The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning

Edited by: Vivien Hodgson, Maarten de Laat, David McConnell and Thomas Ryberg

"This book brings together a wealth of new research that opens up the meaning of connectivity as embodied and promised in the term networked learning . Chapters explore how contexts, groups and environments can be connected rather than just learners; how messy, unexpected and emergent connections can be made rather than structured and predefined ones; and how technology connects us to learning and each other, but also shapes our identity. These exciting new perspectives ask us to look again at what we are connecting and to revel in new and emergent possibilities arising from the interplay of social actors, contexts, technologies, and learning."

"Caroline Haythornthwaite, University of British Columbia"

"Despite creating fundamentally new educational economics and greatly increasing access - teaching and learning in networks is a tricky business. These chapters illuminate the complex interactions amongst tools, pedagogy, educational institutions and personal net presences helping us design and redesign our own networks. In the process, they take (or extract) network theory from the practice of real teaching and learning contexts, making this collection an important contribution to Networked Learning."

"Terry Anderson, Athabasca University"

"What kinds of learning can social networking platforms really enable? Digging well beneath the hype, this book provides a timely, incisive analysis of why and how learning emerges (or fails to) in networked spaces. The editors do a fine job in guiding the reader through the rich array of theories and methods for tackling this question, and the diverse contexts in which networked learning is now being studied. This is a book for reflective practitioners as well as academics: the book's close attention to the political, pedagogical and organisational complexity of effective practice, and the lived experience of educators and learners, helps explain why networked learning has such disruptive potential but equally, why it draws resistance from the establishment."

"Simon Buckingham Shum, The Open University"

"The networked learning conference, a biannual institution since 1998, celebrates its 14th year in this volume. Here a range of studies, reflecting networked learning experiments across Europe and other global contexts, show important shifts away from a conservative tradition of e-learning research and unpeel dilemmas of promoting learning as an elusive practice in virtual environments. The authors point towards important futures in online learning research, where notions of knowledge, connectivity and community become increasingly elastic, and engagements slide across material and virtual domains in new practices whose emergence is increasingly difficult to apprehend."

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"Tara Fenwick University of Stirling."

The chapters in this volume explore new and innovative ways of thinking about the nature of networked learning and its pedagogical values and beliefs. They pose a challenge to us to reflect on what we thought networked learning was 15 year ago, where it is today and where it is likely to be headed.

Each chapter brings a particular perspective to the themes of design, experience and practice of networked learning, the chosen focus of the book. The chapters in the book embrace a wide field of educational areas including those of higher education, informal learning, work-based learning, continuing professional development, academic staff development, and management learning.

The Design, Experience and Practice of Networked Learning will prove indispensable reading for researchers, teachers, consultants, and instructional designers in higher and continuing education; for those involved in staff and educational development, and for those studying post graduate qualifications in learning and teaching.

This, the second volume in the Springer Book Series on Researching Networked Learning, is based on a selection of papers presented at the 2012 Networked Learning Conference held in Maastricht, The Netherlands."

Wikipedia, Flickr, You Tube, Facebook, LinkedIn are all examples of large community-built databases, although with quite diverse purposes and collaboration patterns. Their usage and dissemination will further grow introducing e.g. new semantics, personalization, or interactive media.

Pardede delivers the first comprehensive research reference on community-built databases. The contributions discuss various technical and social aspects of research in and development in areas like in Web science, social networks, and collaborative information systems.

Pardede delivers the first comprehensive research reference on community-built databases. The contributions discuss various technical and social aspects of research in and development in areas like in Web science, social networks, and collaborative information systems.

This book comprises a variety of breakthroughs and recent advances on Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) intended for both researchers and practitioners. Topics addressed here can be of interest for those people searching for last trends involving such a growing discipline. Important issues concerning this book includes cutti- edge topics such as Semantic Web Interfaces, Natural Language Processing and - bile Interaction, as well as new methodological trends such as Interface-Engineering techniques, User-Centred Design, Usability, Accessibility, Development Meth- ologiesandEmotionalUserInterfaces. Theideabehindthisbookistobringtogether relevant and novel research on diverse interaction paradigms. New trends are gu- anteedaccordingtothedemandingclaimsofbothHCIresearchersandpractitioners, which encourage the explicit arrangement of new industrial and technological topics such as the previously cited Interfaces for the Semantic Web, and Mobile Interfaces, but also Multimodal Interaction, Collaborative Interfaces, End-User Development, Usability and User Interface Engineering. Chapters included in this book comprise a selection of top high-quality papers from Interaccion 2007, which is the most important HCI conference sponsored by AIPO (the Spanish HCI Association). Papers were selected from a ranking - tained through double-blind peer review and later meta-review processes, cons- ering the best evaluated paper from both the review and presentation session. Such a paper selection constitutes only 33% of the papers published in the conference proceedings. We would like to thank the reviewers for their effort in revising the chapters included in this publication, namely Silvia T. Acuna, ~ Sandra Baldasarri, Crescencio Bravo, Cesar A.

