Organizations’ approaches to blockchain: A critical realist perspective

Organizations face manifold implementation barriers in blockchain adoption. Of particular interest is the pre-adoption phase, where knowledge and attitudes guide organizations’ approaches toward a new technology. This paper examines organizations’ approaches to blockchain through a sensemaking lens to identify how blockchain prototype development is guided by perceived business value of and sentiments toward the technology. Taking a critical realist perspective, we examine divergences between organizations’ approaches toward blockchain adoption, i.e., what they do, and why and how they approach blockchain. We differentiate between four types of approaches and provide recommendations how the pre-adoption phase can be considered in academic analyses.     

Product Innovation: More Than Just Making a New Product*

Successful product innovation requires more than the management of technology; it also must address users’ problems and needs, how the product will be used, and for what purpose. Regarded in this way, a product innovative process is essentially a creative learning process. Based on in-depth analysis of nine cases, we identify and discuss two learning themes: anchoring and intragroup coherence. The former concerns the what of a comprehensive product package, and the latter concerns the how of building a product team. Several principles supporting successful innovation have been identified.     

Perceived task complexity as a criterion for information support

Here, the conceptual model of perceived task complexity, which incorporates the user, task, and system into a comprehensive unit of analysis, is used to investigate how, when, and why computer-assisted instruction (CAI) systems provide effective support. The work is based on data provided by 156 experimental subjects; information system (IS) use was found to vary by user groups depending on task performance. In addition, the effects of task presentation on task behavior and performance were found to vary between groups, based on their performance. The findings imply that user, task, and system dynamically interact in providing effective IS support. A comprehensive model of perceived task complexity that includes a user's domain knowledge is developed. This should help in further investigating into how, when, and why IS are effective.     

Distributed goal-oriented computing

For current computing frameworks, the ability to dynamically use the resources that are allocated in the network has become a key success factor. As long as the size of the network increases, it is more difficult to find how to solve the problems that the users are presenting. Users usually do know what they want to do, but they do not know how to do it. If the user knows its goals it could be easier to help him with a different approach. In this work we present a new computing paradigm based on goals. This paradigm is called Distributed goal-oriented computing paradigm. To implement this paradigm an execution framework for a goal-oriented operating system has been designed. In this paradigm users express their goals and the OS is in charge of helping the achievement of these goals by means of a service-oriented approach.     

Investigating IT Governance through the Viable System Model

This paper investigates IT governance through the Viable System Model (VSM). We make a theoretical contribution by discussing why IT governance can continue to achieve its purpose of creating and preserving IT business value. Additionally, we demonstrate how the VSM can be used as a lens to describe and diagnose IT governance from a practical perspective, offering insights in how complexity can be unfolded and how complexity engineering takes place to handle changing complexity.     

Knowledge management through multi-perspective modelling: representing and distributing organizational memory

Full and accurate representation of an organization's knowledge assets, which together constitute “organizational memory”, requires multi-perspective modelling at a number of levels of detail. We propose that the perspectives which need to be represented can be characterized as who, what, how, when, where and why knowledge; these perspectives, and necessary levels of abstraction, are captured by the Zachman framework for Information Systems Architecture. We suggest modelling techniques that might be appropriate for different perspectives and levels of abstraction, and illustrate using examples from a medical domain. We also describe how an individual perspective can become the user interface of a knowledge distribution system, and illustrate this by describing the protocol assistant, a Web-based knowledge-based system capable of representing and reasoning with best practice guidelines (“protocols”) in the medical domain.     

