Online Identity Crisis Identity Issues in Online Communities

Minds and Machines - How have online communities affected the ways their users construct, view, and define their identity? In this paper, we will approach this issue by considering two...     

Distributed Apprenticeship in Online Communities

Supporting learning in online communities is an important direction for the future of human–computer interaction as people increasingly leverage social technologies to support professional growth and development. However, few have studied how people leverage the socio-technical affordances of online informal workplace communities to develop professional skills in the absence of dedicated expert guidance. We draw from theories of apprenticeship to introduce an emergent theory of distributed apprenticeship, which outlines how community expectations of transparency and mutual support allow for instruction to be directed by a distributed network of nonexperts. We develop distributed apprenticeship through a qualitative study of crowdfunding entrepreneurs, where novices leverage social interactions with community members to develop a wide range of entrepreneurial skills. We then generalize distributed apprenticeship to other workplace contexts and provide design implications for online communities where people develop professional skills with minimal dedicated formal guidance.     

在线社交网络社区的启发式挖掘框架

指出基于全局优化的社区挖掘方法的不足,给出OSNs网络及其社区挖掘的形式定义,提出一个启发式社区挖掘框架,在此框架下对包括LWP,Clauset,Schaeffer,Papadopoulos,Bagrow与Chen在内的6种启发式社区挖掘算法进行分析比较.通过3个真实OSNs网络的实验比较,验证了启发式社区挖掘框架的可行性,在结果社区有效性与时间效率上对6种启发式算法进行比较,实验结论为网络社区挖掘的工程实践与理论研究提供了借鉴.     

基于结构稳定性校准的在线式社区识别

本文探讨在线社会网络的社区识别问题, 重点研究网络演变特性对社区结构产生的影响. 首先基于节点的邻域倾向性提出社区稳定性的概念并给出稳定社区的快速识别算法, 然后设计了一种基于事件的社区稳定性校准算法以此识别新网络的社区结构. 由于算法的局部搜索策略, 该方法无需在新时间片段重复执行, 并且可以在无参数条件下识别加权网络中具有任意形状的社区结构. 在人工合成网络和真实网络上的实验结果验证了算法的可行性和有效性.     

Correction to: Online Identity Crisis: Identity Issues in Online Communities

Minds and Machines - An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.     

在线教育环境中学习共同体研究综述

随着信息技术与教育的深度融合,蓬勃发展的在线教育已成为教育信息化进程的新常态,并产生了海量的教育数据,但也面临辍学率高、课程完成率低、监管不足等问题,因此如何对海量教育数据进行挖掘和分析是解决这些问题的关键.学习共同体是以学习者为核心要素的学习组织,强调学习过程中学习者之间互动交流、资源共享以及协作学习等行为,从而完成共同的学习任务或目标.对在线教育环境中学习共同体的研究进行回顾、分析和展望.首先,介绍在线教育环境中学习共同体的背景与重要性.其次,介绍不同学科中学习共同体的定义.然后,总结同质、异质和混合3种类型学习共同体的构建方法.接着,从共享、协作和激励3个方面讨论学习共同体的管理机制.最后,探讨和展望学习共同体未来的研究方向.     

Trust Prediction in Online Communities Employing Neurofuzzy Approach

Exploiting the opportunities provided by Web 2.0 technologies has led to the appearance of social web applications, which allow users to interact and collaborate with each other, thereby sharing experience in an online environment. Establishing a trust mechanism is vital in order to identify the trustful sources of information on the social web. Trust prediction can be a useful tool for identifying the potential trust relationships among users in an online community. Thereby, reliable participants can be recommended to users; this increases social interaction among users and makes the trust network denser. The main contribution of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of soft computing and neurofuzzy techniques within the context of trust prediction. Therefore, an adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS) as a representative of neurofuzzy techniques is compared with the widely used classification techniques including C4.5 decision tree, artificial neural network (ANN), logistic regression, and Bayesian network. All methods are applied on a portion of data obtained from the Epinions network. The results of empirical experiments indicate that ANFIS achieves the best performance in terms of area under ROC (AUC) among all other methods. Furthermore, ANFIS follows closely a C4.5 algorithm concerning F-measure. Overall, the results of experiments indicate that AFNIS can be a suitable candidate for prediction of unknown trust relationships in an online community.     

