Criação musical é considerada uma atividade individual realizada por músicos. Desde que a música tem servido como motivação natural para formação de comunidades, novas modalidades tem sido criadas por meio do uso da tecnologia e uma potencial convergência de atividades sociais e a criação musical é campo denominado Networked Music (música em rede), que permite que pessoas explorem as implicações da interconexão de seus computadores e compartilhem experiências musicais como atividades sociais através da música. Esta tese assume que um ambiente de música em rede, se projetado especificamente para isso, pode estimular formas sociais de criação musical, mesmo para usuários leigos em música - pessoas que não possuem conhecimento musical. O objetivo desta tese é investigar como a tecnologia musical pode proporcionar suporte adequado para criação musical e discutir como é possível eliminar obstáculos naturais para esta atividade, bem como definir requisitos orientados especificamente para leigos em música. Como resultado principal e ambiente para teste desta pesquisa, apresentar CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design - Projeto de Protótipos Musicais Cooperativos) - um ambiente baseado na Web, direcionado e projetado para suportar criação musical cooperativa por leigos em música. A natureza prototípica de CODES está projetada e contruída sob uma perspectiva orientada a leigos, para proporcionar-lhes condições para experimentação com música combinando, ouvindo e rearranjando padrões sonoros para criar peças musicais simples - chamadas Protótipos Musicais. Ainda, os usuários de CODES podem cooperar com parceiros num processo de criação de protótipos musicais cíclico e colaborativo (chamado Prototipação Musical Cooperativa ), usando mecanismos de percepção, argumentação e negociação personalizados para permitir que um estágio consensual final seja atingido. Ao longo deste volume, os principais conceitos, princípios, requisitos e características de CODES são apresentados e os detalhes do projeto, implementação e avaliação com usuários reais são descritos. / Music creation is considered as mostly a solitary activity performed by musicians. Since music has traditionally served as a natural motivation for community formation, new modalities have been created by means of use of technology, and one potential convergency of social activities and music making is the field of "Networked Music". It allows people to explore the implications of interconnecting their computers, and share musical experience as a social activity through music. This thesis assumes that a networked music environment - if specifically designed for that - can stimulate social ways of music creation, even by novices in music - people assumed to have no previous knowledge of music. The goal of this thesis is to investigate how networked music technology can provide adequate support for music creation, to discuss how it is possible to overcome a set of natural barriers, and to define requirements specifically oriented to users novices in music, and, as the main result and testbed of this research, to introduce CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design) - a Web-based novice-oriented environment designed to support cooperative music creation. The prototypical nature of CODES is designed and built in order to provide a novice-oriented perspective, as a novice may experiment with music by combining, listening and rearranging pre-defined sound patterns to create simple musical pieces - called Music Prototypes. Furthermore, CODES users may cooperate with partners in a cyclical and collaborative process of music prototypes creation - called Cooperative Music Prototyping, using customized awareness, argumentation, and negotiation mechanisms until a final consensual music prototype stage is reached. Throughout this volume, the main concepts, principles, requirements and characteristics of CODES are presented, and the details of design, implementation of CODES and its evaluation by actual users are described.

