"2008". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Australian Centre for Educational Studies, School of Education, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 268-283. / Introduction -- Review of the literature -- Methods and procedures -- Pre-intervention qualitative data analysis & discussion of findings -- Intervention -- Post-intervention qualitative data analysis & discussions of findings -- Post-intervention quantitative data analysis & discussions of findings -- Conclusions. / Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional approach that is organized around the investigation and resolution of problems. Problems are neither uniform nor similar. Jonassen (1998, 2000) in his design theory of problem solving has categorized problems into two broad types - well-structured and ill-structured. He has also described a host of mediating skills that impact problem solving outcomes. However, this list of skills is not exhaustive and in view of the utility of the Internet as an informational repository, this study examined the need for effective information searching skills to be included in this list. -- This study was aimed at studying how students solve well and ill structured problems and how different Internet information seeking strategies can be used to engage in problem solving. This study devised and empirically tested the efficacy of an interventionist conceptual model that maps the application of different information seeking techniques to successfully resolving well and ill structured problem types. The intervention helps to better understand the influence of information searching skills on problem solving performance and the various problem solving strategies students can adopt in approaching problem solving. The contrasting patterns of navigational path movements taken by students in seeking information to resolve ill and well structured problems were also investigated. -- A mixed methodology research design, involving a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used in this study. The research site was a polytechnic in Singapore that has implemented problem-based learning in its curriculum design. A first year class of 25 students were the sample population who participated in this study. Six problems from the curriculum were chosen for this study - three well-structured and another three ill-structured problems. -- The research findings of this study inform that information searching skills indeed play an important role in problem solving. The findings affirm the need for students to be systematically instructed in the skills of information searching to be aware of the complexities involved in information seeking and accomplish desired problem solving goals. This study has also shown that well and ill structured problems demand different cognitive and information seeking capabilities. Well-structured problems are easily solved and come with singular correct answers. The information searching necessary for solving well-structured problems is constrained and readily manageable. Thus, students only have to be acquainted with fundamental information searching skills to solve well-structured problems. On the other hand, ill-structured problems are messy and contain a number of unknown elements. There are no easy prototypic solutions. Subsequently, the information needs of ill-structured problems are usually complex, multi-disciplinary and expansive. Hence, students have to be trained to apply a more advanced set of information searching skills in resolving ill-structured problems. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xiv, 283 p. ill

Industry reports indicate that the number of security incidents happened in healthcare organisation is increasing. Lessons learned (i.e. the causes of a security incident and the recommendations intended to avoid any recurrence) from those security incidents should ideally inform information security management systems (ISMS). The sharing of the lessons learned is an essential activity in the “follow-up” phase of security incident response lifecycle, which has long been addressed but not given enough attention in academic and industry. This dissertation proposes a novel approach, the Generic Security Template (GST), aiming to feed back the lessons learned from real world security incidents to the ISMS. It adapts graphical Goal Structuring Notations (GSN), to present the lessons learned in a structured manner through mapping them to the security requirements of the ISMS. The suitability of the GST has been confirmed by demonstrating that instances of the GST can be produced from real world security incidents of different countries based on in-depth analysis of case studies. The usability of the GST has been evaluated using a series of empirical studies. The GST is empirically evaluated in terms of its given effectiveness in assisting the communication of the lessons learned from security incidents as compared to the traditional text based approach alone. The results show that the GST can help to improve the accuracy and reduce the mental efforts in assisting the identification of the lessons learned from security incidents and the results are statistically significant. The GST is further evaluated to determine whether users can apply the GST to structure insights derived from a specific security incident. The results show that students with a computer science background can create an instance of the GST. The acceptability of the GST is assessed in a healthcare organisation. Strengths and weaknesses are identified and the GST has been adjusted to fit into organisational needs. The GST is then further tested to examine its capability to feed back the security lessons to the ISMS. The results show that, by using the GST, lessons identified from security incidents from one healthcare organisation in a specific country can be transferred to another and can indeed inform the improvements of the ISMS. In summary, the GST provides a unified way to feed back the lessons learned to the ISMS. It fosters an environment where different stakeholders can speak the same language while exchanging the lessons learned from the security incidents around the world.

