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Recent studies indicate that American high school students are not performing adequately on standardized tests in the area of science. In response, there has been a call to reform science education in the United States. These reform efforts coincide with advances in electronic communication and information technology that have revolutionized knowledge sharing. This study describes an effort to assess the effects of inter-school electronic collaboration on the quality of student final written products. In this study, students ranging in grade levels from 9-12 completed a problem-based earth science module delivered via the Internet. The module presented students with an ill-structured problem, problem-solving model, resources, and recommendations for further inquiry, all related to an authentic environmental issue. Students were also given a set of guidelines for a final written product and a minimum of 4 weeks to complete the project. While all students worked in cooperative groups within their classrooms, selected cooperative groups worked with cooperative groups of students in other schools via e-mail. These groups were collectively referred to as parallel groups. Cooperative groups of students who did not work via e-mail with other groups were collectively referred to as nonparallel groups. A team of evaluators scored the written products of parallel and nonparallel groups. The results were unexpected: The nonparallel groups scored significantly higher than the parallel groups on the final written product. / Ph. D.

When disasters occur, new or informal groups often emerge to assist with the response or have resources that can aid professional disaster managers involved in the crisis. Historically, incorporating these groups into the formal disaster response system under conditions of urgency and uncertainty has been difficult. This mixed-methods, three-article dissertation explores two cases of interorganizational collaboration in which public administrators working to manage the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated and integrated emergent actor participation in the response. The findings of the study point to the potential for disaster managers to routinize the anticipation of emergence by considering those organizations that may be best positioned to facilitate different emergent actors, ways of engaging them before crises occur, and mechanisms that might break down barriers to formal/informal responder collaboration during an acute response. The results of this study have implications for public administration, interorganizational collaboration, and disaster management. / Doctor of Philosophy / Large-scale disasters involve acute dangers to human and environmental health, and often property, creating significant disruption to society. This disruption may challenge public administrators' abilities to manage the size and scope of the impacts, creating an opportunity to work with groups not normally involved in managing disasters but that have unexpected but needed resources. As these new groups may not have the background or knowledge of formal disaster response systems and processes, they may not know how to identify or work with the officials managing the disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic, a complex and relatively uncommon disaster, provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which disaster managers incorporated novel resources and groups as they reacted to the ever-changing demands of the crisis. This dissertation explored two examples of groups of organizations working together in the state of Virginia to manage aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to understand the ways in which disaster managers may be better able to plan for, facilitate, and incorporate new groups into disaster management efforts. The results of this study indicate several ways in which new groups might be integrated into disaster management efforts, including differential implementation of disaster policy, the use of community liaisons to external groups, and technological innovations that reduce barriers to collaboration. Though we can never predict where the next major disaster will strike or what type of hazard it might involve, we can predict that first, it will happen and second, it will bring new groups into the response effort, as well as the need for disaster managers to collaborate with those new groups. As the findings from this project suggest, by considering the ways in which new groups might be better integrated during a disaster, it might be possible to better leverage critical resources to help communities better respond to a disaster.

The research outputs within this portfolio demonstrate sustained inquiry over seven years which has added progressively to the understanding of collaborative educational research contribution. This research developed out of my work with the iPED (inquiring pedagogies) research network which I co‐founded in 2005. The portfolio contextualizes and critiques four journal articles and two peer‐reviewed book chapters published between 2007 and 2012. Through these studies of educational research at Coventry University, I make a significant and original contribution to knowledge, firstly by synthesizing evidence of the facilitators, drivers and barriers to contribution within collaborative educational research; and secondly by offering three new models which help to make the contribution of collaborative educational research more transparent. The Influence Wheel provides a visualization of research contributions as an interactive image. The model can also reveal gaps in contribution, and can be adjusted to display the aspects of contribution of interest to an intended audience. Product‐Based Analysis provides a holistic view of the strategic drivers, goals and interim outcomes of research. This model can be used to analyze, develop, track or communicate a research strategy. Finally, the Enhanced Three‐Phase Model articulates the social and cultural transitions through which a collaborative educational research community may evolve. Used alongside an analysis framework I devised using themes from works of fiction, this model exposes the problems and opportunities a collaboration community may encounter. These three tools exemplify my creativity in devising new ways of visualizing information, an approach adapted from the field of management where graphics are commonly used to supplement text. Methodologically, all the portfolio outputs employ insider inquiry strategies which capture different perspectives on the research context. Conceptually, all the outputs offer social representations of collaborative educational research. These studies offer questions and interim findings which provide opportunities for future research.

<p> </p><p><strong>Introduction</strong></p><p>The aim of the research is to understand collaboration between marketing and logistics, increasing knowledge about perceived barriers in organizations, in order to addressing functional silos in organizations by inter-functional collaboration as a solution. The author questions the advantages of inter-functional collaboration in the scope of organizational performance. The significance of this research is that collaboration is one of the remaining cost cutting advantages that are impeccable for organizations in the following decade.</p><p><strong>Purpose</strong></p><p>The purpose of the study is to understand collaboration between marketing and logistics department, focusing on the instruments that facilitate improved collaboration.</p><p><strong>Method</strong></p><p>The question of how collaboration in organizations takes place, the author used an inductive, qualitative approach to come up with a theoretical framework to improve collaboration. The author reflected on the history of both marketing and logistics functions in organizations and discussed the common responsibilities of the two. Then, the framework was set to study organizational performance in theory, and to aggregate and review possible methods - so called instruments - to improve collaboration within organizations. To accomplish this, the author listed the key instruments for collaboration purpose and defines the important instruments to perform the implementation of collaboration in organizations. Empirical information acquired with interview sessions with the CEO of Nivea Seoul ltd. Contributed to the validity of the concepts and extended the knowledge about instruments.</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p><p>The outcome of theoretical research is that collaboration between marketing and logistics, 'logistics leverage' - positive result by planning, coordination and integration responsibility, and marketing intelligence seem to have positive relationship on organization performance. This implication increases the relevance of the study, the author argues that performance gains might also be observed with the key instruments for inter-functional collaboration facilitation, almost 20 were selected and placed in three categories The instruments under the categories can be used for future research or managers to understand collaboration better and could also provide a basis for empirical research in the future.</p>