The amount of data that is available to us is ever increasing, and thus is the potential to extract information from it. Information visualization, which leverages our perceptual system to enable us to perceive patterns, outliers, trends and anomalies in large amounts of data, is an important technique for exploratory data analysis. As part of a flexible visual data analysis process, the user needs to construct and parametrize visualizations, which is challenging for novice users. In this thesis, I explore how information visualization novices can be supported in visualization construction. First, I identify existing visualization construction approaches in a systematic literature survey and examine their use cases. Second, I conduct a laboratory study to learn about the process and the characteristics of how information visualization novices construct visualization during data analysis. Third, I identify natural language visualization queries as a promising alternative specification approach that I study by analyzing the queries from the laboratory experiment and by conducting an online survey study. Based on my findings, I propose a descriptive model of natural language visualization queries. Fourth, I derive guidelines for visualization construction tools from my studies and from related work. Finally, I show how these guidelines can be applied to existing visualization tools using the example of the Choosel visualization framework. / Graduate

Criação musical é considerada uma atividade individual realizada por músicos. Desde que a música tem servido como motivação natural para formação de comunidades, novas modalidades tem sido criadas por meio do uso da tecnologia e uma potencial convergência de atividades sociais e a criação musical é campo denominado Networked Music (música em rede), que permite que pessoas explorem as implicações da interconexão de seus computadores e compartilhem experiências musicais como atividades sociais através da música. Esta tese assume que um ambiente de música em rede, se projetado especificamente para isso, pode estimular formas sociais de criação musical, mesmo para usuários leigos em música - pessoas que não possuem conhecimento musical. O objetivo desta tese é investigar como a tecnologia musical pode proporcionar suporte adequado para criação musical e discutir como é possível eliminar obstáculos naturais para esta atividade, bem como definir requisitos orientados especificamente para leigos em música. Como resultado principal e ambiente para teste desta pesquisa, apresentar CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design - Projeto de Protótipos Musicais Cooperativos) - um ambiente baseado na Web, direcionado e projetado para suportar criação musical cooperativa por leigos em música. A natureza prototípica de CODES está projetada e contruída sob uma perspectiva orientada a leigos, para proporcionar-lhes condições para experimentação com música combinando, ouvindo e rearranjando padrões sonoros para criar peças musicais simples - chamadas Protótipos Musicais. Ainda, os usuários de CODES podem cooperar com parceiros num processo de criação de protótipos musicais cíclico e colaborativo (chamado Prototipação Musical Cooperativa ), usando mecanismos de percepção, argumentação e negociação personalizados para permitir que um estágio consensual final seja atingido. Ao longo deste volume, os principais conceitos, princípios, requisitos e características de CODES são apresentados e os detalhes do projeto, implementação e avaliação com usuários reais são descritos. / Music creation is considered as mostly a solitary activity performed by musicians. Since music has traditionally served as a natural motivation for community formation, new modalities have been created by means of use of technology, and one potential convergency of social activities and music making is the field of "Networked Music". It allows people to explore the implications of interconnecting their computers, and share musical experience as a social activity through music. This thesis assumes that a networked music environment - if specifically designed for that - can stimulate social ways of music creation, even by novices in music - people assumed to have no previous knowledge of music. The goal of this thesis is to investigate how networked music technology can provide adequate support for music creation, to discuss how it is possible to overcome a set of natural barriers, and to define requirements specifically oriented to users novices in music, and, as the main result and testbed of this research, to introduce CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design) - a Web-based novice-oriented environment designed to support cooperative music creation. The prototypical nature of CODES is designed and built in order to provide a novice-oriented perspective, as a novice may experiment with music by combining, listening and rearranging pre-defined sound patterns to create simple musical pieces - called Music Prototypes. Furthermore, CODES users may cooperate with partners in a cyclical and collaborative process of music prototypes creation - called Cooperative Music Prototyping, using customized awareness, argumentation, and negotiation mechanisms until a final consensual music prototype stage is reached. Throughout this volume, the main concepts, principles, requirements and characteristics of CODES are presented, and the details of design, implementation of CODES and its evaluation by actual users are described.

