Semantic and pragmatic characterization of learning objects

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Modelling search and stopping in interactive information retrieval

Searching for information when using a computerised retrieval system is a complex and inherently interactive process. Individuals during a search session may issue multiple queries, and examine a varying number of result summaries and documents per query. Searchers must also decide when to stop assessing content for relevance - or decide when to stop their search session altogether. Despite being such a fundamental activity, only a limited number of studies have explored stopping behaviours in detail, with a majority reporting that searchers stop because they decide that what they have found feels "good enough". Notwithstanding the limited exploration of stopping during search, the phenomenon is central to the study of Information Retrieval, playing a role in the models and measures that we employ. However, the current de facto assumption considers that searchers will examine k documents - examining up to a fixed depth. In this thesis, we examine searcher stopping behaviours under a number of different search contexts. We conduct and report on two user studies, examining how result summary lengths and a variation of search tasks and goals affect such behaviours. Interaction data from these studies are then used to ground extensive simulations of interaction, exploring a number of different stopping heuristics (operationalised as twelve stopping strategies). We consider how well the proposed strategies perform and match up with real-world stopping behaviours. As part of our contribution, we also propose the Complex Searcher Model, a high-level conceptual searcher model that encodes stopping behaviours at different points throughout the search process. Within the Complex Searcher Model, we also propose a new results page stopping decision point. From this new stopping decision point, searchers can obtain an impression of the page before deciding to enter or abandon it. Results presented and discussed demonstrate that searchers employ a range of different stopping strategies, with no strategy standing out in terms of performance and approximations offered. Stopping behaviours are clearly not fixed, but are rather adaptive in nature. This complex picture reinforces the idea that modelling stopping behaviour is difficult. However, simplistic stopping strategies do offer good performance and approximations, such as the frustration-based stopping strategy. This strategy considers a searcher's tolerance to non-relevance. We also find that combination strategies - such as those combining a searcher's satisfaction with finding relevant material, and their frustration towards observing non-relevant material - also consistently offer good approximations and performance. In addition, we also demonstrate that the inclusion of the additional stopping decision point within the Complex Searcher Model provides significant improvements to performance over our baseline implementation. It also offers improvements to the approximations of real-world searcher stopping behaviours. This work motivates a revision of how we currently model the search process and demonstrates that different stopping heuristics need to be considered within the models and measures that we use in Information Retrieval. Measures should be reformed according to the stopping behaviours of searchers. A number of potential avenues for future exploration can also be considered, such as modelling the stopping behaviours of searchers individually (rather than as a population), and to explore and consider a wider variety of different stopping heuristics under different search contexts. Despite the inherently difficult task that understanding and modelling the stopping behaviours of searchers represents, potential benefits of further exploration in this area will undoubtedly aid the searchers of future retrieval systems - with further work bringing about improved interfaces and experiences

Time for interdisciplinarity:An essay on the added value of collaboration for science, university, and society

In this essay the following questions are raised 1. What exactly is interdisciplinarity and how does it distinguish itself from other forms of collaboration that transcend disciplines? 2. How, in short, has the practice of science proceeded with regard to the organization in disciplines; is interdisciplinary scientific practice increasing; and where do we stand now? 3. Is there a case for further strengthening and stimulating interdisciplinarity in research and education at the university? Why or why not? 4. If so, how can interdisciplinarity best be organized in academia, specifically in Tilburg

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Managing the transition: an analysis of renewable energy policies in resource-rich Arab states with a comparative focus on the United Arab Emirates and Algeria

This study analyses renewable energy policy in hydrocarbons-wealthy Arab states. Integrating elements of energy policy analysis, Middle Eastern studies and sociotechnical governance theory, the thesis contributes to the understanding of renewable energy policy in this region as well as to the question of transferability of governance concepts. The thesis is structured in three parts. Part A discusses relevant research literature and presents the multi-level-perspective which structures the policy analysis. Additionally, the policy design model of transition management that closely interacts with the multilevel-perspective is presented. Then, the material content of renewable energy policies in hydrocarbons-wealthy Arab states is discussed and the research questions developed. A methodological discussion concludes Part A. Part B applies the analytical categories developed to two case studies, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates. The two countries represent the main types of Arab oil and gas wealthy states (large territorial and small city states) and two relevant regions (North Africa and the Gulf States). In addition to domestic renewable energy policy, the thesis also discusses the Desertec project, as well as Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative as case studies within the larger country case studies. In the last part of this study, a cross-case analysis highlights common regional features and particularities in terms of renewable energy policy in the target region and formulates policy recommendations deriving from its critical use of the transition management approach. Lastly, it addresses theory-related outcomes of the case studies with regards to the transfer of Western policy design models to hydrocarbons-rich Arab states

Text analysis and computers

Content: Erhard Mergenthaler: Computer-assisted content analysis (3-32); Udo Kelle: Computer-aided qualitative data analysis: an overview (33-63); Christian Mair: Machine-readable text corpora and the linguistic description of danguages (64-75); Jürgen Krause: Principles of content analysis for information retrieval systems (76-99); Conference Abstracts (100-131)

Accountability and the Law

"This book discusses contemporary accountability and transparency mechanisms by presenting a selection of case studies. The authors deal with various problems connected to controlling public institutions and incumbents’ responsibility in state bodies. The work is divided into three parts. Part I: Law examines the institutional and objective approach. Part II: Fairness and Rights considers the subject approach, referring to a recipient of rights. Part III: Authority looks at the functional approach, referring to the executors of law. Providing insights into increasing understanding of various concepts, principles, and institutions characteristic of the modern state, the book makes a valuable contribution to the area of comparative constitutional change. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics.

“How have child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists experienced and understood the role of social identity in training, and how might this relate to their practice?”

References to social identity feature prominently in the psychoanalytic canon but generally receive little attention or discussion. This qualitative research study aims to examine the role of social identity in the training of child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists by exploring how it has been experienced and understood, and how this role relates to therapeutic practice. It investigates this topic via a literature review and 12 interviews with psychotherapist members of the Association of Child Psychotherapy (ACP). The literature shows how the exclusion of critical or reflexive approaches to learning about healing creates tension when encountering social identity references harmful to non-normative or non-conforming people. Of the most prominent of these references, females, 'negroes', 'homosexuals', and the religious are all designated as inferior and labelled 'primitive' – terminology still habitually used in UK psychoanalytic contexts. I draw on Black Feminist Care Ethics, Social Anthropological and Sociological epistemologies attentive to forms of symbolic violence and the need for ‘participant objectivation’. This provides a historically contextualised, cross-disciplinary review of the above terminology, its accompanying ideologies and existing research. This explores how individuals make sense of particular aspects of identity, accompanied by psychoanalytically focused studies considering the dynamic between trainees’ social identities and the task of developing a professional/psychoanalytic identity. The results of Thematic Analysis represented social identity as holding 3 distinct roles: insufficient, sufficient and ambivalent. The first two roles are opposed, correlating distinctly with the degrees that participants’ social identifications were normative and conforming. The ambivalent role involved more complexity in that it was experienced across all participants’ trainings. This, highlights variation within identity groups and within individuals’ understandings and experiences of navigating training, on account of their social identities. These findings suggest that psychoanalytic training and psychotherapeutic practice would benefit, ethically and epistemically, from an authentic reckoning with the legacy of the very particular relation to social identity that has prevailed until now. Such a 'turn' may foster a new relation, less beholden to the uncritical embrace of normative ideologies and disavowal of vulnerability