De l’efficacité de visualisations indicielles ou symboliques pour la régulation d’activités collaboratives

National audienceRegulatory mechanisms are important when conducting collaborative activities. And previous research showed that providing individual or collective feedback about the ongoing collaboration can lead to better regulation. In this article, we propose to study the impact of different visual of indicators on the control process of collaborative activities. We studied two kinds of indicators : indexical indicators built into the objects being handled and symbolic indicators, added to the activity interface. We conducted a preliminary study with 32 participants. Our results show that regulation efficiency according to the indicator is neither better with indexical visualization nor with symbolic visualization, which leads us to think that a mixed use of indexical and symbolic visualizations would be more effective.Les mécanismes de régulation de groupe sont particulièrement importants pour mener à bien des activités collaboratives. Les dispositifs numériques peuvent permettre une meilleure régulation, notamment en fournissant des retours individuels ou collectifs sur la collaboration en cours. Dans cet article, nous proposons d’étudier l’impact que peuvent avoir différentes visualisations d’indicateurs sur le processus de régulation dans les activités collaboratives. Pour cela, nous avons étudié deux types d’indicateurs, les indicateurs indiciels qui se fondent dans les objets manipulés, et les indicateurs symboliques qui sont adjoints à l’interface de l’activité. Nous avons réalisé une étude préliminaire avec 32 participants. Les résultats mitigés tendent à montrer que qu’une visualisation indicielle ou symbolique n’est pas intrinsèquement meilleure, ce qui nous laisser penser qu’une utilisation mixte pourrait être plus efficace

A Biosemiotic Modeling of the Body-“Self” Synechism

As a counterargument to the Cartesian split that has impacted both speculative and practical fields of knowledge and culture, we propose Peirce’s doctrine of synechism to show the continuity in the semiotic activity that moves from the body as an Interpretant to the emergence of another Interpretant called the “self.” Biosemiotics, a nascent field of interdisciplinary research that tackles inquiries about signs, communication, and information involving living organisms is used as the framework in the discussion. The main question of whether a non-material “self” can emerge from a material body is tackled in many stages. First, the biosemiotic continuum is established in the natural biological processes that takes place in the body. These processes can be taken as an autonomous semiotic system generating the “language” of the body or the Primary Modeling System (PMS). Second, synechism is also observed in the relationship between the mind and the body and this is evident in any physician’s clinical practice. The patient creates a Secondary Modeling System (SMS) of how she perceives what the body communicates to her regarding its state or condition. Finally, the question about whether the emergence of “self” is synechistic as well is tackled. There is one organ from which emerges an Interpretant that is capable of generating a dialog between a Subject, that is the “self,” with its Object, and that is the brain. It is the primordial seat of specifically human activities like thought and language. The recent theory on quantum consciousness supports the doctrine synechism between the body as Interpretant to the “self” as Interpretant. This synechism is crucial for the creation of Secondary Models of “reality” that will, in turn, determine the creation of Tertiary Models more familiarly called culture

How online small groups co-construct mathematical artifacts to do collaborative problem solving

Developing pedagogies and instructional tools to support learning math with understanding is a major goal in math education. A common theme among various characterizations of mathematical understanding involves constructing relations among mathematical facts, procedures, and ideas encapsulated in graphical and symbolic artifacts. Discourse is key for enabling students to realize such connections among seemingly unrelated mathematical artifacts. Analysis of mathematical discourse on a moment-to-moment basis is needed to understand the potential of small-group collaboration and online communication tools to support learning math with understanding.This dissertation investigates interactional practices enacted by virtual teams of secondary students as they co-construct mathematical artifacts in an online environment with multiple interaction spaces including text-chat, whiteboard, and wiki components. The findings of the dissertation arrived at through ethnomethodologically-informed case studies of online sessions are organized along three dimensions: (a) Mathematical Affordances: Whiteboard and chat spaces allow teams to co-construct multiple realizations of relevant mathematical artifacts. Contributions remain persistentlyavailable for subsequent manipulation and reference in the shared visual field. The persistence of contributions facilitates the management of multiple threads of activities across dual media. The sequence of actions that lead to the construction and modification of shared inscriptions makes the visual reasoning process visible.(b) Coordination Methods: Team members achieve a sense of sequential organization across dual media through temporal coordination of their chat postings and drawings. Groups enact referential uses of available features to allocate their attention to specific objects in the shared visual field and to associate them with locally defined terminology. Drawings and text-messages are used together as semiotic resources in mutually elaborating ways.(c) Group Understanding: Teams develop shared mathematical understanding through joint recognition of connections among narrative, graphical and symbolic realizations of the mathematical artifacts that they have co-constructed to address their shared task. The interactional organization of the co-construction work establishes an indexical ground as support for the creation and maintenance of a shared problem space for the group. Each new contribution is made sense of in relation to this persistently available and shared indexical ground, which evolves sequentially as new contributions modify the sense of previous contributions.Ph.D., Information Science and Technology -- Drexel University, 200