Data provenance refers to the lineage or pedigree of data, including information such as its origin and key events that affect it over the course of its lifecycle. In recent years, provenance has become increasingly important as more and more people are using data that they themselves did not generate. Tracking data provenance helps ensure that data provided by many different providers and sources can be trusted and used appropriately. Data provenance also has several other critical uses, including data quality assessment, generating data replication recipes, data security management, etc.One of the major objectives of our research is to investigate the semantics or meaning of data provenance. We describe a generic ontology of data provenance called the W7 model that represents the semantics of data provenance. Formalized in the conceptual graph formalism, the W7 model represents provenance as a combination of seven interconnected elements including "what," "when," "where," "how," "who," "which" and "why." The W7 model is designed to be general and comprehensive enough to cover a broad range of provenance-related vocabularies. However, the W7 model alone, no matter how comprehensive it is, is insufficient for capturing all domain-specific provenance requirements. We hence present a novel approach to developing domain ontologies of provenance. This approach relies on various conceptual graph mechanisms, including schema definitions and canonical formation rules, and enables us to easily adapt and extend the W7 model to develop domain ontologies of provenance. The W7 model for data provenance has been widely adopted and adapted for use within Raytheon Missile Systems and the iPlant Collaborative, as well as the US Army's ATRAP IV (Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Program) system.We also developed a domain ontology of provenance for Wikipedia based on the W7 model. This domain ontology enables us to extract provenance for each Wikipedia article. We present a study in which we use their provenance to assess the quality of Wikipedia articles. Assessing and guaranteeing data quality has become a critical concern that, to a large extent, determines the future success and survival of Wikipedia since the quality of Wikipedia has been continuously called into question due to various incidents of vandalism and misinformation since its launch in 2001. Our study shows that the quality of Wikipedia articles depends not only on the different types of contributors but also on how they collaborate. We identify a number of contributor roles based on the provenance. Based on the roles and provenance, our research identifies several collaboration patterns that are preferable or detrimental for data quality, thus providing insights for designing tools and mechanisms to improve Wikipedia article quality.

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The current cultural climate is stimulating an increasing interest in, and need for, collaboration throughout many fields of practice. Collaborative methods of art production are evident across a range of contemporary visual art practices and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration are becoming more available for artists, particularly those working beyond the gallery context. However, there is currently a lack of literature critically addressing collaborative processes in relation to visual arts practice. This research investigates strategies for interdisciplinary collaboration, which require different approaches than traditional, individual models of art practice. A visual artist (the researcher) adopts a practice-led, naturalistic methodology to investigate qualities and characteristics of the collaborative process and to develop and evaluate strategies for engaging successful interdisciplinary collaborations with practitioners from a variety of fields. A contextual review undertakes a broad review of literature and examples of practice addressing collaboration from the visual arts and other fields (including organisational and management theory). Key issues and approaches to collaboration are addressed in relation to instances of collaboration evident in the visual arts (collaboration between artists, collaboration in contemporary Public Art practices and interdisciplinary collaboration), and two main approaches to collaboration are identified: as a tacit method of practice and as an explicit methodology of practice. Three strands of inquiry are undertaken: collaboration in practice, collaboration in education, and case examples of collaboration. The researcher develops and evaluates strategies for engaging interdisciplinary collaboration with different collaborators in five exploratory research projects. Two projects are developed in an educational context to evaluate undergraduate Fine Art students’ experiences of collaboration. Three interviews with different visual art practitioners are undertaken to address their experiences of collaboration in professional arts contexts. A qualitative definition of collaboration, and a description of the main characteristics and key qualities of a collaborative process are obtained through a systematic, cross-comparative analysis of the research data (detailed project reports, pre-interview questionnaire forms and interview transcripts). These outcomes inform the development of a critical framework, which presents interpretative and evaluative criteria for identifying, describing and evaluating four distinct models of collaboration. The critical framework is primarily intended for use by visual artists as a tool for developing and evaluating their individual experiences of collaborative practice. The research contributes a new critical understanding of the ‘more complex’ model of interdisciplinary collaboration and addresses the implications of approaching interdisciplinary collaboration as a viable methodology of practice for visual artists, in relation to both professional and educational visual art contexts.

The purpose of this study was to describe the interdisciplinary teamwork pedagogy of the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) training programs, specifically the content focus, instructional methods, and assessment practices. LEND programs are a national network providing long-term, graduate interdisciplinary training through federal funds from the Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal Child Health Bureau. This study used a mixed method approach to describe the interdisciplinary teamwork pedagogy of LEND training programs. The study occurred in three stages: 1) a survey of LEND training directors, 2) a survey of LEND interdisciplinary teamwork instructors, and 3) document review of the national LEND website and LEND program websites. Data were analyzed using statistical and qualitative methods and interpreted through the use of professional competencies, the How People Learn framework, and research literature. This study provides for an understanding of interdisciplinary teamwork within one national program in order to inform efforts for training, practice, and research.