The aims of the research are to study the effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on individual communication processes and group interaction under realistic conditions. This contrasts with previous research which has been conducted using inexperienced users in artificial situations. A study investigated communication issues in an organisation where a new electronic mail (e-mail) system had been implemented. Data regarding usage patterns and subjective evaluations of e-mail showed that usability of the system was not critical, but communication and social interaction were important issues not considered during implementation. In particular, the linking of groups within the organisation had been ignored. The second and third studies investigated the way that e-mail impacts on group interaction. Research on the effects of CMC on group processes has produced a number of contradictory findings and it has been proposed that differences in the e-mail context may be responsible for these findings. Based on social identity theory and the concept of de-individuation, it was hypothesised that the identifiability of users and the strength of group identity would be important factors. It was predicted that there would be less adherence to group norms in individuated groups, in terms of: more uninhibited communication (flaming), less group cohesion and less group polarisation. Study 2 compared subjects before and after discussion, whereas study 3 focused on the dynamic nature of communication and experience, using repeated assessment. The provision of extra identifying information was associated with increases in communication activity, self-disclosure and flaming, while limiting the amount of identifying information resulted in more balanced participation. Personal identifiability did not significantly affect the way users perceived themselves, but did affect the way they perceived other group members: there was more perceived group cohesion in groups which received extra identifying information. There was no significant support for the group polarisation phenomenon. There were very few significant effects. of group identity. The research findings are discussed in relation to social psychological theory, previous CMC research and theories of group development. Methodological issues and the practical implications of varying levels of identifiability are also considered. Recommendations are made for future research. One particular issue that needs addressing concerns whether 'flaming' is properly conceptualised as normative or antinormative behaviour.

<p>This thesis introduces the concept of living exhibitions:continuously evolving museum exhibitions that are cooperativelydeveloped and evaluated by teams of museum professionals andvisitor representatives. The author argues that the livingexhibition design process should draw its inspiration frommultiple resources, including current research on museumlearning, interaction principles and technology. As acase-in-point, the thesis provides a description of how suchresults have inspired the design of The Well of Inventions, apublic installation at the Museum of Science and Technology inStockholm. Furthermore, the thesis describes how an evaluationmethodology from cooperative design was adopted andsuccessfully applied within the museum domain. The ultimate aimof the work is to increase the opportunities for communicationbetween museum professionals and their audiences.</p>

<p>This is a comparative study between traditional group work and cooperative learning among 9 graders at a Swedish high school. The classes did an assignment that involved translating and then both students and teachers answered a questionnaire. An example of how profitable cooperative learning is is the fact that the speech activity was more equal in the cooperative groups. All the students in the cooperative groups had to contribute to the assignment in order to fulfill the assignment. The reason for higher speech activity is the structure of cooperative learning, which involves roles suited for the assignment. The study contains observations of four classes, student reflections and teacher reflections from a compulsory school in the middle of Sweden. The results of these observations support each other and they point to the same direction, cooperative learning seems to be a successful didactic approach in the socio cultural perspective. Since the students learn important socio cultural rules, which is useful in society. The students working in cooperative learning show that students cooperate more and enjoy their work when they have their defined roles in the group.</p>

Raw product value of vegetables for processing in the Northwest used to be established by a competitive market involving proprietary processors and growers. Due to the relocation of proprietary processors to the Midwest, this competitive market has eroded forcing cooperative processors to seek other means to set raw product values. In the absence of a competitive market for raw product, cooperatives must rely on an average of last year's prices paid by processors in a given region to value raw product. This method of lagged averages may be resulting in misallocated contracted acreage to grower-members of cooperatives, and inappropriate production levels of the processed good given market conditions. Therefore, the principal objective of this research is to develop and evaluate alternative methods of forecasting raw product value. Since the market for processed vegetables at the retail level is competitive, one alternative method employed was to use a forecast of supply and determinants of demand affecting retail price to forecast raw product value. These explanatory variables were regressed against raw product values of various crops obtained from a northwest processing and marketing cooperative. The raw product values were expressed as net returns/acre to the crops under investigation. The estimated equations, which had adjusted R²'s ranging from .267 to .851, were used to forecast raw product value. A second forecasting method investigated in this study was an exponential smoothing model. Raw product value forecasts were generated over two different time horizons, identified by the cooperatives' accounting procedures. The two alternative forecasting methods were compared to each other, and to the method currently in use by the cooperative, with the aim of determining the most accurate forecasting technique. Results showed that both the econometric and smoothing approaches fit the data better over the estimation period than did a naive lagged price estimate resembling the present method in use by the cooperative. The econometric method also fit the data better than did the smoothing approach. The econometric model provided poor forecasts for the longer forecast horizon, but proved to be effective in the shorter. The smoothing technique forecasted more effectively in the longer forecast horizon as compared with the shorter. These results suggest the importance of the forecast horizon in determining the more appropriate forecasting technique. Both forecasting techniques proposed in this study produced forecasts which were more accurate than the cooperative's present method at least half of the time. This suggests that viable alternatives to the present method of establishing raw product value exist for agricultural cooperatives. / Graduation date: 1986

