‘Are You OK?’ Students’ Trust in a Chatbot Providing Support Opportunities

Best Paper Award of the 8th International Conference on Learning and Collaboration Technologies Presented in the context of HCI International 2021 24-29 July 2021Chatbots show promise as a novel way to provide support to students. However, a central issue with new technologies such as chatbots is whether students trust the technology. In the present study, we use a chatbot to proactively offer academic and non-academic support to students (N = 274) in a Finnish vocational education and training (VET) organization. Students responded to the chatbot with a very high response rate (86%), and almost one-fifth (19%) of the respondents disclosed a need for support. Survey with a subset of participants (N = 49) showed satisfactory trust (total trust score 71% as measured by a human-computer trust scale) and satisfaction (average of 3.83 as measured by a five-point customer satisfaction instrument) with the chatbot. Trust was positively correlated with satisfaction as well as students’ likelihood to respond to the chatbot. Our results show that this kind of approach is applicable for recognizing students’ latent needs for support. Future studies should target the formation of trust in more detail and cultural differences in trusting chatbots.Chatbots show promise as a novel way to provide support to students. However, a central issue with new technologies such as chatbots is whether students trust the technology. In the present study, we use a chatbot to proactively offer academic and non-academic support to students (N = 274) in a Finnish vocational education and training (VET) organization. Students responded to the chatbot with a very high response rate (86%), and almost one-fifth (19%) of the respondents disclosed a need for support. Survey with a subset of participants (N = 49) showed satisfactory trust (total trust score 71% as measured by a human-computer trust scale) and satisfaction (average of 3.83 as measured by a five-point customer satisfaction instrument) with the chatbot. Trust was positively correlated with satisfaction as well as students’ likelihood to respond to the chatbot. Our results show that this kind of approach is applicable for recognizing students’ latent needs for support. Future studies should target the formation of trust in more detail and cultural differences in trusting chatbots.Peer reviewe

Evaluation of a snowmobile track motion resistances with multibody dynamics simulation

Abstract. In this work, target is to build and validate a simulation model of a snowmobile track entity with multibody dynamics simulation software Adams. A full vehicle snowmobile simulation model is also explored. Before there has been a problem with the track model being inaccurate. The focus on this thesis is on implementing a track model, but a full vehicle model is also discussed and presented as the work with the model will continue. Existing tracked vehicle theory is studied and presented how Adams tracked vehicle plugin utilizes these theories. Research consists of simulations with the track model were driven with a real snowmobile and measured for torque and velocity data. Model validation proves that the track model acts quite accurately up to 25 km/h drive speed but with 50 km/h speed the model becomes unstable. With 10 km/h speed simulation result error is 19,87 % and with 25 km/h simulation result error is 1,17 %. In the future the model will be further improved with building a proper chassis and validating the full vehicle model. Knowledge gained from this thesis may be used with simulating a snowmobile before production phase accurately and the model can be used for studying the motion resistances of a snowmobile track. This type of track model may be built to any tracked vehicle and validated in the way done in this thesis.Moottorikelkan telaston ajovastuksien määrittäminen monikappaledynamiikka simuloinnilla. Tiivistelmä. Tässä työssä tavoitteena on rakentaa ja validoida moottorikelkan telaston simulointimalli Adams ohjelmistolla. Telastomallin lisäksi tarkastellaan myös kokonaisen moottorikelkan simulointimallia. Aiemmin on ollut ongelmana telamattomallin epätarkkuus. Työssä keskitytään etenkin kumitelamattomallin implementointiin, mutta kokonaista ajoneuvokokoonpanoa arvioidaan lisäksi, sillä työ mallin kanssa jatkuu. Olemassa olevaa tela-ajoneuvoteoriaa tutkitaan ja esitetään, kuinka Adamsin telaajoneuvo lisäosassa hyödynnetään kyseisiä teorioita. Tutkimus koostuu simulaatioista telamattomallilla sellaisilla nopeuksilla, joita tutkimuksen aikana on mitattu todellisesta moottorikelkasta vääntötiedon kanssa. Validoinnissa todistetaan, että telamalli käyttäytyy suhteellisen tarkasti 25 km/h nopeuteen asti, mutta 50 km/h nopeudessa malli muuttuu epävakaaksi. 10 km/h nopeudella simulaatiotuloksien virhe on 19,87 % verrattuna mitattuihin tuloksiin ja 25 km/h nopeudella simulaatiotuloksien virhe on 1,17 % verrattuna mitattuihin tuloksiin. Tulevaisuudessa mallia tullaan kehittämään lisäämällä siihen runkomalli ja validoimalla täydellinen ajoneuvokokoonpano. Työstä saatavaa tietoa voidaan hyödyntää tulevaisuuden moottorikelkkasimulaatioissa tarkan tiedon saavuttamiseksi ja nykyisellään mallia voidaan hyödyntää telastosta johtuvien ajovastusten tutkimiseen. Työssä esitellyn mallin rakennustavan pohjalta voitaisiin rakentaa telasto mihin tahansa tela–ajoneuvoon ja validoida se työtä vastaavalla tavalla

