An experimental framework for designing document structure for users' decision making -- An empirical study of recipes

Textual documents need to be of good quality to ensure effective asynchronous communication in remote areas, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, defining a preferred document structure (content and arrangement) for improving lay readers' decision-making is challenging. First, the types of useful content for various readers cannot be determined simply by gathering expert knowledge. Second, methodologies to evaluate the document's usefulness from the user's perspective have not been established. This study proposed the experimental framework to identify useful contents of documents by aggregating lay readers' insights. This study used 200 online recipes as research subjects and recruited 1,340 amateur cooks as lay readers. The proposed framework identified six useful contents of recipes. Multi-level modeling then showed that among the six identified contents, suitable ingredients or notes arranged with a subheading at the end of each cooking step significantly increased recipes' usefulness. Our framework contributes to the communication design via documents

The impact of a multi-strategy academic writing handbook on Emergent bilinguals’ cross-curricular writing competences

La escritura académica en una segunda lengua puede ser uno de los requerimientos más complejos en la educación superior debido a los elementos lingüísticos, estratégicos y procedimentales que esta abarca al igual que los procesos cognitivos superiores que involucra. A pesar de su presencia permanente en la academia, los profesores no han encontrado aún una forma apropiada para enseñar y evaluar la escritura que garantice el progreso de los estudiantes y el apoyo continuo a lo largo de su proceso de aprendizaje. De esta manera, este estudio de caso de métodos mixtos apunta a diseñar y evaluar la efectividad de un Manual de Referencia para la Escritura Académica (MREA) que pretende proveer la asistencia constante que los estudiantes necesitan para solidificar su conocimiento de escritura y el material pedagógico apropiado que los docentes requieren para unificar los prácticas de enseñanza y evaluación de la escritura; este manual está fundamentado en los enfoques de la escrita como proceso y basada en el género, análisis de errores y evaluación..

Evaluating Web Search Result Summaries

The aim of our research is to produce and assess short summaries to aid users’ relevance judgements, for example for a search engine result page. In this paper we present our new metric for measuring summary quality based on representativeness and judgeability, and compare the summary quality of our system to that of Google. We discuss the basis for constructing our evaluation methodology in contrast to previous relevant open evaluations, arguing that the elements which make up an evaluation methodology: the tasks, data and metrics, are interdependent and the way in which they are combined is critical to the effectiveness of the methodology. The paper discusses the relationship between these three factors as implemented in our own work, as well as in SUMMAC/MUC/DUC

Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research

The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement with the so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption

What is the influence of genre during the perception of structured text for retrieval and search?

This thesis presents an investigation into the high value of structured text (or form) in the context of genre within Information Retrieval. In particular, how are these structured texts perceived and why are they not more heavily used within Information Retrieval & Search communities? The main motivation is to show the features in which people can exploit genre within Information Search & Retrieval, in particular, categorisation and search tasks. To do this, it was vital to record and analyse how and why this was done during typical tasks. The literature review highlighted two previous studies (Toms & Campbell 1999a; Watt 2009) which have reported pilot studies consisting of genre categorisation and information searching. Both studies and other findings within the literature review inspired the work contained within this thesis. Genre is notoriously hard to define, but a very useful framework of Purpose and Form, developed by Yates & Orlikowski (1992), was utilised to design two user studies for the research reported within the thesis. The two studies consisted of, first, a categorisation task (e-mails), and second, a set of six simulated situations in Wikipedia, both of which collected quantitative data from eye tracking experiments as well as qualitative user data. The results of both studies showed the extent to which the participants utilised the form features of the stimuli presented, in particular, how these were used, which ocular behaviours (skimming or scanning) and actual features were used, and which were the most important. The main contributions to research made by this thesis were, first of all, that the task-based user evaluations employing simulated search scenarios revealed how and why users make decisions while interacting with the textual features of structure and layout within a discourse community, and, secondly, an extensive evaluation of the quantitative data revealed the features that were used by the participants in the user studies and the effects of the interpretation of genre in the search and categorisation process as well as the perceptual processes used in the various communities. This will be of benefit for the re-development of information systems. As far as is known, this is the first detailed and systematic investigation into the types of features, value of form, perception of features, and layout of genre using eye tracking in online communities, such as Wikipedia

