Crowdsourcing for linguistic field research and e-learning

Crowdsourcing denotes the transfer of work commonly carried out by single humans to a large group of people. Nowadays, crowdsourcing is employed for many purposes, like people contributing their knowledge to Wikipedia, researchers predicting diseases from data on Twitter, or players solving protein folding problems in games. Still, there are areas for which the application of crowdsourcing has not yet been investigated thoroughly. This thesis examines crowdsourcing for two such areas: for empirical research in sciences oriented on humans -focusing on linguistic field research- and for e-learning. Sciences oriented on humans -like linguistics, sociology, or art history- depend on empirical research. For example, in traditional linguistic field research researchers ask questions and fill in forms. Such methods are time-consuming, costly, and not free of biases. This thesis proposes the application of crowdsourcing techniques to overcome these disadvantages and to support empirical research in getting more efficient. Therefore, the concept of a generic market for trading with symbolic goods and speculating on their characteristics in a playful manner, called Agora is introduced. Agora aims to be an "operating system" for social media applications gathering data. Furthermore, the Web-based crowdsourcing platform metropolitalia has been established for hosting two social media applications based upon Agora: Mercato Linguistico and Poker Parole. These applications have been conceived as part of this thesis for gathering complementary data and meta-data on Italian language varieties. Mercato Linguistico incites players to express their own knowledge or beliefs, Poker Parole incites players to make conjectures on the contributions of others. Thereby the primary meta-data collected with Mercato Linguistico are enriched with secondary, reflexive meta-data from Poker Parole, which are needed for studies on the perception of languages. An evaluation of the data gathered on metropolitalia exhibits the viability of the market-based approach of Agora and highlights its strengths. E-learning is concerned with the use of digital technology for learning, nowadays especially via the Internet. This thesis investigates how e-learning applications can support students with association-based learning and lecturers with teaching. For that, a game-like e-learning tool named Termina is proposed in this thesis. From the data collected with Termina association maps are constructed. An association map is a simplified version of a concept map, in which concepts are represented as rectangles and relationships between concepts as links. They constitute an abstract comprehension of a topic. Students profit from the association maps' availability, learn from other participating students, and can track their own learning progress. Lecturers gain insights into the knowledge and into potential misunderstandings of their students. An evaluation of Termina and the collected data along a university course exhibits Termina's usefulness for both students and lecturers. The main contributions of this thesis are (1) a literature review over collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, and related fields, (2) a model of a generic market for gathering data for empirical research efficiently, (3) two applications based on this model and results of an evaluation of the data gathered with them, (4) the game-like e-learning tool Termina together with insights from its evaluation, and (5) a generic software architecture for all aforementioned applications.Crowdsourcing bezeichnet die Auslagerung von Arbeit an eine Gruppe von Menschen zur Lösung eines Problems. Heutzutage wird Crowdsourcing für viele Zwecke verwendet, zum Beispiel tragen Leute ihr Wissen zu Wikipedia bei, Wissenschaftler sagen Krankheiten anhand von Twitter-Daten vorher oder Spieler lösen Proteinfaltungsprobleme in Spielen. Es gibt dennoch Gebiete, für die der Einsatz von Crowdsourcing noch nicht gründlich untersucht wurde. Diese Arbeit untersucht Crowdsourcing für zwei solche Gebiete: für empirische Forschung in auf den Menschen bezogenen Wissenschaften mit Fokus auf linguistischer Feldforschung sowie für E-Learning. Auf den Menschen bezogene Wissenschaften wie Linguistik, Soziologie oder Kunstgeschichte beruhen auf empirischer Forschung. In traditioneller linguistischer Feldforschung zum Beispiel stellen Wissenschaftler Fragen und füllen Fragebögen aus. Solche Methoden sind zeitaufwändig, teuer und nicht unbefangen. Diese Arbeit schlägt vor, Crowdsourcing-Techniken anzuwenden, um diese Nachteile zu überwinden und um empirische Forschung effizienter zu gestalten. Dazu wird das Konzept eines generischen Marktes namens Agora für den Handel mit symbolischen Gütern und für die Spekulation über deren Charakteristika eingeführt. Agora ist ein generisches "Betriebssystem" für Social Media Anwendungen. Außerdem wurde die Internet-basierte Crowdsourcing-Plattform metropolitalia eingerichtet, um zwei dieser Social Media Anwendungen, die auf Agora basieren, bereitzustellen: Mercato Linguistico und Poker Parole. Diese Anwendungen wurden als Teil dieser Arbeit entwickelt, um komplementäre Daten und Metadaten über italienische Sprachvarietäten zu sammeln. Mercato Linguistico regt Spieler dazu an, ihr eigenes Wissen und ihre Überzeugungen auszudrücken. Poker Parole regt Spieler dazu an, Vermutungen über die Beiträge anderer Spieler anzustellen. Damit werden die mit Mercato Linguistico gesammelten primären Metadaten mit reflexiven sekundären Metadaten aus Poker Parole, die für Studien über die Wahrnehmung von Sprachen notwendig sind, bereichert. Eine Auswertung der auf metropolitalia gesammelten Daten zeigt die Zweckmäßigkeit des marktbasierten Ansatzes von Agora und unterstreicht dessen Stärken. E-Learning befasst sich mit der Verwendung von digitalen Technologien für das Lernen, heutzutage vor allem über das Internet. Diese Arbeit untersucht, wie E-Learning-Anwendungen Studenten bei assoziationsbasiertem Lernen und Dozenten bei der Lehre unterstützen können. Dafür wird eine Spiel-ähnliche Anwendung namens Termina in dieser Arbeit eingeführt. Mit den über Termina gesammelten Daten werden Association-Maps konstruiert. Eine Association-Map ist eine vereinfachte Variante einer Concept-Map, in der Begriffe als Rechtecke und Beziehungen zwischen Begriffen als Verbindungslinien dargestellt werden. Sie stellen eine abstrakte Zusammenfassung eines Themas dar. Studenten profitieren von der Verfügbarkeit der Association-Maps, lernen von anderen Studenten und können ihren eigenen Lernprozess verfolgen. Dozenten bekommen Einblicke in den Wissensstand und in eventuelle Missverständnisse ihrer Studenten. Eine Evaluation von Termina und der damit gesammelten Daten während eines Universitätskurses bestätigt, dass Termina sowohl für Studenten als auch für Dozenten hilfreich ist. Die Kernbeiträge dieser Arbeit sind (1) eine Literaturrecherche über kollektive Intelligenz, Crowdsourcing und verwandte Gebiete, (2) ein Modell eines generischen Marktes zur effizienten Sammlung von Daten für empirische Forschung, (3) zwei auf diesem Modell basierende Anwendungen und Ergebnisse deren Evaluation, (4) die Spiel-ähnliche E-Learning-Anwendung Termina zusammen mit Einblicken aus dessen Evaluation und (5) eine generische Softwarearchitektur für alle vorgenannten Anwendungen

