Bots, Seeds and People: Web Archives as Infrastructure

The field of web archiving provides a unique mix of human and automated agents collaborating to achieve the preservation of the web. Centuries old theories of archival appraisal are being transplanted into the sociotechnical environment of the World Wide Web with varying degrees of success. The work of the archivist and bots in contact with the material of the web present a distinctive and understudied CSCW shaped problem. To investigate this space we conducted semi-structured interviews with archivists and technologists who were directly involved in the selection of content from the web for archives. These semi-structured interviews identified thematic areas that inform the appraisal process in web archives, some of which are encoded in heuristics and algorithms. Making the infrastructure of web archives legible to the archivist, the automated agents and the future researcher is presented as a challenge to the CSCW and archival community

Datapedia: a Yellow Brick Roadmap

This note lays out a roadmap to Datapedia: the goal is to share numbers with the same power and ease that the Wiki has delivered for documents. This would transform the quality and usability of economic data. The goal is a system which, by analogy with Wikipedia can establish a world resource for reliable data. The paper discusses a process by which data providers and users can evolve a new set os systems for exchanging, describing and interacting with data to bring this about. The proposal centres on the metadata – additional descriptive data – that is associated with numeric data, and suggests how, in two cases – World GDP and Creative Industry Employment – data could be mapped in such a way that viable Datawiki platforms can be built. The proposal also allows existing communities of users to start reshaping the way they exchange and handle data, to permit, and also to improve existing standards for collaborative use of data. The first step would be Datawiki: an opensource system for recording revisions, changes and sources of data, allowing users to compare different revisions and versions of data with each other. It would be a set of protocols, and simple web tools, to help data researchers pool, compare, scrutinise, and revise datasets from multiple sources. The first step towards Datawiki is Wikidata: rethinking the way that data itself is transmitted between people that collaborate on it a platform-independent standard for exchanging specifically numeric data. I show that the ubiquitous standard for exchanging data – the spreadsheet – is not up to the task of serving as a platform for Datawiki, and assess how alternatives can be developed.Creative Industries; Economic statistics; Datapedia; Wikipedia; Wikidata, wikipedia, creative industries, macroeconomics

First-year higher education students’ acquisition of digital content creation literacies in discipline-specific settings

Digital knowledge production involves the processing and presentation of digital information and content through the implementation of digital literacy practices in technical, cognitive and social-emotional dimensions. As such, this thesis addresses the question: How and why do first-year higher education students acquire digital content creation literacies in a discipline-specific setting? Firstly, this thesis contributes to the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a social practice through theorizing the complex and evolving nature of digital literacy practices in disciplinary-specific contexts in higher education. Secondly, the thesis develops a theoretical explanation to how higher education students acquire digital content creation literacies within their discipline-specific settings. Drawing on the New Literacies Studies’ theoretical approach, first-year students’ digital literacy practices, in particular content creation literacies, are explored in relation to sociocultural factors, and enablers and contradictions influencing their practices in disciplinespecific settings. Additionally, Gee’s (2008) principles of literacy and Discourse acquisition inform the analysis of student acquisition of digital literacy practices. An adaptation of Ng’s (2015) digital literacy framework is applied as an analytical tool for categorising students’ digital literacy practices and is further complemented by Engeström's (2001) second generation Activity theory framework when analysing the students’ digital literacy practices involved in assignment writing (the digital literacy event). Using a case study design with a mixed methods approach, quantitative (a questionnaire) and qualitative (focus groups, interviews and student assignments) data is obtained from a total of 103 and 27 students respectively. A key finding of this thesis is that discipline-specific learning and assessment activities (LAAs) instantiate individual and collaborative digital content creation and also drive the desire for students’ acquisition of digital literacies for content creation. However, there are some ‘actual processes’ (Maxwell, 2012) that are not directly perceptible, such as student experience in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), age, volition, gender, course culture, historicity of practice and student histories of learning with ICT that influence student digital content creation practices. By the same token, this thesis highlights the importance of students owning or having technology access at university as lack of access is a constraining factor for their engagement in their LAAs. The main contribution of this thesis is the finding that, when LAAs, which foster the acquisition of digital content-creation literacies are part of the curriculum, students can acquire the respective literacies through self-teaching, scaffolding from peers or senior students, trial and error, and engaging in practice within their disciplines, implying that there is no need for overt instruction as is the case of digital skills training isolated from the context of practice. The implication of this finding is that universities need to annually review firstyear students’ prior digital literacy skills and practices to inform the responsive adaptation of the LAAs. Additionally, universities require a deliberate strategy for collaboration between their academics, library staff, writing centre staff and professional development units on the integration of digital literacies for learning into the curriculum

Source Code Protection for Applications Written in Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements (“source code”) of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of problems. By critically examining the suitability of spreadsheet computer programming languages for application development, six “application development features” are identified, with source code protection being the most important. We investigate the status of these features and discuss how they might be implemented in the dominant Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and in the new Google Spreadsheet. Although Google Spreadsheet currently provides no source code control, its web-centric delivery model offers technical advantages for future provision of a rich set of features. Excel has a number of tools that can be combined to provide “pretty good protection” of source code, but weak passwords reduce its robustness. User access to Excel source code must be considered a programmer choice rather than an attribute of the spreadsheet

Collaborative yet independent: Information practices in the physical sciences

In many ways, the physical sciences are at the forefront of using digital tools and methods to work with information and data. However, the fields and disciplines that make up the physical sciences are by no means uniform, and physical scientists find, use, and disseminate information in a variety of ways. This report examines information practices in the physical sciences across seven cases, and demonstrates the richly varied ways in which physical scientists work, collaborate, and share information and data. This report details seven case studies in the physical sciences. For each case, qualitative interviews and focus groups were used to understand the domain. Quantitative data gathered from a survey of participants highlights different information strategies employed across the cases, and identifies important software used for research. Finally, conclusions from across the cases are drawn, and recommendations are made. This report is the third in a series commissioned by the Research Information Network (RIN), each looking at information practices in a specific domain (life sciences, humanities, and physical sciences). The aim is to understand how researchers within a range of disciplines find and use information, and in particular how that has changed with the introduction of new technologies

Student experiences of technology integration in school subjects: A comparison across four middle schools

This research examined student perspectives on their in-school, subject specific, technology use in four U.S. public schools. Considering students’ perspectives may provide a significant reframing of adult-created rhetoric of the utopian power of digital technologies for changing teaching and learning. A survey and focus group interviews were administered to 6th and 7th students (n=1,544) in four public middle schools, with varying demographics, that rely on local funding. These four schools revealed moderate use of many well-established digital technologies, such as word processing, presentation software, and quiz games. Students voiced outright hatred for teacher-directed PowerPoint-supported lectures, the most prominent technology activity students experienced, yet reported enjoying creation activities. The students in the rural school with a Hispanic-majority and high economically disadvantaged population reported much lower technology use. Discussion frame the digital inequities in the four schools and emphasizes the need for awareness and inclusion of students’ digital experiences to form any trajectory toward establishing digital equity and learning in schools