有效开展在线教学的方法与策略探索

疫情时期,为保障师生安全、保证教学进度,各校纷纷开展在线教学以满足学生在家的学习需求,实现教师离校不离教、学生离校不离学。本文通过分析在线教学的特点及现状,提出在线教学的方法设计以及组织实施策略,为在线教学的教师提供参考。     

Empowerment through seamfulness: smart phones in everyday life

In this paper, we describe research into use of multifunctional mobile phones by working adults and posit the device as a plausible realization of ubiquitous computing. We investigate how users actively adapt and adopt the different functions in smart phones to suit their needs and lifestyles. Through an interview and diary study, we discover how the smart phone is used in pragmatic and seamful ways, regardless of the interface of the specific phone selected or the particular features available. Users used phones in highly individual manners; mixed and adapted existing functions to meet their own priorities; added some functions and ignored others to create their own portfolio; and blended their use with the specifics of their everyday lives. While these data challenge some assumptions of human–computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, it also presents new research potential in terms of understanding how users take advantage of the multiple features in smart phone devices and how they utilize seamfulness in everyday smart phones practices.     

在线技术社区的用户技能与兴趣发现

在线技术社区是技术爱好者或者从业者进行技术交流、咨询和分享的重要平台。社区运营者如果能够准确掌握每个用户的技能和兴趣,对用户进行画像,将有助于为用户提供精准的推荐和个性化服务,从而增加用户的黏性和社区的活跃度。考虑到社区用户既是内容的生产者(作者)又是内容的消费者(读者),生产者体现用户技能,消费者体现用户兴趣,从而提出了一种作者—读者—话题(author-reader-topic,ART)模型,同时对用户的技能和兴趣进行建模。该模型可以将文档的作者和读者关联起来,因而能够提升话题的聚集效果,产生更准确的作者话题分布和读者话题分布。该文基于CSDN技术社区的真实数据集进行了实验对比和分析,实验结果表明,该文提出的ART模型能够有效地发现用户的技能和兴趣,明显优于现有的各种话题模型。     

一种融合话题和行为的在线问答社区领域专家发现方法

根据在线问答社区中答案的产生过程,提出一种“问题-回答者-话题”(Question-Answerer-Topic, QAT)模型,对“问题-回答者对”(question-answerer pair)的领域话题分布进行建模,并结合社区中的点赞行为,融入用户在每个问题下答案的获赞数据,计算用户在领域话题分布下的专业水平,最后结合链接分析的方法,提出一种主题敏感的PageRank改进模型,最终得到每位用户在领域话题下的专家得分。基于中文在线问答社区知乎网的人工智能领域真实数据集进行实验和对比分析,实验结果表明,本文提出的领域专家发现方法明显优于其他现有方法。     

网络环境下高职院校学生在线学习设计策略

信息化时代的发展,为网络教育的普遍应用提供了优越的条件。本文在对在线学习概念分析的基础上,针对目前高职院校学生在线学习现状及特点,结合在线学习活动构成要素,提出了高职院校学生在线学习活动的五项设计策略,以提高学生的在线学习能力。     

Ideation Capabilities for Continuous Innovation

This paper explores ideation capabilities in large organizations. Based on the dynamic capabilities framework, it is seen that ideation capabilities are managerial and organizational processes for the stimulation, identification, selection and implementation of ideas. In order to explore how these capabilities are manifested and used in firms, case studies of four Swedish companies have been performed. The results of the study show that there are different approaches to ideation. In terms of the nature of innovative ideas, the observations lead to the suggestion that ideation presents some seemingly paradoxical issues to management. Firms with an explicit focus on building ideation practices experience that there are some negative consequences of the resultant formalization. Furthermore, the extent to which many employees should be involved in ideation is a difficult aspect, even though new technologies make this more viable. Also the degree to which the search for ideas should be directed is a non‐trivial question, as the ideation processes can be facilitated by both freedom and limitations. It is nevertheless seen that firms can benefit from more deliberate approaches to ideation, in particular if these are broad and balanced and focus on both building capabilities that formalize the informal, in terms of establishing explicit processes, roles and systems, and building capabilities needed to manage informal structures in new ways.     

Wikibooks in higher education: Empowerment through online distributed collaboration

In this case study, wiki technology was applied to the development of an introductory academic textbook on information systems. While the development, production and distribution of traditional textbooks are influenced by commercial interests, the wikitextbook was developed collaboratively by faculty and by students, and was made available online free of charge. After about two years of activity, the wikitextbook accumulated 564 sub-chapters, co-authored by undergraduate and graduate students in more than 20 classes offered by seven academic departments across three Israeli universities. We discuss the potential of wikitextbooks as vehicles of empowerment to students, teachers, and the discipline. This type of collaborative online technology intimates an influence on the status-quo in academic education in favor of less empowered stakeholders. However, caution is advised in drawing premature conclusions from results reported here. The implementation of wikitextbook should be augmented by a careful study of cultural, societal, behavioral and pedagogic variables.     

