<p><p>Internet is used today as a traditional medium for information exchange and social interaction. One of these is virtual meeting places where people meet and exchange information, socialize and exchange knowledge with each other. The group has chosen to examine the factors affecting the use of web forums, one of the virtual meeting places that exist on the Internet today. And look at how people use the web forum today in the current situation and how to design a web forum.</p><p>A survey was conducted to find out how people look at web forums today, 80 people participated, and they got to talk about what they think about different web forums regarding how and why the use these them. Guidelines on how a web forum should be designed were also developed. An interview was also carried out to a specific audience to see if there were special needs and interests that they had, so that we could take that into account in the development of the guidelines that are to be used in the design for this web forum. The group carried out a user tests on a mockup designed to investigate how people would respond and use the web forums of different age groups.</p><p>The results showed that many users of web forums today are different between users, depending on gender and age. The use of various web forums depends on that they have different needs and interests. This dose so the layout of the web forum must be directed so as to be adapted for any specific audience. Mainly people used web forums as an information source where you can find answers and ask questions to others. Two factors must be fulfilled for a page to be able to grow, and that is trust and credibility. This can be fulfilled by its members if they can create an identity for them self in the virtual meeting place. It is also important for lurkers on a virtual meeting place that they show commitment, support and encourage members to be active participant. The lurker’s role is an important one when the site goes throw its state of maturity and growth.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Web Forum, virtual meeting places, user study.</p></p>

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Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001.

QC 20100622

Distributed programming is usually considered both difficult and inherently different from concurrent centralized programming. It is thought that the distributed programming systems that we ultimately deploy, in the future, when we've worked out all the details, will require a very different programming model and will even need to be evaluated by new criteria. The Mozart Programming System, described in this thesis, demonstrates that this need not be the case. It is shown that, with a good system design, distributed programming can be seen as an extended form of concurrent programming. This is from the programmer's point-of-view; under the hood the design and implementation will necessarily be more complex. We relate the Mozart system with the classical transparencies of distributed systems. We show that some of these are inherently on the application level, while as Mozart demonstrates, others can and should be dealt with on the language/system level. The extensions to the programming model, given the right concurrent programming base, are mainly concerned with non-functional properties of programs. The models and tuning facilities for failure and performance need to take latency, bandwidth, and partial failure into account. Other than that there need not be any difference between concurrent programming and distributed programming. The Mozart Programming System is based on the concurrent programming language Oz, which integrates, in a coherent way, all three known concurrency or thread-interaction models. These are message-passing (like Erlang), shared objects (like Java with threads) and shared data-flow variables. The Mozart design philosophy is thus applicable over the entire range of concurrent programming languages/systems. We have extracted from the experience with Mozart a number of principles and properties that are applicable to the design and implementation of all (general-purpose) distributed programming systems. The full range of the design and implementation issues behind Mozart are presented. This includes a description of the consistency protocols that make transparency possible for the full language, including distributed objects and distributed data-flow variables. Mozart is extensively compared with other approaches to distributed programming, in general, and to other language-based distributed programming systems, in particular / QC 20100928

Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies

Vi undersöker genom denna uppsats i vilken grad ett informationssystem som utvecklats med ett användbarhetsperspektiv också uppnår handlingsbarhet. Då vi under vår utbildning blivit väl bevandrade i både användbarhet och handlingsbarhet, framförallt teoretiskt, så har det uppstått enfråga som vi vill behandla. Nämligen: leder systemutveckling utifrån ett användbarhetsperspektiv gärna till handlingsbara system? För att söka svar på denna fråga så är intervjuer av användare i ett egenutvecklat system samt observation av densamma det som utgör de empiriska erfarenheterna. Slutsatsen är att användbarhetsperspektivet inte i detta fall per automatik lett till en hög handlingsbarhet utan vi ser en tämligen låg handlingsbarhet trots att användbarheten är tydlig och rådande. Utvecklingen av systemet har skett med användarmedverkan och intervjuerna visar på att det mest är funktionalitetskrav där samråd varit gällande. Vi tror att samråd medanvändarna gällande gränssnittet leder till en högre användbarhet samt handlingsbarhet. Vi tror även att handlingsbarhet och användarmeverkan behöver vara starkt förknippade med varann, detta därför att användarna är de som förstår verksamheten och därmed ökar sannolikheten att uppfylla kriterierna för handlingsbara system.

This work offers a new paradigm for building intelligent software systems that facilitate on-line learning. The research investigated effects of adopting intelligent agent techniques to an on-line learning environment. KnowBots (or Knowledge Robots) are intelligent agents created specifically for this research. These KnowBots employed intelligent agent techniques to provide assistance to learners and facilitators who participated in a series of on-line workshops. The KnowBot architecture created was based on a study of repetitive tasks of human workshop facilitators. KnowBots automated and reduced the number of these routine tasks. The study specifically captured experimental results of using KnowBots in two sessions of the ALN on-line workshop, Getting Started Creating On-line Courses. Using two experimental groups, the effect of the use of KnowBots on workshop completion was examined as well as the effects of KnowBots on other factors such as facilitation time and learner satisfaction. The findings showed that intelligent agent technology holds promise for application to on-line learning and indicated that the use of KnowBots was positively associated with higher learner completion rates in the workshops. In addition, KnowBots implemented a learning-support tool that reminded learners about deadlines. The support KnowBots were found to be effective autonomous motivators. In sum, the results of this research suggest that the application of agent technology to on-line learning holds great promise.