This thesis studies processes of cultural mediation and the role of digital media within them. It is based on the experiences of a group of cultural mediators within a particular music scene in contemporary Chile, and focuses on actors’ meaningful repertoires of action, their material arrangements and their relation with information and communication technologies (ICTs). ‘Mediation’ in a broader sense means processes through which human and non-human agencies produce and shape meanings, attaching them to various cultural flows such as information, images, and identities. As cultural mediators, actors define the music scene, curating and circulating through digital media various flows which they deem worthy of being considered by audiences, and distinguishing themselves across different fields. The thesis is based on nine months of fieldwork (2011) in Santiago, following the everyday practices of the creators of eight music websites through which global and local cultural flows are mediated, organised, and circulated. It analyses how various technological devices facilitate individuals’ construction of networks where cultural flows circulate, and through which their uses of taste are displayed and objectified. It proposes the concept of ‘digital capital’ as an assemblage of actors, practices, objects, and meanings, which is convertible into other types of capital (e.g. economic) and exchangeable in various fields. It is a mode of practice and expertise through which, using digital technologies, individuals create networks where cultural flows circulate. Through the making of websites, music fans become cultural mediators, developing their digital capital as cultural and technical expertise. This expertise is convertible into economic capital and positionality across different fields, especially the field of advertising. Digital capital can be summarised in the question: ‘what are the connections and associations between technical knowledge, cultural flows, and social position, as well as conversions of capital, behind someone who is using Twitter or Facebook, or making a website about a music scene?’ Against this backdrop, it is explored how actors produce and perform ‘cultures of mediation’, commoditising culture as consumption goods.

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This work focused on the investigation of the question how the concept of relevance in Information Retrieval can be validated. The work is motivated by the consistent difficulties of defining the meaning of the concept, and by advances in the field of cognitive science. Analytical and empirical investigations are carried out with the aim of devising a principled approach to the validation of the concept. The foundation for this work was set by interpreting relevance as a phenomenon occurring within the context of two systems: An IR system and the cognitive processing system of the user. In light of the cognitive interpretation of relevance, an analysis of the learnt lessons in cognitive science with regard to the validation of cognitive phenomena was conducted. It identified that construct validity constitutes the dominant approach to the validation of constructs in cognitive science. Construct validity constitutes a proposal for the conduction of validation in scenarios, where no direct observation of a phenomenon is possible. With regard to the limitations on direct observation of a construct (i.e. a postulated theoretic concept), it bases validation on the evaluation of its relations to other constructs. Based on the interpretation of relevance as a product of cognitive processing it was concluded, that the limitations with regard to direct observation apply to its investigation. The evaluation of its applicability to an IR context, focused on the exploration of the nomological network methodology. A nomological network constitutes an analytically constructed set of constructs and their relations. The construction of such a network forms the basis for establishing construct validity through investigation of the relations between constructs. An analysis focused on contemporary insights to the nomological network methodology identified two important aspects with regard to its application in IR. The first aspect is given by a choice of context and the identification of a pool of candidate constructs for the inclusion in the network. The second consists of identifying criteria for the selection of a set of constructs from the candidate pool. The identification of the pertinent constructs for the network was based on a review of the principles of cognitive exploration, and an analysis of the state of the art in text based discourse processing and reasoning. On that basis, a listing of known sub-processes contributing to the pertinent cognitive processing was presented. Based on the identification of a large number of potential candidates, the next step consisted of the inference of criteria for the selection of an initial set of constructs for the network. The investigation of these criteria focused on the consideration of pragmatic and meta-theoretical aspects. Based on a survey of experimental means in cognitive science and IR, five pragmatic criteria for the selection of constructs were presented. Consideration of meta-theoretically motivated criteria required to investigate what the specific challenges with regard to the validation of highly abstract constructs are. This question was explored based on the underlying considerations of the Information Processing paradigm and Newell’s (1994) cognitive bands. This led to the identification of a set of three meta-theoretical criteria for the selection of constructs. Based on the criteria and the demarcated candidate pool, an IR focused nomological network was defined. The network consists of the constructs of relevance and type and grade of word relatedness. A necessary prerequisite for making inferences based on a nomological network consists of the availability of validated measurement instruments for the constructs. To that cause, two validation studies targeting the measurement of the type and grade of relations between words were conducted. The clarification of the question of the validity of the measurement instruments enabled the application of the nomological network. A first step of the application consisted of testing if the constructs in the network are related to each other. Based on the alignment of measurements of relevance and the word related constructs it was concluded to be true. The relation between the constructs was characterized by varying the word related constructs over a large parameter space and observing the effect of this variation on relevance. Three hypotheses relating to different aspects of the relations between the word related constructs and relevance. It was concluded, that the conclusive confirmation of the hypotheses requires an extension of the experimental means underlying the study. Based on converging observations from the empirical investigation of the three hypotheses it was concluded, that semantic and associative relations distinctly differ with regard to their impact on relevance estimation.