This book records one of the continuous attempts of the IFIP Working Group 8. 2, studying the interaction of information systems and the organization, to explore and understand the shifting boundaries and dependencies between organizational activities and their computer support. The book marks the result of the IFIP WG 8. 2 conference on "Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments: Socio-Technical Issues and Challenges. " Since its inception in the late 1970s, IFIP WG 8. 2 has sought to understand how computer-based information systems interact and must be designed as an integrated part of the organizational design. At that time, information systems handled repetitive and remote back-office functions and the main concern was work task design for repetitive input tasks and the potential impact of improved information support on organizational decision-making and structure. The focus of the information system design shifted in the 1980s when computers became part of the furniture and moved into the office. Reflecting this significant change, IFIP WG 8. 2 in 1989 organized a conference dedicated to the design and impact of desktop technology in order to examine how organizational processes and the locus of action changed when the computer was moved into the office. Sixteen years later, we are experiencing another significant change. Computers are now becoming part of our body and sensory system and will move out of the traditional office locations and into the wilderness. Again, IFIP WG 8.

This book critically reflects on current statistical methods used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and introduces a number of novel methods to the reader. Covering many techniques and approaches for exploratory data analysis including effect and power calculations, experimental design, event history analysis, non-parametric testing and Bayesian inference; the research contained in this book discusses how to communicate statistical results fairly, as well as presenting a general set of recommendations for authors and reviewers to improve the quality of statistical analysis in HCI. Each chapter presents [R] code for running analyses on HCI examples and explains how the results can be interpreted. Modern Statistical Methods for HCI is aimed at researchers and graduate students who have some knowledge of "traditional" null hypothesis significance testing, but who wish to improve their practice by using techniques which have recently emerged from statistics and related fields. This book critically evaluates current practices within the field and supports a less rigid, procedural view of statistics in favour of fair statistical communication.

This book describes how domain knowledge can be used in the design of interactive systems. It includes discussion of the theories and models of domain, generic domain architectures and construction of system components for specific domains. It draws on research experience from the Information Systems, Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction communities.

Human-System interaction has been and will continue to be of interest to many researchers of various disciplines: engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, and social scientists. The research in Human-System Interaction (HSI) has progressed from the era of using anthropomorphic data to design workspace to the current period which utilizes human and artificial sensors to design sensory-based cooperative workspace. In either of these developments, HSI has been known to be complex. In 1994, we initiated a series of symposiums on Human Interaction with Complex Systems. It was then that various ideas surrounding HSI for today and tomorrow were discussed by many scientists in the related disciplines. As a follow-up, in 1995 the Second Symposium was organized. The objective of this symposium was to attempt to defme a framework, principles, and theories for HSI research. This book is the result of that symposium. The 1995 symposium brought together a number of experts in the area of HSI. The symposium was more focused on expert opinions and testimonies than traditional meetings for technical papers. There were three reasons for that approach.

The introduction of Enterprise Identity Management Systems (EIdMS) in organizations even beyond the purely technological level is a costly and challenging endeavor. However, for decision makers it seems difficult to fully understand the impacts and opportunities arising from the introduction of EIdMS. This book explores the relevant aspects for an ex-ante evaluation of EIdMS. Therefore it examines this domain by employing a qualitative expert interview study to better understand the nature of EIdMS, as they are situated between security and productive IT systems. To this regard, the focus is put on the general nature of EIdMS projects and the constructs being relevant for analyzing such projects in the decision support phase. Based on the derived constructs and thematic topics from the interviews, an explanatory model for EIdMS introductions is derived and iteratively improved and evaluated. Finally, a possible application use-case for the creation of adequate decision support tools is presented.

