1,242 research outputs found

    Impactful contributions of usability practitioners to open source software projects:a multiple case study

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    Abstract. Open source software (OSS) has been described as being designed by and for technically advanced users. As OSS has been gaining popularity among non-technical users, concern about its usability has been raised, as it is difficult for technically-minded developers to design for average users. Hiring usability experts to represent the needs of average users has been used in commercial software development as an effective solution for improving usability. It has been also suggested as a way of addressing the usability issues of OSS, but it has been observed that it is often difficult for usability experts to contribute to OSS so that their work has a major impact on the usability of the software. In this thesis, a multiple case study of four usability interventions was conducted. The cases were a part of a larger research program called UKKOSS, which aims to test ways how usability experts can meaningfully contribute to OSS by conducting usability interventions, where student teams act as usability practitioners who enter OSS projects and carry out usability work on them. This study examined how OSS developers reacted to four of those usability interventions by examining the data gathered during those interventions. The analysed data included documents, such as summary reports, communication logs, project plans, and reports on the conducted usability activities. The larger goal of studying these cases was to gather information on how usability practitioners can conduct impactful usability work on OSS projects. The outcomes of the cases were examined through the lens of prior research, and the factors that may have contributed to the success of the cases were examined through cross-case analysis. The developers welcomed the usability work of the usability teams in generally all of the four cases, but the actual impacts the interventions had varied from none of the suggested usability changes being implemented to most of them being implemented to the software. The outcomes of the most successful cases suggest that an approach where usability practitioners implement their suggested changes themselves after discussing about them with the core developers, establishing trust with the developers by contacting them via voice call or video conferencing instead of using only asynchronous communication, and making usability reports as persuasive as possible by including user testing metrics which strengthen the validity of the issues, should be studied further to evaluate if they can have a positive effect on the impact of the work of usability practitioners. The main contributions of this research were supporting the prior research on the obstacles faced by usability experts entering OSS projects by supporting it with empirical evidence and proposing new areas of research on the subject based on the outcomes of the cases

    An investigation into how teachers interpret and implement the curriculum in the further education and training phase in the English first additional language classroom

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    Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-113).The focus of this research is to examine how teachers interpret and implement the curriculum in an English First Additional classroom. The three sub-questions are (1) what are the theories and aims behind the two prescribed theoretical approaches (the communicative language approach and the text-based approach) as set out in the National Curriculum Statement? (2) how do teachers understand, interpret and use these two approaches? (3) do teachers assist students to develop the appropriate abstract cognitive academic language that is specific for the discipline? This is an interpretive, qualitative study. The data were collected from 27th of July to the 17th of August 2009 in a township school in the Western Cape. To develop thick description and explanations on the findings, the research techniques used were classroom observation, discourse analysis and interviews. In order to avoid any natural bias, and to contribute to the credibility of the study, 'triangulation' was used. The three components were: an examination of the English First Additional Language National Curriculum Statement; classroom observation and interviews. Forty-four lessons of three teachers were observed and recorded, supplemented with detailed field-notes. (In the final analysis, only two teachers' lessons were closely examined as the limited space in this minor dissertation was not sufficient for the detail the analyses presented.) To broaden the perspective, the teachers were interviewed in order to understand their views, theories and experiences. The main tool used to investigate teachers' interpretation and implementation of the curriculum was classroom discourse analysis. This study describes how teachers in one township school interpret and implement the curriculum. The classroom observations showed how the practical realities of teaching were often at odds with what the teachers claimed they were doing when discussing the curriculum on a theoretical level. The tools of discourse analysis allowed for a detailed investigation of the teaching and learning taking place. It appears that the teachers revert to traditional methods and pedagogies with which they were taught and so are unaware of these discrepancies between their understanding of the curriculum and their practice. Teachers are dealing with challenging and complex realities in the class, including huge work load, continuous assessment of large classes and recent influxes of underprepared students from the Eastern Cape. While the teachers were experienced and passionate about their work, there were several features of their teaching that hindered effective implementation of the curriculum. Some of the main hindrances were a traditional initiation-responseevaluation/ feedback method; the use of chorusing in the class and a lack of full theoretical understanding of the prescribed pedagogies. The paper ends with recommendations for teacher professional development, focusing on theorised practice that could lead to better implementation of the curriculum

    El espectáculo contrahegemónico de Occupy Wall Street: estado integral y lucha integral

