Ideas for the Future of the Is Field

Information systems as a field of intellectual inquiry is now approximately 50 years old. It has many achievements and extensive research to its credit and has established a large group of researchers and experts worldwide. The field has changed and changed and changed again over the last half century. The question addressed in this inaugural issue article is: Where does IS go from here? This article presents the views of six of the “fathers of the field” about its directions in the years ahead. Each coauthor presents two ideas about the future. The topics covered includes continuing support of the work of organizations, emerging technologies, new ways of communicating, expanding the ways IS performs research, expanding its vision both of what IS is and of its impact, its role as a resource, its model of the IS professional and its graduates, and its staying on top of new technologies and new areas of inquiry

Pro-active Meeting Assistants: Attention Please!

This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all. This paper gives an overview of pro-active meeting assistants, what they are and when they can be useful. We explain how to develop such assistants with respect to requirement definitions and elaborate on a set of Wizard of Oz experiments, aiming to find out in which form a meeting assistant should operate to be accepted by participants and whether the meeting effectiveness and efficiency can be improved by an assistant at all

Preserved Grasshopper Fauna Of Knife Point Glacier, Fremont County, Wyoming, U.S.A.

In 1987 and 1988, samples of preserved insects were extracted from the ice of Knife Point Glacier, Fremont County, Wyoming. The glacier lies at an altitude of 3500 m a.s.l. in the Shoshone National Forest, Wind River Range, and is known to contain preserved insects. Although the glacier has undergone extensive recession in the last 50 yr, some insect deposits are still embedded at 20 to 25 cm below the surface and perhaps much deeper. The frozen deposits appear to consist entirely of grasshoppers. A few, virtually intact, specimens and body parts were in a state of preservation that allowed their identification as Spharagemon campestris McNeill and Melanoplus spretus (Walsh) or M. sanguinipes (F.). The majority of the deposits consisted of partial bodies and isolated parts, including, in order of frequency: mandibles, tibiae, tentoria, femora, wings (primarily tegmina), and cingulae/epiphalli. Deposits from various depths and locations on the glacier were radiocarbon dated at 205 + 65 to 450 + 80 yr BP. Although access to the glacier is quite difficult, the insects are better preserved than any glacial deposit documented in recent history. Thus, the state of preservation and age of the frozen deposits would suggest that additional, intensive sampling may be valuable in obtain- ing information on the ecology of grasshoppers prior to European settlement of North America

Preserved Grasshopper Fauna Of Knife Point Glacier, Fremont County, Wyoming, U.S.A.

In 1987 and 1988, samples of preserved insects were extracted from the ice of Knife Point Glacier, Fremont County, Wyoming. The glacier lies at an altitude of 3500 m a.s.l. in the Shoshone National Forest, Wind River Range, and is known to contain preserved insects. Although the glacier has undergone extensive recession in the last 50 yr, some insect deposits are still embedded at 20 to 25 cm below the surface and perhaps much deeper. The frozen deposits appear to consist entirely of grasshoppers. A few, virtually intact, specimens and body parts were in a state of preservation that allowed their identification as Spharagemon campestris McNeill and Melanoplus spretus (Walsh) or M. sanguinipes (F.). The majority of the deposits consisted of partial bodies and isolated parts, including, in order of frequency: mandibles, tibiae, tentoria, femora, wings (primarily tegmina), and cingulae/epiphalli. Deposits from various depths and locations on the glacier were radiocarbon dated at 205 + 65 to 450 + 80 yr BP. Although access to the glacier is quite difficult, the insects are better preserved than any glacial deposit documented in recent history. Thus, the state of preservation and age of the frozen deposits would suggest that additional, intensive sampling may be valuable in obtain- ing information on the ecology of grasshoppers prior to European settlement of North America

The Psychology of Trust from Relational Messages

A fundamental underpinning of all social relationships is trust. Trust can be established through implicit forms of communication called relational messages. A multidisciplinary, multi-university, cross-cultural investigation addressed how these message themes are expressed and whether they are moderated by culture and veracity. A multi-round decision-making game with 695 international participants assessed the nonverbal and verbal behaviors that express such meanings as affection, dominance, and composure, from which people ultimately determine who can be trusted and who not. Analysis of subjective judgments showed that trust was most predicted by dominance, then affection, and lastly, composure. Behaviorally, several nonverbal and verbal behaviors associated with these message themes were combined to predict trust. Results were similar across cultures but moderated by veracity. Methodologically, automated software extracted facial features, vocal features, and linguistic metrics associated with these message themes. A new attentional computer vision method retrospectively identified specific meaningful segments where relational messages were expressed. The new software tools and attentional model hold promise for identifying nuanced, implicit meanings that together predict trust and that can, in combination, serve as proxies for trust

