Written and oral second language pedagogy have undergone a major shift from the traditional focus on form and end-product to a focus on the process of creating meaning. However, recent research indicates that a reliance on process alone is insufficient, and that specific linguistic and knowledge-related demands must be made within a process if second language learners are to develop proficiency in oral and written expository discourse. Interactive decision-making activities in the classroom may present such demands, but the pre-constructed, somewhat artificial tasks typically included in adult ESL classes are generally directed toward the limited goal of stimulating more talk, without verifying their value for generating the language that is cognitively linked to decision-making. While collaborative revision of compositions has been used to aid decision-making during writing, its potential as a language learning activity has not previously been explored. The current study examines collaborative revision of compositions as a tool for eliciting oral decision-making language in the ESL classroom. Eight adult ESL students participated in two collaborative composition-related tasks and two interactive "constructed decision" activities. Using repeated measures ANOVA, the composition related activities were found to be at least as effective as the constructed decision activities for eliciting decision-making language as measured by five categories of decision-making moves. Qualitative examination of the discourse indicated that the composition activities also offer a context for conscious reinforcement of principles of grammar and rhetoric. The present results indicate that this activity may offer a natural alternative to pre-constructed decision-making tasks, and in doing so provides a context for the integration of oral and written language learning. In addition, by evaluating the discourse of activities in language terms, this research may help provide a bridge between processes and products not only for writing but for communicative language teaching. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Real-time conferencing and collaborative computing is a great way to make developers more effective. This project is a collaborative framework development comprising configurable client and server components.

A novel approach was used to investigate differences between groups using computer-mediated and face-to-face communication. In a laboratory setting, three-person groups completed three survival themed tasks. The tasks were related in that the output of a preliminary task became the input of the sequent task.

Challenges in global politics like climate change, maritime piracy and fighting highly contagious diseases concern global public goods. The related policy decisions are mostly made by teams. In contrast, economic models of global public goods typically assume a single rational decision-maker. We use a laboratory experiment to compare team decisions to decisions of individuals in a finitely repeated public good game with and without a costly punishment option. Teams of three participants coordinate on decisions either by majority or unanimity rule. We find that in absence of a punishment option teams contribute more to the public good than individuals. With a punishment option subsequently to the contribution decision team treatments exhibit a less frequent use of anti-social punishment and lower levels of social as well as anti-social punishment. Extreme preferences for punishment are eliminated by the majority decision rule. Overall, team decisions are closer to the social optimum and teams yield higher net payoffs when compared to individuals.

Challenges addressed in global politics, such as climate change, maritime piracy and fighting highly contagious diseases, concern global public goods. The related policy decisions are primarily made by teams. In contrast, economic models of global public goods typically assume a single rational decision maker. We use a laboratory experiment to compare team decisions to the decisions of individuals in a finitely repeated public goods game with and without a costly punishment option. Teams of three participants coordinate on decisions either by majority or unanimity rule. We find that, in the absence of a punishment option, teams deciding by the unanimity rule contribute slightly more than individuals. With the punishment option, unanimity teams choose significantly lower levels of punishment and exhibit anti-social punishment less frequently than individuals. A possible explanation is the elimination of extreme preferences for punishment through the coordination process in teams.

Since the inception of AI research, great strides have been made towards achieving the goal of extending natural language conversation as a medium of interaction with machines. Today, we find many Conversational Agents (CAs) situated in various aspects of our everyday life such as information access, education and entertainment. However, most of the existing work on CAs has focused on agents that support only one user in each interactive session. On the other hand, people organize themselves in groups such as teams of co-workers, family and networks of friends. With the mass-adoption of Internet based communication technologies for group interaction, there is an unprecedented opportunity for CAs to support interactive situations involving multiple human participants. Support provided by these CAs can make the functioning of some of these groups more efficient, enjoyable and rewarding to the participants. Through our work on supporting various Multi-Party Interactive Situations (MPIS), we have identified two problems that must be addressed in order to embed effective CAs in such situations. The first problem highlights the technical challenges involving the development of CAs in MPIS. Existing approaches for modeling agent behavior make assumptions that break down in multi-party interaction. As a step towards addressing this problem, this thesis contributes the Basilica software architecture that uses an event-driven approach to model conversation as an orchestration of triggering of conversational behaviors. This architecture alleviates the technical problems by providing a rich representational capability and the flexibility to address complex interaction dynamics. The second problem involves the choice of appropriate agent behaviors. In MPIS, agents must compete with human participants for attention in order to effectively deliver support and interventions. In this work, we follow a model of human group interaction developed by empirical research in small group communication. This model identifies two fundamental processes in human group interaction, i.e., Instrumental (Task-related) and Expressive (Social-Emotional). Behaviors that constitute this expressive process hold the key to managing and regulating user attention and serve other social functions in group interaction. This thesis describes two socially capable conversational agents that support users in collaborative learning and group decision making activities. Their social capabilities are composed of a set of behaviors based on the Social-Emotional interaction categories identified by work in small group communication. These agents demonstrate the generalizability of our methodology for designing and implementing social capabilities across two very different interactive situations. In addition to the implementation of these agents, the thesis presents a series of experiments and analysis conducted to investigate the effectiveness of these social capabilities. First and foremost, these experiments show significant benefits of the use of socially capable agents on task success and agent perception across the two different interactive situations listed above. Second, they investigate issues related to the appropriate use of these social capabilities specifically in terms of the amount and timing of the constituent social behaviors. Finally, these experiments provide an understanding of the underlying mechanism that explains the effects that social capabilities can achieve.