A major problem confronting farmer cooperatives merging for the first time is the lack of valuable experience that a prior merger would have provided. This lack of experience results in a decision making environment of imperfect knowledge, both of the necessary postmerger activities to be performed and the timing of their performance. Thus, it was the purpose of this study to provide inexperienced cooperatives with a guide for scheduling uncertain postmerger decisions and activities. Such a guide will enable more rational postmerger decision making and more effective reorganization of merging businesses. The additional information was provided primarily from the historical records of an actual dairy cooperative case merger to which a technique known as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was applied to develop a prescriptive model of the postmerger activities and their scheduling for possible use in similar subsequent mergers. The major benefits from using a case study approach was pedagogical in the hope that the results would be more readily adopted in practical use than if a purely theoretical design were used. Furthermore, the results of the study are based on the supposition that the synergistic benefits are greatest when the length of the postmerger decision period is minimized. Uncertainty is alleviated through planning and PERT is a planning tool that can be used to minimize project completion time. However, by applying PERT to historical data much can be learned from the experience of a previous merger. The results of applying PERT to a posteriori case study data provided a prescriptive guide for scheduling postmerger decisions and activities. More specifically, PERT determined the key performance areas of marketing and personnel to be of critical significance following the decision to merge. These areas were determined to be critical with respect to their constituent activity completion times; that is, the sequential activity path determined to be the longest occurred within the marketing and personnel areas. Thus, the expected completion times of the activities within these areas must not be prolonged in order that the merger may be completed on schedule. As determined by PERT, all other key performance areas in the case merger were not likely to become bottleneck areas during the postmerger decision period; basically their integration responsibility was one of converting the premerger procedures of the "acquired" cooperatives to that of the acquiring cooperative. Merging cooperatives can realize substantial savings from adapting the methods and findings of this study to their particular situation. Such a course of action will enable a more rapid completion of the postmerger decisions and activities and hasten the realization of the potential synergistic benefits. / Graduation date: 1971

No description available.

Spatial diversity is an effective technique to combat the effects of severe fading in wireless environments. Recently, cooperative communications has emerged as an attractive communications paradigm that can introduce a new form of spatial diversity which is known as cooperative diversity, that can enhance system reliability without sacrificing the scarce bandwidth resource or consuming more transmit power. It enables single-antenna terminals in a wireless relay network to share their antennas to form a virtual antenna array on the basis of their distributed locations. As such, the same diversity gains as in multi-input multi-output systems can be achieved without requiring multiple-antenna terminals. In this thesis, a new approach to cooperative communications via distributed extended orthogonal space-time block coding (D-EO-STBC) based on limited partial feedback is proposed for cooperative relay networks with three and four relay nodes and then generalized for an arbitrary number of relay nodes. This scheme can achieve full cooperative diversity and full transmission rate in addition to array gain, and it has certain properties that make it alluring for practical systems such as orthogonality, flexibility, low computational complexity and decoding delay, and high robustness to node failure. Versions of the closed-loop D-EO-STBC scheme based on cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing type transmission are also proposed for both flat and frequency-selective fading channels which can overcome imperfect synchronization in the network. As such, this proposed technique can effectively cope with the effects of fading and timing errors. Moreover, to increase the end-to-end data rate, this scheme is extended for two-way relay networks through a three-time slot framework. On the other hand, to substantially reduce the feedback channel overhead, limited feedback approaches based on parameter quantization are proposed. In particular, an optimal one-bit partial feedback approach is proposed for the generalized D-O-STBC scheme to maximize the array gain. To further enhance the end-to-end bit error rate performance of the cooperative relay system, a relay selection scheme based on D-EO-STBC is then proposed. Finally, to highlight the utility of the proposed D-EO-STBC scheme, an application to cognitive radio is studied.

No description available.

Call number: LD2668 .P7 1973 I85

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1950 H35 / Master of Science