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    In this article, we explore the US social movement “Occupy Wall Street.” First, we look at how its members attempt to construct a counter-hegemonic ‘spectacle’ characterized by an unstructured, leaderless and ‘ideology-less’ organization enacted by a series of practices that utilize communication and re-signification as the main terrain of confrontation. Secondly, we draw on Gramsci in order to stress the importance of the “integral state”—a concept that emphasizes how a successful hegemonic project achieves a “historic bloc” only when it operates both at the level of state and civil society. We claim that Occupy Wall Street’s goals require an equally integral kind of struggle, one that operates at all of these multiple levels.Este artículo se centra en el movimiento social norteamericano conocido como Occupy Wall Street. Por una parte, analiza la intención de sus participantes en la construcción de un ‘espectáculo’ contra-hegemónico caracterizado por una organización sin estructuras, líderes, o ‘ideologías,’ cuyas prácticas se basan en la comunicación y la resignificación como principales áreas de confrontación. Por otra parte, se presenta el concepto gramsciano de “estado integral” como herramienta para enfatizar en qué medida un proyecto hegemónico se constituye como “bloque histórico” sólo cuando es capaz de integrar al Estado y a la sociedad civil. Los objetivos de Occupy Wall Street, por tanto, requieren una lucha también integral que se mueva entre estos niveles

    A Child Shall Lead Them: Exploring Discourses of Efficacy and Climate Change as They Appear in Children\u27s Animated Film

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    Recent climate change discourse has tended to presume scientific knowledge and rational argumentation as the principle factor in convincing peoples and publics toward climate action. However, scholarship across numerous fields reveals myriad other contributing factors in how people think about and respond to this environmental crisis, which leans predominately toward silence and apathy. Alongside this, children are often centered as inheriting a calamity, yet find themselves largely disempowered. From out of this rhetorical milieu I interject by way of a multidisciplinary grounding to examine the predominate framings of efficacy in the context of children, climate change, and environmental discourse. To accomplish this, I conduct a rhetorical analysis of three animated environmental children\u27s films (Happy Feet, WALL-E, and Moana). Through this process, I obverse three efficacy frames at work across the films. Speaking to their method and mode of responding to environmental catastrophe, I have delineated these frames as Scientistic Messianism, Neoluddic Asceticism, and Reconciliatory Ecophronesis. Further, I explore how these frames function in climate discourse more broadly, paying special attention to rhetorics of science, social movement, and discourses of resistance, and especially regarding children. Among possible implications, I propose a turn toward a postcolonial refolding of deep ecology that embraces diversity, ecological systems thinking, and a storied morality alongside and with empiricism and criticism - and demonstrate how such an efficacy framework can empower both children and adults

    Natural Language Generation as an Intelligent Activity (Proposal for Dissertation Research)

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    In this proposal, I outline a generator conceived of as part of a general intelligent agent. The generator\u27s task is to provide the overall system with the ability to use communication in language to serve its purposes, rather than to simply encode information in language. This requires that generation be viewed as a kind of goal-directed action that is planned and executed in a dynamically changing environment. In addition, the generator must not be dependent on domain or problem-specific information but rather on a general knowledge base .that it shares with the overall system. These requirements have specific consequences for the design of the generator and the representation it uses. In particular, the text planner and the low-level linguistic component must be able to interact and negotiate over decisions that involve both high-level and low-level constraints. Also, the knowledge representation must allow for the varying perspective that an intelligent agent will have on the things it talks about; the generator must be able to appropriately vary how it describes things as the system\u27s perspective on them changes. The generator described here will demonstrate how these ideas work in practice and develop them further

    A clinical investigation of impairment in the development of healthy aggression with reference to the work of Henri Parens

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    This thesis investigates how impailments and arrests in the development of ordinary healthy aggression interfere with development in general. I review the literature on aggression, particularly in relation to Henri Parens' concept of a spectrum of aggression. I describe two cases seen in a general CAMH service. The clinical material from the first year of therapy for each case is subjected to Grounded Theory coding to ensure that aggression has not been prejudiced over other significant factors. I describe the two cases using Anna Freud's Diagnostic Profile and Developmental Lines to trace the development of aggression within the broader context of more general development. I compare their respective progress with reference to Parens' work, using his spectrum to hypothesise that in some children there is a confusion of ordinary healthy aggresssion(or developmental assertiveness) with destructiveness. I suggest that this confusion inhibits development across several areas. Finally I discuss some possible implications for clinical practice

    The silent dialogue : Parallel Trajectories of H.D.\u27s and Adrienne Rich\u27s Poetic Treatment of Patriarchal Violence

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    An examination of the parallel treatment of the theme of male violence in the poetic works of H.D. and Adrienne Rich. Particular attention is given to the importance of H.D.\u27s epic poetry (Trilogy and Helen in Egypt) to Rich\u27s poetry of the later 1970\u27s and early 1980\u27s (Dream of a Common Language and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far)

    Public advocacy by the Roman Catholic Church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the twenty-first century

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    The Roman Catholic Church has engaged in moral criticism throughout history and continues to do so today through movie reviews published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The history of the Roman Catholic Church\u27s censorship of moral content includes controlling the amount and type of media available. This rhetorical analysis of both the USCCB and New York Times movie reviews for the top ten grossing movies of 2006 discusses rhetoric as an expression of meaning that emerges through a texts\u27 historical and cultural situation. Both sets of reviews are found on the Internet and this analysis argues that they contribute to the Roman Catholic Church\u27s ongoing attempts to influence morality in the absence of moral criticism in popular culture media
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