In Hidden Profiles gelingt es Gruppen häufig nicht, ihr Potenzial, bessere Entscheidungen als jedes ihrer Mitglieder zu treffen, zu erfüllen. Für dieses Phänomen wurden bereits verschiedene Ursachen ermittelt. Dazu gehören insbesondere Verzerrungen im Inhalt der Gruppendiskussion sowie der Bewertung von entscheidungsrelevanten Informationen durch die Gruppenmitglieder. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird nun ein weiterer Aspekt individueller Informationsverarbeitung untersucht, dessen Verzerrung einen nachteiligen Einfluss auf die Entscheidungsqualität von Diskussionsgruppen haben könnte: der individuelle Recall bezüglich aufgabenrelevanter Informationen. Dabei werden zwei Verzerrungen postuliert: Ein Erinnerungsvorteil von Informationen, welche die ursprüngliche Präferenz des jeweiligen Gruppenmitglieds unterstützen sowie eine Verzerrung zugunsten von Informationen, die bereits vor der Diskussion verfügbar sind. Es wird angenommen, dass beide Verzerrungen einen negativen Einfluss auf die Entscheidungsqualität des Individuums und somit auch der gesamten Gruppe haben. Diese Annahmen wurden in einer Reihe von vier Experimenten und der Reanalyse zweier früherer Studien untersucht. Insgesamt wurde dabei Evidenz für einen Erinnerungsvorteil eigener, vor der Diskussion bekannter Informationen gegenüber in der Diskussion neu gelernten Informationen gefunden. Belege für einen Erinnerungsvorteil präferenzkonsistenter Informationen zeigten sich dagegen nur vereinzelt und in einer metaanalytischen Zusammenfassung nicht in signifikantem Maße. Eine experimentelle Manipulation der Erinnerungsverzerrungen liefert keinen Hinweis auf einen Zusammenhang zwischen diesen Faktoren und der Entscheidungsqualität in Hidden-Profile- Situationen. Eine Verzerrung der individuellen Erinnerung im Hinblick auf entscheidungsrelevante Informationen ist somit nach den Ergebnissen dieser Arbeit keine sinnvolle Erweiterung der bestehenden Erklärungsansätze für das Scheitern von Entscheidungsgruppen an der Realisierung von Synergien.

