Teaching with GSS: Techniques for Enabling Student Participation

Learning requires cognitive effort and two way communication. In the classroom setting, it is difficult to give every student a significant amount of time to participate. Group support systems (GSS) have been shown to make meetings more effective (Nunamaker, Dennis, Valacich, Vogel and George 1991). If the classroom is viewed as a meeting where the students are called upon to contribute, GSS can bring the same benefits to the classroom. This paper first describes our goals for improving classroom learning and then describes our experiences and techniques to help others apply them to their classroom situation. The techniques described are domain independent. They apply to any subject area and almost every level of education

Exploring the Effects of a Convergance Intervention on Ideation Artifacts: A Multi-Group Field Study

Information technology professionals frequently need to reduce and clarify ideas. The convergence patterns of collaboration-reduce and clarify are key in helping a group focus effort on issues that are worthy of further attention. This study furthers understanding convergence patterns by exploring and characterizing the effects of a FastFocus intervention on an ideation artifact. Researchers conducted an observational case study of executives and staff addressing a real task within a large it intensive organization. Three sets of artifacts were analyzed from three groups. Analysis of the problem statements generated during a problem identification and clarification session revealed several implications about convergence interventions. The FastFocus thinkLet reduced the number of concepts from 620 down to 145, a reduction of 76%. Ambiguity dropped from 55% in the ideation artifact to 6% in the converged artifact. Implications for brainstorming instructions were identified that may contribute to reduced ambiguity in ideation artifacts

Benefitting from IS Research -- Who and How? A Panel on the Value of IS Research

This panel reexamines the perennial debate on the relevance of IS from the point of view of the value of IS research, who benefits from it and how these benefits are realized. Following up on previous panels, it promotes a discussion on the kinds of knowledge the IS community produces, the visibility of the IS research, its contributions and what could or should the IS community be working on in the future. Four panelists, who have demonstrated outstanding accomplishments in their respective careers, weigh in and respond to questions on who benefits from their research, what they view as grand challenges that the IS community has addressed, and how as a research community, we can create value. Their discussions on these critical issues are expected to inspire the IS community towards addressing impactful issues that matter to society

Desperately Seeking Dissonance: Identifying the Disconfirming Case in Qualitative Evidence Synthesis

Actively seeking the disconfirming or deviant case is properly regarded as a hallmark of trustworthiness in primary qualitative research. The need to subject emergent theory to such testing is no less important within qualitative systematic reviews. There is, as yet, little available guidance on how to implement such strategies. Few researchers have described the practicalities of seeking the disconfirming case. We survey the methodological literature to gain a better understanding of how systematic reviews of qualitative research handle the disconfirming case. We reflect on our own experience from three recent qualitative evidence syntheses. We describe how reviewers might actively manufacture opportunities to identify discrepant or refutational findings. We conclude by outlining possible methods by which a team might integrate active seeking of a disconfirming case within the overall review process

Opening up the Quantum Three-Box Problem with Undetectable Measurements

One of the most striking features of quantum mechanics is the profound effect exerted by measurements alone. Sophisticated quantum control is now available in several experimental systems, exposing discrepancies between quantum and classical mechanics whenever measurement induces disturbance of the interrogated system. In practice, such discrepancies may frequently be explained as the back-action required by quantum mechanics adding quantum noise to a classical signal. Here we implement the 'three-box' quantum game of Aharonov and Vaidman in which quantum measurements add no detectable noise to a classical signal, by utilising state-of-the-art control and measurement of the nitrogen vacancy centre in diamond. Quantum and classical mechanics then make contradictory predictions for the same experimental procedure, however classical observers cannot invoke measurement-induced disturbance to explain this discrepancy. We quantify the residual disturbance of our measurements and obtain data that rule out any classical model by > 7.8 standard deviations, allowing us for the first time to exclude the property of macroscopic state-definiteness from our system. Our experiment is then equivalent to a Kochen-Spekker test of quantum non-contextuality that successfully addresses the measurement detectability loophole

A Seven-Layer Model of Collaboration: Separation of Concerns for Designers of Collaboration Systems

Designers of collaboration systems address many interrelated issues in a social-technical context. The volume, complexity, and variety of issues can invoke cognitive overload, causing deficiencies in system designs. We use inductive logic to derive seven key areas of concern for designers of collaboration support systems. We use deductive logic to argue that these areas address collaboration at differing levels of abstraction, and so may be organized into a seven-layer model, affording separation of concerns at design time. The layers are: Goals, Products, Activities, Patterns, Techniques, Tools, and Scripts. Design changes at one layer may not necessitate changes to layers above it, but may require changes to layers below it. At each layer and between each layer there are different issues and outcomes that may be addressed with different concepts, techniques and tools. This separation of concerns may reduce cognitive load for designers and may help to improve completeness and consistency of their designs, yielding higher productivity for collaborating groups

Spatiotemporal complexity of a ratio-dependent predator-prey system

In this paper, we investigate the emergence of a ratio-dependent predator-prey system with Michaelis-Menten-type functional response and reaction-diffusion. We derive the conditions for Hopf, Turing and Wave bifurcation on a spatial domain. Furthermore, we present a theoretical analysis of evolutionary processes that involves organisms distribution and their interaction of spatially distributed population with local diffusion. The results of numerical simulations reveal that the typical dynamics of population density variation is the formation of isolated groups, i.e., stripelike or spotted or coexistence of both. Our study shows that the spatially extended model has not only more complex dynamic patterns in the space, but also chaos and spiral waves. It may help us better understand the dynamics of an aquatic community in a real marine environment.Comment: 6pages, revtex

Evaluation of Exchange-Correlation Energy, Potential, and Stress

We describe a method for calculating the exchange and correlation (XC) contributions to the total energy, effective potential, and stress tensor in the generalized gradient approximation. We avoid using the analytical expressions for the functional derivatives of E_xc*rho, which depend on discontinuous second-order derivatives of the electron density rho. Instead, we first approximate E_xc by its integral in a real space grid, and then we evaluate its partial derivatives with respect to the density at the grid points. This ensures the exact consistency between the calculated total energy, potential, and stress, and it avoids the need of second-order derivatives. We show a few applications of the method, which requires only the value of the (spin) electron density in a grid (possibly nonuniform) and returns a conventional (local) XC potential.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Analysis of Sub-threshold Short Gamma-ray Bursts in Fermi GBM Data

The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) is currently the most prolific detector of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). Recently the detection rate of short GRBs (SGRBs) has been dramatically increased through the use of ground-based searches that analyze GBM continuous time tagged event (CTTE) data. Here we examine the efficiency of a method developed to search CTTE data for sub-threshold transient events in temporal coincidence with LIGO/Virgo compact binary coalescence triggers. This targeted search operates by coherently combining data from all 14 GBM detectors by taking into account the complex spatial and energy dependent response of each detector. We use the method to examine a sample of SGRBs that were independently detected by the Burst Alert Telescope on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, but which were too intrinsically weak or viewed with unfavorable instrument geometry to initiate an on-board trigger of GBM. We find that the search can successfully recover a majority of the BAT detected sample in the CTTE data. We show that the targeted search of CTTE data will be crucial in increasing the GBM sensitivity, and hence the gamma-ray horizon, to weak events such as GRB 170817A. We also examine the properties of the GBM signal possibly associated with the LIGO detection of GW150914 and show that it is consistent with the observed properties of other sub-threshold SGRBs in our sample. We find that the targeted search is capable of recovering true astrophysical signals as weak as the signal associated with GW150914 in the untriggered data.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, submitted to Ap