Hercules finances research infrastructure

In 2007 the Flemish government created a structural funding channel to support investment in research infrastructure: Hercules. On 15 October 2008 the Hercules Foundation approved a first list of investment proposals. In this article specific features of this first call are examined

Nortear: A platform to support higher education applicants’ decisions

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceData can have immense public value, and although Open Data has been made available on the internet mostly by governments and public institutions having as a main justification the “public interest”, most of what is turned public, is done so in formats not suitable to the eyes of most of the public which they are aimed to. The high level of digital literacy needed to turn this data into useful information continues to keep virtually inaccessible what was supposed to be Open Data. This work aims exclusively on data over the education sector, but this situation is also true for data involving other sectors of organized society. This Open Data which is virtually “locked data” have grave relevance to students, parents, and society. This work aims to give a humble step towards exploring the lack of accessibility for information extracted from Open Data on the Portuguese educational sector to collect data that are relevant to future graduates on the choice for a university aiming to create a platform where these students can access visualizations linked to key decision factors relevant when choosing a place to study, including information about the city, the country, and the university. This way, this work intends also to create encouragement to more initiatives which can help to “translate” data for the good of the broad public

The Impact of Social Media Sentiment on Market Share for Higher Education Institutions

In recent years, university enrollment and market share have been discussed among administrators. With declining populations and increased educational pathways for students, the need to capture the attention of prospective students is of increased interest. At the same time, social media has become a significant factor in the lives of current and potentially future generations. This factor influences not only trends but also decision-making. As a result, higher education institutions must ensure a requisite social media presence and manage their social media reputation to impact potential students’ intent to enroll. This study explores these components and how one influences the other. A quantitative exploratory study utilizing social media data was deployed for this research study. This allowed for the examination of the level of influence social media posts have on a student’s decision to apply to an institution of higher education. Social media sentiment of various institutions was used to develop a net sentiment score. This score was then compared to the number of applications received yearly. It was posited that the two items would be positively correlated. Regression, correlation, and time series analyses were used to explore the relationship between the variables. This study contributes to practice and theory by identifying tools to assist institutions in monitoring social media sentiment, forecasting applicant pool size, and highlighting social media reputation as a statistically significant element in students’ college choices. The inclusion of social media sentiment as a factor in the information component of choice models adds a brick to the current literature around college choice. Therefore, this study provides a valuable contribution to understanding social media and its impact on higher education institutions’ reputation and applicant pool size

Quantifying, Modeling and Managing How People Interact with Visualizations on the Web

The growing number of interactive visualizations on the web has made it possible for the general public to access data and insights that were once only available to domain experts. At the same time, this rise has yielded new challenges for visualization creators, who must now understand and engage a growing and diverse audience. To bridge this gap between creators and audiences, we explore and evaluate components of a design-feedback loop that would enable visualization creators to better accommodate their audiences as they explore the visualizations. In this dissertation, we approach this goal by quantifying, modeling and creating tools that manage people’s open-ended explorations of visualizations on the web. In particular, we: 1. Quantify the effects of design alternatives on people’s interaction patterns in visualizations. We define and evaluate two techniques: HindSight (encoding a user’s interaction history) and text-based search, where controlled experiments suggest that design details can significantly modulate the interaction patterns we observe from participants using a given visualization. 2. Develop new metrics that characterize facets of people’s exploration processes. Specifically, we derive expressive metrics describing interaction patterns such as exploration uniqueness, and use Bayesian inference to model distributional effects on interaction behavior. Our results show that these metrics capture novel patterns in people’s interactions with visualizations. 3. Create tools that manage and analyze an audience’s interaction data for a given visualization. We develop a prototype tool, ReVisIt, that visualizes an audience’s interactions with a given visualization. Through an interview study with visualization creators, we found that ReVisIt make creators aware of individual and overall trends in their audiences’ interaction patterns. By establishing some of the core elements of a design-feedback loop for visualization creators, the results in this research may have a tangible impact on the future of publishing interactive visualizations on the web. Equipped with techniques, metrics, and tools that realize an initial feedback loop, creators are better able to understand the behavior and user needs, and thus create visualizations that make data and insights more accessible to the diverse audiences on the web

Self-organizing distributed digital library supporting audio-video

The StreamOnTheFly network combines peer-to-peer networking and open-archive principles for community radio channels and TV stations in Europe. StreamOnTheFly demonstrates new methods of archive management and personalization technologies for both audio and video. It also provides a collaboration platform for community purposes that suits the flexible activity patterns of these kinds of broadcaster communities