Mining and Visualizing Research Networks using the Artefact-Actor-Network Approach

Reinhardt, W., Wilke, A., Moi, M., Drachsler, H., & Sloep, P. B. (2012). Mining and Visualizing Research Networks using the Artefact-Actor-Network Approach. In A. Abraham (Ed.), Computational Social Networks. Mining and Visualization (pp. 233-268). Springer. Also available at http://www.springer.com/computer/communication+networks/book/978-1-4471-4053-5Virtual communities are increasingly relying on technologies and tools of the so-called Web 2.0. In the context of scientific events and topical Research Networks, researchers use Social Media as one main communication channel. This raises the question, how to monitor and analyze such Research Networks. In this chapter we argue that Artefact-Actor-Networks (AANs) serve well for modeling, storing and mining the social interactions around digital learning resources originating from various learning services. In order to deepen the model of AANs and its application to Research Networks, a relevant theoretical background as well as clues for a prototypical reference implementation are provided. This is followed by the analysis of six Research Networks and a detailed inspection of the results. Moreover, selected networks are visualized. Research Networks of the same type show similar descriptive measures while different types are not directly comparable to each other. Further, our analysis shows that narrowness of a Research Network's subject area can be predicted using the connectedness of semantic similarity networks. Finally conclusions are drawn and implications for future research are discussed

How Does Mobile Computing Develop Transactive Memory in Virtual Team? A Social Identification View

The advancement in mobile computing technologies has shown great potential to drive efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge work in virtual teams. Despite their ubiquity, theoretical and empirical research investigating the impact of mobile computing artifacts on development of transactive memory in virtual teams is in its infancy. Drawing on the social psychology literature, we propose a social identity based view to understand how the use of mobile computing artifacts is associated with the development of transactive memory system (TMS) in virtual teams. Specially, the use of four categories of mobile computing artifacts (i.e., ubiquitous co-presence, status disclosure, context search, and customized notification) is proposed to enhance social identification, which thereafter promotes TMS development in terms of specialization, credibility, and coordination. This study offers a new perspective on the mechanisms through which mobile computing artifacts facilitate TMS development, and it yields important implications for the design of mobile strategy in organizations

The 3C cooperation model applied to the classical requirement analysis

Aspects related to the users' cooperative work are not considered in the traditional approach of software engineering, since the user is viewed independently of his/her workplace environment or group, with the individual model generalized to the study of collective behavior of all users. This work proposes a process for software requirements to address issues involving cooperative work in information systems that provide distributed coordination in the users' actions and the communication among them occurs indirectly through the data entered while using the software. To achieve this goal, this research uses ergonomics, the 3C cooperation model, awareness and software engineering concepts. Action-research is used as a research methodology applied in three cycles during the development of a corporate workflow system in a technological research company. This article discusses the third cycle, which corresponds to the process that deals with the refinement of the cooperative work requirements with the software in actual use in the workplace, where the inclusion of a computer system changes the users' workplace, from the face to face interaction to the interaction mediated by the software. The results showed that the highest degree of users' awareness about their activities and other system users contribute to a decrease in their errors and in the inappropriate use of the system

Providing guidance on Backstage, a novel digital backchannel for large class teaching

Many articles in the last couple of years argued that it is necessary to promote the active participation of students in lectures with large audiences. One approach to make students actively participate in a lecture is to use a digital backchannel, i.e. a computer-mediated communication platform that allows students to exchange ideas and opinions, without disrupting the lecturer’s discourse. Though, a digital backchannel, in order to be most helpful for learning, have to address the need for guidance of the users interacting. The article presents Backstage, a digital backchannel for large class lectures, and shows how it provides guidance for its users, i.e. the students but also the lecturer. Structural guidance is provided by aligning the usually incoherent backchannel discourse with the presentation slides that are integrated in the backchannel’s user interface. The alignment is thereby asserted by carefully designed backchannel workflows. The article also discusses the guidance of a student’s substantial involvement in both the frontchannel and the backchannel by means of scripts. Through the interactions of guided individuals a social guidance may emerge, leading to a collectively regulated backchannel

