Feasibility report: Delivering case-study based learning using artificial intelligence and gaming technologies

This document describes an investigation into the technical feasibility of a game to support learning based on case studies. Information systems students using the game will conduct fact-finding interviews with virtual characters. We survey relevant technologies in computational linguistics and games. We assess the applicability of the various approaches and propose an architecture for the game based on existing techniques. We propose a phased development plan for the development of the game

Understanding Collaborative Sensemaking for System Design — An Investigation of Musicians\u27 Practice

There is surprisingly little written in information science and technology literature about the design of tools used to support the collaboration of creators. Understanding collaborative sensemaking through the use of language has been traditionally applied to non-work domains, but this method is also well-suited for informing hypotheses about the design collaborative systems. The presence of ubiquitous, mobile technology, and development of multi-user virtual spaces invites investigation of design which is based on naturalistic, real world, creative group behaviors, including the collaborative work of musicians. This thesis is considering the co-construction of new (musical) knowledge by small groups. Co-construction of new knowledge is critical to the definition of an information system because it emphasizes coordination and resource sharing among group members (versus individual members independently doing their own tasks and only coming together to collate their contributions as a final product). This work situates the locus of creativity on the process itself, rather than on the output (the musical result) or the individuals (members of the band). This thesis describes a way to apply quantitative observations to inform qualitative assessment of the characteristics of collaborative sensemaking in groups. Conversational data were obtained from nine face-to-face collaborative composing sessions, involving three separate bands producing 18 hours of recorded interactions. Topical characteristics of the discussion, namely objects, plans, properties and performance; as well as emergent patterns of generative, evaluative, revision, and management conversational acts within the group were seen as indicative of knowledge construction. The findings report the use of collaborative pathways: iterative cycles of generation, evaluation and revision of temporary solutions used to move the collaboration forward. In addition, bracketing of temporary solutions served to help collaborators reuse content and offload attentional resources. Ambiguity in language, evaluation criteria, goal formation, and group awareness meant that existing knowledge representations were insufficient in making sense of incoming data and necessitated reformulating those representations. Further, strategic use of affective language was found to be instrumental in bridging knowledge gaps. Based on these findings, features of a collaborative system are proposed to help in facilitating sensemaking routines at various stages of a creative task. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of collaborative sensemaking during non-work, creative activities in order to inform the design of systems for supporting these activities. By studying an environment which forms a potential microcosm of virtual interaction between groups, it provides a framework for understanding and automating collaborative discussion content in terms of the features of dialogue

Never Being Able to Say You’re Sorry: Barriers to Apology By Leaders in Group Conflicts

Conner and Jordan discuss three implications of the foregoing analysis for leaders, peacemakers, and scholars interested in apology as an instrument to advance justice, prevent destructive conflict, and promote cooperation. First, an effective apology is likely to occur only after other changes have softened up negative attitudes between the groups--referred to here as ripeness. Second, even with a degree of ripeness, apology is unlikely without a window of opportunity, a confluence of circumstances that permits the leader to limit the scope of the apology so as not to concede too much. Third, even if these conditions are satisfied, words alone are not enough for an apology to be effective

Teaching Substantive Environmental Law and Practice Skills Through Interest Group Role-Playing