Rethinking the evaluation of algorithm animations as learning aids: an observational study

One important aspect of creating computer programs is having a sound understanding of the underlying algorithms used by programs. Learning about algorithms, just like learning to program, is difficult, however. A number of prior studies have found that using animation to help teach algorithms had less beneficial effects on learning than hoped. Those results surprise many computer science instructors whose intuition leads them to believe that algorithm animations should assist instruction. This article reports on a study in which animation is utilized in more of a “homework” learning scenario rather than a “final exam” scenario. Our focus is on understanding how learners will utilize animation and other instructional materials in trying to understand a new algorithm, and on gaining insight into how animations can fit into successful learning strategies. The study indicates that students use sophisticated combinations of instructional materials in learning scenarios. In particular, the presence of algorithm animations seems to make a complicated algorithm more accessible and less intimidating, thus leading to enhanced student interaction with the materials and facilitating learning.     

A grounding framework

In order for an agent to achieve its objectives, make sound decisions, communicate and collaborate with others effectively it must have high quality representations. Representations can encapsulate objects, situations, experiences, decisions and behavior just to name a few. Our interest is in designing high quality representations, therefore it makes sense to ask of any representation; what does it represent; why is it represented; how is it represented; and importantly how well is it represented. This paper identifies the need to develop a better understanding of the grounding process as key to answering these important questions. The lack of a comprehensive understanding of grounding is a major obstacle in the quest to develop genuinely intelligent systems that can make their own representations as they seek to achieve their objectives. We develop an innovative framework which provides a powerful tool for describing, dissecting and inspecting grounding capabilities with the necessary flexibility to conduct meaningful and insightful analysis and evaluation. The framework is based on a set of clearly articulated principles and has three main applications. First, it can be used at both theoretical and practical levels to analyze grounding capabilities of a single system and to evaluate its performance. Second, it can be used to conduct comparative analysis and evaluation of grounding capabilities across a set of systems. Third, it offers a practical guide to assist the design and construction of high performance systems with effective grounding capabilities.     

Multimodal Scene Understanding Framework and Its Application to Cooking Recognition

We propose a multimodal “scene understanding” framework using sensory and text information. Scene understanding is defined by extracting information such as What, When, Where, Who, Why, and How on the surrounding environment. Although scene understanding has been studied, information on why and how was not considered. We constructed a framework for extracting how information, in addition to the conventional information based on multimodality and background knowledge. This framework was applied to a cooking scene, in which how information was defined as a cooking procedure. This framework was evaluated by constructing an audio-visual multimodal cooking recognition system, utilizing recipes as background knowledge. A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and a Hierarchical Hidden Markov Model (HHMM) were adopted in this system. Our experiments showed the robustness of the proposed framework in noisy and/or occluded situations. An interactive cooking support system based on the proposed framework might suggest the next step for cooking procedures via human–robot communications.     

Getting it from the Web: why and how online resources are used by independent undergraduate learners

Abstract Undergraduate students access the Internet for a range of purposes, many unrelated to their studies. Increasingly, learners are using the Internet to find information and resources for coursework, whether or not this is promoted or endorsed by their teachers. This article reports an interview study that investigated why and how independent learners use Web‐based resources, exploring not only the academic context of the courses studied, but also any relevant personal, domestic and employment‐related circumstances. Factors were identified, which enhanced or competed with study activities, acting as incentives or disincentives for learners. The findings suggest that it is not technologies per se, but a combination of various contextual factors, that determine students' use of Web resources for learning. Of the academic factors that emerged from the interviews, assessment requirements and pedagogic approach were particularly important.     

Investigative Visual Analysis of Global Terrorism

Recent increases in terrorist activity around the world have made analyzing and understanding such activities more critical than ever. With the help of organizations such as the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), we now have detailed historical information on each terrorist event around the world since 1970. However, due to the size and complexity of the data, identifying terrorists' patterns and trends has been difficult. To better enable investigators in understanding terrorist activities, we propose a visual analytical system that focuses on depicting one of the most fundamental concepts in investigative analysis, the five W's (who, what, where, when, and why). Views in our system are highly correlated, and each represents one of the W's. With this approach, an investigator can interactively explore terrorist activities efficiently and discover reasons of attacks (why) by identifying patterns temporally (when), geo‐spatially (where), between multiple terrorist groups (who), and across different methods or modes of attacks (what). By coupling a global perspective with the details gleaned from asking these five questions, the system allows analysts to think both tactically and strategically.     

