Chaotic worlds: an analysis of World of Warcraft

Virtual worlds provide new forms of collaboration and social interaction. The World of Warcraft (WoW) is one such virtual world. It is the most popular example of what is called a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). In this paper, we analyze players’ outcomes with WoW using chaos theory. Our paper suggests that players are highly sensitive to initial conditions which are impacted by style of play and the social structure of groups

Analysing qualitative data from virtual worlds: using images and text mining

There is an increasing interest within both organisational and social contexts in virtual worlds and virtual reality platforms. Virtual worlds are highly graphical systems in which avatars interact with each other, and almost every event and conversation is logged and recorded. This presents new challenges for qualitative researchers in information systems. This paper addresses the challenges of analyzing the huge amounts of qualitative data that can be obtained from virtual worlds (both images and text). It addresses how images might be used in qualitative studies of virtual worlds, and proposes a new way to analyze textual data using a qualitative software tool called Leximancer. This paper illustrates these methods using a study of a social movement in a virtual world

The transformation of public space : mobile technology practices and urban liminalities

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.Since the mid-twentieth century, various architectural, urban, cultural, and computer science discourses have advanced the rhetoric that contemporary information and communications technologies (ICTs) will fundamentally transform the built and urban environment. More recently, communications and media studies, as well as computer science allied fields such as human computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design have directed significant attention to the urban contexts in which mobile information and communications technologies (mICT) are used, and on the so-called transformative practices of mobile ‘location-awareness’. These diverse fields, that simultaneously attend to the topics of urbanism, space, and technology, bring alternate perspectives, methods, and theories to bear on the notion of urban transformation. Yet equally, they also contribute to a growing body of discourse that situates mobile technology practices as a force of radical and positive urban transformation. This thesis argues that understanding and representing the impacts of mobile technology practices on the aesthetic, symbolic, and lived experience of urban public space is a contestable territory subject to a range of technical, socio-economic, and cultural variables that are difficult to account for from any singular disciplinary perspective. Accordingly, this thesis adopts an interdisciplinary method that examines the selected discourse through the lens of liminal theory initially developed by anthropologist Victor Turner from observations of tribal ritual (1967, 1974a, 1974b, 1977a, 1977b, 1982, 1985)—a theory that has much to say on the concepts and processes of transformation. This constructs a unique critique of claims that mobile technology practices have transformed urban public space by unpacking and examining a number of underlying assumptions and ideals that connect to key conceptual frameworks as well as disciplinary biases. From this perspective, this thesis argues that while mobile technology practices have influenced urban conditions—in both a positive and negative sense—from social practices, and workplace organisation, to ways of moving, they can be alternately conceptualised as liminal triggers that invoke ambivalent representations of urban public space over its radical transformation. The discourse examined in this thesis points to a significant investment in research that attends to the interrelationships between emerging digital technologies and the built environment in the social, cultural, and computer sciences, whereas limited engagement from the architectural discipline. As a contribution to interdisciplinary thinking the value of this thesis to the architectural discipline lies in its presentation and critique of these alternate disciplinary perspectives that have ‘made visible’ the often-abstract impacts of mobile technology practices on and within urban public space. With an eye to the current technourban imaginary and policy vehicle of the smart city, this thesis contends that from this more informed position the architectural discipline can offer much-needed critique on the relationships between emerging technologies and the built environment. The corollary of engaging and adapting a liminal theoretical gaze here is the problematisation of liminal space itself, and a further contribution to its history and methodological range

Undergraduates Perception of Informal Personal Learning Environments: Affordances for Self-regulated Learning

Mental Models, informal representations of reality, provide an appealing explanation for the apparently non-rational decisions of users. Although users may be attempting to make secure decisions, the use of incomplete or incorrect information security mental models as a shortcut to decision making may lead to undesirable results. We describe mental models of Viruses and Hackers drawing on data from a survey of 609 adult computer users and link these to security behaviours and perceptions. We find that there are potentially just a small number of common security beliefs and suggest that accommodating these mental models during security design may be more beneficial to long-term security than expecting users to change to accommodate security requirements

