Video tutorials are a popular medium for learning to perform different tasks in feature-rich software applications. In existing systems, the comments are generally shown below the video in threads. This separation of video and comments creates cognitive load when users try to link comments with the video. We designed and developed 'VidComm', a prototype interface enabling users to filter comments from different categories and link them directly to the tutorial content – and thus enhancing the existing video tutorial comment system. An evaluation of VidComm suggests that this system helps users find particular information from comments more quickly and accurately than a traditional commenting system. / February 2016

During software development various forms of software documentation can be produced to make the software easier to understand and maintain after the software have been developed. One of these forms of software documentation is code comments, which is a form of software documentation that is produced to make source code easier to read and maintain. Although code comments make the code easier to read and maintain, code comments can become outdated and inconsistent with their corresponding code. Outdated and inconsistent code comments increase the probability for future bugs and when these comments are encountered, developers could lose the confidence for all other comments. In order to reduce the amount of outdated and inconsistent code comments, a program named the comment validator is presented in this study. The comment validator provides developers with the opportunity to manually validate code comments by segmenting code into three segments of code that needs to be manually validated: classes, methods and properties. The comment validator identifies when code segments have been modified after validation, therefore indicating that the code segments corresponding code comments could be outdated and inconsistent. The comment validator were evaluated through functional testing and through a field study in order to test that the comment validator could reduce the amount of outdated and inconsistent code comments. The evaluation showed that the comment validator did remove outdated and inconsistent code comments when it were used according to the description presented in this study, therefore providing a new way to reduce the amount of outdated and inconsistent code comments in software development projects.

Code comments improve software maintainability, programming productivity, and software reliability. To address the comment scarcity issue in many projects and save developers’ time in writing comments, we propose a new, general automatic comment generation approach, which mines comments from a large programming Question and Answer (Q&A) site. Q&A sites allow programmers to post questions and receive solutions, which contain code segments together with their descriptions, referred to as code-description mappings. We develop AutoComment to extract such mappings, and leverage them to generate description comments automatically for similar code segments matched in open source projects. We apply AutoComment to analyze 92,140 Java and Android tagged Q&A posts to extract 132,767 code-description mappings, which help AutoComment generate 102 comments automatically for 23 Java and Android projects. The number of generated comments is still low, but the user study results show that the majority of the participants consider the generated comments accurate, adequate, concise, and useful in helping them understand the code. One of the advantages from mining Q&A sites for automatic comment generation is that human written comments can provide information that is not explicitly in the code. In the future, we would like to focus on improving both the yield and quality of the generated comments. To improve the yield, we can replace the token-based clone detection tool with one that can detect addition and reordering of lines to increase the number of code matches. To improve the quality, we can apply advanced natural language processing techniques such as semantic role labeling to analyze the semantics of the sentences, or typed dependencies to analyze the grammatical structure of the sentences.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF BENJAMIN M. ERWIN, for the Masters of Arts degree in Rhetoric and Composition, presented on December 18th, 2009 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: WHAT YOU SAY AND WHERE YOU SAY IT: AN EXAMINATION OF INSTRUCTOR END COMMENTS AND STUDENT REVISION IN FRESHMAN COMPOSITION MAJOR PROFESSOR: LISA J. MCCLURE The relationship between instructor commentary and student revision is not a new issue, but the majority of this existing scholarship focuses on marginal feedback while largely ignoring the possible influence of end comments. The purpose of my study was to examine the types of remarks within endnotes alongside the revisions made by a pair of English 101 students at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The participants in my study were English 101 instructors and students. By studying the comments of composition instructors as well as the revisions of a pair of SIUC students, this study presents evidence that suggests students revise and edit as the result of remarks within end comments. However, various types of remarks seemed to result in different types of revisions from these two students. Based on the instructor endnotes and the revisions provided by the two case study students, lower-order concerns are most commonly addressed in the revision process in the form of individual editing changes. Changes made in response to lower-order remarks do not generally affect the content of the text. Questions and references to higher-order concerns within end comments seemed to yield content-specific changes from both students. Given the low number of participants involved in my study, these results do not provide sufficient evidence to make specific claims regarding the influence of end comments for all students; however, endnotes seemed to foster revision when feedback is given on early drafts and when remarks clearly address content-specific aspects of a student's text.