Most law students take their first introductory course in environmental law during their second year of law school. The traditional first-year curriculum does little to prepare students for the complex statutory and regulatory models for most environmental regulation. Law students at the end of their first year often have had little exposure to statutory interpretation. Further, they often have no exposure to administrative law and regulatory implementation. These students may expect statutes to provide clear statements of rules rather than guidelines for administrative rulemaking. They also tend to view the lawmaking and interpretive process through the traditional lens of congressional legislation and common-law-style judicial interpretation in a bipolar scheme of implementation--where the regulatory agencies and the regulated industries are the only players. In fact, environmental regulatory programs constantly evolve through a complex interaction of legislative amendment, administrative rulemaking, and judicial interpretation. Influencing these programs are the multipolar interaction of regulated industries, environmental groups, state agencies, and federal regulators. Law students accustomed to the bipolar model of common-law legal development and who expect statutory law to consist of a simple reading of clear statutory texts can find this interest group pluralist model of law development bewildering. One way to help give context to this complex interaction is to place students in the roles of the various advocates and decision-makers in the environmental law processes. Assigning students to adopt the perspective of various distinct players in the regulatory process, such as agency lawyer, industry lawyer, and environmental NGO lawyer, helps make this complex interaction more accessible to students. This also provides an introduction into the skills of statutory interpretation and regulatory implementation. At Pace Law School, we have had considerable success integrating this approach into an Environmental Law Skills course. This course combines a comprehensive study of the Clean Water Act (CWA) regulatory program with skills-based exercises in administrative rulemaking, judicial review, regulatory permitting, negotiation, and enforcement. The course was added to the curriculum in the 1990s in response to the growing recognition by the legal academy that the traditional case-oriented method of instruction failed to result in law graduates with basic competencies expected of lawyers. The course has been refined over the years to incorporate the Carnegie Report\u27s more recent critiques: the legal education\u27s failure to foster students\u27 development of their professional identities and their understanding of lawyers\u27 role in representing clients. By integrating role-playing, problem solving, and doctrinal instruction, the course seeks to engage students in active learning and professional identity development. The course also seeks to implement recommendations for the improvement of legal instruction contained in Professor Stuckey\u27s influential 2007 report, Best Practices for Legal Education. In particular, the course seeks to “teach doctrine, theory, and practice as part of a unified, coordinated program of instruction” as recommended in that report

The new scale of occupational functional communication demands (SOFCD): developing a measure of competence required in workplace-communication-skills in jobs

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree, by coursework and research report, for Organisational/Industrial Psychology in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, August 2017Organisations cannot function without communication, however, it is the effectiveness and appropriateness of the communication that is vital to organisational effectiveness. The undisputed need for the assessment of communication competence skills is evident in selection and recruitment, job profiling, performance evaluation, and the development of focused skill orientated training. However, no existing individual instrument adequately measures communicative competence in South African workplaces as a number of unique barriers to interpersonal communication within SA workplaces are unaccounted for in established conceptualisations of workplace communication competence, informing communication assessment approaches and methodologies. Thus, the overarching aim of the current research is to develop a workplace communication assessment scale of routine verbal task-related communication skills, which is contextually and representationally valid, and accommodates contextual social features of South African organisations, relevant in judgments of communication competence. In realising this aim the development of an alternative conceptualisation of SA workplace communicative competence was required. The future establishment of criterion referenced norms for specific jobs would be of practical utility to Human Resources (HR) in the customisation of organisational and job specific communication assessment tools and focused interventions. Method In Phase 1 a broad, inclusive representative item pool was reduced by frequency analysis and collapsing/deleting semantically similar items to 69 retained routine SA workplace communication behaviours. In Phase 2, the 69-item experimental scale was administered to a 303 SA working sample. Competing factor structures were evaluated according to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) model fit indices, pre and post item deletion, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to differentiate superior model fit. Lastly, the psychometric properties of the resultant scale, in terms of convergent and divergent validity with two existing measures (CCQ (Monge, Bachman, Dillard, & Eisenberg, 1982)) and the SRC (Cupach & Spitzberg, 1981)), as well as reliability, were evaluated. Results The 63-item eight factor model demonstrated the best fit in terms of an even distribution of primary factor loading across the factors, a single non-loading item, no theoretically incompatible item crossloadings, an even distribution of variance across factors, and the most conceptually interpretable pattern of factor loadings. Additionally, Phase 2 provided evidence of the scale's content, structural, convergent, and discriminant validity, and reliability. Discussion SA respondents differentiated eight subcategories as a basis for evaluating how they communicate at work. This suggests greater dimensionality relative to other workplace communication competence measures. The differentiation of the Higher Order Language subscale (i.e. the understanding of abstract and inferential language) suggests a broader conceptualisation of workplace communication skills as required by competent communicators in SA workplaces. Conclusion This research has offered an alternative conceptualisation of workplace communication competence, and developed a valid, reliable, communication assessment scale, from diverse disciplines and theoretical orientations, that measures all dimensions of routinely occurring interactional task-related communication skills within SA workplaces. This communication competence framework facilitates the efficient production of tailored job-specific criterion referenced norms for the immediate customisation of job-specific communication assessment tools and focused interventions. The utility of the new scale extends beyond Industrial/Organisation Psychology practice to inform return to work (RTW) rehabilitation in Speech Language Pathology.XL201