Effects of Team-Based Computer Interaction: The Media Equation and Game Design Considerations

The current paper applies media equation research to video game de-sign. The paper presents a review of the existing media equation research, de-scribes a specific study conducted by the authors, discusses how the findings of the study can be used to inform future game design, and explores how other media equation findings might be incorporated into game design. The specific study, discussed in detail in the paper, explores the notion of team formation between humans and computer team-mates. The results show that while highly experienced users will accept a computer as a team-mate, they tend to react more negatively towards the computer than to human teammates (a ‘Black Sheep’ Effect

The media equation and team formation: Further evidence for experience as a moderator

This study extends previous media equation research, which showed that interdependence but not identity leads to team affiliation effects with computers. The current study used an identity manipulation that more closely replicated the manipulation used in traditional team and group formation research than the original media equation research in this area. The study also sought further evidence for the relationship between experience with computers and behaviour reflecting a media equation pattern of results. Sixty students from the University of Queensland voluntarily participated in the study. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions: control, human team (a team made of only humans) or human-computer team (a team made of computers and humans). Questionnaire measures assessing participants’ affective experience, attitudes and opinions were taken. Participants of high experience, but not low experience, when assigned to either of the team conditions enjoyed the tasks completed on the computer more than participants who worked on their own. When assigned to a team that involved a computer, participants of high experience, but not low experience, reacted negatively towards the computer (in comparison to high experience participants working on their own or on a team without a computer as a team member) – rating the information provided by the computer lower, rating themselves as less influenced by the computer and changing their own ratings and rankings to be less like those of the computer. These results are interpreted in light of the ‘Black Sheep’ literature and recognized as a media equation pattern of results

Is project management the new management 2.0?

This paper considers the evolving nature of project management (PM) and offers a comparison with the evolving nature of management generally. Specifically, we identify a number of management trends that are drawn from a paper that documents a proposed ‘Management 2.0’ model, and we compare those trends to the way in which PM is maturing to embrace the challenges of modern organizational progress.Some theoretical frameworks are offered that assist in explaining the shift from the historically accepted ‘tools and techniques’ model to a more nuanced and behaviorally driven paradigm that is arguably more appropriate to manage change in today’s flexible and progressive organizations, and which provide a more coherent response, both in PM and traditional management, to McDonald’s forces. In addition, we offer a number of examples to robustly support our assertions, based around the development of innovative products from Apple Inc. In using this metaphor to demonstrate the evolution of project-based work, we link PM with innovation and new product development.

Interoperability in the OpenDreamKit Project: The Math-in-the-Middle Approach

OpenDreamKit --- "Open Digital Research Environment Toolkit for the Advancement of Mathematics" --- is an H2020 EU Research Infrastructure project that aims at supporting, over the period 2015--2019, the ecosystem of open-source mathematical software systems. From that, OpenDreamKit will deliver a flexible toolkit enabling research groups to set up Virtual Research Environments, customised to meet the varied needs of research projects in pure mathematics and applications. An important step in the OpenDreamKit endeavor is to foster the interoperability between a variety of systems, ranging from computer algebra systems over mathematical databases to front-ends. This is the mission of the integration work package (WP6). We report on experiments and future plans with the \emph{Math-in-the-Middle} approach. This information architecture consists in a central mathematical ontology that documents the domain and fixes a joint vocabulary, combined with specifications of the functionalities of the various systems. Interaction between systems can then be enriched by pivoting off this information architecture.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Trust in ICT-Based New Product Development - Guidelines for Virtual New Product Development Teams

The traditional process of new product development is focusing on an intra-organizational workflow, which should - in its ideal form - be done by virtual interdisciplinary teams. Team members should be from several departments like manufacturing, research & development, sales and marketing. But innovation is happening more and more in networks of companies, clusters or so called network companies. The following article delivers a framework of guidelines for virtual team management in order to improve the success of innovation strategies.e-collaboration, virtual team work, new product development, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Personnel and Human Resource Management

The basic endeavor of this discipline has not changed over the years: it has sought “to contribute to organizational success by assuring that the right numbers of the right people are in the right places at the right times doing the right things in the right ways.

Whiteness of A Name: Is “White” the Baseline?

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that Whiteness is used as a normative standard when comparing a variety of first names. Design/methodology/approach– Respondents (full- and part-time business students) evaluated names that sounded common, African-American, Russian, and unusual. Findings– Results from two studies suggest that “common” or “neutral” names are perceived to be white, and to be more American than African-American, Russian or unusual-sounding names. Results also demonstrate that the common names have more positive attributes, including socio-economic class. Research limitations/implications– The study found that the basic comparison of American respondents will be to a white person. Second, the authors applied Critical Race Theory (CRT) to the research on names. Finally, the authors demonstrate that unless they are totally anonymous, virtual teams will still have the type of social categorization and stereotyping of team members found in ordinary teams. Practical implications– Organizations and managers need to recognize that a “colorblind” approach simply reinforces the expectation that any differences in American organizations will be compared against the Whiteness standard. This can be a problem in any organizational setting, especially given the proliferation of virtual teams. This may be addressed with attempts to increase common in-group identity and strategies for identifying bias. Originality/value– In this research the authors integrate concepts and theory from Virtual Teams, CRT and the Psychology of Names, providing both theoretical and practical implications

Security in online learning assessment towards an effective trustworthiness approach to support e-learning teams

(c) 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.This paper proposes a trustworthiness model for the design of secure learning assessment in on-line collaborative learning groups. Although computer supported collaborative learning has been widely adopted in many educational institutions over the last decade, there exist still drawbacks which limit their potential in collaborative learning activities. Among these limitations, we investigate information security requirements in on-line assessment, (e-assessment), which can be developed in collaborative learning contexts. Despite information security enhancements have been developed in recent years, to the best of our knowledge, integrated and holistic security models have not been completely carried out yet. Even when security advanced methodologies and technologies are deployed in Learning Management Systems, too many types of vulnerabilities still remain opened and unsolved. Therefore, new models such as trustworthiness approaches can overcome these lacks and support e-assessment requirements for e-Learning. To this end, a trustworthiness model is designed in order to conduct the guidelines of a holistic security model for on-line collaborative learning through effective trustworthiness approaches. In addition, since users' trustworthiness analysis involves large amounts of ill-structured data, a parallel processing paradigm is proposed to build relevant information modeling trustworthiness levels for e-Learning.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft