Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Doina Caragea / Recent advances in social network applications have resulted in millions of users joining such networks in the last few years. User data collected from social networks can be used for various data mining problems such as interest recommendations, friendship recommendations and many more. Social networks, in general, can be seen as a huge directed network graph representing users of the network (together with their information, e.g., user interests) and their interactions (also known as friendship links). Previous work [Hsu et al., 2007] on friendship link prediction has shown that graph features contain important predictive information. Furthermore, it has been shown that user interests can be used to improve link predictions, if they are organized into an explicitly or implicitly ontology [Haridas, 2009; Parimi, 2010]. However, the above mentioned previous studies have been performed using a small set of users in the social network LiveJournal. The goal of this work is to study the performance of the ontology based approach proposed in [Haridas, 2009], when number of users in the dataset is increased. More precisely, we study the performance of the approach in terms of performance for data sets consisting of 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 users. Our results show that the performance generally increases with the number of users. However, the problem becomes quickly intractable from a computation time point of view. As a part of our study, we also compare our results obtained using the ontology-based approach [Haridas, 2009] with results obtained with the LDA based approach in [Parimi, 2010], when such results are available.

<p>Following study is about motivation from a student perspective. Based on the prescribed literature and published research, the concept and field of motivation have been illuminated. The purpose of the study was to examine how students in ninth grade perceived their educational motivation and what kind importance they considered it had for their performance in school. The study is also supposed to base upon the result; clarify the differences if any between schools. In an attempt to get a clear image of this a quantitative method in the form of surveys was made on two schools in the Stockholm region. One of the schools had a really good merit value, and the other had a rather poor merit- value. By choosing a quantitative method a relatively large number of students where able to participate and equally large quantity of statistics have been presented. The result point at motivation in the participating students in both schools can increase and decrease through different factors. These factors, observed in this study, are directly linked to the school and includes among other things the significant of having an influence on the education and inner factors as being able to achieve a certain degree and of external factors as the school environment.</p> / <p>Studien handlar om studiemotivation utifrån ett elevperspektiv. Med utgångspunkt i utgiven litteratur och publicerad forskning har begreppet och området motivation belysts.</p><p>Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur elever i årskurs 9 uppfattar sin studiemotivation och vilken betydelse de anser att den har för deras skolprestation. Även skillnader i resultatet mellan de två skolorna belyses.</p><p>Till detta har en kvantitativ undersökningsmetod i form av enkäter genomförts på två grundskolor i Stockholms län. Genom valet av en kvantitativ metod kunde ett relativt stort antal elever delta och statistik presenteras.</p><p>Resultatet pekar på att studiemotivationen hos eleverna på de undersökta skolorna kan både öka och minska genom olika faktorer. De olika faktorer som uppmärksammats i denna studie är direkt kopplade till skolan och innefattar bl.a. vikten av att få påverka undervisningen, inre faktorer som t ex att uppnå visst betyg eller yttre faktorer som t ex skolmiljön.</p>

Following study is about motivation from a student perspective. Based on the prescribed literature and published research, the concept and field of motivation have been illuminated. The purpose of the study was to examine how students in ninth grade perceived their educational motivation and what kind importance they considered it had for their performance in school. The study is also supposed to base upon the result; clarify the differences if any between schools. In an attempt to get a clear image of this a quantitative method in the form of surveys was made on two schools in the Stockholm region. One of the schools had a really good merit value, and the other had a rather poor merit- value. By choosing a quantitative method a relatively large number of students where able to participate and equally large quantity of statistics have been presented. The result point at motivation in the participating students in both schools can increase and decrease through different factors. These factors, observed in this study, are directly linked to the school and includes among other things the significant of having an influence on the education and inner factors as being able to achieve a certain degree and of external factors as the school environment. / Studien handlar om studiemotivation utifrån ett elevperspektiv. Med utgångspunkt i utgiven litteratur och publicerad forskning har begreppet och området motivation belysts. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur elever i årskurs 9 uppfattar sin studiemotivation och vilken betydelse de anser att den har för deras skolprestation. Även skillnader i resultatet mellan de två skolorna belyses. Till detta har en kvantitativ undersökningsmetod i form av enkäter genomförts på två grundskolor i Stockholms län. Genom valet av en kvantitativ metod kunde ett relativt stort antal elever delta och statistik presenteras. Resultatet pekar på att studiemotivationen hos eleverna på de undersökta skolorna kan både öka och minska genom olika faktorer. De olika faktorer som uppmärksammats i denna studie är direkt kopplade till skolan och innefattar bl.a. vikten av att få påverka undervisningen, inre faktorer som t ex att uppnå visst betyg eller yttre faktorer som t ex skolmiljön.

This thesis presents a 31-day case study carried out with a 15 year old young man who has classical autism. The study involved introducing him to a number of new and challenging activities, in a variety of contexts, over 31 days, that were previously assumed to be outside of his range of capability. The case study found that the application of the concepts of choice, control, challenge and risk had an unexpectedly positive impact upon the young man’s performance. This study further attempts to explore the concept of narrative as a ‘pedagogical bridge’ between the ‘worlds’ of autism and neurotypicality, arguing that narrative may provide a ‘way in’ to the world of autism. ‘Narrative’, this study contends, may provide a tapestry across which the world of autism may be connected with the world that surrounds it; by revealing a multiplicity of selves in a multiplicity of contexts. Methods of data collection included field notes, interviews, photographs and film footage. Ultimately, the study found that the use of ‘performance texts’ (DVDs featuring the young man’s achievements) constituted a powerful means of celebrating his accomplishments within the school and its wider community. Research approaches were participatory and ethnographic in the data collection phases, while a more phenomenological approach was adopted in the data analysis phase. The overarching analytical framework was that of ‘narrative analysis’ in telling a story of bravery, courage, hope and optimism.