Integrating groupware technology into the learning environment

This paper presents the hard lessons learned from the introduction of groupware technology within a final‐year software engineering module. The module began in 1997 and is now in its fourth year. The paper provides a detailed account of our successes and failures in each year, and describes what the authors now feel is a successful model for integrating groupware into the learning environment. The paper is important because it provides a longitudinal study of the use of groupware within a learning environment and an insight into the key success factors associated with the use of groupware. Success factors relate not only to the technology but also to social factors such as group facilitation and social protocols, to factors associated with monitoring and assessment, and to factors related to the skills development associated with being a member of a global team

The impact of Group Intelligence software on enquiry-based learning

Despite the increasing use of groupware technologies in education, there is little evidence of their impact, especially within an enquiry-based learning (EBL) context. In this paper, we examine the use of a commercial standard Group Intelligence software called GroupSystems®ThinkTank. To date, ThinkTank has been adopted mainly in the USA and supports teams in generating ideas, categorising, prioritising, voting and multi-criteria decision-making and automatically generates a report at the end of each session. The software was used by students carrying out an EBL project, set by employers, for a full academic year. The criteria for assessing the impact of ThinkTank on student learning were those of creativity, participation, productivity, engagement and understanding. Data was collected throughout the year using a combination of interviews and questionnaires, and written feedback from employers. The overall findings show an increase in levels of productivity and creativity, evidence of a deeper understanding of their work but some variation in attitudes towards participation in the early stages of the project

The Importance Ranking of Trust Attributes in e-Commerce Website

The process of building consumer trust in e-Commerce is based on the presence of trust features or trust attributes in the websites. Trust attributes are usually presented to the consumer by some clues on the homepage. For example, the clue ‘contact us’ will be linked to the trust attribute ‘company address’. Consumers may examine e-Commerce websites for the existence of trust attributes. However, to date, which trust attributes contribute to the website’s trustworthiness and which trust attributes give more value to consumers has not been adequately explored. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is: (1) to look for relevant trust attributes that should be placed in e-Commerce websites and (2) to identify the importance ranking of trust attributes that contribute to the trustworthiness of e-Commerce website. Five e-Commerce trust models were used for deriving the trust attributes. An online survey that received 1230 respondents was carried out to investigate the importance ranking of important trust attributes. This paper contributes to the discussion on how to build trust in e-Commerce for various stakeholders that include consumers, business organizations, system developers, and also to the researchers

Individual trust development in computer mediated teamwork

Facilitated group collaboration is evolving into a new generation in Web 2.0 using new technology such as online group systems. Building trust is vital to group collaboration. Risk, benefit, utility value, power and interest are six factors that influence individual trust development. This paper further develops the Scale Balance Model based on the Individual Trust Development Model in order to investigate individual trust development in facilitated group collaboration. There is a two stage investigation using a survey from face-to-face student groups with Web based group system support. The model is used to analyse the individual trust development in the sample. The results of applying the improved model can help give feedback and advice for future collaboration research. Copyright 200 ACM

Cost consequence analysis of transcutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (TTNS) for urinary incontinence in care home residents alongside a randomised controlled trial

Background: Urinary incontinence (UI) is prevalent in more than half of residents of nursing and residential care homes and can have a detrimental impact on dignity and quality of life. Care homes predominantly use absorbent pads to contain UI rather than actively treat the condition. Transcutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (TTNS) is a non-invasive, safe, low-cost intervention with demonstrated effectiveness for reducing UI in adults. We examined the costs and consequences of delivering TTNS to care home residents in comparison to sham (inactive) electrical stimulation.Methods: A cost consequence analysis approach was used to assemble and present the resource use and outcome data for the ELECTRIC trial which randomised 406 residents with UI from 37 care homes in the United Kingdom to receive 12 sessions of 30 minutes of either TTNS or sham (inactive) TTNS. TTNS was administered by care home staff over 6 weeks. Health state utility was measured using DEMQOL-U and DEMQOL-PROXY-U at baseline, 6 weeks and 18 weeks follow-up. Staff completed a resource use questionnaire at baseline, 6 weeks and 18 weeks follow-up, which also assessed use of absorbent pads. Results: HRQoL did not change significantly in either randomised group. Delivery of TTNS was estimated to cost £81.20 per participant, plus training and support costs of £121.03 per staff member. 85% of participants needed toilet assistance as routine, on average requiring one or two staff members to be involved 4 or 5 times in each 24 hours. Daily use of mobility aids and other assistive devices to use the toilet were reported. The value of staff time to assist residents to use the toilet (assuming an average of 5 minutes per resident per visit) was estimated as £19.17 (SD 13.22) for TTNS and £17.30 (SD 13.33) for sham (per resident in a 24-hour period).Conclusions: Use of TTNS to treat UI in care home residents did not lead to changes in resource use, particularly any reduction in the use of absorbent pads and no cost benefits for TTNS were shown. Managing continence in care homes is labour intensive, requiring both high levels of staff time and use of equipment aids