Becoming Friends in Online Brand Communities: Evidence From China

With the aid of information technology, consumers have increasingly engaged in social interaction in online brand communities. How can these strangers make friends online? Drawing on embeddedness theory and media richness theory, we examine the antecedents and intermediate mechanisms of online friendship. We theorize that online brand community interactivity aided by instant messaging technology is the main driving force of online friendship, whereas social presence and a sense of yuan (a Chinese concept describing predetermined relations) mediate online friendship development. Online friendship in turn enhances consumer online brand community commitment. We test our conceptual model with a sample of consumers from Chinese online sporting goods forums. The results support our hypotheses and inform online brand community research and practice.     

A Comparison of Creative Behaviours in Online Communities across Cultures

In this study we shed light on the impact of cultural differences on creative processes and innovation creation in online communities. Analysing English‐ and Chinese‐speaking online basketball communities, we investigate how innovations develop in virtual consumer groups and what motives drive members to engage in joint innovation creation. Similarly to findings from creativity research in offline contexts, we find that culture does have an influence on creative processes and expressions. While English‐ and Chinese‐speaking online communities are similar in their high quality and quantity of creative outputs, they differ with regard to innovation patterns and the kinds of emerging innovations. From a practical perspective the findings suggest that companies that aim to collaborate with communities across cultures have to align the interaction with the members' different expectations and routines. Further, what communities consider as creative and innovative may depend on culture.     

Establishment of Ad-Hoc Communities through Policy-Based Cryptography

A policy-based encryption scheme allows to encrypt a message according to a credential-based policy formalized as monotone Boolean expression written in standard normal form. The encryption is so that only the users having access to a qualified set of credentials for the policy are able to decrypt the message. In this paper, we first revisit the formal definition of policy-based encryption and describe a policy-based encryption scheme from bilinear pairings. Our scheme improves the one proposed in [W. Bagga and R. Molva. Policy-based cryptography and applications. In Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC'05), volume 3570 of LNCS, pages 72–87. Springer-Verlag, 2005] in terms of ciphertext size, while at the same time preserving the computational efficiency. Then, we describe an application of policy-based encryption in the context of ad-hoc networks. More precisely, we show how the policy-based encryption primitive can be used to achieve a privacy-enhanced secure establishment of ad-hoc communities.     

Monitoring Online Tests through Data Visualization

We present an approach and a system to let tutors monitor several important aspects related to online tests, such as learner behavior and test quality. The approach includes the logging of important data related to learner interaction with the system during the execution of online tests and exploits data visualization to highlight information useful to let tutors review and improve the whole assessment process. We have focused on the discovery of behavioral patterns of learners and conceptual relationships among test items. Furthermore, we have led several experiments in our faculty in order to assess the whole approach. In particular, by analyzing the data visualization charts, we have detected several previously unknown test strategies used by the learners. Last, we have detected several correlations among questions, which gave us useful feedbacks on the test quality.     

Online Randomization Strategies to Obfuscate User Behavioral Patterns

When operating from the cloud, traces of user activities and behavioral patterns are accessible to anyone with enough privileges within the system. This could be, for example, the case of dishonest technical staff who may well be interested in selling user logs to competitors. In this paper, we investigate some of the security and privacy leakages derived from the analysis of user activities. We show that the working behavioral patterns exhibited by users can be easily captured into computationally useful representations that would allow an adversary to predict future activities, detect the occurrence of events of interest, or infer the organization??s internal structure. We then introduce the idea of obfuscating user behaviour through Online Action Randomization Algorithms. In doing so, we introduce an indistinguishability-based definition for perfectly obfuscated actions and a concrete scheme to randomize user traces in an incremental way. We report experimental results confirming the obfuscation quality and other properties of the proposed schemes.     

Semantic Ideation Learning for Agent-Based E-Brainstorming

Brainstorming can assist organizations in generating creative ideas using teamwork and collaboration. However, the role of information technology in brainstorming is merely that of an assistant that passively supports the progression of brainstorming sessions rather than proactively engaging in the sessions. This paper integrates the unique association thinking of humans with an intelligent agent technique to devise an automated decision agent called the Semantic Ideation Learning Agent (SILA) that can represent a session participant who is actively participating in brainstorming. SILAs are grounded on the three association capabilities of human thinking (similarity, contiguity, and contrast). Furthermore, a Collective Brainstorming Decision System (CBDS) is built to construct an environment where SILAs can learn and share their knowledge with each other. Additionally, CBDS is integrated into an intelligent care project (iCare) for the purpose of innovated e-service recommendation. Preliminarily, evaluation results indicate that the proposed system advances e-brainstorming by crossing the three key boundaries of human ideation capability (understanding, cognition boundary, and endurance).