Throughout the life-cycle of a design project, architects rely heavily on their tacit design knowledge to support design decisions. Tacit knowledge is highly personal and implicit. As such, it encompasses expertise, intuitive understanding, and professional insight formed as a result of experience. Due to its implicit nature, tacit design knowledge is typically shared only among colleagues who work in the same office through face-toface interactions. With emerging Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies, designers face new opportunities for capturing and reusing tacit design knowledge. However, there is no accepted CMC strategy for sharing tacit design knowledge in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. This research investigates the impact of tacit design knowledge on design performance in a distributed design environment supported by CMC software. The software was developed and tested in three design studios in which design students sought advice from experts in remote locations. It provides tools for showing images, such as drawings and renderings, and for engaging in a written dialogue (chat session). The written and graphic artifacts of the conversation are stored in a Web-accessible database. The chat sessions included the identification, clarification, and explanation of real problems. Dialogue records provide evidence of a significant influence upon the students’ approach to conceptual design. Content analysis of the comments from the experts provides qualitative evidence for the software’s effectiveness. The participants shared past experience, professional recommendations, and intuitive expectations. In follow-up surveys, most participants reported that their experience with the software was very enjoyable and the software is well-designed to support sharing of design knowledge. This research also suggests that tacit design knowledge may be confidently captured and shared through careful strategic implementation of CMC technology in a distributed design environment. Demographic and attitudinal surveys of the participants suggest that enabling factors for sharing tacit design knowledge include knowledge sharing attitude, just-in-time expertise matching, and timing of the communication.

<p>This essay investigates cases of Swedish-English code-switching in a bilingual discussion forum on the Internet. Code-switching is a linguistic term used to describe switches from one language to another in discourse. The material consists of excerpts from the forum which have been analyzed and presents various cases of code-switching which appeared in the forum. The examples from the forum presented in this essay are chosen due to their relevance to code-switching and bilingualism. The examples were analyzed according to Romaine’s (1989) and Klintborg’s (1999) classifications of code-switching.</p><p>The research questions sought to find out if, how and why the bilingual users in this forum code-switch when communicating. The results proved that the bilingual users do code-switch, and that the most common switch is the insertion of one word, or several words, in another language into an otherwise monolingual sentence. The discussion part also consists of a summary of the switches in the forum.</p><p>The conclusion of the study is that code-switching does exist in this forum, and the participants code-switch in different ways, however mainly to show hospitality and to signal a belonging to the group.</p>

This Report addresses the importance of intercultural communicative competence among foreign language learners and the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology to achieve this goal in the classroom. CMC technology provides learners a unique opportunity to interact with students of different cultures, a situation that allows for experiential learning to occur and which has been shown to lead to gains in intercultural communicative competence. The work begins with a definition of culture and intercultural communicative competence, followed by a review of general approaches used to facilitate such competence in students, and finally a review of the literature on the positive and negative aspects of using CMC for cross-cultural learning. As the aim of this work is to offer teachers a resource and guidance for implementing intercultural exchanges via the use of CMC tools, the Report concludes with suggestions on best practices for using CMC in the foreign language classroom. / text

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been shown to facilitate positive outcomes in language learning environments, including greater motivation, positive attitudes, and increased interactive quantity and quality of language use. This study posits that CMC can serve as an affordance that allows for increased opportunities for deaf students to engage in direct, collaborative learning and meaningful interaction in English that then allows for increased motivation, improved visualizations of the self, attitudes, and self-efficacy in English language learning. Changes in these outcomes due to the intervention of CMC in college English classes designed for the deaf student will be assessed with pre- and post-tests, using hierarchical linear modeling as a statistical methodology to capture class effects. Qualitative analyses will also capture greater levels of complexity in instructor and student experiences with CMC through interviews, observations, and transcript analysis. This report also includes an evaluation plan with an outline of the essential program components, a logic model, and analysis plan based on stakeholder questions. / text