The Dialectical Tensions in the Funding Infrastructure of Cyberinfrastructure

This article focuses on funding for cyberinfrastructure and how funding affects the cyberinfrastructure foundation laid, who completes the work, and what the outcomes of the funding are. By following qualitative procedures and thematic analysis, we identify five dialectical tensions across three difference levels of institutions, individuals, and ideologies in the funding infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure. Through an organizational communication lens, we define funding infrastructure as the communication arrangements of institutions, individuals, and ideologies that must be coordinated in order for cyberinfrastructure to be brought into existence. These communication arrangements include salient motivations of and financial compensations for individuals who engage in them. They also comprise explicit policies about funding, as well as implicit ideologies about science embedded in funding, as held by institutions involved in these communication arrangements.     

A framework for asynchronous change awareness in collaborative documents and workspaces

Change awareness is the ability of individuals to track the asynchronous changes made to a collaborative document or graphical workspace by other participants over time. We develop a framework that articulates what change awareness information is critical if people are to track and maintain change awareness. Information elements include: knowing who changed the artifact, what those changes involve, where changes occur, when changes were made, how things have changed and why people made the changes. The framework accounts for people's need to view these changes from different perspectives: an artifact-based view, a person-based view and a workspace-based view. Each information element is further broken down into distinguishing features and matched against these perspectives, e.g., location history within the where category prompts the questions ‘where was this artifact when I left’ in the artifact-based view, ‘where in the workspace has a person visited’ in the person-based view and ‘where have people been in the workspace’ in the workspace-based view. The framework can be used both to inform and critique change awareness tools.     

Technology-driven and model-driven approaches to group decision support: focus,research philosophy,and key concepts

There are (at least) two distinct traditions within group decision support: what we will call the ‘Technology-driven’ tradition, which originates in the Information Systems discipline, and what we will call the ‘Model-driven’ tradition, which originates in OR/MS. Although proponents of the two traditions share many of the same objectives, in the past there has been little communication between the two groups. In this paper, we describe the basic distinction between the two traditions in terms of two primary themes: research focus (i.e., what the researchers find of interest) and research philosophy and methodology (i.e., how researchers go about studying their chosen subject matter); and we trace these implications of these differences through the key concepts of each tradition. We conclude by arguing that there are many opportunities for synergy between the two traditions.     

The teacher's responsibility in whole‐class debriefing of mathematical activity

Abstract

Prompted by recent moves in the United Kingdom to guide teachers’ practices in whole‐class, direct interactive teaching, in this article, we offer an opportunity for North American mathematics educators to reflect on possibilities for whole‐class teaching of mathematics. We focus particularly on the plenary aspect of lessons—what might be considered the debriefing of mathematical activity—and specifically on the teacher's responsibility during those sessions, both to his or her students and to the authenticity of the discipline of mathematics. Drawing on data from a Grade‐3 classroom and invoking complexity science as a theoretical lens to explore the classroom as a complex learning system, we present implications for teaching in whole‐class debriefings of mathematical activity.     

Mobile map interactions during a rendezvous: exploring the implications of automation

Location awareness can help facilitate a rendezvous of two or more persons. To further enhance the rendezvous experience, we conducted two complementary field studies to identify what information in a location-aware map application is important to rendezvous individuals (study 1) and to explore the use of autofocus, our automation technique to reduce user interactions with the rendezvous application while still providing relevant information to assist users with their navigation task (study 2). Overall, our results highlight the importance of maintaining the visibility of the user’s location in relation to that of their partner(s) and rendezvous location. Additionally, we show that automation is useful in the context of a rendezvous application, but that the considerations are significantly more nuanced than originally conceived. We discuss unique instances when and why the automation process broke-down or did not perform as required by users. The results of this work demonstrate the potential for automation in a location-aware rendezvous application and identify important design considerations for future work in this area.     