A validity argument for the use of scores from a web-search-permitted and web-source-based integrated writing test

The field of language assessment has seen a recent surge of literature on assessment tasks that integrate two or more skills, such as reading and writing. Source-based writing is also gaining much interest in both first and second language studies, with a particular focus on issues relating to source selection and source language use. The purpose of this study is to build a validity argument for the use of scores from a web-search-permitted and web-source-based integrated writing test. Scores from the test are intended to be used as final exam scores in an academic writing course for international undergraduate students at a large research university in the US. The construct that the test is intended to measure is web-researching-to-write or web-source-based writing, which is defined by the course syllabus and teaching/learning activities. There are seven inferences that make up the validity argument: domain description, evaluation, generalization, explanation, extrapolation, utilization, and implication. This chain of seven inferences connects the target language use domain and observations of performance to scores and leads ultimately to the consequences of test use. Each inference is supported by a warrant, which in turn is supported by one or more assumptions. Each assumption is backed by evidence. Mixed methods were used to collect and analyze data that would become the backing. Data included 48 Camtasia screen capture recordings, 50 test essays, 40 post-test test-taker questionnaire responses, 6 post-test test-taker interviews, 9 follow-up test-taker questionnaire responses, 9 follow-up test-taker interviews, 5 instructor interviews, and documents. All of the assumptions underlying the seven inferences were at least partially supported by the backing, which means that the overall validity argument can be upheld by the chain of seven inferences. Further research is suggested to produce additional backing in support of the comparatively weaker inferences. This study contributes to validation research in language assessment by providing an example of a validity argument constructed for low-stakes classroom-based testing. Furthermore, the study introduces the web-search-permitted and web-source-based integrated writing test as a test that has potential to be adopted by various stakeholders and opens up new possibilities for research on integrated language assessment tasks

Perspectives on safety culture

Overviewing selected elements from the literature, this paper locates the notion of safety culture within its parent concept of organisational culture. A distinction is drawn between functionalist and interpretive perspectives on organisational culture. The terms ‘culture’ and ‘climate’ are clarified as they are typically applied to organisations and to safety. A contrast is drawn between strategic top down and data-driven bottom up approaches to human factors as an illustrative aspect of safety. A safety case study is used to illustrate two measurement approaches. Key issues for future study include valid measurement of safety culture and developing methods to adequately represent mechanisms through which safety culture might influence, and be influenced by, other safety factors

An intervention using digital social media to support academic writing of university students: a case study

Many university students, both native and non-native speakers of English, seek ongoing discipline-based academic writing support. However, this type of support within the university sector has yet to be broadly implemented due to cost and practical concerns. their overall academic performance. The effects of using digital social media as a platform in providing academic writing support for university students was investigated within this research. The research also intended to investigate university -efficacy beliefs in this context. It is believed that self-efficacy functions as a significant predictor of academic writing performance. This study included three main phases pre-intervention, intervention and post-intervention—with 25 university students from a regional Australian university. A case study method was incorporated that accompanied quantitative and qualitative methods within an overall qualitative design. Self-efficacy questionnaires, interviews and field notes were used to collect data in this study. The intervention phase provided the participants with academic writing support by the researcher via digital social media for four weeks. The analysed data of this case study showed improvement in the participants’ academic writing self-efficacy beliefs after the academic writing support they gained during the intervention phase. The reason for this improvement can be found in the use of a digital social media platform that enabled the provision of discipline-based academic writing support when the participants needed it most. The results suggest that digital social media may be a beneficial platform for providing ongoing discipline-based academic writing support for university students