This study seeks to investigate this core research topic: how identity is involved in everyday interactions between Chinese microblogging website users? By understanding identity as an element in the interaction context of discursive practices, the investigation is achieved through the analysis of naturally occurring text-based online data. Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) are used to do the analysis. The former will focus on the interaction structure while the latter will be used to make some of the contents in the interactions relevant. This study seeks to make the “orderliness” (Sacks, 1972) and “members’ methods” (Garfinkel, 1967) under a particular context describable and analyzable. The sequential and categorical organization described in this study shows how members are oriented to identities in the in situ context when they exchange their ideas on a sensitive topic, and on a microblogging website. / text

This article looks into accounts of the computer mediated discourse medium of instant messaging programs. Previous accounts have compared communication within this medium either to solely written or to solely spoken language, thus neglecting its relationship to both or to the constraints generated specifically by the medium. Such accounts have therefore, often come to erroneously alarming conclusions. This article lays out an argument for the treatment of computer mediated communication through instant messaging programs as the beginnings of a set of new registers. / text

Email, chat, instant messaging, blogs, and newsgroups are now common ways for people to interact. Along with these new ways for sending, receiving, and storing messages comes the challenge of organizing, filtering, and understanding them, for which text mining has been shown to be useful. Additionally, it has done so using both content-dependent and content-independent methods.Unfortunately, computer-mediated communication has also provided criminals, terrorists, spies, and other threats to security a means of efficient communication. However, the often textual encoding of these communications may also provide for the possibility of detecting and tracking those who are deceptive. Two methods for organizing, filtering, understanding, and detecting deception in text-based computer-mediated communication are presented.First, message feature mining uses message features or cues in CMC messages combined with machine learning techniques to classify messages according to the sender's intent. The method utilizes common classification methods coupled with linguistic analysis of messages for extraction of a number of content-independent input features. A study using message feature mining to classify deceptive and non-deceptive email messages attained classification accuracy between 60\% and 80\%.Second, speech act profiling is a method for evaluating and visualizing synchronous CMC by creating profiles of conversations and their participants using speech act theory and probabilistic classification methods. Transcripts from a large corpus of speech act annotated conversations are used to train language models and a modified hidden Markov model (HMM) to obtain probable speech acts for sentences, which are aggregated for each conversation participant creating a set of speech act profiles. Three studies for validating the profiles are detailed as well as two studies showing speech act profiling's ability to uncover uncertainty related to deception.The methods introduced here are two content-independent methods that represent a possible new direction in text analysis. Both have possible applications outside the context of deception. In addition to aiding deception detection, these methods may also be applicable in information retrieval, technical support training, GSS facilitation support, transportation security, and information assurance.

Interaction, particularly learner-learner interaction, needs to be cultivated in online classes in order for students to have a satisfying learning experience. This study considered two graduate level online classes in an effort to determine: 1) is cognitive style related to the quantity of learner-learner interaction in online courses, 2) is there a relationship between learner characteristics and learner posting preferences in learner-learner interaction in online courses, 3) how do selected learners differ in their use of interaction elements during online discussion, and 4) how do selected learners perceive their experiences in online courses. Using the Student Demographic Questionnaire, the Group Embedded Figures Test, the Text Analysis Tool, and an Interview Protocol developed by the researcher, the study was conducted with a mixed method design. Learner-learner interaction was considered in terms of the students' contributions to the FirstClass discussion activities that were completed as part of the course requirements. This study found that: a) there is not a correlation between cognitive style and quantity of learner-learner interaction, b) some learner characteristics do influence learner posting preferences, c) interaction elements during online discussion do not indicate the content of discussion, but do somewhat indicate how the discussion is taking place, and d) students have opinions on how their experiences in online courses should impact online course design, particularly in terms of knowing the learner and communication. Knowing the learner was discussed in terms of time management, motivation, and differences among learners. Communication was discussed in terms of spontaneity, isolation, freedom, and accountability. Course design was discussed in terms of flexibility, organization, accountability, and technology. The results of this study have implications regarding online course design and recommendations for future research.