Diese Dissertation untersucht aus der Perspektive der ökologischen Rationalität (ÖR) die Frage, wie Menschen Entscheidungen in sozialen Kontexten treffen, z.B. in Gruppen oder mit Hilfe von Ratschlägen. Zentral waren die Fragen, wie und welche Umweltfaktoren die Verwendung und Güte von verschiedenen Entscheidungsstrategien beeinflussen. Ziel war es, den Forschungsrahmen der ÖR mit der Gruppenforschung und Literatur zum Thema Ratgeben zu verknüpfen, um für die jeweiligen Forschungsstränge neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen. Im ersten Projekt wurden die Leistungen von Einzelpersonen und Zweiergruppen in einer Strategielernaufgabe miteinander verglichen. Aufgabe war es, mit Hilfe von Feedback, die Strategie zu lernen, die adaptiv in Bezug auf die Struktur der Umwelt war. Dabei war es entweder adaptiv, auf den besten diskriminierenden Cue zu setzen und die weniger validen Informationen zu ignorieren (take-the-best), oder aber alle vorhandenen Informationen zu verrechnen (weighted additive). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl Einzelpersonen als auch Gruppen die jeweils beste Strategie erlernten, wobei Gruppen einen schnelleren Lernerfolg zeigten, wenn take-the-best adaptiv war. Das zweite Projekt untersuchte, ob Gruppen Entscheidungsstrategien verwenden, die auf ihre Zusammensetzung hinsichtlich aufgabenrelevanter Faktoren abgestimmt sind. Ergebnisse eines Experiments, in dem 3-Personen-Gruppen eine Paarvergleichsaufgabe bearbeiteten, zeigten, dass Gruppen dazu in der Lage sind, den Strategien zu folgen, die am erfolgversprechendsten sind. Das dritte Projekt untersuchte den Einfluss von Aufgabenschwierigkeit auf die Güte und Verwendung von zwei häufig verwendeten Strategien (mitteln und auswählen) zur Integration von Ratschlägen. Wahrgenommene Aufgabenschwierigkeit schlug sich in verschiedenen statistischen Merkmalen der Umweltstruktur nieder, was wiederum die potentielle Güte der Strategien. Zudem stimmten Personen ihre Strategien auf die Aufgabenschwierigkeit ab. / This dissertation is an investigation from an ecological rationality (ER) perspective of how people make decisions in social contexts, for example, when people collectively make decisions in small groups or with the help of another person’s advice. Of particular interest were the questions of what and how environmental factors influence the use and performance of different decision strategies. The studies thus were aimed at linking the framework of ER with research on group decision making and advice taking, respectively, in order to derive new insights for the related research streams. A first project compared the performances of individuals and two-person groups in a strategy-learning task. The task was to learn with the help of feedback the most adaptive strategy for a given task environment. One environment favored take-the-best (i.e., the strategy to rely on the best discriminating cue and ignore the rest); the second environment favored the weighted additive strategy, which weights and adds all available cues. Results show that individuals and dyads learned to select the most appropriate strategy over time, with a steeper learning rate in dyads when take-the-best was adaptive. A second project investigated whether small groups apply decision strategies conditional on the group’s composition in terms of task-relevant features. Results of an experiment with three-member groups working on a paired-comparison task support the hypothesis that groups indeed adaptively apply the strategy that leads to the highest theoretically achievable performance. A third project investigated the impact of perceived task difficulty on the performance and use of choosing and averaging, two prominent advice-taking strategies. Perceived task difficulty was reflected in the statistical properties of the environment, which, in turn, determined the theoretical accuracy of choosing and averaging. Further, people were found to adaptively use the strategies in different task environments.

Para auxiliar os gestores das organizações em seu processo decisório, o emprego de métodos de apoio à tomada de decisão é utilizado desde o século passado, a partir da década de 1950, havendo forte ênfase nas questões econômico-financeiras e operacionais das alternativas. Atualmente, o uso de métodos que consideram as questões relativas à sustentabilidade ambiental das alternativas é um assunto que tem despertado interesse, conforme se observa na literatura recente, ainda que relativamente escassa. Contudo, a práxis da maioria dos métodos multicritério existentes tem embasamento no tomador de decisão como um indivíduo ao invés de um grupo e a ampla diferença entre o comportamento de um indivíduo e de um grupo é negligenciado. Neste novo tipo de abordagem, soluções para resolver os conflitos que inevitavelmente surgem da necessidade de atender os diferentes critérios dos agentes envolvidos devem ser propostas. Para estes casos, a Teoria dos Jogos é reconhecidamente uma abordagem que permite a resolução de conflitos por meio da avaliação de diferentes cenários com diferentes alternativas. Neste sentido, a presente pesquisa apresenta um método multicriterial, baseado em indicadores de sustentabilidade em conjunto com a Teoria dos Jogos e o equilíbrio de Nash, para que seja uma das ferramentas de apoio na escolha do sistema de tratamento de esgoto sanitário para municípios. Para tornar possível a metodologia proposta, indicadores de sustentabilidade foram selecionados para serem usados como critérios na