The volume contains all papers presented at the Working Conference on Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction (EHCI'95), grouped into the topic areas Formal Methods, Tools, Multimedia, Architecture, CSCW, and Design. It includes transcripts of all discussions among the presenters and the conference participants. It further contains the results of several mini-workshops held during the conference on topics like the Human Context, How to make Formal Methods Useful, Rapid Implementation and Development, Usability Testing, CSCW Mini Scenarios.

Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction brings together research that spans several disciplines related to artificial intelligence, including natural language processing, information retrieval, machine learning, planning, and computer-aided instruction, to account for the role that mixed initiative plays in the design of intelligent systems. The ten contributions address the single issue of how control of an interaction should be managed when abilities needed to solve a problem are distributed among collaborating agents. Managing control of an interaction among humans and computers to gather and assemble knowledge and expertise is a major challenge that must be met to develop machines that effectively collaborate with humans. This is the first collection to specifically address this issue.

Modern society has been transformed by the digital convergence towards a future where technologies embed themselves into the fabric of everyday life. This ongoing merging of social and technological infrastructures provides and necessitates new possibilities to renovate past notions, models and methods of information systems development that accommodates humans as actors within the infrastructure. This shift introduces new possibilities for information systems designers to fulfil more and more everyday functions, and to enhance their value and worth to the user. Reframing Humans in Information Systems Development aims to reframe the phenomenon of human-centered development of information systems by connecting scientific constructs produced within the field of information systems which has recently provided a plethora of multidisciplinary user views, without explicitly defining clear constructs that serve the IS field in particular. IS researchers, practitioners and students would benefit from Reframing Humans in Information Systems Development as the book provides a comprehensive view to various human-centered development methods and approaches. The representatives of the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Collaborative Work will also find this book an excellent resource. A theoretical handbook and collection of practical experiences, are included along with critical discussions of the utilization methods in ISD and their implications with some interconnecting commentary viewpoints.

With a variety of emerging and innovative technologies combined with the active participation of the human element as the major connection between the end user and the digital realm, the pervasiveness of human-computer interfaces is at an all time high. Emerging Research and Trends in Interactivity and the Human-Computer Interface addresses the main issues of interest within the culture and design of interaction between humans and computers. By exploring the emerging aspects of design, development, and implementation of interfaces, this book will be beneficial for academics, HCI developers, HCI enterprise managers, and researchers interested in the progressive relationship of humans and technology.

Robot manipulation is a great challenge; it encompasses versatility -adaptation to different situations-, autonomy -independent robot operation-, and dependability -for success under modeling or sensing errors. A complete manipulation task involves, first, a suitable grasp or contact configuration, and the subsequent motion required by the task. This monograph presents a unified framework by introducing task-related aspects into the knowledge-based grasp concept, leading to task-oriented grasps. Similarly, grasp-related issues are also considered during the execution of a task, leading to grasp-oriented tasks which is called framework for physical interaction (FPI). The book presents the theoretical framework for the versatile specification of physical interaction tasks, as well as the problem of autonomous planning of these tasks. A further focus is on sensor-based dependable execution combining three different types of sensors: force, vision and tactile. The FPI approach allows to perform a wide range of robot manipulation tasks. All contributions are validated with several experiments using different real robots placed on household environments; for instance, a high-DoF humanoid robot can successfully operate unmodeled mechanisms with widely varying structure in a general way with natural motions. This research was recipient of the European Georges Giralt Award and the Robotdalen Scientific Award Honorary Mention.

The broad scope of Cloud Computing is creating a technology, business, sociolo- cal, and economic renaissance. It delivers the promise of making services available quickly with rather little effort. Cloud Computing allows almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime to interact with these service offerings. Cloud Computing creates a unique opportunity for its users that allows anyone with an idea to have a chance to deliver it to a mass market base. As Cloud Computing continues to evolve and penetrate different industries, it is inevitable that the scope and definition of Cloud Computing becomes very subjective, based on providers' and customers' persp- tive of applications. For instance, Information Technology (IT) professionals p- ceive a Cloud as an unlimited, on-demand, flexible computing fabric that is always available to support their needs. Cloud users experience Cloud services as virtual, off-premise applications provided by Cloud service providers. To an end user, a p- vider offering a set of services or applications in the Cloud can manage these off- ings remotely. Despite these discrepancies, there is a general consensus that Cloud Computing includes technology that uses the Internet and collaborated servers to integrate data, applications, and computing resources. With proper Cloud access, such technology allows consumers and businesses to access their personal files on any computer without having to install special tools. Cloud Computing facilitates efficient operations and management of comp- ing technologies by federating storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth.