This study investigated how EFL learners managed their real time interaction in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) environment called Schmooze University MOO. Fourteen undergraduates enrolled at two universities in Tokyo took part in weekly text chat sessions over a semester. Four task types were implemented; information-gap, jigsaw, decision-making and opinion-exchange. Qualitative data such as transcripts, field notes and questionnaires were analyzed within the framework of a case study. Findings indicated that the subjects actively managed their interaction, monitored their linguistic output, supported each other and exercised autonomy. Analysis of the transcripts revealed that the subjects consistently produced coherent target language output focused on the tasks, while at the same time, overcoming the challenge of communicating effectively in a new online environment. They achieved this considerable feat in part, by utilizing features of the environment designed to facilitate interaction. Moreover, they utilized a mix of transactional and interactional discourse management strategies that have been identified in the literature on native speaker interaction in real time CMC. Transactional strategies identified in the data were addressivity, time saving and feedback. Interactional strategies were the use of pseudonyms, positive and negative politeness, greetings, leave-takings and off-task discussion. These strategies enabled the subjects to track turns, provide feedback and build the social cohesion necessary for sustained communication in online environments. The analysis showed that as the project progressed, the subjects utilized a greater number and wider range of strategies than in the earlier sessions. The majority of these appeared the result of transfer from conventional forms of communication. However, others were adaptive and appropriate to the online nature of the interaction. These strategies that have not been reported in the literature on learner-learner interaction in CMC, were use of the to command, split turns, suspension dots, quotation and omission. The appearance of these medium induced strategies highlights the subjectsʼ increasingly sophisticated and successful attempts to deal with real time computer-based nature of the interaction. Analysis of the data further revealed that when communication problems arose the subjects overcome them by utilizing communication strategies involved in negotiation of meaning. The most frequent strategies identified in the data were definition and clarification requests followed by self-, other-initiated correction and non-response. The subjects also made limited use of confirmation and comprehension checks. These strategies were more frequent in the jigsaw tasks than in the other task types. The data showed that learner-learner negotiation in this type of CMC broadly follows the model proposed for face-to-face interaction in conventional classrooms. However, analysis indicated that the interplay of proficiency levels, task, the computer-based nature of the interaction and sociocultural concerns appeared to influence the frequency of negotiation.

This thesis focuses on systems for mediated communication that run on mobile technology. The aim has been to give an answer to the question about what require- ments there are for situation awareness for domain experts when communication is secondary and supports the primary task. This thesis originated in a critical approach to the common practice of design- ing mediated communication systems with the face-to-face meeting as a guiding scenario. Instead, this thesis explores a design process that is based on the task and the strength of the technology itself. Different tasks do, of course, make different de- mands on a system, and a task that is strongly connected to the face-to-face meeting will probably be best served by a system that is designed from that perspective. Three cases that are presented in this thesis share three common themes that have characteristics that set them apart from the face-to-face meeting. The first theme is that the communication is a secondary task that is used to support a primary task. The second theme is that the cases involve domain experts active in the primary task. The use of experts implies that communication will be task- centered and also that the need for information to sustain a valuable situation awareness may be different from a person with less experience in the domain. The third theme is that all cases and the corresponding tasks benefit from some kind of situation awareness among the participants for optimal execution of the task. The three cases are based on: Wearable computers using mediated communication with wearable computers and how to handle interruptions for users of such computers Multidisciplinary team meetings improving access to patient information and enabling individual and group interaction with this information Trauma resuscitation giving a remote trauma expert’s correct and valuable in- formation while minimizing disturbance when supporting a local trauma re- suscitation team Prototypes are central in all three cases, and different prototypes have been designed and evaluated to validate the benefit of designing tools for communication that do not try to replicate the face-to-face meeting. The main findings in this thesis show that the shift of focus to the primary task when designing mediated communication systems has been beneficial in all three cases. A conflict between the secondary communication that is used to support sit- uation awareness and the primary task has been identified. Full situation awareness should therefore not be a goal in these designs but communication should support enough situation awareness to benefit the primary task with minimal disturbance to it. / <p>QC 20140221</p>