160 research outputs found
Crucible: Graphical Test Cases for Alloy Models
Alloy is a declarative modeling language that is well suited for verifying
system designs. Alloy models are automatically analyzed using the Analyzer, a
toolset that helps the user understand their system by displaying the
consequences of their properties, helping identify any missing or incorrect
properties, and exploring the impact of modifications to those properties. To
achieve this, the Analyzer invokes off-the-shelf SAT solvers to search for
scenarios, which are assignments to the sets and relations of the model such
that all executed formulas hold. To help write more accurate software models,
Alloy has a unit testing framework, AUnit, which allows users to outline
specific scenarios and check if those scenarios are correctly generated or
prevented by their model. Unfortunately, AUnit currently only supports textual
specifications of scenarios. This paper introduces Crucible, which allows users
to graphically create AUnit test cases. In addition, Crucible provides
automated guidance to users to ensure they are creating well structured,
valuable test cases. As a result, Crucible eases the burden of adopting AUnit
and brings AUnit test case creation more in line with how Alloy scenarios are
commonly interacted with, which is graphically
Examining the Relationships Between Distance Education Studentsâ Self-Efficacy and Their Achievement
This study aimed to examine the relationships between studentsâ self-efficacy (SSE) and studentsâ achievement (SA) in distance education. The instruments were administered to 100 undergraduate students in a distance university who work as migrant workers in Taiwan to gather data, while their SA scores were obtained from the university. The semi-structured interviews for 8 participants consisted of questions that showed the specific conditions of SSE and SA. The findings of this study were reported as follows: There was a significantly positive correlation between targeted SSE (overall scales and general self-efficacy) and SA. Targeted students' self-efficacy effectively predicted their achievement; besides, general self- efficacy had the most significant influence. In the qualitative findings, four themes were extracted for those students with lower self-efficacy but higher achievementâphysical and emotional condition, teaching and learning strategy, positive social interaction, and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, three themes were extracted for those students with moderate or higher self-efficacy but lower achievementâmore time for leisure (not hard-working), less social interaction, and external excuses. Providing effective learning environments, social interactions, and teaching and learning strategies are suggested in distance education
Recognizing hand-drawn diagrams in images
Diagrams are an essential tool in any organization. They are used to create conceptual models of anything ranging from business processes to software architectures. Despite the abundance of diagram modeling tools available, the creation of conceptual models often starts by sketching on a whiteboard or paper. However, starting with a hand-drawn diagram introduces the need to eventually digitize it, so that it can be further edited in modeling tools. To reduce the effort associated with the manual digitization of diagrams, research in hand-drawn diagram recognition aims to automate this task. While there is a large body of methods for recognizing diagrams drawn on tablets, there is a notable gap for recognizing diagrams sketched on paper or whiteboard. To close this research gap, this doctoral thesis addresses the problem of recognizing hand-drawn diagrams in images. In particular, it provides the following five main contributions. First, we collect and publish a dataset of business process diagrams sketched on paper. Given that the dataset originates from conceptual modeling tasks solved by 107 participants, it has a high degree of diversity, as reflected in various drawing styles, paper types, pens, and image-capturing methods. Second, we provide an overview of the challenges in recognizing conceptual diagrams sketched on paper. We find that conceptual modeling leads to diagrams with chaotic layouts, making the recognition of edges and labels especially challenging. Third, we propose an end-to-end system for recognizing diagrams modeled with BPMN, the standard language for modeling business processes. Given an image of a hand-drawn BPMN diagram, our system produces a BPMN XML file that can be imported into process modeling tools. The system consists of an object detection neural network, which we extend with network components for recognizing edges and labels. The following two contributions are related to these components. Fourth, we present several deep learning methods for edge recognition, which recognize the drawn path and connected shapes of each arrow. Last, we describe a label recognition method that consists of three steps, one of which features a network that predicts whether a label belongs to a specific shape or edge. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods, we evaluate them on both our collected and the existing diagram datasets
Vielfalt und Integration - diversitĂĄ ed integrazione - diversitĂ© et intĂ©gration: Sprache(n) in sozialen und digitalen RĂ€umen: Eine Festschrift fĂŒr Elisabeth Burr
Diese Festschrift fĂŒr Elisabeth Burr stellt Vielfalt und Integration in der Sprachwissenschaft und in den Digital Humanities in den Mittelpunkt. Die BeitrĂ€ge berĂŒhren zentrale Fragen im Schaffen Burrs: Wie kann Sprache und ihre Variation in AbhĂ€ngigkeit von sozialen und geographischen Faktoren adĂ€quat beschrieben werden? Wie lassen sich informatische und digitale ZugĂ€nge dafĂŒr nutzen? VerknĂŒpft werden sie mit ihr wichtigen und aktuellen Themen aus Sozio-, Gender- und Korpuslinguistik, Dialektologie und Sprachgeographie sowie den digitalen Geisteswissenschaften.