Of ‘knowing science’ and of ‘doing science’: A reaffirmation of the tacit and the affective in science and science education

Abstract:

Most of school science concentrates on helping students gain a knowledge and understanding of explicit science, which may subsequently be tested in examinations. It presents a picture of science as a secure body of knowledge, gained by scientists working according to the standard procedures of science. In this paper I stress a different model of science: the looseness of the knowledge held, the idiosyncratic methods by which it is obtained, and the personal way in which it is used to solve problems. I also stress the importance of tacit knowledge and the affective driving force, which describe the personal knowledge that scientists both hold and utilize; I analyse the nature of authentic science in terms of the type of knowledge that scientists know and the way in which scientists work. The arguments for and against such authentic science in schools are considered, together with the factors limiting its practicality. Influenced by the writing of Polanyi, Hodgkin, and Claxton and by experience of, and researches into, students doing problem‐solving projects in schools, I argue that it is desirable, and possible, to incorporate some such authentic science into the school science curriculum. In spite of many unsympathetic pressures acting on current schooling, I believe that there is a vital need to reaffirm the importance of the tacit and the affective in school science.     

Understanding and measuring formal communication quality for technology implementation: A test during the anticipation stage

Successfully introducing new technologies to employees remains a critical and challenging task for managers. Practitioner and academic research points to the crucial role of formal communication in the success of technology implementation. We developed a scale for measuring formal communication quality and assessed its influence using three samples of working professionals who were anticipating new technologies at work. Informed by the coping model of user adaptation, we examined the direct and indirect effects of formal communication quality during the anticipation stage of a technology implementation project on employees’ cognitions, emotions and intention to connect with colleagues in order to prepare themselves for the new technologies. The results validate our conceptualization of formal communication as a second-order formative construct with information quality in four content areas (i.e., what, how, why and when) as the first-order dimensions. Our findings affirm the role of formal communication as a managerial influence mechanism that positively affects an employee’s preliminary evaluation of a new IT during the anticipation stage. The evaluation of the new IT triggered emotions, and the emotions in turn motivated employees to seek opinions and camaraderie from others as a means of adapting to the new IT. Our post hoc analyses illustrate the dynamic nature of the relationship among formal communication quality, beliefs, emotions and coping intentions as the implementation unfolds. Our work contributes to the literature by improving the operationalization of formal communication quality, expanding the current understanding of seeking social support and revealing new insight about the temporal dynamics of the relationships in the nomological network during the anticipation stage. The validated scale of formal communication can be a useful tool for managers who wish to evaluate the effectiveness of their communication and to assess its impact on employees’ adaptation.     

Why and how developers fork what from whom in GitHub

Forking is the creation of a new software repository by copying another repository. Though forking is controversial in traditional open source software (OSS) community, it is encouraged and is a built-in feature in GitHub. Developers freely fork repositories, use codes as their own and make changes. A deep understanding of repository forking can provide important insights for OSS community and GitHub. In this paper, we explore why and how developers fork what from whom in GitHub. We collect a dataset containing 236,344 developers and 1,841,324 forks. We make surveys, and analyze programming languages and owners of forked repositories. Our main observations are: (1) Developers fork repositories to submit pull requests, fix bugs, add new features and keep copies etc. Developers find repositories to fork from various sources: search engines, external sites (e.g., Twitter, Reddit), social relationships, etc. More than 42 % of developers that we have surveyed agree that an automated recommendation tool is useful to help them pick repositories to fork, while more than 44.4 % of developers do not value a recommendation tool. Developers care about repository owners when they fork repositories. (2) A repository written in a developer’s preferred programming language is more likely to be forked. (3) Developers mostly fork repositories from creators. In comparison with unattractive repository owners, attractive repository owners have higher percentage of organizations, more followers and earlier registration in GitHub. Our results show that forking is mainly used for making contributions of original repositories, and it is beneficial for OSS community. Moreover, our results show the value of recommendation and provide important insights for GitHub to recommend repositories.