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Design Principals of Social Navigation

8th Delos Workshop on "User Interfaces for Digital Libraries" (on 21 October it will be held in conjuction with the 4th ERCIM Workshop on "User Interfaces for All"), SICS, Kista, Sweden, 21-23 October 1998PERSON

Visualizing Social Documents as Traces of Collaborative Activity in Enterprise Collaboration Platforms

Enterprise collaboration platforms are large-scale information infrastructures that provide a wide range of tools and functionality to support collaborative work in organizations. These collaborative activities leave digital traces in the form of social documents, which can be analyzed to understand how employees work together to coordinate their joint work. In this paper, we present the findings of a research project to visualize the structure of social documents to prepare them for analysis as traces of collaborative activity. Using the representation of social documents defined in the Social Document Ontology (SocDOnt), we draw on concepts from graph theory to develop a method for the graphical visualization of social documents. Applying this method to analyze the social documents in an operational enterprise collaboration platform, we identify and display different types of social document and define their characteristic structure. Our findings provide the necessary foundation for conducting computational ethnographies of collaborative work

Cultural Learning in Virtual Environments

This paper is a survey of evaluation mechanisms that may be specifically suitable for virtual heritage environments and also to some extent for social learning environments. It suggests in particular new terms and criteria to assess the contextual appropriateness of various evaluation methods. From two working examples it also reviews issues and lessons learnt from current ongoing research. The first case study of Palenque in Mexico involved five types of evaluation specifically chosen to assess cultural awareness and understanding gained from different forms of interaction in a virtual heritage environment. The second case study, "Virtual Babel", will attempt to use some of these evaluation methods to track cultural learning between students in Japan and in Australia using an online virtual world

Socially-augmented argumentation tools: rationale, design and evaluation of a debate dashboard

Collaborative Computer-Supported Argument Visualization (CCSAV) is a technical methodology that offers support for online collective deliberation over complex dilemmas. As compared with more traditional conversational technologies, like wikis and forums, CCSAV is designed to promote more critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning, by using representations that highlight conceptual relationships between contributions, and through computational analytics that assess the structural integrity of the network. However, to date, CCSAV tools have achieved adoption primarily in small-scale educational contexts, and only to a limited degree in real world applications. We hypothesise that by reifying conversations as logical maps to address the shortcomings of chronological streams, CCSAV tools underestimate the importance of participation and interaction in enhancing collaborative knowledge-building. We argue, therefore, that CCSAV platforms should be socially augmented in order to improve their mediation capability. Drawing on Clark and Brennan’s influential Common Ground theory, we designed a Debate Dashboard, which augmented a CCSAV tool with a set of widgets that deliver meta-information about participants and the interaction process. An empirical study simulating a moderately sized collective deliberation scenario provides evidence that this experimental version outperformed the control version on a range of indicators, including usability, mutual understanding, quality of perceived collaboration, and accuracy of individual decisions. No evidence was found that the addition of the Debate Dashboard impeded the quality of the argumentation or the richness of content

The Structure of Social Documents

Enterprise collaboration platforms are large scale, highly integrated information infrastructures that enable many hundreds of employees to work collaboratively and share information. In this paper, we lay the theoretical and analytical foundations for the use of social documents as digital traces of collaborative activity in enterprise collaboration platforms. Through a review of related research and an empirical analysis of social documents, we identify key concepts and structures, providing the foundation for the Social Document Ontology (SocDOnt). SocDOnt expresses the generic structure of social documents and extends previous work in two important ways. At the micro-level a social document is defined as a composition of an intellectual entity enhanced by both intellectual and simple components and at the macro-level a collection is defined as an aggregation of social documents. These analytical constructs enable a more nuanced and granular analysis of social documents to understand collaborative activity in enterprise collaboration platforms