Criação musical é considerada uma atividade individual realizada por músicos. Desde que a música tem servido como motivação natural para formação de comunidades, novas modalidades tem sido criadas por meio do uso da tecnologia e uma potencial convergência de atividades sociais e a criação musical é campo denominado Networked Music (música em rede), que permite que pessoas explorem as implicações da interconexão de seus computadores e compartilhem experiências musicais como atividades sociais através da música. Esta tese assume que um ambiente de música em rede, se projetado especificamente para isso, pode estimular formas sociais de criação musical, mesmo para usuários leigos em música - pessoas que não possuem conhecimento musical. O objetivo desta tese é investigar como a tecnologia musical pode proporcionar suporte adequado para criação musical e discutir como é possível eliminar obstáculos naturais para esta atividade, bem como definir requisitos orientados especificamente para leigos em música. Como resultado principal e ambiente para teste desta pesquisa, apresentar CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design - Projeto de Protótipos Musicais Cooperativos) - um ambiente baseado na Web, direcionado e projetado para suportar criação musical cooperativa por leigos em música. A natureza prototípica de CODES está projetada e contruída sob uma perspectiva orientada a leigos, para proporcionar-lhes condições para experimentação com música combinando, ouvindo e rearranjando padrões sonoros para criar peças musicais simples - chamadas Protótipos Musicais. Ainda, os usuários de CODES podem cooperar com parceiros num processo de criação de protótipos musicais cíclico e colaborativo (chamado Prototipação Musical Cooperativa ), usando mecanismos de percepção, argumentação e negociação personalizados para permitir que um estágio consensual final seja atingido. Ao longo deste volume, os principais conceitos, princípios, requisitos e características de CODES são apresentados e os detalhes do projeto, implementação e avaliação com usuários reais são descritos. / Music creation is considered as mostly a solitary activity performed by musicians. Since music has traditionally served as a natural motivation for community formation, new modalities have been created by means of use of technology, and one potential convergency of social activities and music making is the field of "Networked Music". It allows people to explore the implications of interconnecting their computers, and share musical experience as a social activity through music. This thesis assumes that a networked music environment - if specifically designed for that - can stimulate social ways of music creation, even by novices in music - people assumed to have no previous knowledge of music. The goal of this thesis is to investigate how networked music technology can provide adequate support for music creation, to discuss how it is possible to overcome a set of natural barriers, and to define requirements specifically oriented to users novices in music, and, as the main result and testbed of this research, to introduce CODES (Cooperative Music Prototypes Design) - a Web-based novice-oriented environment designed to support cooperative music creation. The prototypical nature of CODES is designed and built in order to provide a novice-oriented perspective, as a novice may experiment with music by combining, listening and rearranging pre-defined sound patterns to create simple musical pieces - called Music Prototypes. Furthermore, CODES users may cooperate with partners in a cyclical and collaborative process of music prototypes creation - called Cooperative Music Prototyping, using customized awareness, argumentation, and negotiation mechanisms until a final consensual music prototype stage is reached. Throughout this volume, the main concepts, principles, requirements and characteristics of CODES are presented, and the details of design, implementation of CODES and its evaluation by actual users are described.

Alors que de nombreuses directives institutionnelles invitent à considérer la formation des enseignants novices (EN) comme un moyen d’accroitre leur satisfaction professionnelle et in fine leur santé, peu de travaux scientifiques ont réellement étudié le caractère effectif de ce type de considération. Cette étude a donc pour objet premier d’analyser, dans le cadre de situations de formation de type tutorat mixte impliquant tuteurs de terrain et formateurs universitaires, les circonstances de formation permettant d’aboutir à la satisfaction professionnelles des enseignants novices en situation de travail en classe. Cette étude s’inscrit dans un programme de recherche sur la formation professionnelle dont les soubassements épistémologiques sont issus d’une anthropologie culturaliste principalement inspirée de la philosophie analytique de Wittgenstein (2004). Elle a été menée dans le cadre d’un dispositif innovant de formation en alternance articulant de façon itérative des séquences de formation menées sous la forme d’entretiens de conseil pédagogique et des séquences de travail en classe. Les résultats de cette étude permettent de situer trois principales circonstances de formation ayant permis d’aboutir à l’apprentissage de règles par les EN, voire à leur