This thesis addresses the challenges of producing digitally mediated healthcare information, a high-stakes arena which is conceptualised as a complex discourse and its diverse producers as interlocutors within this discourse. The study is located theoretically in the tradition of universal or formal pragmatics, the foundation of Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Building on this theoretical core a conceptual framework is developed that integrates insight from several other traditions, including communication studies. The notion of communicative transparency is aligned with the idealised goal of a rich informational context supporting a range of perspectives in movement towards a balanced and consensual understanding by lay and expert actors of healthcare in our world. The central research question is: Can digital mediation increase the transparency of healthcare communication? The empirical focus rests on two organisations involved in the creation of digital information products. Key mediators of meaning in digital healthcare information are identified as the diverse types of expertise of its producers, the materiality of digital artefacts, and the communicative mechanisms, processes and practices that often lead to departures from the normative idealised standard of transparency. The methodology is a comparative case analysis based on field research employing principally interviews to build a rich corpus, analysed using a recursive in-depth thematic coding procedure to reveal the ways in which digitally mediated healthcare meanings are shaped and shared. The study demonstrates how communicative transparency emerges from shared frames of reference and common models of communication. It is concluded that digital mediation can indeed increase the transparency of healthcare information by supporting the deepening of Habermasian rational discourse, providing that validity claims to truth, truthfulness, and rightness can be raised and resolved at all stages in the discourse among all interlocutors, whatever their role and status.

This thesis addresses the representation of, and reasoning on, musical knowledge in the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web that aims at describing information that is distributed on the web in a machine-processable form. Existing approaches to modelling musical knowledge in the context of the Semantic Web have focused on metadata. The description of musical content and reasoning as well as integration of content descriptions and metadata are yet open challenges. This thesis discusses the possibilities of representing musical knowledge in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) focusing on chord sequence representation and presents and evaluates a newly developed solution. The solution consists of two main components. Ontological modelling patterns for musical entities such as notes and chords are introduced in the (MEO) ontology. A sequence pattern language and ontology (SEQ) has been developed that can express patterns in a form resembling regular expressions. As MEO and SEQ patterns both rewrite to OWL they can be combined freely. Reasoning tasks such as instance classification, retrieval and pattern subsumption are then executable by standard Semantic Web reasoners. The expressiveness of SEQ has been studied, in particular in relation to grammars. The complexity of reasoning on SEQ patterns has been studied theoretically and empirically, and optimisation methods have been developed. There is still great potential for improvement if specific reasoning algorithms were developed to exploit the sequential structure, but the development of such algorithms is outside the scope of this thesis. MEO and SEQ have also been evaluated in several musicological scenarios. It is shown how patterns that are characteristic of musical styles can be expressed and chord sequence data can be classified, demonstrating the use of the language in web retrieval and as integration layer for different chord patterns and corpora. Furthermore, possibilities of using SEQ patterns for harmonic analysis are explored using grammars for harmony; both a hybrid system and a translation of limited context-free grammars into SEQ patterns have been developed. Finally, a distributed scenario is evaluated where SEQ and MEO are used in connection with DBpedia, following the Linked Data approach. The results show that applications are already possible and will benefit in the future from improved quality and compatibility of data sources as the Semantic Web evolves.