Encoded knowledge in oral traditions: Skwxwú7mesh transformer sites and their relationship with landscape perception and use

This research studies the characteristics and roles of Transformer sites in daily life of people journeying through Skwxwú7mesh territory and the transmission of environmental knowledge through the Skwxwú7mesh oral tradition. Transformer sites are culturally significant places for numerous Indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest and are so named for their narrative association with supernatural figures from the culture’s oral traditions that could transform themselves and the landscape. Skwxwú7mesh Transformer sites are associated with the journey of four brothers, Xaay Xays, and are located throughout Skwxwú7mesh territory. Many Transformer sites are important for their history and place within a community’s cultural landscape even without human modification. While archaeological sites generally refer to locations where there are material signs of past human activity, that definition does not include places where ephemeral activities took place, or places of cultural significance that were not directly modified by human behavior. Approaches within landscape archaeology provide a lens through which to effectively view and study places where the archaeological record is silent. Visibility, proximity to recorded archaeological sites, and ethnographic analysis, when taken together, can make a strong intersecting argument for how people in the past interacted with specific places and the landscape as a whole. This thesis recorded the physical characteristics of Skwxwú7mesh Transformer sites associated with Xaay Xays, evaluated the visibility of Skwxwú7mesh Transformer sites from water routes through Skwxwú7mesh territory, and compared the environmental and land use messaging from the names and stories of each site to the archaeological, ecological, and ethnographic information of that location. The results showed that the majority of Transformer sites were locations either used directly for resources described in the Xaay Xays narrative or were associated with active archaeological areas, suggesting that Transformer sites were an ever present part of daily life, and that the stories that describe and connect these locations hold information about the environment that was transmitted through generations by telling and retelling these stories. Despite the cultural significance of Transformer sites to Indigenous communities and their potential for archaeological investigation, they are not guaranteed protection under provincial or federal heritage legislation. There is much more that can be learned from Transformer sites and other natural places about people’s interactions with the landscape through time, but first those places must be acknowledged and protected for generations to come

