Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 10, 2008). Advisor: Murali Shanker. Keywords: Open-source, Social Networks, Software Success. Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-160).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the networked computer use by scholars and to determine whether or not this computer use could facilitate international communication, academic collaboration and increased scholarly productivity. An electronic mail survey was sent to 1048 biologists scattered across the globe. After adjusting for invalid electronic mail addresses, 731 out of the 1048 surveys were eventually delivered and a total of 333 completed questionnaires were returned yielding a response rate of 45.6%. Although this was an extremely homogenous population, many trends emerged. Networked computer use appears to enhance perceived productivity. Collaboration via the computer is valued with respondents reporting their most frequent activities as exchanging work-related messages with colleagues from abroad, reading postings on scholarly/academic discussion groups, and exchanging work-related messages with colleagues at home institutions. Scholars reported benefiting most from exchanging messages with colleagues from abroad and from collaboration with peers. Exchanging messages and collaboration are types of informal communication which is the best means of attaining membership in an invisible college which is a group of geographically scattered academics with common research interests who determine the scholarly direction of a discipline. The more frequently a user exchanged e-mail messages, the more that user perceived gaining benefit in the ability to collaborate. Similarly, those who more frequently exchanged drafts reported higher levels of perceived benefit from enhanced contact with colleagues abroad. Exchanging messages with colleagues abroad associated moderately strongly with English proficiency. Those who reported higher levels of benefit from their CMC use also more strongly believed that CMC is changing the way academic researchers collaborate. These findings lend indirect support to the possibility that the use of networked computers could lead to increased communication, collaboration and productivity on the global level. Results showed informal communication, collaboration and self-perceived productivity are all potentially increased by network computer use. All of these factors could ultimately lead to the opportunity to join an invisible college.

This study examined the impact of a local history project on students' computer use, skills, attitudes toward computer technology and history learning. The variables of gender, grade level, etc. were also investigated. This one-year project integrated computer technology into history curriculum using primary sources. The participants were 64 students from four Western Massachusetts public schools. The Likert scale pre and post surveys were used to gather quantitative data as a main research method. Class observations and informal interviews were conducted for qualitative data as supplementary information for the research. To analyze the pre-post differences at the item level, approximation to binomial distribution was applied. To analyze the data at the aggregate level, One-way ANOVA, a univariate analysis of variance tests was employed. The data results showed significant differences in students' computer use and computer skills between the pre and post surveys. However, the data didn't show significant differences in students' attitudes towards computer technology and history learning. The reason for this may be due to the fact that the students already had positive attitudes prior to the project. The trend for computer skills indicated that as girls got older their skill level went up, but as boys got older, their skill level went down. The same trend was also reflected in students' attitudes toward computer technology. As for students' attitudes toward history learning, the older students had more positive attitudes than the younger students. The qualitative data also indicate the positive impact of the project on student learning. Most of the students “enjoyed working on the project” and believed “computer technology was useful”. Many students commented that they “learned not only the local history, but also computer technology”, and they “learned much more from researching on the Internet than from the textbook”. However, the biggest challenge for the students in doing this project seemed to be teamwork, and some students had difficulty cooperating with other people in the group.