Cognitive Disability Aesthetics

Cognitive Disability Aesthetics explores the invisibility of cognitive disability in theoretical, historical, social, and cultural contexts. Fraser’s cutting edge research and analysis signals a second-wave in disability studies that prioritizes cognition. He expands upon previous research into physical disability representations and focuses on those disabilities that tend to be least visible in society (autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia). Moving beyond established literary approaches analyzing prose representations of disability, the book explores how iconic and indexical modes of signification operate in visual texts. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics successfully reconfigures disability studies in the humanities and exposes the chasm that exists between Anglophone disability studies and disability studies in the Hispanic world

Durkheim and the Internet

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Sociolinguistic evidence is an undervalued resource for social theory. In this book, Jan Blommaert uses contemporary sociolinguistic insights to develop a new sociological imagination, exploring how we construct and operate in online spaces, and what the implications of this are for offline social practice. Taking Émile Durkheim’s concept of the ‘social fact’ (social behaviours that we all undertake under the influence of the society we live in) as the point of departure, he first demonstrates how the facts of language and social interaction can be used as conclusive refutations of individualistic theories of society such as 'Rational Choice'. Next, he engages with theorizing the post-Durkheimian social world in which we currently live. This new social world operates 'offline' as well as 'online' and is characterized by 'vernacular globalization', Arjun Appadurai’s term to summarise the ways that larger processes of modernity are locally performed through new electronic media. Blommaert extrapolates from this rich concept to consider how our communication practices might offer a template for thinking about how we operate socially. Above all, he explores the relationship between sociolinguistics and social practice In Durkheim and the Internet, Blommaert proposes new theories of social norms, social action, identity, social groups, integration, social structure and power, all of them animated by a deep understanding of language and social interaction. In drawing on Durkheim and other classical sociologists including Simmel and Goffman, this book is relevant to students and researchers working in sociolinguistics as well as offering a wealth of new insights to scholars in the fields of digital and online communications, social media, sociology, and digital anthropology

Digital material: tracing new media in everyday life and technology

Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media have yielded a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. New Media Studies crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, and this begs the question: where do we stand now? Which new questions are emerging now that new media are being taken for granted, and which riddles are still unsolved? Is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', the participating user, or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how this constitutes us as 'you'? The contributors to the present book, all employed in teaching and researching new media and digital culture, assembled their 'digital material' into an anthology, covering issues ranging from desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to blogging and e-learning, from role-playing games and cybergothic music to wireless dreams. Together the contributions provide a showcase of current research in the field, from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective.Nieuwe media zijn vanaf hun opkomst begeleid door revolutionaire beloften en bedreigingen: hypertekst zou lezers veranderen in auteurs, digitale beelden zouden de waarheid en werkelijkheid ondermijnen, en online communicatie zou alle afstanden overbruggen. 'Cyberspace' werd gevierd dan wel gevreesd als immaterieel en autonoom, losgezongen van onze dagelijkse leefwereld. Na twee decennia 'cyberrevolutie' zijn nieuwe media vanzelfsprekend geworden en blijken zij allesbehalve immaterieel. Vanuit dat perspectief belicht de bundel Digital Material digitale culturen. De bijdragen onderzoeken onder meer computer games, mobiele communicatie, interfacemetaforen, weblogculturen, software ontwikkeling en digitale beeldproductie. Bij elkaar vormen zij een inspirerend theoretisch kader om de hedendaagse betekenis van nieuwe media te doorgronden

Durkheim and the Internet

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Sociolinguistic evidence is an undervalued resource for social theory. In this book, Jan Blommaert uses contemporary sociolinguistic insights to develop a new sociological imagination, exploring how we construct and operate in online spaces, and what the implications of this are for offline social practice. Taking Émile Durkheim’s concept of the ‘social fact’ (social behaviours that we all undertake under the influence of the society we live in) as the point of departure, he first demonstrates how the facts of language and social interaction can be used as conclusive refutations of individualistic theories of society such as 'Rational Choice'. Next, he engages with theorizing the post-Durkheimian social world in which we currently live. This new social world operates 'offline' as well as 'online' and is characterized by 'vernacular globalization', Arjun Appadurai’s term to summarise the ways that larger processes of modernity are locally performed through new electronic media. Blommaert extrapolates from this rich concept to consider how our communication practices might offer a template for thinking about how we operate socially. Above all, he explores the relationship between sociolinguistics and social practice In Durkheim and the Internet, Blommaert proposes new theories of social norms, social action, identity, social groups, integration, social structure and power, all of them animated by a deep understanding of language and social interaction. In drawing on Durkheim and other classical sociologists including Simmel and Goffman, this book is relevant to students and researchers working in sociolinguistics as well as offering a wealth of new insights to scholars in the fields of digital and online communications, social media, sociology, and digital anthropology