Glitch Poetics:Critical Sensory Realism in Contemporary Language Practice

A practice-based research project that introduces the term "Glitch Poetics" as a mode for reading and writing in the digital age: this term overlaps different creative (and uncreative) writing methodologies, and forges new lines of connection between "new media" and the literary and textual. The work is relevant to fields such as Literary Theory, Experimental Writing, Electronic Literature and New Media Art. The research methodology was interdisciplinary, including: synthesising key conceptualisations of "glitch" from media theoretical areas such as media archaeology and software studies, and new media art practitioners such as Rosa Menkman, with those of historical approaches to 'poetics'; performing close readings of contemporary literature, performance and other artistic language practices; and producing art works that move between live performance, exposition and textual practice. Over the course of 4 years, the project achieved a significant level of depth, concluding that "glitches" offer a moment of correspondence between the (already diverse) concerns of poetics and those of critical media practices, forming new disciplinary allegiances and necessitating new hybrid forms of critique. In recent published material I have also illustrated how this critical framework can be deployed to analyse influential books and artworks alongside emerging technologies. The new term "Glitch Poetics" gained traction through a publications in national specialist media, such as Art Monthly, Resonance FM and Poetry Wales, and was developed through interdisciplinary contexts including invited talks at Transmediale festival, Onassis centre in Athens, academic appearances at conferences for new media, literature and poetics, and as a chapter in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature. The practice-based components were commissioned by the Bluecoat and FACT, and a final outcome was developed into a publication with Entr'acte records in Antwerp, streamed in its entirety on The Wire website

Anglicisms in financial Italian: A corpus-driven analysis of Italian press from 2008 to 2020

This research focuses on the identification and analysis of the terminology of Anglo-American origin, the so-called Anglicisms, related to the lexicon of the 2008 global financial crisis that have entered the Italian special language of economics and finance since the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 to the year 2020. The research is a corpus-driven analysis conducted on a specifically built monolingual corpus that aims to quantitatively and qualitatively analyse the Italian special language of economics and finance and its features. The corpus constitutes of four Italian financial newspapers addressed both to an audience of experts and professionals, in the case of the specialised journals Milano Finanza and Italia Oggi, and to an audience of laypersons, in the case of the newspapers of general reach Il Sole 24 Ore and La Repubblica. For each newspaper 25 articles a-year have been selected, for a total of 1,3000 articles. Furthermore, the qualitative and quantitative conclusions drawn upon the data extracted on the anglicisms investigated have been further supported by the construction of an Anglo-American monolingual reference corpus, balanced with respect to the Italian corpus in terms of the period of time considered, from 2008 to 2020, to the varied audience addressed, and to the number of articles collected. In fact, the reference corpus constitutes of 25 articles a-year selected from four English financial newspapers published from 2008 to 2020; additionally, the newspapers that constitute the reference corpus have been geographically selected, as two of them are British, The Financial Times and City A.M, and two are American, i.e. Investors’ Business Daily and American Banker

GENETIC STRUCTURE AND BIODEMOGRAPHY OF THE RAMA AMERINDIANS FROM THE SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN COAST OF NICARAGUA

This dissertation examines the evolutionary impact of recent historical events on the population structure of the Rama Amerindians who inhabit the southern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, by analyzing the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphic variants and their biological relationship with, and ancestral divergence from other neighboring groups. Genetic profiles of 265 individuals from seven Rama communities revealed that the majority of individuals belong to haplogroup B2 (71%) or A2 (28%), with the remaining 1% of variation comprised by the maternal lineages C1 and L3. Based on multivariate analyses combined with median-joining networks, AMOVA, tests of selective neutrality and diversity, phylogeography, and surname isonomy analyses, it is proposed that the geographic distribution of the haplogroups among the Rama communities reflects the history of migration of this population after the European incursion into the Caribbean region of Southern Central America following the 16th century. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical accounts of sub-population fissions and subsequent forced migrations are congruent with these results, leading to the conclusion that the disruption of the Rama's traditional way of life led to changes in mortality patterns, reproductive dynamics and epidemiology, which ultimately impacted the genetic variation of this population

HEBE: Highly Engaging eBook Experiences

Despite more and more books are made available in electronic format and technology is increasingly present in children’s everyday life, thus far the potential of the electronic book (eBook) medium has been only partially exploited. With the Highly Engaging eBook Experiences (HEBE) project we studied how to design and evaluate eBooks for children with the goal of making the reading experience more engaging. The project began with an investigation of the many facets that characterize the reading experience of children in order to understand how it could possibly be enhanced by electronic books. In a later stage an intergenerational design team used different techniques of Cooperative Inquiry to explore a range of design ideas. Then, based on those ideas, we developed a prototype of enhanced eBook and elaborated a shortlist of design recommendations that are intended to help designers in creating more engaging eBooks. The research project ended with a stage of evaluation where children’s User Experience with the eBook prototype was assessed. We took inspiration from Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory to define a benchmark for evaluating the reading experience. Then, by means of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), we investigated and collected data on the reading experience of two groups of children, one of which read an eBook enhanced following our design recommendations while the other read a basic version of the same eBook. Following a mixed-method approach, with quantitative analysis we verified whether participants who read the enhanced eBook had a better reading experience, while with qualitative analysis we tried to understand why. The results of the evaluation showed that that an eBook designed following our design recommendations may have a positive effect on children’s reading experience by making it more engaging