By bringing together various current directions, Software Project Management in a Changing World focuses on how people and organizations can make their processes more change-adaptive. The selected chapters closely correspond to the project management knowledge areas introduced by the Project Management Body of Knowledge, including its extension for managing software projects.

The contributions are grouped into four parts, preceded by a general introduction. Part I Fundamentals provides in-depth insights into fundamental topics including resource allocation, cost estimation and risk management. Part II Supporting Areas presents recent experiences and results related to the management of quality systems, knowledge, product portfolios and global and virtual software teams. Part III New Paradigms details new and evolving software-development practices including agile, distributed and open and inner-source development. Finally, Part IV Emerging Techniques introduces search-based techniques, social media, software process simulation and the efficient use of empirical data and their effects on software-management practices.This book will attract readers from both academia and practice with its excellent balance between new findings and experience of their usage in new contexts. Whenever appropriate, the presentation is based on evidence from empirical evaluation of the proposed approaches. For researchers and graduate students, it presents some of the latest methods and techniques to accommodate new challenges facing the discipline. For professionals, it serves as a source of inspiration for refining their project-management skills in new areas."

Can psychoanalysis offer a new computer model? Can computer designers help psychoanalysts to understand their theory better?In contemporary publications human psyche is often related to neural networks. Why? The wiring in computers can also be related to application software. But does this really make sense?

Artificial Intelligence has tried to implement functions of human psyche. The reached achievements are remarkable; however, the goal to get a functional model of the mental apparatus was not reached. Was the selected direction incorrect?The editors are convinced: yes, and they try to give answers here. If one accepts that the brain is an information processing system, then one also has to accept that computer theories can be applied to the brain s functions, the human mental apparatus.

The contributors of this book - Solms, Panksepp, Sloman and many others who are all experts in computer design, psychoanalysis and neurology are united in one goal: finding synergy in their interdisciplinary fields."

We live in an ever complex, dynamic and technological-based world. A world where industries, businesses and agencies rely ever increasingly on automated systems to maintain efficiency, increase productivity, minimize human error or gain a competitive edge. Moreover, automation is now seen by many organizations as the solution to human performance problems. These organizations continue to invest significant resources to implement automated systems wherever possible and there is no doubt that automation has helped such organizations manage their sophisticated, information-rich environments, where humans have limited capabilities. Therefore, automation has helped to improve industrial and commercial progress to the extent that organizations now depend upon it for their own benefit. However, new and unresolved problems have arisen as more individuals, groups and teams interact with automated systems. Hence, the need and motivation of this volume. The chapters contained in this volume explore some of the key human performance issues facing organizations as they implement or manage automated systems. Dealing with a range of topics, from how to design optional use, avoiding misuse, to creating training strategies for automated systems, this volume also explores which theories may help us understand automation better and what research needs to be conducted. This publication attempts to illustrate how human performance research on automation can help organizations design better systems and also hopes to motivate more theoretically-based but practically-relevant research in the technological-based world of the 21st century.

The intent of this chapter is to outline a distinctive way of thinking about issues of technology and society that has characterized many Nordic approaches to the topic. One of the characteristics of this approach has been the recognition of the worth of human labour. Technology is not seen as an alien force, but something which is itself a product of human labour, and it can be designed and utilized in ways which augment human skills and expertise, rather than degrading them. What is particularly striking, at least to this author, in this approach is that we are presented not simply with a vision of how things could be better in our society, but with concrete exemplars of how we can build such a better world. It is in recognition of this fact that I have chosen the title of this chapter, as it emphasizes that, while the tradition of Utopian literature is the - lineation of a supposedly idea world which exists no-place (u-topos, in Greek), these visions can be an inspiration for quite practical activities on the ground, as steps towards their realization. As Wilde notes (in the quote above) this is a never-ending quest, as with each achievement, we recognize that there are further bridges to cross and places to be visited.

