Web-based collaborative writing in L2 contexts: Methodological insights from text mining

The increasingly widespread use of social software (e.g., Wikis, Google Docs) in second language (L2) settings has brought a renewed attention to collaborative writing. Although the current methodological approaches to examining collaborative writing are valuable to understand L2 students’ interactional patterns or perceived experiences, they can be insufficient to capture the quantity and quality of writing in networked online environments. Recently, the evolution of techniques for analyzing big data has transformed many areas of life, from information search to marketing. However, the use of data and text mining for understanding writing processes in language learning contexts is largely underexplored. In this article, we synthesize the current methodological approaches to researching collaborative writing and discuss how new text mining tools can enhance research capacity. These advanced methods can help researchers to elucidate collaboration processes by analyzing user behaviors (e.g., amount of editing, participation equality) and their link to writing outcomes across large numbers of exemplars. We introduce key research examples to illustrate this potential and discuss the implications of integrating the tools for L2 collaborative writing research and pedagogy

Revisiting the Design Patterns of Composite Visualizations

Composite visualization is a popular design strategy that represents complex datasets by integrating multiple visualizations in a meaningful and aesthetic layout, such as juxtaposition, overlay, and nesting. With this strategy, numerous novel designs have been proposed in visualization publications to accomplish various visual analytic tasks. These well-crafted composite visualizations have formed a valuable collection for designers and researchers to address real-world problems and inspire new research topics and designs. However, there is a lack of understanding of design patterns of composite visualization, thus failing to provide holistic design space and concrete examples for practical use. In this paper, we opted to revisit the composite visualizations in VIS publications and answered what and how visualizations of different types are composed together. To achieve this, we first constructed a corpus of composite visualizations from IEEE VIS publications and decomposed them into a series of basic visualization types (e.g., bar chart, map, and matrix). With this corpus, we studied the spatial (e.g., separated or overlaying) and semantic relationships (e.g., with same types or shared axis) between visualizations and proposed a taxonomy consisting of eight different design patterns (e.g., repeated, stacked, accompanied, and nested). Furthermore, we analyzed and discussed common practices of composite visualizations, such as the distribution of different patterns and correlations between visualization types. From the analysis and examples, we obtained insights into different design patterns on the utilities, advantages, and disadvantages. Finally, we developed an interactive system to help visualization developers and researchers conveniently explore collected examples and design patterns

Pathways to Karlsruhe: A Sequence Analysis of the Careers of German Federal Constitutional Court Judges

Judges of the German Federal Constitutional Court can be seen as both judicial and political elites. Yet, up to now there is no systematic work on the Court's' judges and especially their careers prior to their appointments. Using sequence analysis, I identify four relatively distinct clusters of career characteristics: academia, administration (and administrative courts), ordinary jurisdiction and politics. Judges whose career background is limited to the judicial sphere mostly advance from a level below the Länder to the Länder and then on to the federal level, while those with a background in politics or administration switch less often among them. Furthermore, I find little evidence to suggest that differences in the judges' career paths can be explained by reference to the body that elected them (Bundestag or Bundesrat) or the party that nominated them (CDU/CSU or SPD). The article also illustrates the possibilities of sequence analysis for elite studies

Supporting social innovation through visualisations of community interactions

Online communities that form through the introduction of sociotechnical platforms require significant effort to cultivate and sustain. Providing open, transparent information on community behaviour can motivate participation from community members themselves, while also providing platform administrators with detailed interaction dynamics. However, challenges arise in both understanding what information is conducive to engagement and sustainability, and then how best to represent this information to platform stakeholders. Towards a better understanding of these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of simple visualisations integrated into a Collective Awareness Platform for Social Innovation platform titled commonfare.net. We discuss the promise and challenge of bringing social innovation into the digital age, in terms of supporting sustained platform use and collective action, and how the introduction of community visualisations has been directed towards achieving this goal

Quantifying Impacts of Climate Change on Species Interactions While Fostering Undergraduate Research Experiences Using the Monarch (Danaus Plexippus)- Milkweed (Asclepias Sp.) System

Species interactions, specifically plant-insect interactions, are ubiquitous worldwide. Climate change will alter species interactions by affecting abiotic conditions, affecting species phenologies, interaction strengths, and physiological development. However, climate change impacts are often studied using individual species, with limited consideration quantifying the direct and indirect impacts of climate change species interactions. Using lab, field, and greenhouse experiments, I investigated how climate change will directly and indirectly affect species interactions while also fostering undergraduate research experiences using the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus)- milkweed (Asclepias sp.) system. In North America, a widely planted, invasive milkweed species, Asclepias curassavica, negatively impacts monarch butterflies. I conducted a fully-factorial field experiment quantifying the indirect impacts of climate change on monarchs, as mediated through the invasive A. curassavica and native A. incarnata. Here, an ecological trap may be developing, driven by lethal increases in milkweed toxicity. Monarchs reared on the invasive A. curassavica at ambient conditions experienced improved performance, but under increased temperatures, monarchs fared much worse. Additionally, I conducted lab and field experiments to quantify the direct impacts of climate change on monarch butterflies and their protozoan parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE). OE threatens monarch populations by decreasing monarch performance, and empirical support is lacking on assessing the impacts of climate change on the interaction between parasites and hosts. Here, simultaneous parasite infection and increased temperatures act as a one-two punch for monarchs, decreasing development time, weights, melanism, and size. I also designed a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) for early-division undergraduate students. Here, enrolled students conducted a fully-factorial, greenhouse competition experiment between invasive A. curassavica and two native milkweed species, A. incarnata and A. tuberosa. CURE student performance to that of upper-division students enrolled in a traditional ecology laboratory was also assessed. We found that A. curassavica is a commensal competitor, and that CURE participation can effectively educate and engage early division students in conducting scientific research. In summary, my dissertation highlights the importance of empirically testing the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on species and their interactions, while reinforcing that novel course structures can foster scientific inroads for early division undergraduate students