Die Beitragenden sind u. a. Stefania Spina, Thomas Krefeld, Annette Gerstenberg, Lazslo Hinyadi, Carol Chiodo und Lauren Tilton, Manuel Burghardt, Ăyvind Eide, JĂŒrgen Hermes, Andreas Witt. Ray Siemens, Arianna Ciula, Alejandro BĂa sowie Rob Evans
A Design-Science-Research Approach
Neue Organisationsformen, wie evolutionÀre Organisationen, bilden in vielen Kooperationsszenarien sozio-technische Konstrukte mit modernen CSCW Anwendungen aus. Daher erfordern VerÀnderungen dieser sozialen Systeme eine kontinuierliche Anpassung der technischen Tools an die neuen sozialen Konfigurationen.
Diese Dissertation ist als Design Science Research (DSR) Projekt konzipiert und addressiert die folgende Forschungsfrage (RQ): âWie können soziotechnische, evolutionĂ€re Organisationen die Herausforderungen der joint optimization und des organizational choice wĂ€hrend ihrer autopoietischen VerĂ€nderungsprozesse addressieren?â
Die Fallstudie Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. wurde mittels qualitativer und ethnographischer Methoden im Rahmen der entsprechenden DSR Zyklen untersucht. Das Forschungsprojekt fokussiert die Entwicklung von Artefakten indem sowohl eine technische, als auch eine soziale Perspektive eingenommen wird.
Aus der technische Perspektive wird die RQ durch eine Microservice-Plattform adressiert. Die Architektur dient der Verteilung von Verantwortlichkeit fĂŒr die Software in einem heterogenen Netzwerk von Entwickler:innen. Dabei mĂŒssen diverse neue Herausforderungen beachtet werden, wie etwa die Verteilung des User Interface.
Durch die Betrachtung der RQ aus der sozialen Perspektive wird der USMU Workshop entwickelt. Dieses Artefakt dient der Verbindung der Charakteristika evolutionÀrer Organisationen mit agiler Software Entwicklung und mit Methoden des partizipativen Designs.
Die Studien zeigen, dass beide Artefakte die RQ adressieren. Zudem konnte ich fĂŒr beide Artefakte wertvolle Verbesserungsmöglichkeiten aufzeigen. Somit motivieren die Ergebnisse den nĂ€chsten Schritt des Projekts und die vorliegende Thesis wird Bestandteil des zyklischen Ablaufs eines DSR Projekts.The emergence of new types of organizational structures, such as evolutionary-teal organizations, almost always leads to the development of socio-technical constructs when it comes to working in collaboration with modern CSCW applications. A consequence of this is that the social systemâs autopoietic change processes create challenges that compel one to adjust the implementation of the technical tool to the social systemâs new configuration.
This thesis is structured according to the design science research (DSR) approach and focuses on the research question (RQ): âHow can socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations address the challenges of joint optimization and organizational choice during their autopoietic processes?â
For this purpose, the case study Viva con Agua de St. Pauli e.V. is investigated using a qualitative ethnographical approach during the DSR cycles. Addressing the RQ, two artifacts are designed from a technical as well as a social perspective. While the technical perspective primarily investigates the adjustments of technology, the social perspective focuses on the management of change in socio-technical evolutionary-teal organizations.
I propose a microservice platform as an artifact that addresses the RQ from a technical perspective. The microservice architecture aims at spreading the responsibility for the software through a heterogeneous ecosystem of developers.
The newly designed USMU workshop is addressing the RQ from the social perspective. It strives to intertwine the characteristics of evolutionary-teal organizations with agile software development and participatory design methods.
In my studies, I examine the fact that both artifacts can be used to address the RQ. Additionally, I was able to identify valuable improvements for both of my artifacts. Hence, the project follows the lifecycle of a DSR project by reasoning through the results presented here for its next iteration
Digital writing technologies in higher education : theory, research, and practice
This open access book serves as a comprehensive guide to digital writing technology, featuring contributions from over 20 renowned researchers from various disciplines around the world. The book is designed to provide a state-of-the-art synthesis of the developments in digital writing in higher education, making it an essential resource for anyone interested in this rapidly evolving field.
