Summarization from Multiple User Generated Videos in Geo-Space

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

E-book adoption in academic and research libraries

Electronic books (e-books) have grown in importance in Academic and Research Libraries (ARLs). Some ARLs are now spending more on e-book acquisitions than hardcopy books. Whether this investment in e-book provision is justified by adoption outcomes is often the subject of simplistic, rather than rigorous research. This research has attempted to rigorously explore the phenomenon of e-book adoption in a case study ARL, namely, Edith Cowan University (ECU) Library. The study population consisted of ECU academics, students and non-academic staff. The research had three aims. First, by employing a theoretical framework based on technology adoption and information behaviour theory, the study sought explanations of adoption behaviours in the population. In a triangular research design, that included a survey, ECU users were invited to self-describe their own patterns of e-book behaviour. Survey data was used to determine if behaviour observed in transactions could be explained in terms of constructs derived from technology acceptance, information behaviour and other domain theories that seek to understand user interaction with information sources. Next, applying log analysis techniques to system-generated datasets of e-book usage, the researcher documented and analysed patterns of ECU e-book user behaviour in terms of the transaction record. Lastly, the study investigated whether transaction logs could be used with high reliability to profile users’ information behaviour providing the basis of a method for e-book individualisation. The study attempted to profile power users and to derive a predictive method for identifying them in log data. The study found many factors in technology acceptance theory that were significant in terms of adoption behaviour. E-book adoption in the case study ARL was found to be related to culture of use across the dimensions of habit/automaticity, preference for online resources and platforms, and information literacy. E-book collection sufficiency, purpose or task fit, convenience, functionality, and access/copy/print/download provisions were found to be significant in terms of performance expectancy. Dimensions of effort expectancy in finding/searching/reading e-books also significantly affected user behaviour. Other significant relations comprised perceived e-book hedonic attributes (pleasantness of experience, attractiveness of formats), familiarity (awareness, prior experience, differentiability), intimacy (personal likeness, emotional attachment, preferences), facilitating conditions (such as discovery, findability, connectivity/access, courseware embedded links), moderating factors (including respondent category, student programme, age, gender, and experience/years). These factors were found to be significant as sources of gratification and continuance intention. An original contribution to knowledge was also made by deriving a predictive equation for classifying users based on transaction log data. Further, the research developed a new model of higher level information behaviours displayed by sophisticated or so-called ‘power users,’ and generated a model of e-book information behaviour maturity that distinguishes nascent from mature behaviours. The model is grounded in self-reported information behaviour. As an expansive exploration of e-book usage patterns in a case study ARL using multiple methods, the work is also innovative both in terms of scope and as an exploration of e-book adoption in an Australian context. This research is significant in laying the foundations for machine-based user profiling and enhanced individualisation of e-books to make for more satisfying user experience and acceptance of e-books

Click, Explore, and Learn: Graduate Students’ Experiences and Attitudes Toward Using E-Books for College-Level Courses

The main purpose of this qualitative research was to explore graduate students’: (a) interpretations of their experiences with the use of e-books for learning; (b) reasons that influence their preference to use e-books or printed books when they learn; (c) perceptions toward e-books impact on learning; (d) perceptions toward the influence of prior technological experience, knowledge, and confidence on opinions and decisionmaking associated with e-books; (e) interpretations of their experiences with the use of a given e-book; and (f) recommendations of changes to e-books to better supporting their learning. Participants were 20 graduate students at one of the midsize universities in the Western United States. Purposeful sampling was applied to the selection of participants along with the proposed selection criteria. The data collection procedure was comprised of three phases and three data collection methods (interviews, observations, and artifacts). Interview transcripts were the main data source in this research. Observational data and artifacts were considered as supplementary data. In this phenomenological research, the trustworthiness was examined through the consideration of three criteria (credibility, transferability, and dependability). A phenomenological data analysis was employed to analyze the data. A theoretical lens comprised of several supporting learning theories to the constructivism learning approach was utilized to analyze the results and provide insight on students’ learning experiences with e-books. Such learning theories include behaviorist learning theory (self-testing), cognitive load theory, information processing theory, social constructivism theory, dual coding theory, self-efficacy theory, and cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Five major themes and 16 sub themes emerged from participants\u27 interpretations of their experiences with the use of e-books for learning. The five major themes were: (a) all students valued e-books, but nearly all students still prefer printed books; (b) e-books can enhance learning, but can hinder learning as well; (c) the impact of prior technological experience, knowledge, and confidence on learning and decision-making associated with e-books; (d) students preferred to use the given e-book to the given printed book; and (e) change to e-books recommended by students to better support learning. Research implications were drawn from the research findings for educators, students, developers of e-book readers, e-book authors, e-book publishers, and technology production companies. Implications could contribute to stakeholders’ understanding towards the root causes for students’ preference and reluctance to the use of e-books and the changes they need to see in e-books in order to use them more when they aim to learn. Finally, recommendations for future research were provided