Submitted by Alice Araujo (alice.caraujo@ufpe.br) on 2018-05-18T21:18:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Camila Oliveira de Almeida Lima.pdf: 2165455 bytes, checksum: d701930550a886f21d8719b56a6e60bd (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-18T21:18:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTAÇÃO Camila Oliveira de Almeida Lima.pdf: 2165455 bytes, checksum: d701930550a886f21d8719b56a6e60bd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-15 / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar como o arcabouço das Máquinas Sociais, à luz da teoria de Burégio, Meira e Rosa (2013), e os vinte e seis elementos que estão inseridos em três categorias (i) Software Sociais, (ii) Software como Entidades Sociáveis e (iii) Pessoas como Unidades Computacionais estão sendo pesquisados no âmbito nacional da Ciência da Informação (CI). O tema se justifica a partir da observação de pesquisas esparsas na CI referentes a Internet que não estão consolidadas, fazendo-se necessário observar, a partir do arcabouço máquinas sociais, identificar quais contribuições para esta área já foram publicados em veículos nacionais dedicados à CI. Para tal intento, esta pesquisa foi conduzida a partir da realização de um Mapeamento Sistemático da Literatura (MSL) referente às Máquinas Sociais e suas categorias em bases de dados nacionais da CI. A abordagem de pesquisa adotada foi indutiva, quanto ao tipo de pesquisa, esta se caracteriza como qualitativa, quanto aos meios é uma pesquisa bibliográfica e quanto aos fins é uma pesquisa descritiva. O método de pesquisa utilizado foi o MSL, a técnica de coleta de dados adotada foi a análise documental e o método de análise utilizado foi a análise temática. Foram analisados cinquenta artigos e identificados pesquisas sobre onze dos elementos referentes às Máquinas Sociais: (i) redes sociais, (ii) blogs, (iii) microblogs, (iv) wiki, (v) compartilhamento de vídeo, (vi) plataformas colaborativas, (vii) mash up, (viii) sistemas de aquisição do conhecimento, (ix) crowdsourcing, (x) sistemas baseados em dados sociais e (xi) plataformas de API abertas. Foi possível destacar as redes sociais, blogs e microblogs, que eram objetos de pesquisa da maioria dos artigos analisados; Aos demais elementos foi dada uma menor atenção, não se identificando tantas contribuições. Os outros quinze destes elementos sequer foram citados nos artigos investigados. Percebeu-se que as pesquisas relacionadas ao contexto da Internet na área da CI dão uma maior ênfase às redes sociais e a web 2.0, estando descontextualizadas de qualquer arcabouço teórico, sendo pesquisadas isoladamente como objetos de estudos sem conexão com outros contextos mais amplos, como, por exemplo, as máquinas sociais. / This research aims to investigate how Social Machines, in the light of the theory of Buregio, Meira and Rosa (2013), and its twenty-six elements that are related in three categories (i) Social Software, (ii) Software as Sociable Entities and (iii) People as Computational Units are being researched in Brazilian scope of Information Science (IS). The subject is justified by the observation of research in IS related to Internet are not consolidated and it is necessary to observe, from social machines perspectives, identify which contributions have already been published in national vehicles dedicated to IS. For such, this research was carried out a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) referring to Social Machines and their categories in national IS databases. The research approach adopted was inductive; the type of the research is characterized as qualitative; the means is a bibliographical research and the purposes are a descriptive research. The research method used was the SLM, the technique of data collection adopted was the documentary analysis and the analysis method used was thematic analysis. Fifty articles were analyzed and eleven of them were related to eleven Social Machine elements: (i) social networks, (ii) blogs, (iii) microblogs, (iv) wiki, (v) video sharing, (vi) collaborative platforms, (Vii) mashup, (viii) knowledge acquisition systems, (ix) crowdsourcing, (x) social data systems, and (xi) open API platforms. Some points can be highlighteds such as social networks, blogs and microblogs which are central subjects of most of the articles analyzed, the other elements is given less attention and not have so many contributions. Fifteen of these elements are not even mentioned in the investigated articles. It was noticed that the research related to the context of the Internet in the area of IS emphasizes social networks and web 2.0, being decontextualized of any theoretical framework, being researched in isolation as objects of studies without connection with other broader contexts, such as, for example, social machines.

Die Dissertation untersucht, welche individuellen Einflussfaktoren Wissenschaftler zur Wissensteilung mittels Social Software motivieren. Dazu werden universitäre Wissenschaftler, ihre Stakeholder und typische Karrierewege sowie die Bereiche Open Science und Open Educational Resources beleuchtet. Im Anschluss wird die Anwendbarkeit existierender Theorien der Technologieakzeptanz und der Wissensteilung (insbesondere in virtuellen Communities) auf die Wissensteilung von Wissenschaftlern mittels Social Software untersucht. Darauf aufbauend werden potentielle Einflussfaktoren identifiziert und ein spezifisches Erklärungsmodell abgeleitet. Dieses wird mittels Online-Umfragen empirisch überprüft und verfeinert.

Developing countries like Tanzania experience challenges towards utilization and acceptance of ICT; calling for a need to further research on the concept. Open Source (OS) usage is a potential strategy for addressing such challenges. However, the success of this strategy strongly relies on the strength of the promotional efforts. The study, therefore aims at assessing the OS promotional efforts in relation to ICT acceptance challenges in Tanzania. This study entailed a descriptive, mixed-methods research. A literature analysis, document analysis and observations of OS community activities were conducted in order to list the ICT acceptance challenges. The results formed a basis for survey and interview questions. The findings obtained were triangulated to determine the existing OS promotional activities and assess the effectiveness of the promotional efforts in addressing ICT acceptance challenges in Tanzania. The study also makes recommendations on how OS promotional efforts should be changed to improve their effectiveness. / Computing / (M.Sc. (Information Systems))

Tese de mestrado. Multimédia. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2011

Developing countries like Tanzania experience challenges towards utilization and acceptance of ICT; calling for a need to further research on the concept. Open Source (OS) usage is a potential strategy for addressing such challenges. However, the success of this strategy strongly relies on the strength of the promotional efforts. The study, therefore aims at assessing the OS promotional efforts in relation to ICT acceptance challenges in Tanzania. This study entailed a descriptive, mixed-methods research. A literature analysis, document analysis and observations of OS community activities were conducted in order to list the ICT acceptance challenges. The results formed a basis for survey and interview questions. The findings obtained were triangulated to determine the existing OS promotional activities and assess the effectiveness of the promotional efforts in addressing ICT acceptance challenges in Tanzania. The study also makes recommendations on how OS promotional efforts should be changed to improve their effectiveness. / Computing / M.Sc. (Information Systems)