AN EXPLORATION OF FIRST-YEAR UNDERGRADUATES’ PREPAREDNESS AND EXPERIENCES IN BLENDED COURSES

Despite their advantages, blended approaches have been met with mixed results by learners. There is a general view that learners who are known as Digital Natives or Millennials, are technologically savvy. Research, however, suggests rather that they possess poor levels of digital literacy and have demonstrated some degree of avoidance towards e-learning tools (Boyd, 2014; Chigeza and Halbert, 2014; O’Connell and Dyment, 2014). This study thus intends to explore learners\u27 preparedness in adapting to blended courses. We hypothesize that learners’ depth of engagements in blended activities is influenced by learners’ characteristics. We further hypothesize the influence of learning facilitators and the learning environment in moderating learners’ engagement. We aim to contribute in a theoretical and empirical manner by testing the proposed framework based on past literature. Expected practical contributions include enriching teaching practices to better cater to students’ needs, and improving on blended techniques, allowing learners to learn in a more effective manner

Cultural Changes Resulting from Information System Adoption and Use: A Case Study on New Product Development in the Consumer Food Industry

This paper explores how managers acted as internal and external change agents to persuade the digital transformation and organizational culture through the different stages of food product innovation and development for consumer food products. A case study approach was adopted to collect rich data cataloging the cultural changes in the firm in their progressive adoption of an information technology for decision support and management control purposes when managing NPD processes and activities. We focused on the perspectives of senior management over two specific time periods of before and near the commercial launch of their new salmon fish products. Through the use of the analytics tool, Leximancer, we observed how the reasoning, decision making, and emphasis on senior management had changed over a six-month period. Our findings show the changes in organizational cultures after digital transformation was applied and overhauled onto their new product development process

Longitudinal Analysis of Reciprocal Relationships between Digital Literacy and Self-Regulated Learning within Personal Learning Environments

Personal learning environments (PLEs) offer valuable opportunities to enhance overall learning experiences while nurturing technological and learning skills of contemporary learners. To maximize these opportunities researchers and practitioners must clearly understand how learners’ digital literacy (DL) and self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are interrelated within PLEs. This paper presents the quantitative findings of an ongoing longitudinal mixed methods study designed to identify and describe these relationships. Structural equation modeling is used to test competing two-wave panel models using online survey data from 181 participants. The results support the acceptance of a model with significant positive reciprocal relationships between DL component constructs and the SRL construct. We contribute, via empirical evidence, to clarifying the direction and extent to which DL and SRL skills of undergraduates influence each other within PLEs. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for theory and practice together with future research opportunities

RULES GOVERNING THE USE OF PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS FOR SELF-REGULATED LEARNING: AN ACTIVITY THEORY APPROACH

Advances in technology access allow learners to personalize their learning to their individual interests via the creation and use of informal personal learning environments (PLEs). A com-prehensive understanding of how self-regulated learning (SRL) occurs in such PLEs and the im-plicit and explicit rules which govern the learners’ interaction with the learning community is still lacking. Activity Theory (AT) is used to conceptually and methodologically frame this study. The paper draws on 20 in-depth interviews with undergraduates, to present preliminary findings elaborating the norms, conventions, and values which mediate the SRL processes of PLE users. The results indicate that trust, agency and a concern for safety governs the metacognitive, moti-vational and behavioral SRL processes of PLE users. Initial findings contribute to clarifying SRL processes within PLEs while addressing a gap in existing PLE literature. This paper adds further perspective to the ongoing academic discussion on the effective use of personal technologies and how best to utilize such technologies for teaching and learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future research opportunities

The Impact of Motivation and Strategy Use on Course Outcome in Digital Learning Environment- A case Analysis of a Business School Course

Using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) multiple times in an undergraduate business school course in a University in New Zealand, 188 students completed the questionnaire to explore how students’ motivation and strategy use changed as they progressed and how these constructs predict students’ course outcome. In contrast to other studies, our results showed varying levels of motivation as well as increasing strategy usage as the course progressed. Our exploratory analysis identified three subgroups within the class, each of which reported differently in terms of motivation and strategy use. From this analysis and course outcome data we infer how these finding may contribute to theory and classroom practice

A Design Methodology for Learning Analytics Information Systems: Informing Learning Analytics Development with Learning Design

The paper motivates, presents and demonstrates a methodology for developing and evaluating learning analytics information systems (LAIS) to support teachers as learning designers. In recent years, there has been increasing emphasis on the benefits of learning analytics to support learning and teaching. Learning analytics can inform and guide teachers in the iterative design process of improving pedagogical practices. This conceptual study proposed a design approach for learning analytics information systems which considered the alignment between learning analytics and learning design activities. The conceptualization incorporated features from both learning analytics, learning design, and design science frameworks. The proposed development approach allows for rapid development and implementation of learning analytics for teachers as designers. The study attempted to close the loop between learning analytics and learning design. In essence, this paper informs both teachers and education technologists about the interrelationship between learning design and learning analytics