avaliação de alternativas de sistema de tratamento de esgoto. Além disto, vetores de pesos para os critérios foram definidos para representar perfis de jogadores. A partir disto, foi proposta uma função de pagamentos e um exemplo foi gerado a partir da definição do jogo e seus jogadores, tendo sido o software Gambit utilizado para encontrar o equilíbrio de Nash do jogo. Como resultado, a aplicação da metodologia proposta permite tratar o processo de escolha de ETE como um processo de escolha em grupo, ao invés de uma escolha individual, e visa contribuir para quebrar o paradigma da busca pela eficiência baseada nos critérios formados pelo binômio técnico e econômico na escolha de sistemas de tratamento de esgoto. Desta forma, a aplicação do novo método visa proporcionar meios para se enxergar o mesmo problema sobre diferentes focos e, com a utilização de diferentes critérios, poderia facilitar o processo da tomada de decisão para a escolha da alternativa técnica, econômica, ambiental e socialmente mais adequada. / To assist the managers of organizations in their decision making, the use of methods to support the decision are used since the last century, from the 1950s, with a strong emphasis on economic issues, financial and operational details of the treatment plants sewage. Currently, the use of methods to consider issues relating to the environmental sustainability of wastewater treatment plants is a subject that has attracted attention, as shown in recent studies, although relatively scarce. However, the practice of most existing methods are based on multicriteria decision-maker as an individual instead of a group and the wide difference between the behavior of an individual and a group is neglected. In this new approach, solutions to resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise from the need to meet the various criteria of the parties involved must be proposed. For these cases, game theory is admittedly an approach that allows the resolution of conflicts through the evaluation of different scenarios with different alternatives. With this research we sought to develop a measurement methodology based on indicators of sustainability in conjunction with game theory and Nash equilibrium, that is one of tools to support the choice of system of sewage treatment for a particular municipality . For the proposed new methodology, sustainability indicators were selected to be used as criteria in the evaluation of alternative system of sewage treatment and weight vectors for the criteria were defined as profiles of players. From this, we choose a function of reward and an example was generated from the definition of the game and its players, the software Gambit was used to find the Nash equilibrium of the game. The proposed methodology allows us to treat the process of choosing ETE as a selection process in group, rather than an individual choice, and aims to deconstruct the paradigm of the quest for efficiency based on criteria formed the duo in the technical and economic choice of systems for wastewater treatment. Thus, applying the new method aims at providing means to see the same problem on different sides, and with the use of different criteria, could facilitate the process of decision making for the choice of alternative technical, economic, environmental and socially suitable.

<p>Сложеност процеса доношења одлука у водопривреди лежи у чињеници да су проблеми који се решавају често слабо структурирани, због чега је неопходно њихово учвршћивање хеуристичким техникама до нивоа када се проблем може решити применом математичких модела вишекритеријумске оптимизације и анализе.<br />Групно доношење одлука у водопривреди није новост у свету, али коначнаг одређења методологије у овој области још увек нема. Постојање конфликата између различитих страна, заинтересованих за проблематику водопривреде, између врста коришћења вода, као и самих корисника вода указује на сложеност проблемтике. Сложеност увећава постојање великог броја алтернатива, које треба вредновати према великом броју критеријума.<br />Методологија избора учесника у доношењу одлука у водопривреди и одређивања њихових међусобних значаја, који је предложена у дисертацији, заснована је на коришћењу техника стратегијског менаџмента, прогностичких метода, гласачких метода, метода вишекритеријумске анализе и оптимизације и ГИС технологијама.<br />Досадашњи систем управљања водним ресурсима у Србији има слабости јер није у довољној мери заснован на корисничким захтевима, а свака промена захтева обично доводи до дуготрајне процедуре за измену статуса корисника, или измену квалитативних и квантитативних захтева у односу на водне ресурсе.<br />Развијени партиципативни модел, који подрзумева дефинисање конзистентног поступка за избор учесника у процесу управљања сливом, као и одређивање њихових међусобних односа и значаја, у садашњим условима и условима пуне изграђености Регионалног хидросистема демонстриран је на примеру слива реке Криваје.<br />Слив Криваје одабран је због вишеструке сложености водопривредне проблематике, јер је вишенаменски, вишекориснички, са поделама надлежности, како локалних самоуправа, тако и водопривредне делатности. Такође, Криваја је прекогранични водоток, што проблематику усложњава и у међудржавном, ресурсном, економском и политичком смислу. Методологија приказана у дисертацији примењива је и на друге сливове, &#39;оптерећене&#39; вишенаманским, вишекорисничким конфликтима, као и конфликтима надлежности.