Introducing New Methodologies for Identifying Design Patterns for Internationalization and Localization

This paper describes a new methodology for deriving interaction design patterns from an analysis of ethnographic data. It suggests using inductive and deductive analysis processes to identify and articulate patterns that address the needs of culturally diverse users of interactive, collaborative systems. This might inform the internationalization and localization process of computer supported collaboration systems

Taking Afrobarometer Data Everywhere

According to statistics gathered by research group Afrobarometer, many countries in Africa lack infrastructure and basic necessities. In fact, Afrobarometer knows the specific rates of need and availability sampled across thirty-six countries but more prosperous African countries do not know these numbers. These more developed countries are in a position to help their less fortunate neighbors if only made aware of the social and economic climate in the respective areas. Our partnership with Afrobarometer will allow us to advertise these statistics through the use of a mobile application. The data will be displayed in a way that is easy for the average reader to digest and understand. By exposing a larger African audience to the results from these public opinion surveys, Afrobarometer hopes to inspire these people to take action and make donations to the appropriate social benefit groups. The countries represented by the surveys can then receive help in the areas expressing need

Digital libraries and minority languages

Digital libraries have a pivotal role to play in the preservation and maintenance of international cultures in general and minority languages in particular. This paper outlines a software tool for building digital libraries that is well adapted for creating and distributing local information collections in minority languages, and describes some contexts in which it is used. The system can make multilingual documents available in structured collections and allows them to be accessed via multilingual interfaces. It is issued under a free open-source licence, which encourages participatory design of the software, and an end-user interface allows community-based localization of the various language interfaces - of which there are many

Localisation and linguistic anomalies

Interactive systems may seek to accommodate users whose first language is not English. Usually, this entails a focus on translation and related features of localisation. While such motivation is worthy, the results are often less than ideal. In raising awareness of the shortcomings of localisation, we hope to improve the prospects for successful second-language support. To this end, the present paper describes three varieties of linguistic irregularity that we have encountered in localised systems and suggests that these anomalies are direct results of localisation. This underlines the need for better end-user guidance in managing local language resources and supports our view that complementary local resources may hold the key to second language user support

Localization of Learning Objects in Mathematics

Mathematics learning seems to be a demanding and time-consuming task for many learners. Information and communication technology (ICT) is an attractive tool of learning for students at any level and it can provide an effective atmosphere for understanding mathematics. The question is how to combine mathematics teaching contents, approaches, curricula, and syllabus with new media. The key issue in European educational policy (and other countries as well) is exchange and sharing digital learning resources (learning objects) among countries. In order to accumulate the practice of various countries and use the best digital resources created by different countries, it is necessary to localize learning objects (LO). The paper deals with some problems connected with localization of LO, developed for mathematics education, and presents some solution. Software localization is mainly referred to as language translation (e.g., translation of user interface texts and help documents). However, there are many other important elements depending on the country and people who will use the localized software. In this paper, the main attention is paid to localization of learning objects used for teaching and learning mathematics

University choice, research quality and graduates' employability: Evidence from Italian national survey data

Universities have come under increasing pressure to become key drivers of economic development in the age of the knowledge economy. Yet we know very little about the impact of university quality and scientific excellence on the probability of graduates finding jobs. This paper investigates the determinants of Italian graduates’ employability 3-years after graduation, with special reference to university quality measured in terms of research performance and teaching quality. The empirical evidence sheds light on the pivotal role of academic institutions in economic systems, proving that their contribution to employment growth could be substantial. Our analysis supports the promotion of policy initiatives to improve the quality of academic institutions, and the accountability of research results. As we also observe wide regional differences, we argue that university quality emerges as a supply tool for policy makers aiming at boosting young and skilled labour demand in less developed regions.

Culture and E-Learning: Automatic Detection of a Users’ Culture from Survey Data

Knowledge about the culture of a user is especially important for the design of e-learning applications. In the experiment reported here, questionnaire data was used to build machine learning models to automatically predict the culture of a user. This work can be applied to automatic culture detection and subsequently to the adaptation of user interfaces in e-learning