e-Governance: Supporting pragmatic direct deliberative action through online communities of interest

Authors often report on the limited success of e-Government initiatives in developing nations. Top down, national strategies are developed to target improved government services, but maintain hierarchical, citizen-state conceptions of governance through representative democracy. An alternative conception, direct deliberative democracy, frames the potential role of the internet in governance differently. Web based platforms might support locally animated deliberations, which target pragmatic outcomes, while the resulting social networks afford collective learning through connections across traditional boundaries. This paper presents an investigation of direct deliberative governance as it occurs in online 'communities of interest', and is based on research with such a community in southern Africa. We investigate contributions to the online governance process and develop an action typology distinguishing between degrees of 'agency freedom'. Network analytic techniques are then used to understand how acts of varying degree are expressed in terms of the structure of a social network. The aim, more broadly, is to understand how the environment shapes acts of direct deliberative governance, and, in turn, how the acts shape the evolution and effectiveness of the community. The preliminary results suggest design considerations for online governance communities, and highlight their role to not only provide deliberative space, but to mediate social network connections

Communities of interest - young LGBT people.

BeLonG To's Drugs Service was set up in late 2006 to support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) young people (14-23yrs old) in relation to drug and alcohol use. It is a one-worker service and is the only designated LGBT drugs education and prevention service in Ireland. The BeLonG To experience through delivering this work, which is mirrored in major Irish research, shows that LGBT young people can experience marginalisation, fear, isolation, bullying, harassment, family and peer rejection, which can lead to them being more vulnerable to drug & alcohol use. The service was set up in conjunction with a national study of drug use amongst LGBT young people Supporting LGBT Lives • Most common age people knew they were LGBT = 12 • Most common age they first told anyone = 17 • 58% reported homophobic bullying in their school • 25% were physically threatened by their school peers • 27% of LGBT people had self-harmed at least once • 50% of LGBT people under 25 years had seriously thought about ending their lives • 20% of LGBT people under 25 years had attempted suicide at least once Gillian Brien informed the audience that: • Research has shown that 65% of young people who accessed the service had used drugs before and that LGBT young people are 2 to 5 times more likely to use drugs. • Most young people realise their sexual preference when they are twelve yet most only come out to friends or family when they are seventeen and therefore carry a lot of emotion and are vulnerable to substance abuse. • The LGBT community want to be included on the Treatment and Rehabilitation Board and on Drugs Task Forces because their voices need to be heard since they make up 10% of the population. • The common theme between all of the 'communities of interest' is inclusio

Communities of Interest in Colorado Redistricting

Part I of this Article will provide background on redistricting in Colorado, including an overview of recent developments regarding the establishment of an independent commission. Part II will describe the two federal constitutional requirements for redistricting and then explore the state-specific redistricting criteria used in Colorado. Part III includes a geographic profile of the distinct regions of Colorado and then delves into an examination of how communities of interest have been increasingly used in Colorado redistricting during three of the past four redistricting cycles. Part IV of this Article will critique the use of communities of interest and focus on the arbitrariness inherent in such a vague criterion, the potential for political manipulation of the process of identifying communities of interest, how certain federal interests may be better represented by multiple members of Congress, and how stability should be encouraged in redistricting. This Article will ultimately conclude that the recently established independent commission should avoid recognizing newfound communities of interest due to the redistricting criterion\u27s subjectivity and malleability and should instead seek to preserve only well-established communities of interest in Colorado to the extent required by the Colorado Constitution

A Cultural Heritage Forum Celebrating Technological Innovation at Station X

We aim to encourage and support public participation in heritage through the development of Cultural Heritage Forums, a kind of cultural web portal that enables active participation of communities of interest in a way that complements rather than replaces visits to physical cultural institutions. The cultural heritage forum described here (Station X) is concerned with promoting an understanding of technology innovation in the areas of computing and cryptography. We propose a number of scenarios concerning how the forum can be designed, drawing on our earlier work in using knowledge modelling and text analysis to support the exploration of digital resources

Collaborative Authoring of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia by Enriching a Semantic Wiki’s Output

This research is concerned with harnessing collaborative approaches for the authoring of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia (AEH) systems. It involves the enhancement of Semantic Wikis with pedagogy aware features to this end. There are many challenges in understanding how communities of interest can efficiently collaborate for learning content authoring, in introducing pedagogy to the developed knowledge models and in specifying user models for efficient delivery of AEH systems. The contribution of this work will be the development of a model of collaborative authoring which includes domain specification, content elicitation, and definition of pedagogic approach. The proposed model will be implemented in a prototype AEH authoring system that will be tested and evaluated in a formal education context

Community building and virtual teamwork in an online learning environment

In the world of OTIS, an online Internet School for occupational therapists, students from four European countries were encouraged to work collaboratively through problem based learning by interacting with each other in a virtual semi-immersive environment. This paper aims to explore the issues that there was little interaction between students from different tutorial groups and virtual teamwork developed in each of the cross cultural tutorial groups. Synchronous data from European students was captured during tutorial sessions and peer booked meetings and evidence suggests that communities of interest were established. It is possible to conclude that collaborative systems can be designed, which encourage students to build trust and teamwork in a cross cultural online learning environment. </p

Dezvoltarea şi perfecţionarea relaţiei inovaţie – capital intelectual – cerinţă a performanţei organizaţionale în firmele româneşti

In a knowledge economy, innovation is the competitiveness key and the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in social systems is the result of collaboration between individuals and communities of interest. Managers can not measure the innovative capacity of the organization, but they may improve his performance. Managers can improve the rate and quality of innovation and competitiveness on the market. Intellectual capital through its three forms - human capital, organizational capital and structural capital, it makes organizational performance. The purpose of this article is to highlight the relationship between innovation, intellectual capital and organizational performance.innovation, entrepreneurship, human capital, intellectual capital, structural capital, performance.

FROM AGILE TO LEAN: THE PERSPECTIVES OF THE TWO AGILE ONLINE COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST

In the last several years there has been a noticeable focus shift of agile methods from eXtreme Programming (XP) and Scrum to Lean approaches, which is indicated as “from agile to lean”. However our understanding of the driving factors behind this focus shift is very limited. The study proposed in this paper attempts to investigate the shift through a content analysis of two major agile mailing lists. The expected result is a set of driving factors behind the shift from agile to lean, which can contribute to a better understanding of if and why Lean software development is “the next wave of software process”

Methods and models of next generation technology enhanced learning - White Paper

Our understanding of learning with technology is increasingly lagging behind technological advancements, such that it is no longer possible to fully understand learning with technologies without bringing together evidence from practice-based experiences and theoretical insight to inform research, design, policy and practice. Furthermore, whilst practical experiences and theoretical insights make significant contributions towards understanding learning with new technologies, the dynamic nature of learner practices and study contexts make it difficult to predict future requirements in terms of methods and models for next generation technology enhanced learning. We therefore require formal and comprehensive methods and models of learning with technology that accommodate theory and practice whilst allowing us to anticipate methodological innovations that capture future transitions and changes in learner practices and study contexts, in order to inform research, design, policy and practice. Workshop participants represented different communities of interest including research, design, evaluation and assessment. The overall objective was to anticipate methodological innovations in technology enhanced learning research and design over the next 5/10 years