This volume contains the proceedings of IFIPTM 2010, the 4th IFIP WG 11.11 International Conference on Trust Management, held in Morioka, Iwate, Japan during June 16-18, 2010. IFIPTM 2010 provided a truly global platform for the reporting of research, development, policy, and practice in the interdependent arrears of privacy, se- rity, and trust. Building on the traditions inherited from the highly succe- ful iTrust conference series, the IFIPTM 2007 conference in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, the IFIPTM 2008 conference in Trondheim, Norway, and the IFIPTM 2009 conference at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, IFIPTM 2010 focused on trust, privacy and security from multidisciplinary persp- tives. The conference is an arena for discussion on relevant problems from both research and practice in the areas of academia, business, and government. IFIPTM 2010 was an open IFIP conference. The program of the conference featured both theoretical research papers and reports of real-world case studies. IFIPTM 2010 received 61 submissions from 25 di?erent countries: Japan (10), UK (6), USA (6), Canada (5), Germany (5), China (3), Denmark (2), India (2), Italy (2), Luxembourg (2), The Netherlands (2), Switzerland (2), Taiwan (2), Austria, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Israel, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Turkey. The Program Committee selected 18 full papers for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. In addition, the program and the proceedings include two invited papers by academic experts in the ?elds of trust management, privacy and security, namely, Toshio Yamagishi and Pamela Briggs

The past decade has seen a revolution in the field of spoken dialogue systems. As in other areas of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, data-driven methods are now being used to drive new methodologies for system development and evaluation. This book is a unique contribution to that ongoing change. A new methodology for developing spoken dialogue systems is described in detail. The journey starts and ends with human behaviour in interaction, and explores methods for learning from the data, for building simulation environments for training and testing systems, and for evaluating the results. The detailed material covers: Spoken and Multimodal dialogue systems, Wizard-of-Oz data collection, User Simulation methods, Reinforcement Learning, and Evaluation methodologies. The book is a research guide for students and researchers with a background in Computer Science, AI, or Machine Learning. It navigates through a detailed case study in data-driven methods for development and evaluation of spoken dialogue systems. Common challenges associated with this approach are discussed and example solutions are provided. This work provides insights, lessons, and inspiration for future research and development - not only for spoken dialogue systems in particular, but for data-driven approaches to human-machine interaction in general.

This thesis lays the groundwork for the automatic supervision of the laser incision process, which aims to complement surgeons' perception of the state of tissues and enhance their control over laser incisions. The research problem is formulated as the estimation of variables that are representative of the state of tissues during laser cutting. Prior research in this area leveraged numerical computation methods that bear a high computational cost and are not straightforward to use in a surgical setting. This book proposes a novel solution to this problem, using models inspired by the ability of experienced surgeons to perform precise and clean laser cutting. It shows that these new models, which were extracted from experimental data using statistical learning techniques, are straightforward to use in a surgical setup, allowing greater precision in laser-based surgical procedures.

This book explores coordination within and between teams in the context of large-scale agile software development, providing readers a deeper understanding of how coordinated action between teams is achieved in multiteam systems. An exploratory multiple case study with five multiteam systems and a total of 66 interviewees from development teams at SAP SE is presented and analyzed. In addition, the book explores stereotypes of coordination in large-scale agile settings and shares new perspectives on integrating conditions for coordination. No previous study has researched this topic with a similar data set, consisting of insights from professional software development teams. As such, the book will be of interest to all researchers and practitioners whose work involves software product development across several teams.

With the growth of public and private data stores and the emergence of off-the-shelf data-mining technology, recommendation systems have emerged that specifically address the unique challenges of navigating and interpreting software engineering data.

This book collects, structures and formalizes knowledge on recommendation systems in software engineering. It adopts a pragmatic approach with an explicit focus on system design, implementation, and evaluation. The book is divided into three parts: "Part I - Techniques" introduces basics for building recommenders in software engineering, including techniques for collecting and processing software engineering data, but also for presenting recommendations to users as part of their workflow."Part II - Evaluation" summarizes methods and experimental designs for evaluating recommendations in software engineering."Part III - Applications" describes needs, issues and solution concepts involved in entire recommendation systems for specific software engineering tasks, focusing on the engineering insights required to make effective recommendations. The book is complemented by the webpage rsse.org/book, which includes free supplemental materials for readers of this book and anyone interested in recommendation systems in software engineering, including lecture slides, data sets, source code, and an overview of people, groups, papers and tools with regard to recommendation systems in software engineering.

The book is particularly well-suited for graduate students and researchers building new recommendation systems for software engineering applications or in other high-tech fields. It may also serve as the basis for graduate courses on recommendation systems, applied data mining or software engineering. Software engineering practitioners developing recommendation systems or similar applications with predictive functionality will also benefit from the broad spectrum of topics covered."