Productive re-use of CSCL data and analytic tools to provide a new perspective on group cohesion

The goals of this paper are twofold: (1) to demonstrate how previously published data can be re-analyzed to gain a new perspective on CSCL dynamics and (2) to propose a new measure of social cohesion that was developed through improvements to existing analytic tools. In this study, we downloaded the Simuligne corpus from the publicly available Mulce repository. We improved the Knowledge Space Visualizer (KSV) to deepen the notion of cohesion by using a dynamic representation of sociograms. The Calico tools have been used and extended to complete this cohesion measure by analyzing lexical markers. These complementary analyses of cohesion, based on clique sizes and communication intensity on the one hand, and lexical markers on the other hand, offer more detailed information on (a) the relationships between participants and (b) the structure and intensity of communication. In particular, the analyses highlight strong convergences that were not visible in the previous analysis

Multimodal learning and teaching corpora exchange: Lessons learned in five years by the Mulce project

In order to make replication possible for interaction analysis in online learning, the French project named Mulce (2007-2010) and its team worked on requirements for research data to be shareable. We defined a learning and teaching corpus (LETEC) as a package containing the data issued from an online course, the contextual information and metadata, necessary to make these data visible, shareable and reusable. These human, technical and ethical requirements are presented in this paper. We briefly present the structure of a corpus and the repository we developed to share these corpora. Related works are also described and we show how conditions evolved between 2006 and 2011. This leads us to report on how the Mulce project was faced with four particular challenges and to suggest acceptable solutions for computer scientists and researchers in the humanities: both concerned by data sharing in the Technology Enhanced Learning community

Building and Analyzing a Corpus of Contextualized Traces Collected during a Technology Enhanced Teaching Module

International audience—Sharing and analyzing data collected within Technology Enhanced Learning environments is an interesting issue for researchers to validate their models and systems. In this paper we present a corpus we built and analyzed in order to validate our proposed " Proxy approach " as an approach for sharing and analyzing learning data corpora

The 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit: A Modular Tool for Transparent and Traceable Social Media Research

This paper introduces the 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit (4CAT), an open-source Web-based research tool that can capture data from a variety of online sources including Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, 4chan, 8kun, BitChute, Douban and Parler, and analyze the data through analytical processors. 4CAT seeks to make robust data capture and analysis available to researchers not familiar with computer programming, without “black-boxing” the implemented research methods. Before outlining the practical use of 4CAT, we discuss three “affordances” that informed its design: modularity, transparency, and traceability. 4CAT is modular because new data sources and analytical processors can be easily added and changed; transparent because it aims to render legible its inner workings; and traceable because of automatic and shareable documentation of intermediate analysis steps. We then show how 4CAT operationalizes these features through a description of its general setup and a short walkthrough. Finally, we discuss how 4CAT strives for an “ethics by design” development philosophy that enables ethically sound data-driven research with it. 4CAT is then positioned as both an answer to and a further call for “tool criticism” in computational social research

Victorian fiction and the material imagination

How should we deal with the ‘stuff' in books? This is the question addressed in the lead articles of the Spring 2008 issue of 19, all of which focus on some aspect of the material in relation to Victorian fiction. Gas, rocks, jewellery, automata and the entire contents of houses are examined in essays that explore the material imagination of Dickens, Hardy, George Eliot and Thackeray, among others. Moving forward from the previous edition, which different types of collected object, here contributors examine how the material is brought into collision with literature. The phrase 'material imagination' can be traced to the work of Gaston Bachelard who identifies two types of imagination, the formal and the material. Whereas the former focuses on surfaces and the visual perception of images, the latter consists of '…this amazing need for penetration which, going beyond the attractions of the imagination of forms, thinks matter, dreams in it, lives in it, or, in other words, materializes the imaginary'. As Bachelard suggests, the material imagination involves more than just a focus on the representation of objects and the contributions to this edition explore such wide ranging subjects as the gender politics of ownership, dispossession, the body as object, the politics of collecting and display and the dichotomy between the material and immaterial. In addition, this edition features a forum on digitisation and materiality. We are particularly pleased to be able to make use of 19's digital publishing format to further debates about digital media. In the forum, five contributors respond to a series of questions about the nature of the virtual object. All five have worked or are working on nineteenth-century digitisation projects so they are uniquely placed to consider issues surrounding representation and the nature of digital space

Labours of care: Art practice and urban ecological restoration

This research reveals how an art practice built around ethics of care offers a means of enacting an ecological responsibility. As cities and their human populations continue to grow, urban creeks and green spaces are becoming increasingly important and contested. Habitat loss for non-human species increases the need to care for these places. My volunteer work as a ‘Friend of Merri Creek’ in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, prompted this practice-based research which has explored practices of care as both subject matter and method. I argue that the processual, repetitive and labour-intense nature of my practice are qualities shared by environmental restoration work. This led me to ask: What could my art practice, based in print and textiles, reveal about practices of ecological restoration and degradation at an urban creek? I have set out to explore this question by bringing Merri Creek and my art practice closer together, using the meditative and repetitive acts of walking, weeding, planting, sewing and printing with locally collected plant dye. Through studio and field-based investigation, I have established a way to observe contemporary and historic actions that have altered the Merri Creek ecosystem. Further, through an exploration of process, repetition and labour, I have found ways to produce artworks that manifest through—and reveal—practices of care. My research culminated in three works, brought together in an installation at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, together with an exegetical text. Building and departing from feminist debates surrounding an ‘ethics of care’, I draw on the work of theorists that approach care from materialist, ecological and practice-based standpoints. If care is a way of seeing and acting in the world in which interdependency and relationships are foregrounded and the potential to take responsibility is raised, then my examination of care as practice and method of art, and its interpretation, offers a path through which to navigate an increasingly precarious world

Microblogging: Using Digital Literacies to Engage Middle School English Learners

As a result of the changing technologies associated with the 21st century, the definition of literacy has changed and expanded (Antonacci & O’Callaghan, 2011) to encompass e-books, text messages, blogs, and even videogames and the peripheral literacies associated with gaming. These new literacies have demonstrated promise for engaging students in literate practices (Gee, 2007; Gerber, 2009). One practice in particular, microblogging, provides a way to engage English learners in writing and responding to text. Microblogging is a participant web technology that allows users to interact and share information in succinct online posts (Hricko, 2010). For middle school English learners, microblogging provides an avenue for both consuming and producing information in a second language in a way that is interesting and authentic

Microblogging: Using Digital Literacies to Engage Middle School English Learners

As a result of the changing technologies associated with the 21st century, the definition of literacy has changed and expanded (Antonacci & O’Callaghan, 2011) to encompass e-books, text messages, blogs, and even videogames and the peripheral literacies associated with gaming. These new literacies have demonstrated promise for engaging students in literate practices (Gee, 2007; Gerber, 2009). One practice in particular, microblogging, provides a way to engage English learners in writing and responding to text. Microblogging is a participant web technology that allows users to interact and share information in succinct online posts (Hricko, 2010). For middle school English learners, microblogging provides an avenue for both consuming and producing information in a second language in a way that is interesting and authentic