This thesis takes a fresh look at software, treating it as a document, manuscript, corpus, or text to be consumed among communities of programmers and uncovering the social roles of these texts within two specific sub-communities and comparing them. In the paper, the social roles of the texts are placed within the context of the technical and cultural constraints and environments in which programs are written. Within that context, the comments emphasize the metaphoric status of programming languages and the social role of the comments themselves. These social roles are combined with the normative intentions for each comment, creating a dynamic relationship of form and function for both normative and identity-oriented purposes. The relationship of form and function is used as a unifying concept for a more detailed investigation of the construction of comments, including a look at a literary device that relies on the plural pronoun "we" as the subject. The comments used in this analysis are derived from within the source code of the Linux kernel and from a Corporate environment in the US. / Master of Science

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Although the use of peer assessment in MOOCs is common, there has been little empirical research about peer assessment in MOOCs, especially composition MOOCs. This study aimed to address issues in peer assessment in a MOOC-based composition course, in particular student perceptions, peer-grading scores versus instructor-grading scores, and peer commentary versus instructor commentary. The findings provided evidence that peer assessment was well received by the majority of student participants from their perspective as both peer evaluators of other students’ papers and as students being evaluated by their peers. However, many student participants also expressed negative feelings about certain aspects of peer assessment, for example peers’ lack of qualifications, peers’ negative and critical comments, and unfairness of peer grading. Statistical analysis of grades given by student peers and instructors revealed a consistency among grades given by peers but a low consistency between grades given by peers and those given by instructors, with the peer grades tending to be higher than those assigned by instructors. In addition, analysis of peer and instructor commentary revealed that peers’ commentary differed from instructors’ on specific categories of writing issues (idea development, organization, or sentence-level). For instance, on average peers focused a greater percentage of their comments (70%) on sentence-level issues than did instructors (64.7%), though both groups devoted more comments to sentence-level issues than to the two other issue categories. Peers’ commentary also differed from instructors’ in the approaches their comments took to communicating the writing issue (through explanation, question, or correction). For example, in commenting on sentence-level errors, on average 85% of peers’ comments included a correction as compared to 96% of instructors’ comments including that approach. In every comment category (idea development, organization, sentence-level), peers used a lower percentage of explanation—at least 10% lower—than did instructors. Overall, findings and conclusions of the study have limitations due to (1) the small size of composition MOOC studied and small sample size of graded papers used for the analysis, (2) the lack of research and scarcity of document archives on issues the study discussed, (3) the lack of examination of factors (i.e. level of education, cultural background, and English language proficiency) that might affect student participants’ perception of peer assessment, and (4) the lack of analysis of head notes, end notes, and length of comments. However, the study has made certain contributions to the existing literature, especially student perception of peer assessment in the composition MOOC in this study. Analysis of the grades given by peers and instructors in the study provides evidence-based information about whether online peer assessment should be used in MOOCs, especially composition MOOCs and what factors might affect the applicability and consistency of peer grading in MOOCs. In addition, analysis of the data provides insights into types of comments students in a composition MOOC made as compared to those instructors made. The findings of the study as a whole can inform the design of future research on peer assessment in composition MOOCs and indicate questions designers of peer assessment training and practice in such MOOCs could find helpful to consider.