développement professionnel et, par-là même, à leur satisfaction : (i) l’intérêt pour les formateurs de « dé-satisfaire » les EN avant de s’engager dans une activité d’enseignement de nouvelles règles, (ii) la nécessité pour les EN d’avoir une « exemplarisation » des règles enseignées qui s’ancre dans leurs circonstances d’enseignement et, (iii) la nécessité pour les formateurs d’engager un véritable travail d’accompagnement des EN lors de leurs premiers suivis des règles préalablement enseignées. Sur la base d’une discussion de ces résultats des pistes, en matière de recherches complémentaires à mener et de dispositifs innovants à mettre en œuvre, sont finalement proposées. / Many institutional guidelines point out that teacher education programs can be a means to enhance the job satisfaction, and thereby the health, of preservice teachers (PTs). However, few studies have actually examined this proposition. This study therefore sought to determine the training circumstances that contribute to PTs’ satisfaction with their classroom work in the context of teacher education with teams composed of cooperating teachers and university supervisors. This study is part of a research program based on epistemological principles derived from cultural anthropology, which has been much inspired by the analytical philosophy of Wittgenstein (2004). The study was conducted within the framework of an innovative teacher education program that alternates sequences of PTs’ classroom work with sequences of supervisory meetings. The results indicate three main training circumstances that facilitated the PTs’ learning of the work rules, which in turn contributed to their professional development and thereby to their satisfaction: (i) the teacher educator team needs to “de-satisfy” the PTs before engaging in the activity of teaching new work rules, (ii) the PTs need an “exemplification” of the new work rules that is rooted in their actual teaching circumstances, and (iii) the teacher education team needs to engage in a veritable work of supporting the PTs as they begin to follow the work rules that they have learned. The discussion of the results focuses on proposals for new directions in complementary research and innovative training methods.

Alors que de nombreuses études scientifiques pointent l’intérêt de mettre en place des dispositifs de formation exploitant le visionnage de vidéos, il existe peu de preuves empiriques quant aux retombées de ce type d’aménagement sur l’activité professionnelle des enseignants novices. Cette étude a donc pour objet premier d’analyser les activités de formation exploitant le visionnage de vidéos et leurs effets sur l’activité professionnelle d’enseignants novices. Cette étude s’inscrit dans un programme de recherche sur la formation professionnelle dont les soubassements épistémologiques sont issus d’une anthropologie culturaliste principalement inspirée de la philosophie analytique de Wittgenstein (2004). Elle a été menée dans le cadre d’un dispositif innovant de formation par alternance articulant des séquences d’enseignement en établissement scolaire et de formation exploitant le visionnage de vidéos menées à l’université. Les principaux résultats de cette étude et leur discussion mettent en exergue que le visionnage de vidéos constitue un moyen privilégié d’alimenter certaines capacités normatives permettant aux enseignants novices d’analyser leur enseignement ou celui d’autrui, de le planifier, et de le réaliser de façon plus adéquate en classe. Dans certaines circonstances, l’expérience vécue lors du visionnage de vidéos leur permet en effet de « s’approcher » de l’expérience d’enseignement sans toutefois s’y substituer. Parallèlement, cette étude montre que le recours au visionnage de vidéos complexifie parfois l’activité de chacun des formateurs impliqués dans le dispositif et plus largement la mise en place d’un véritable collectif de formation. / Many studies have demonstrated the interest of video-based training, but few have provided empirical evidence of its impact on the professional activity of novice teachers. The principal aim of this study was thus to investigate the activities in a video-based training program and assess their effects on the teaching activity of novice teachers. This study is part of a much broader research program on vocational training. The field of cultural anthropology, much inspired by Wittgenstein’s analytical philosophy (2004), provides the epistemological foundations for this work. The study was conducted within an innovative framework with alternating sequences of classroom teaching in the schools and video-based analysis at the university. The main results and the discussion provide evidence that video viewing aids in the development of certain normative capacities, thereby better equipping novice teachers to analyse their own or others’ teaching activity, as well as to plan and carry it out more effectively in the classroom. In certain circumstances, the experience lived during these video viewing sessions allows them to “approach” the experience of teaching without, however, actually substituting for it. The study also shows that using video sometimes increases the complexity of trainers’ activity and, more broadly, the construction of a veritable training collective.