Finnish Education Professionals’ Thoughts on Adaptive Learning Technologies

With the rapidly increased use of digital technologies in education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to discuss these technologies’ impact on the teaching profession. Using thematic analysis and epistemic network analysis (ENA), we analyzed 114 social media posts by Finnish education professionals commenting on an opinion piece about technology partly taking responsibilities usually attributed to a teacher. Out of the analyzed posts, 32 were supportive, 30 ambivalent, and 52 critical towards the presented scenario. The epistemic network analysis graphs showed some differences between posts with a different attitude. Supportive posts, on average emphasized technological capabilities and their connections with teacher workload and self-directed/self-regulated learning. In comparison, the critical posts on average emphasized human presence and its connections with pupil diversity and technological capability. Our findings both reveal the relevant themes in the discussion about technologies’ impact on the teaching profession and underline the differences in supportive and critical argumentation.Peer reviewe

Performance and beef quality of growing bulls offered whole crop legume-cereal and alsike clover silages

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Effects of silage plant species and breed on carcass and meat quality of finishing bulls using forage-based beef production systems

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Kasvunhallinta yrityksen kasvu- ja tuotestrategioissa

Tiivistelmä. Yritykset tavoittelevat usein liiketoiminnan kasvua keskeisenä tavoitteenaan. Yrityksen kasvu tuo mukanansa sisäisiä kasvukipuja, jotka hidastavat tai jopa estävät yrityksen toiminnan kokonaan. Strategisen kasvunhallinnan avulla kasvuesteitä pyritään ennalta tunnistamaan ja hallitsemaan, jotta liiketoiminnan kannattavuus ja suorituskyky säilyisi. Tämän kandidaatintyön tavoitteena oli selvittää kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla, miten kasvunhallinta näkyy yrityksen strategiassa ja erityisesti tuotestrategiassa. Tarkoituksena oli tunnistaa, miten liiketoiminnan kasvuun ja sen aiheuttamiin kasvukipuihin voidaan vaikuttaa yrityksen strategioiden kautta. Työssä pyrittiin erityisesti tunnistamaan kasvunhallinnan piirteitä ja strategisia tavoitteita yrityksen tuoteportfolio- ja tuotehallinnassa. Lisäksi tavoitteena oli tunnistaa yrityksen organisaation ja kasvustrategian välinen yhteys. Tutkimuksen avulla löydettiin, että pienet ja keskisuuret yritykset kokevat enemmän kasvukipuja sisäisissä prosesseissa, mutta hyödyntävät myös vähemmän strategisen suunnittelun työkaluja niiden ehkäisemisessä. Tämä johtuu yrittäjälähtöisten organisaatioiden vähäisistä resursseista ja strategisen johtamistaidon puutteesta. Suuremmat organisaatiot eivät koe sisäisiä kasvukipuja niin usein. Niille luontaisempaa on kohdata kilpailun ja nopeasti muuttuvien markkinaympäristöjen aiheuttamia kasvukipuja vastata vaihteleviin asiakastarpeisiin. Vastausta edellä mainittuihin kasvukipuihin haetaan usein tuotestrategian avulla joustavasta tuoteportfolio- ja tuotehallinnasta.Growth management in company’s growth- and product strategies. Abstract. Companies are often pursuing business growth as their main goal. Growth can bring along internal growing pains that slow down or even fully obstruct the companies’ activities. Strategic growth management is used to identify and manage these growth barriers, in forward to maintain the profitability and efficiency. This bachelor’s thesis’ goal was to find out, how growth management is seen in company’s strategy and especially in product strategy by using literature review. The purpose was to identify how growing pains can be influenced with strategies. This work tried to especially recognize growth management characteristics and strategic goals in company’s product portfolio management and product management. In addition, the goal was also to identify the relationship between organization and growth strategy. The research resulted that small and middle-sized companies experience more internal growing pains and utilize strategic tools to prevent them less than larger organizations. This is due to their lack of resources and poor skills in strategic management. Larger businesses tend to face more growing pains concerning competitive environment and rapidly changing customer needs. This is often resolved by exploiting product strategy to maintain flexible product portfolio management and product management