This thesis explores the use of avatars with facial expressions in social media and e-journalism communication interfaces. This thesis involved three experimental conditions. In the first experimental condition a survey (n=34) and an experiment (n=25) were carried out in order to explore the central problems faced by users during adding and retrieving comments and methods to overcome those problems. The survey intended to find out the position users took towards these metaphors. 25users from the Aljazeera Channel in Doha, Qatar took part. The first experimental condition consisted of two interfaces, TARCS (traditional adding and retrieving comments system) and CMARCS (classification multimodal adding and retrieving comments system). This was carried out in order to assess users' perception of unique text with graphic classification and multimodal in an EARCS (electronic adding and retrieving comments system) interface in the presence and absence of an interactive context. This was implemented in order to assess the role of these unique classification interfaces in a news comment in the term of usability. In the second experiment, forty users evaluated the use of the VARCS (visual adding and retrieving comments system) and MMARCS (multimodal adding and retrieving comments system). Both interfaces evaluated the effect on public opinion as media study and effectiveness, interactivity and user satisfaction in HCI studies. The third experimental condition consisted of one study that investigated the impactbility and usability of facial expressions compared text with graphic and multimodal metaphors. Sixty six users from Al-Arabiya Channel in Dubai, UEA took part in these two experiments. The results obtained show that users had some problems with adding and retrieving comments in social media such as missing data and lack of organisation. Also, the new classification performed better and faster under an interface that implemented avatars with specific facial expressions compared to a textual interface and multimodal. Practical guidelines were also introduced to provide assistance to multimedia designers who use avatars with facial expressions in e-journalism interactive systems as well as its impact on the public opinion.

Online software tutorials help a wide range of users acquire skills with complex software, but are not always easy to follow. For example, a tutorial might target users with a high skill level, or it might contain errors and omissions. Prior work has shown that user contributions, such as user comments, can add value to a tutorial. Building on this prior work, we investigate an approach to soliciting structured tutorial enhancements from tutorial readers. We illustrate this approach through a prototype called Antorial, and evaluate its impact on reader contributions through a multi-session evaluation with 13 participants. Our findings suggest that structuring tutorial contributions has positive impacts on both the number and type of reader contributions. Our findings also point to design considerations for systems that aim to support community-based tutorial refinement, and suggest promising directions for future research. / February 2017

This study involves the development and validation of a measure of physical appearance-related comments, The Verbal Commentary on Physical Appearance Scale (VCOPAS). Previous research has shown that the development of body image and eating disturbances is greatly influenced by teasing and negative appearance-related feedback. The limited research on positive appearance-related feedback is likely due to the lack of an empirically validated scale of positive appearance-related commentary. Consequently, the VCOPAS was developed to assess the frequency and effect of positive appearance-related comments and other types of appearance-related comments. In Study 1, 50 undergraduate female students of ages 18 to 25 completed the revised VCOPAS and 8 of these students also attended a focus group session. The revised VCOPAS and its subscales demonstrated adequate internal consistency. This scale was subsequently modified based on the findings of Study 1. In Study 2, 320 undergraduate female students of ages 18 to 25 completed the VCOPAS. Factor analyses indicated that four factors should be retained. The VCOPAS and its subscales exhibited low to high internal consistencies. Study 3 was a confirmatory factor analysis study that used 246 undergraduate female students of ages 18 to 25. An exploratory factor analysis was also conducted to cross-validate the VCOPAS with a new sample. Given the importance of interpretability and theory in scale development, a four-factor model was retained for the final VCOPAS. The final VCOPAS consists of 26 items and contains four subscales (Negative Appearance, Positive Body, Positive General Appearance, and Exercise Commentary). The total scale and subscales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Significant correlations were found between a number of VCOPAS subscales and measures of physical appearance-related feedback, body image disturbance, self-objectification, and self-esteem. Regression analyses indicated the utility of the Negative Appearance, Positive Body, and Positive General Appearance subscales in predicting body image disturbance. It seems that different types of appearance-related commentary influence the body image of females in distinct ways. The VCOPAS is likely to be useful in future research examining the role of appearance-related commentary, specifically positive appearance-related commentary, in the development of body image and eating disturbances among females.