Secure Mobile Support of Independent Sales Agencies

Sales agents depend on mobile support systems for their daily work. Independent sales agencies, however, are not able to facilitate this kind of mobile support on their own due to their small size and lack of the necessary funds. Since their processes correlate with confidential information and include the initiation and alteration of legally binding transactions they have a high need for security. In this contribution we first propose an IT-artifact consisting of a service platform that supports multi-vendor sales processes based on previous work. We then analyze use cases of sales representatives of independent sales agencies using this system and derive their security requirements. We then propose a security extension to the IT-artifact and evaluate this extension by comparing it to existing solutions. Our results show that the proposed artifact extension provides a more convenient and secure solution than already existing approaches

Scaling Consultative Selling with Virtual Reality: Design and Evaluation of Digitally Enhanced Services

Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies allow creation of powerful customer experiences and illustrative demonstrations especially in use cases that benefit from spatial visualizations. Our study focuses on the natural resource management sector and digitalizing of consultative selling process. More specifically, we look at how to improve customer engagement with the use of virtual reality (VR) and thus digitally scale consultative selling. In this process, a VR application is used to demonstrate various management operations and their economic results. Design research methodology is applied to a pre-development phase and three application development iterations between 2016 and 2018. Data consists of user interviews and video observations (N = 129) during various development iterations and three application development plans. The results show that VR offers an emotionally engaging and illustrative tool in consultative selling. Further, it opens a novel way for interaction between the salesperson and customer and possibilities to scale consultative selling digitally, emphasizing the role of trust.Peer reviewe

A portal of educational resources: providing evidence for matching pedagogy with technology

The TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model presents the three types of knowledge that are necessary to implement a successful technology-based educational activity. It highlights how the intersections between TPK (Technological Pedagogical Knowledge), PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and TCK (Technological Content Knowledge) are not a sheer sum up of their components but new types of knowledge. This paper focuses on TPK, the intersection between technology knowledge and pedagogy knowledge – a crucial field of investigation. Actually, technology in education is not just an add-on but is literally reshaping teaching/learning paradigms. Technology modifies pedagogy and pedagogy dictates requirements to technology. In order to pursue this research, an empirical approach was taken, building a repository (back-end) and a portal (front-end) of about 300 real-life educational experiences run at school. Educational portals are not new, but they generally emphasise content. Instead, in our portal, technology and pedagogy take centre stage. Experiences are classified according to more than 30 categories (‘facets’) and more than 200 facet values, all revolving around the pedagogical implementation and the technology used. The portal (an innovative piece of technology) supports sophisticated ‘exploratory’ sessions of use, targeted at researchers (investigating the TPK intersection), teachers (looking for inspiration in their daily jobs) and decision makers (making decisions about the introduction of technology into schools)

Equal opportunities: Do shareable interfaces promote more group participation than single users displays?

Computers designed for single use are often appropriated suboptimally when used by small colocated groups working together. Our research investigates whether shareable interfaces–that are designed for more than one user to inter-act with–can facilitate more equitable participation in colocated group settings compared with single user displays. We present a conceptual framework that characterizes Shared Information Spaces (SISs) in terms of how they constrain and invite participation using different entry points. An experiment was conducted that compared three different SISs: a physical-digital set-up (least constrained), a multitouch tabletop (medium), and a laptop display (most constrained). Statistical analyses showed there to be little difference in participation levels between the three conditions other than a predictable lack of equity of control over the interface in the laptop condition. However, detailed qualitative analyses revealed more equitable participation took place in the physical-digital condition in terms of verbal utterances over time. Those who spoke the least contributed most to the physical design task. The findings are discussed in relation to the conceptual framework and, more generally, in terms of how to select, design, and combine different display technologies to support collaborative activities

Small Oscillatory Accelerations, Independent of Matrix Deformations, Increase Osteoblast Activity and Enhance Bone Morphology

A range of tissues have the capacity to adapt to mechanical challenges, an attribute presumed to be regulated through deformation of the cell and/or surrounding matrix. In contrast, it is shown here that extremely small oscillatory accelerations, applied as unconstrained motion and inducing negligible deformation, serve as an anabolic stimulus to osteoblasts in vivo. Habitual background loading was removed from the tibiae of 18 female adult mice by hindlimb-unloading. For 20 min/d, 5 d/wk, the left tibia of each mouse was subjected to oscillatory 0.6 g accelerations at 45 Hz while the right tibia served as control. Sham-loaded (n = 9) and normal age-matched control (n = 18) mice provided additional comparisons. Oscillatory accelerations, applied in the absence of weight bearing, resulted in 70% greater bone formation rates in the trabeculae of the metaphysis, but similar levels of bone resorption, when compared to contralateral controls. Quantity and quality of trabecular bone also improved as a result of the acceleration stimulus, as evidenced by a significantly greater bone volume fraction (17%) and connectivity density (33%), and significantly smaller trabecular spacing (−6%) and structural model index (−11%). These in vivo data indicate that mechanosensory elements of resident bone cell populations can perceive and respond to acceleratory signals, and point to an efficient means of introducing intense physical signals into a biologic system without putting the matrix at risk of overloading. In retrospect, acceleration, as opposed to direct mechanical distortion, represents a more generic and safe, and perhaps more fundamental means of transducing physical challenges to the cells and tissues of an organism