In the first part of the book, the authors offer an overview of the impact that digitalization has had on writing, covering more than 25 key technological innovations and their implications for writing practices and pedagogical uses. Drawing on these chapters, the second part of the book explores the theoretical underpinnings of digital writing technology such as writing and learning, writing quality, formulation support, writing and thinking, and writing processes. The authors provide insightful analysis on the impact of these developments and offer valuable insights into the future of writing. Overall, this book provides a cohesive and consistent theoretical view of the new realities of digital writing, complementing existing literature on the digitalization of writing. It is an essential resource for scholars, educators, and practitioners interested in the intersection of technology and writing
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Examining university student satisfaction and barriers to taking online remote exams
Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of online exams at universities, due to the greater convenience and flexibility they offer both students and institutions. Driven by the dearth of empirical data on distance learning students' satisfaction levels and the difficulties they face when taking online exams, a survey with 562 students at The Open University (UK) was conducted to gain insights into their experiences with this type of exam. Satisfaction was reported with the environment and exams, while work commitments and technical difficulties presented the greatest barriers. Gender, race and disability were also associated with different levels of satisfaction and barriers. This study adds to the increasing number of studies into online exams, demonstrating how this type of exam can still have a substantial effect on students experienced in online learning systems and
technologies
Good Issues and bad tidying: what GitHub can tell us about agency in project-based group modelling work for higher education
Collaborative project work in technology-enabled environments at university is essential for learners to become ready for an increasingly global, complex, and virtualised workplace. Research on effective pedagogical and technical design for computer supported collaborative learning in higher education (CSCL) has often taken place in synchronous contexts, using specialised technology platforms. However, large-scale changes to work and education resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic necessitate the development of pedagogical and research approaches that support students working asynchronously, in distributed teams, using collaboration platforms that extend beyond institutional infrastructure.
Within the field of CSCL, knowledge building research has shown collaboration to be a complex systems phenomenon, involving the intersection of individual and collective efforts to actively advance the groupâs shared knowledge, but studies analysing interaction data have been resource-intensive to conduct. Contemporary workplace platforms such as professional knowledge environments have multiple design affordances consistent with knowledge building principles, as well as the capacity to generate rich data about user activity. However, we have little understanding to date as to how these environments can support knowledge building pedagogies and facilitate associated research.
This study uses a case study approach and thematic analysis to investigate the activity of three university groups engaged in a collaborative modelling task over time. It investigates how agency emerges during project work in professional knowledge environments, and how the system interaction data can extend our understanding of effective collaboration processes. The results show that the GitHub platform can support knowledge building pedagogical designs in facilitating individual and collective agency in higher education group work, and provide insights into epistemic, regulative and relational aspects of learner behaviour at individual and group levels.
These findings extend our understanding of effective learning design to novel environments of a type likely to be used by our students in the workplace, and make design and methodological contributions to research on computer-supported collaborative learning
A productive response to legacy system petrification
Requirements change. The requirements of a legacy information system change, often in unanticipated ways, and at a more rapid pace than the rate at which the information system itself can be evolved to support them. The capabilities of a legacy system progressively fall further and further behind their evolving requirements, in a degrading process termed petrification. As systems petrify, they deliver diminishing business value, hamper business effectiveness, and drain organisational resources. To address legacy systems, the first challenge is to understand how to shed their resistance to tracking requirements change. The second challenge is to ensure that a newly adaptable system never again petrifies into a change resistant legacy system. This thesis addresses both challenges. The approach outlined herein is underpinned by an agile migration process - termed Productive Migration - that homes in upon the specific causes of petrification within each particular legacy system and provides guidance upon how to address them. That guidance comes in part from a personalised catalogue of petrifying patterns, which capture recurring themes underlying petrification. These steer us to the problems actually present in a given legacy system, and lead us to suitable antidote productive patterns via which we can deal with those problems one by one. To prevent newly adaptable systems from again degrading into legacy systems, we appeal to a follow-on process, termed Productive Evolution, which embraces and keeps pace with change rather than resisting and falling behind it. Productive Evolution teaches us to be vigilant against signs of system petrification and helps us to nip them in the bud. The aim is to nurture systems that remain supportive of the business, that are adaptable in step with ongoing requirements change, and that continue to retain their value as significant business assets
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