamics of this adaptation process as a fundamental constraint leading to perturbations for the information system. We demonstrate how this view is separated from the entanglement in practice perspective and show that this understanding has far-reaching consequences for developing, managing, and examining information systems
Qualitative software engineering research -- reflections and guidelines
Researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance of human aspects in
software development and since qualitative methods are used to, in-depth,
explore human behavior, we believe that studies using such techniques will
become more common.
Existing qualitative software engineering guidelines do not cover the full
breadth of qualitative methods and knowledge on using them found in the social
sciences. The aim of this study was thus to extend the software engineering
research community's current body of knowledge regarding available qualitative
methods and provide recommendations and guidelines for their use.
With the support of an epistemological argument and a literature review, we
suggest that future research would benefit from (1) utilizing a broader set of
research methods, (2) more strongly emphasizing reflexivity, and (3) employing
qualitative guidelines and quality criteria.
We present an overview of three qualitative methods commonly used in social
sciences but rarely seen in software engineering research, namely
interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, and discourse
analysis. Furthermore, we discuss the meaning of reflexivity in relation to the
software engineering context and suggest means of fostering it.
Our paper will help software engineering researchers better select and then
guide the application of a broader set of qualitative research methods.Comment: 30 page
Communication in organizations: the heart of information systems
We propose a theory characterizing information systems (IS) as language communities which use and develop domain-specific languages for communication. Our theory is anchored in Language Critique, a branch of philosophy of language. In developing our theory, we draw on Systems Theory and Cybernetics as a theoretical framework. "Organization" of a system is directly related to communication of its sub-systems. "Big systems" are self-organizing and the control of this ability is disseminated throughout the system itself. Therefore, the influence on changes of the system from its outside is limited. Operations intended to change an organization are restricted to indirect approaches. The creation of domain-specific languages by the system itself leads to advantageous communication costs compared to colloquial communication at the price of set-up costs for language communities. Furthermore, we demonstrate how our theoretical constructs help to describe and predict the behavior of IS. Finally, we discuss implications of our theory for further research and IS in general. Keywords: Language Critique, language communities, communication, self-organization, IS researc
Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies
This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have
been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers
and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of
computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more
recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that
have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper,
it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in
undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of
socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach
common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate
further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research,
design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development,
like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User
Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of
bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical
construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote
further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT
design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and
modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D.
Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded
Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title
"Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an
EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/
GATE -- an Environment to Support Research and Development in Natural Language Engineering
We describe a software environment to support research and development in natural language (NL) engineering. This environment -- GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering) -- aims to advance research in the area of machine processing of natural languages by providing a software infrastructure on top of which heterogeneous NL component modules may be evaluated and refined individually or may be combined into larger application systems. Thus, GATE aims to support both researchers and developers working on component technologies (e.g. parsing, tagging, morphological analysis) and those working on developing end-user applications (e.g. information extraction, text summarisation, document generation, machine translation, and second language learning). GATE will promote reuse of component technology, permit specialisation and collaboration in large-scale projects, and allow for the comparison and evaluation of alternative technologies. The first release of GATE is now available
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