Information technology is constantly changing, and if academic users are to make best use of these resources, they must sustain efficient information-seeking behaviour. This study explores the information-seeking behaviour of graduate students at Kuwait University, and investigates the factors influencing that behaviour. The population also includes faculty members engaged in teaching and supervising graduate students, and academic librarians. Adopting Wilson's information-seeking model (1999) as the theoretical framework, the study identifies factors influencing graduate students' information behaviour and formulates hypotheses that illustrate the relationship between the different variables. The use of this model provides useful insights into determinants of the information-seeking behaviour patterns of students in a multidisciplinary graduate context. The research uses a mixed method approach, comprising questionnaire survey, focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Application of the Critical Incident Technique method provided in-depth data about the patterns of information-seeking behaviour of both graduate students and faculty members. Logistic regression revealed that significant factors related to library awareness, information literacy, organisational and environmental issues, source characteristics, and demographics act as determinants of the patterns of students' information-seeking behaviour. Uneasiness on the part of graduate students towards using the library and consulting its personnel reflects a broader negative perception of the role of the library in shaping students' information-searching patterns. The clearest finding that emerged from the analysis of the students' information literacy dimension was that the majority of graduate students still face difficulties in finding the appropriate information resources, particularly when using resources that need advanced search strategies. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed a heavy reliance on the information resources that require least effort (search engines, Internet websites, and personal contacts). Further, results revealed that graduate students are overwhelmed by an information overload, which leads them to become anxious about finding the appropriate information resources. Based on the results of the research, recommendations are made to further explore the information-seeking behaviour patterns of graduate students in order to enhance their information literacy skills. Improving information-seeking behaviour and enhancing the information literacy of students require interventions on various fronts: faculty members, academic librarians, the university administration, and graduate students themselves.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the information seeking behaviour of graduate students at Uppsala University, Sweden. Using a qualitative method I gain deeper knowledge of the students’ information behaviour. Method – I interview four master students concerning their information seeking. Two of the students are from the social sciences and two from the medical sciences. Findings – The findings show that students primarily use electronic information resources. The students prefer to access scientific articles electronically, and they rarely use printed books in their studies. The students prefer to use library databases over Google Scholar. The reason for this is not only the access to material, but also that they prefer the more advanced search options provided by the library. Further results show that the students tend to avoid interaction with librarians. Paper type – Two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

This thesis focuses on investigating inter-departmental Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) through Inter-organisational Systems (IOS) in the context of Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in England and Wales. There is an increasing demand to involve LGA departments in sharing information electronically in order to reduce the cost of storing and managing data, increase the level of data accuracy and timeliness and improve the accountability of the authority. During the last decades, several LGAs in the United Kingdom have started to employ IOSs to support information sharing and networked collaboration within their departments in order to meet a diverse range of citizen needs including housing services, social care services and education services. However, reaching a great level of crossdepartmental collaboration is not easy and requires additional time and effort. Normative literature proposed various models and frameworks that examine various issues and factors influencing the effort of EIS in the private and public domain. However, the applicability and validity of those models in the context of LGAs is arguable. Therefore, this research proposes and validates a novel conceptual framework that can be used as a tool for decision-making while sharing information electronically. The framework consists of four main levels: (a) investigation and presentation of factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing in LGAs based on external environment, organisational capacity, technology environment, EIS characteristics and inter-departmental environment, (b) investigation and presentation of the phases that departments adopt while participating in the EIS effort, (c) mapping of the influential factors onto the participation phases and (d) prioritisation of the factors influencing EIS in LGAs in relation to different phases. By validating the conceptual framework through using a qualitative, interpretive, multiple case study research strategy, this thesis attempts to contribute to the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of inter-departmental EIS. Despite the results of the cases cannot be generalised, yetthey can allow others to relate their views with the onesreported in this thesis.