Towards a pattern language for e-participation processes (PL4eP)

The role of ICTs in political life and civic participation is now widely accepted and further validated through the massive use of social media, which has led to an increasing expectation of involvement by citizens through what is often termed e-Participation: the use of ICT to enable citizens' participation in the process of central or local governmental decision making. Increased involvement has created the need to consider the design of participatory processes beyond a single event, such as voting, towards more complex situations which may involve a series of events conducted over a period of time. However, e-Participation is a challenging system to put into operation, as there are three major problems inherent to its application: 1) the process, in which the participation process is not a single activity but a series of activities of different types and formats, such as workshops, focus groups or voting, which become more complex as the level of citizen participation increases; 2) the complexity of designing the participation processes requires skills, experience and knowledge which would require governments to hire or train skilled consultants. This would be very expensive and constrained by the availability of the resources; and 3) the difficulty of choosing the appropriate technologies from the wide range available. Choosing appropriate tools, that are both effective and accessible to citizens, will be of crucial importance to any e-Participation scheme. This research seeks to develop a structured approach to designing public participation processes based upon the concept of the pattern language to overcome complexities in the public participation process field, by combining knowledge from pattern languages for e-Business, which concerns itself with mapping from real world problems to ICT solutions, with that of Collaboration Engineering, which concerns the design of collaboration processes.The approach to addressing the above problems is based on that of Design Science Research (DSR), which provides an iterative method of problem solving. In this research, four design cycles were followed to design a PL4eP through five proposed processes of DSR: awareness of problems, suggestion, development, evaluation and conclusion. The pattern language was evaluated by experts and practitioners in the field who found that the language provides a promising design approach that is a beneficial starting point for non-experienced designers to design public participation processes. Thus, the language enables the designers to think about their scope and objectives before engaging in the participation process and shows them the choices available against their objectives through its logical topology, presented in terms of the five steps. The contribution of this research is in recognising the potential complexity of participatory processes and in bringing together aspects of two bodies of work on patterns to propose a new pattern language for designing e-Participation processes, thePL4eP. From its two viewpoints, the conceptual views in terms of layers, and the users' view in terms of the five design steps delivered through a website, the PL4eP contributes to both theory and practice.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of BahrainGBUnited Kingdo

Optimal Cutoff Values for Overweight: Using Body Mass Index to Predict Incidence of Hypertension in 18- to 65-Year-Old Chinese Adults

Studies aimed at identifying body mass index (BMI) cutoffs representing increased diseased risk for Asians are typically based on cross sectional studies. This study determines an optimal BMI cutoff for overweight that represents elevated incidence of hypertension in Chinese adults with data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey 2000–2004 prospective cohort. Cumulative incidence was calculated by dividing new cases of hypertension over the study period by the total at-risk population, aged 18–65 years, in 2000. Sex-specific receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to assess the sensitivity and specificity of BMI as a predictor of hypertension incidence. Four-year cumulative incidences of hypertension (13% and 19% for women and men, respectively) were significantly (P < 0.005) related to the increase in BMI. The crude area under the curves (AUC) were 0.62 (95% CI: 0.59–0.65) and 0.62 (95% CI: 0.58–0.65) for men and women, respectively; the age-adjusted AUC were 0.68 (95% CI: 0.65–0.70) and 0.71 (95% CI: 0.68–0.74) for men and women, respectively. A BMI of 23.5 kg/m2 for women and 22.5 kg/m2 for men provided highest sensitivity and specificity (60%). The finding was consistent in different age groups. A BMI level of 25 kg/m2 provided lower sensitivities (36% for women and 29% for men) with higher specificities (80% for women and 85% for men). Our study supported the hypothesis that the BMI cutoff to define overweight should be lower in Chinese than in Western populations