Tools and Methods to Analyze Multimodal Data in Collaborative Design Ideation

Collaborative design ideation is typically characterized by informal acts of sketching, annotation, and discussion. Designers have always used the pencil-and-paper medium for this activity, partly because of the flexibility of the medium, and partly because the ambiguous and ill-defined nature of conceptual design cannot easily be supported by computers. However, recent computational tools for conceptual design have leveraged the availability of hand-held computing devices for creating and sharing ideas. In order to provide computer support for collaborative ideation in a way that augments traditional media rather than imitates it, it is necessary to study the affordances made available by digital media for this process, and to study designers\u27 cognitive and collaborative processes when using such media. In this thesis, we present tools and methods to help make sense of unstructured verbal and sketch data generated during collaborative design, with a view to better understand these collaborative and cognitive processes. This thesis has three main contributions

Pathways of Property Transformation: Enterprise Network Careers in Hungary, 1988-2000: Outline of an Analytic Strategy

This study analyzes the restructuring of a national economy by identifying the career pathways of its enterprises. This analysis is conducted in a setting strategically chosen as a case of rapid and profound economic transformation: the post-socialist Hungarian economy between 1988-2000. The goal of this study is to chart the multiple pathways of property transformation. Property pathways are conceptualized as the patterned sequences of change that firms undergo 1) in the composition of their ownership structure and 2) in their position within network structures of ties to other enterprises. These career pathways are neither unidirectional nor plotted in advance. The landscape and topography of the socioeconomic field are given shape and repeatedly transformed by the interaction of the multiple strategies of firms attempting to survive in the face of variable political, institutional, and market uncertainties. These different types of uncertainties will have different temporalities, and the study explores whether and how they increase or diminish in various periods. The authors develop and test specific hypotheses about how enterprise pathways along the compositional and positional property dimensions are related to the shifting contexts of these types of uncertainty. The core dataset for this study includes the complete ownership histories of approximately 1,800 of the largest enterprises in Hungary for a twelve year period, starting with the collapse of communism in 1989, recording each change in a company's top 25 owners on a monthly basis. Monthly entries for each enterprise also include changes in top management, boards of directors, major lines of product activity, raising or lowering of capital, and location of establishments and branch offices, as well as the dates of founding, mergers, bankruptcy, etc. Data on revenues, number of employees, and operating profit will be compiled from annual balance sheets. These rich data make it possible to map the life cycles of the business groups that are formed by network ties among enterprises, identifying not only when they arise, merge, or dissipate, but also the changing shapes of their network properties. To identify patterns of change, the study draws on sequence analysis, a research tool that makes possible the study of historical processes in an eventful way similar to historiography while retaining social scientific abstraction. Whereas sequence analysis has given us a perspective on careers as historical processes but has not been applied to business organizations, network analysis has been applied to business organizations but has not been done historically. The methodological innovation at the heart of this study is to combine the tools of sequence analysis and network analysis to yield a sequence analysis of changing network positions

Multi-Locus Phylogeographic and Population Genetic Analysis of Anolis carolinensis: Historical Demography of a Genomic Model Species

The green anole (Anolis carolinensis) has been widely used as an animal model in physiology and neurobiology but has recently emerged as an important genomic model. The recent sequencing of its genome has shed new light on the evolution of vertebrate genomes and on the process that govern species diversification. Surprisingly, the patterns of genetic diversity within natural populations of this widespread and abundant North American lizard remain relatively unknown. In the present study, we use 10 novel nuclear DNA sequence loci (N = 62 to 152) and one mitochondrial locus (N = 226) to delimit green anole populations and infer their historical demography. We uncovered four evolutionarily distinct and geographically restricted lineages of green anoles using phylogenetics, Bayesian clustering, and genetic distance methods. Molecular dating indicates that these lineages last shared a common ancestor ∼2 million years ago. Summary statistics and analysis of the frequency distributions of DNA polymorphisms strongly suggest range-wide expansions in population size. Using Bayesian Skyline Plots, we inferred the timing of population size expansions, which differ across lineages, and found evidence for a relatively recent and rapid westward expansion of green anoles across the Gulf Coastal Plain during the mid-Pleistocene. One surprising result is that the distribution of genetic diversity is not consistent with a latitudinal shift caused by climatic oscillations as is observed for many co-distributed taxa. This suggests that the most recent Pleistocene glacial cycles had a limited impact on the geographic distribution of the green anole at the northern limits of its range

Geographic imaginaries of urban spatial segregation: a case study of the west end neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky.

The objective of this thesis is to translate the framework of geographic imaginaries into an urban context in order to capture a narrative of how residents conceptualize and experience segregation. This framework is rooted in an investigation of local discourses as they exist within a specific social, political, and historical context. Institutionalized segregation and structural racism are the foundations on which the American urban context studied here was built upon. This study employs multiple methods, including contextualizing the study area, analyzing discursive content, and visualizing the results. The results of these analyses included empirically connecting concentrations of protected classes to limited access to vital local resources and identifying three discursive themes: territorial stigmatization, specific calls for change, and sense of community. These results were synthesized and visualized in order to develop a narrative of geographic imaginaries from multiple positionalities