This thesis is focused on identifying key aspects of mechanics graphs regarded by students and experts. It also contains observations of student's attention focused on each graph. This data was collected using eye tracking camera. 23 high school students and 14 experts participated in this research. Our group of experts contained graduate and post-graduate students as well as researchers from faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University. Our results suggest that experts were able to memorize more information from each graph than high school students. Difference in focus on relevant parts of graphs was obvious from analyzing correct and incorrect answers of high school students and they consider axes and their labeling as the key parts of graphs in contrast to the students. Incorrectly answering students were more focused on parts with no relevance to the task in question. On the contrary, students with correct answers spent less time looking on non-relevant parts of graphs. Ideas of incorrectly answering students were mostly focused on wrong idea about graph as a sketch of real situation, or picture resembling physical situation.

Un des objectifs des politiques éducatives européennes en matière de formation professionnelle des enseignants novices consiste à consolider les partenariats entre les universités et les établissements scolaires. Sur le plan scientifique, la majorité des études pointent l'importance de renforcer la collaboration entre les formateurs de ces deux institutions par des dispositifs fondés sur le modèle des " communautés de pratique " (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Or, ces études restent souvent peu précises sur la nature de leurs activités au sein de tels dispositifs. Cette recherche vise à analyser les activités de formation d'un collectif de formateurs et leurs conséquences sur la formation professionnelle d'un enseignant novice.Cette étude s'appuie sur une lecture de la formation professionnelle des enseignants novices (Bertone, 2011 ; Chaliès, 2012) qui emprunte certains postulats à une théorie générale de l'apprentissage (Nelson, 2008) et de l'action collective (Wittgenstein, 2004). Cette lecture est ordonnée par trois activités de formation : (i) enseigner des règles pour permettre aux enseignants novices de signifier leur vécu et agir différemment en classe ; (ii) aménager des situations et contrôler les premiers suivis des règles pour leur permettre d'en constater les résultats ; (iii) accompagner leur développement en les aidant à interpréter les règles apprises.Cette recherche a été menée en collaboration avec deux collectifs de formation en éducation physique et sportive. Composé chacun d'un enseignant novice et de plusieurs formateurs, ces collectifs ont été mis en place lors d'un dispositif de formation par les visites. Deux types de données ont été recueillies : des données d'enregistrement audio-vidéo (des leçons et des entretiens de conseil pédagogique menés en suivant) ; des données d'autoconfrontation. Les données ont été analysées afin d'identifier les règles apprises et/ou suivies par les acteurs pour signifier leurs activités au cours de chacun des temps du dispositif.Les résultats montrent principalement l'intérêt pour le collectif de formateurs : (i) de mener une activité d'enseignement (et éventuellement d'explication) ostensive pour permettre à l'enseignant novice de réaliser les premiers suivis des règles conformes à leurs attentes ; (ii) d'aménager les situations de classe pour faciliter son constat des résultats attendus des règles préalablement enseignées ; (iii) d'accompagner son développement en l'aidant à faire usage des règles apprises dans de nouvelles circonstances.