The Digital Reading Experiences of Middle School Readers: A Phenomenological Study

Reading digitally is part of the 21st century New Literacies, residing in the curriculum as a comprehension skill developed with print reading skills. Differences exist between purpose of digital reading and print reading, manifested in the association of digital reading as a mostly non-fiction genre, the immediacy to digital information and its relevance to a reader’s decision about the usefulness of the information. Contrastingly, print reading can be fiction or non-fiction with access to all the text. The differences suggest that learning focused on immediate evaluation, synthesis, and application of information while reading digitally should be taught in the context of digital reading. This hermeneutic phenonmenological study examined digital reading experiences of eight middle school students. Using indepth interviewing to describe and understand the experiences, findings are presented as themes. The findings contribute to the ongoing discourse of digital reading, teacher preparation and development, curriculum, new literacies, pedagogy, and turning research into practice

Commonwealth Marine Reserves Review: Report of the Expert Scientific Panel

The report provides a scientific basis for the declaration and management of the Australian Marine Reserve Syste

‘Jaysus, keep talking like that and you’ll fit right in’- an investigation of oral Irish English in contemporary Irish fiction

This project is an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation of the reproduction of linguistic features of Irish English (IrE) present in contemporary IrE fiction. To do this, a corpus of over 1 million words comprising 16 works of fiction published in the Republic of Ireland by 8 authors was compiled: the Corpus of Contemporary Fictionalized Irish English (CoFIrE). The goal of this thesis, therefore, is to determine 1) which are the most frequently reproduced features of IrE orality in contemporary IrE fiction, 1a) how realistic is their fictional portrayal when contrasted against real spoken uses, 2) what does the use of the most frequently reproduced features in the corpus encode with regard to speaker identity, and 3) in what manner may modern Irishness be encoded through the reproduction of pragmatic items in fiction. Utilizing a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies, including Corpus Stylistics, Corpus Linguistics, Sociolinguistic, and Pragmatic techniques, the thesis identifies signature linguistic features that are thought to be representative of IrE in the corpus via quantitative and qualitative, comparative corpus analysis. To evaluate the level of realism inherent in the fictional rendition, the findings are contrasted against the Limerick Corpus of Irish English and the BNC2014. A second corpus comprising books by one of the CoFIrE authors, i.e. Paul Howard, was also compiled. Thus, the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly Corpus (CoROCK) was created given this series’ reputation for being a chronicler of modern Ireland and because of the high frequency of IrE orality reproduction these books were found to contribute to CoFIrE. Two case studies on non-standard, non-traditionally IrE high frequency intensifiers are conducted on CoROCK to better answer the research questions regarding the potential indexation of modern Irishness through speech reproduction in fiction. Finally, by evaluating the type of speaker identity these features may index when used in contemporary fiction, this thesis determines the type of modern Irishness that appears to be encoded through fictional speech representations.N

What Theories of Political Participation Can Teach Us about the Blogosphere, and Vice Versa.

Few venues span the spectrum of political ideas better than the blogosphere, the sprawling online network of "web-logs"' and their authors. Roughly 1.3 million Americans blog at least occasionally about politics, with aggregate daily readership exceeding that of major newspapers, and daily aggregate word counts in the tens of millions. This incredibly diverse medium captures the daily thoughts of people from all walks of life, from Senators to army wives to community activists to business owners to conspiracy theorists, all lending their voices to a public forum that was almost unimaginable a generation ago. Previous research has focused primarily on how blogging is different, especially how blogging is different from traditional journalism. In contrast, I show how political blogging is strikingly similar--to political activism. The same social forces that lead people to vote, protest, or write letters to public officials can also lead them to blog about politics. Thus, bloggers are not journalists. They are activists, which means that classic theories of political participation can inform the study of blogging. This project explores these similarities, detailing the forces that drive participation in the political blogosphere, and revealing where the blogosphere represents--and distorts--the voice of the electorate. This research provides clues into behaviors that are hard to observe in other contexts, but matter deeply for society and for democracy. Conversely, data from the blogosphere can open new avenues of research into political participation. Unlike most forms of communication, blogging leaves a permanent data trail. Archives of thousands of political blogs exist online, complete with text, dates, links, and comments. This project taps this wealth of social data using a combination of techniques from social and computer science: survey research, content analysis, web crawling, and automated text classification. Using this interdisciplinary mix of tools, I survey hundreds of bloggers and analyze nearly eight million blog posts. In the process, I build methodological bridges between social and computer science, making software and data available for future research.PHDPublic Policy & Political ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102371/1/agong_1.pd

Developing a Personalised Nutrition toolkit for the nutritional management of individuals at risk of cardiovascular disease

Imperial Users onl