FIWARE Open Source Standard Platform in Smart Farming - A Review

[EN] FIWARE is an open source platform for the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, driven by European Union and managed by FIWARE Foundation. Recently, FIWARE Foundation has launched his new product Agricolus, which focus on Smart Farming and it uses FIWARE infrastructure. Agricolus manages to bring Hardware and Software together in a decision-making process that support farming activities and offers a "plug and play" interface for precision agriculture. This is encompassed by the phenomenon of Smart Farming, which is a development that take advantage of the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in the daily farm management. This review aims to gain insight into the state-of-the-art of FIWARE in Smart Farming and identify the components of Agricolus in comparison with essential FIWARE architecture.This research has been carried out in the framework of the project "Development of an integrated maturity model for agility, resilience and gender perspective in supply chains (MoMARGE). Application to the agricultural sector." Ref. GV/2017/025 funded by the Generalitat Valenciana.Rodríguez-Sánchez, MDLÁ.; Cuenca, L.; Ortiz Bas, Á. (2018). FIWARE Open Source Standard Platform in Smart Farming - A Review. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. 534:581-589. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99127-6_50S581589534Robert, P.C.: Precision agriculture: research needs and status in the USA. In: Stafford, J.V. (ed.) Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Precision Agriculture, Part 1, pp. 19–33. Academic Press, SCI/Sheffield (1999)Ge, Y., Thomasson, J.A., Sui, R.: Remote sensing of soil properties in precision agriculture: a review. Front. Earth Sci. 5(3), 229–238 (2011)Sundmaeker, H., Verdouw, C., Wolfert, S., Pérez Freire L.: Internet of food and farm 2020. In: Vermesan, O., Friess, P. (eds.) Digitising the Industry - Internet of Things Connecting Physical, Digital and Virtual Worlds, pp. 129–151. River Publishers, Gistrup/Delft (2016)Lin, J., Liu, C.: Monitoring system based on wireless sensor network and a SocC platform in precision agriculture. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Communication Technology (ICCT), Hangzhou, pp. 101–104 (2008)Kaewmard, N., Saiyod, S.: Sensor data collection and irrigation control on vegetable crop using smart phone and wireless sensor networks for smart farm. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Wireless Sensors (ICWiSE), pp. 106–112 (2014)FIWARE. https://www.fiware.org/Future Internet Private Public Partnership (FI-PPP). https://www.fi-ppp.eu/Agricolus. https://www.agricolus.comFIWARE Generic Enablers. http://edu.fiware.org/FIWARE Catalogue. https://catalogue.fiware.org/enablersKamilaris, A., Gao, F., Prenafeta-Boldu, F.X., Ali, M.I.: Agri-IoT: a semantic framework for Internet of Things-enabled smart farming applications. In: IEEE 3rd World Forum on Internet of Things, WF-IoT 2016, pp. 442–447 (2017)López-Riquelme, J.A., Pavón-Pulido, N., Navarro-Hellín, H., Soto-Valles, F., Torres-Sánchez, R.: A software architecture based on FIWARE cloud for precision agriculture. Agric. Water Manag. 183, 123–135 (2017)Martínez, R., Pastor, J.Á., Álvarez, B., Iborra, A.: A testbed to evaluate the FIWARE-based IoT platform in the domain of precision agriculture. Sensors (Switzerland), 16(11) (2016)Pesonen, L.A., et al.: Cropinfra - an internet-based service infrastructure to support crop production in future farms. Biosys. Eng. 120, 92–101 (2014)Barmpounakis, S., et al.: Management and control applications in agriculture domain via a future internet business-to-business platform. Inf. Process. Agric. 2(1), 51–63 (2015)Kaloxylos, A., et al.: Farm management systems and the future internet era. Comput. Electron. Agric. 89, 130–144 (2012)Kaloxylos, A., et al.: A cloud-based farm management system: architecture and implementation. Comput. Electron. Agric. 100, 168–179 (2014)Ryu, M., Yun, J., Miao, T., Ahn, I.Y., Choi, S.C., Kim, J.: Design and implementation of a connected farm for smart farming system. In: 2015 IEEE SENSORS Proceedings, pp. 1–4 (2015)Layton, A.W., Balmos, A.D., Sabpisal, S., Ault, A., Krogmeier, J.V., Buckmaster, D.: ISOBlue: an open source project to bring agricultural machinery data into the cloud, Montreal, 13 July–16 July 2014. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (2014)SmartAgriFood. http://smartagrifood.com/FIWARE MarketPlace. https://marketplace.fiware.orgFIWARE iHubs. https://www.fiware.org/community/fiware-ihubs/Agricolus in FIWARE MarketPlace. https://marketplace.fiware.org/pages/solutions/2ec3c741ef4dd8f83bab4e83Implementation example of Agricolus. http://www.libelium.com/increasing-tobacco-crops-quality-by-climatic-conditions-control/FIspace. https://www.fispace.eu/whatisfispace.htm