<br />Основна карактеристика модела је конзистентна структуираност, модул консензусног одлучивања у конфликтним и хазардним условима и употреба савремених математичко-компјутерских метода и модела и информационих технологија који, поред осталог, синергијски указују на доминантне учеснике у процесу одлучивања.</p> / <p>Složenost procesa donošenja odluka u vodoprivredi leži u činjenici da su problemi koji se rešavaju često slabo strukturirani, zbog čega je neophodno njihovo učvršćivanje heurističkim tehnikama do nivoa kada se problem može rešiti primenom matematičkih modela višekriterijumske optimizacije i analize.<br />Grupno donošenje odluka u vodoprivredi nije novost u svetu, ali konačnag određenja metodologije u ovoj oblasti još uvek nema. Postojanje konflikata između različitih strana, zainteresovanih za problematiku vodoprivrede, između vrsta korišćenja voda, kao i samih korisnika voda ukazuje na složenost problemtike. Složenost uvećava postojanje velikog broja alternativa, koje treba vrednovati prema velikom broju kriterijuma.<br />Metodologija izbora učesnika u donošenju odluka u vodoprivredi i određivanja njihovih međusobnih značaja, koji je predložena u disertaciji, zasnovana je na korišćenju tehnika strategijskog menadžmenta, prognostičkih metoda, glasačkih metoda, metoda višekriterijumske analize i optimizacije i GIS tehnologijama.<br />Dosadašnji sistem upravljanja vodnim resursima u Srbiji ima slabosti jer nije u dovoljnoj meri zasnovan na korisničkim zahtevima, a svaka promena zahteva obično dovodi do dugotrajne procedure za izmenu statusa korisnika, ili izmenu kvalitativnih i kvantitativnih zahteva u odnosu na vodne resurse.<br />Razvijeni participativni model, koji podrzumeva definisanje konzistentnog postupka za izbor učesnika u procesu upravljanja slivom, kao i određivanje njihovih međusobnih odnosa i značaja, u sadašnjim uslovima i uslovima pune izgrađenosti Regionalnog hidrosistema demonstriran je na primeru sliva reke Krivaje.<br />Sliv Krivaje odabran je zbog višestruke složenosti vodoprivredne problematike, jer je višenamenski, višekorisnički, sa podelama nadležnosti, kako lokalnih samouprava, tako i vodoprivredne delatnosti. Takođe, Krivaja je prekogranični vodotok, što problematiku usložnjava i u međudržavnom, resursnom, ekonomskom i političkom smislu. Metodologija prikazana u disertaciji primenjiva je i na druge slivove, &#39;opterećene&#39; višenamanskim, višekorisničkim konfliktima, kao i konfliktima nadležnosti.<br />Osnovna karakteristika modela je konzistentna struktuiranost, modul konsenzusnog odlučivanja u konfliktnim i hazardnim uslovima i upotreba savremenih matematičko-kompjuterskih metoda i modela i informacionih tehnologija koji, pored ostalog, sinergijski ukazuju na dominantne učesnike u procesu odlučivanja.</p> / <p>The complexity of the decision-making process in water management lies in the fact that problems, to be solved, are often poorly structured, making it necessary to strenghten them by heuristic techniques to the level where problem can be solved by using mathematical models of multi-criteria optimization and analysis.<br />Group decision-making in water management is not unknown, but the final determination of methodology in this area is still missing.<br />The existence of conflicts between the various parties interested in the issue of water management, between a type of water use and water users themselves, indicates the complexity of the problems. The complexity increases the presence of a large number of alternatives that must be evaluated against a number of criteria.<br />The methodology of selection of participants in decision-making in water management and determining their mutual importance; importance of each one among the others; importance of each of them among the group; importance of each of participants, which is presented in the dissertation, is based on the use of techniques of strategic management, forecasting methods, the voting methods, multi-criteria analysis and optimization, and GIS technologies.<br />The current system of water resources management in Serbia has a weakness because it is not sufficiently based on user requirements, and any requirement&rsquo;s change usually leads to time-consuming procedures for changing the status of users, or alteration of qualitative and quantitative requirements in relation to water resources.<br />Developed participatory model, which implies defining a consistent procedure for the selection of participants in the river basin management, as well as determining their relationships and importance in current terms and conditions of the full construction of the Regional hydro system, has been demonstrated on the example of the basin of the Krivaja river.<br />Confluence Krivaja has been chosen because of multiple complexities of water management issues, its multipurpose, multi-user, the division of responsibilities among local self-governments, as well as water management work. Also, Krivaja is cross-border watercourse, which complicates the issue in the interstate, resource, economic and political sense. The methodology presented in the dissertation is also applicable to other basins &#39;loaded&#39; by multipurpose and multi-user conflicts, as well as conflicts of jurisdiction.<br />The basic characteristic of the model is consistent structure, the module of consensual decision-making in conflict and hazardous conditions, and the use of modern mathematical-computerized methods and models, as well as information technologies which, among other things, the synergistic indicate the dominant participants in the decision-making process.</p>