Mental training has been studied extensively for the past century but we are still not completely sure how it affects brain and behavior. The aim of this doctoral thesis was to examine one aspect of mental training i.e. motor imagery. In Study I, active high jumpers were trained for 6 weeks using a motor imagery mental training program. We measured behavioral effects in motor parameters such as total height, false attempts, take off angle, and bar clearance. A significant improvement was found on the bar clearance component compared to a control group of high jumpers that did not participate in the mental training program. The results emphasize the importance of using appropriate outcome measures since mental training may affect distinct features of the movement rather than the entire movement. Study II used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to examine the neural correlates of imagery for active high jumpers, and also how imagery training affects brain activity. Active high jumpers were compared to a control group of high jumping novices and the results showed that high jumpers were able to activate motor regions, whereas controls used parts of the visual system to perform imagery of the high jump. Thus, we were able to show how important well established motor representations are in order to achieve a neural overlap between imagery and action. In study III we examined the effects after motor, mental and combined motor and mental training on a finger tapping task. Behaviorally, even though mental training improved performance, adding mental training to motor training did not improve the results beyond only using motor training. Imaging results showed that motor and mental training engaged different neural systems, with motor training associated with motor activity and mental training with visual activity. The combination of motor and mental training activated both motor and visual systems. Additionally combining motor and mental training resulted in transfer to an untrained motor sequence and neural data indicated that cerebellum mediated the transfer. The overall findings explain how mental training can be used to improve motor performance and motor parameters. Moreover, it also illustrates that the neural processes underlying such improvements may be distinct from motor training and that the brain may react differently during mental training depending on prior physical experience of the action.

Choosing the right investment option by a fund manager or analyst is the first step that contributes to the overall performance of any portfolio of assets. The decision making process is complicated. Markowitz portfolio theory (1952, 1959) laid the theoretical foundations for asset selection and management. However the decision maker is influenced by parameters outside the realm of financial theory and mathematical models (French and French 1997; French 2001). The actual behavior of decision makers can deviate from this normative model. This can be due to the problem solving behavior of the human brain. Human problem solving theory began with the work of Newell and Simon (1972) and Simon (1978). They argue that the human memory is characterized by limitations in terms of processing capacities (Newell and Simon 1972). Given the amount of data the decision maker has to analyze, the process of asset selection is complicated and difficult. Besides the volume of data, the information items may provide information relating to the same aspect of the asset making some of the data set redundant. Besides that, some of information contained in the data set might provide contradictory signals about the performance or characteristics of the asset. Thus the information set available to a decision maker is large, multi-channeled (different data providing different information) and multi-dimensional (for example real estate assets have information pertaining to legal aspects, financial aspects, physical aspects etc.). The limitations in the decision maker’s processing capabilities and the characteristics of the information cues make the asset selection process exceedingly difficult. French (2001) in a study of fund managers from U.K finds that asset allocation uses two sets of hard information during the process, namely historic data and current market perceptions. The study also finds differences between exposure levels of the funds dictated by theory (as per portfolio theory) and actual decisions made by companies (true asset allocations of funds). Gallimore, Gray and Hansz (2000) find medium-sized and small companies’ investment decision making does not follow any normative model due to the diverse nature of property markets in the United Kingdom. Past literature in the field of decision making finds that an expert’s decision making behavior differs from that of a novice. (Bedard and Mock (1992), Bouwman (1984) and Jacoby et al. (1984, 1985, 1986, 1987)). The primary purpose of this study is to understand the impact of experience on the decision making behavior of investors and see if their behavior differs from that of inexperienced individuals. In a controlled experiment design, two groups of subjects are tested. One group is composed of experienced subjects (experts) represented by real estate professionals such as acquisition analysts, fund/portfolio managers or real estate investors (experienced individuals investing either their own money or a client’s money in real estate). The other group tested is composed of students, who are inexperienced subjects (novices). Both groups are asked to choose between two investment cases in two different cities. The two options offered are both class A office properties, institutional grade. Fifteen sets of data are given for each investment option. Data for the cases is sourced from investment management companies, involved in managing funds on behalf of institutional clients. Using a process tracing technique, each subject’s behavior is observed and recorded while making the investment choice. These observations will give us insight into the actual (descriptive) behavior of experienced real estate professionals and inexperienced novices. It will help in isolating the impact of experience on the decision making behavior of real estate investors. This study finds mixed evidence relating to the difference in the behavior of novices and experts. On the five aspects that the two groups are tested, evidence that their behavior differs in three has been uncovered. They are search pattern, number of steps and time on task. However, for the other two aspects, sequencing and cue utilization, no difference was found.