INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE e-Society 2014

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12th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

e-Society 2014

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 12 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE th

e-Society 2014

MADRID, SPAIN 28 FEBRUARY – 2 MARCH, 2014

Organised by IADIS International Association for Development of the Information Society

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Copyright 2014 IADIS Press All rights reserved This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Permission for use must always be obtained from IADIS Press. Please contact [email protected].

Edited by Piet Kommers and Pedro Isaías Associate Editor: Luís Rodrigues

ISBN: 978-989-8704-03-0

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

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PROGRAM COMMITTEE

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KEYNOTE LECTURE

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FULL PAPERS INFLUENCING FACTORS FOR PURCHASE OF VIRTUAL AND DIGITAL GOODS

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Mayank Sharma, Pradeep Kumar and Bharat Bhasker

E-MONEY AS LEGAL TENDER: DOES THE STATUS REALLY MATTER?

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Safari Kasiyanto

A READINESS FOR CHANGE MODEL FOR DUBAI E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE

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Khalid Samara and John Raven

E-GOVERNMENT READINESS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH IMPROVEMENT OF BUSINESS: EVALUATION OF RESULTS FROM 2008 TO 2012

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Gustavo de Oliveira Almeida and Deborah Moraes Zouain

AUDIO MONITORING IN SMART CITIES - AN INFORMATION PRIVACY PERSPECTIVE

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Anna Ståhlbröst, Annika Sällström and Danilo Hollosi

INFORMATION SHARING ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND DATING WEBSITES

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Liza Eckert

A PRE-FETCH CACHE MANAGER BASED ON 3DCG MANIPULATION HISTORY ON AN AUGMENTED REALITY USER INTERFACE

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Hiroshi Honda and Kosuke Takano

EVALUATING USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR A WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE MOBILE APPLICATION

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Xia Sheng and Vincent Ng

ONLINE INFORMATION DISCLOSURE IN SOCIAL NETWORKING: THE CASE OF FACEBOOK Sevim Oztimurlenk

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TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED BULLYING & ADOLESCENT RESISTANCE TO REPORT: THE NEED TO EXAMINE CAUSAL FACTORS

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Justin Connolly, Regina Connolly and Pamela Hussey

CALL OF DUTY TO TEENAGE BOYS EXPERIENCES AND LIST OF HEURESTICS A CASE OF MODERN WAR GAME

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Pirita Ihamäki

DEVELOPMENT OF A CARDIOVASCULAR RISK CALCULATOR: CARDIORISK_ALERT

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Borja Martínez-Pérez, Isabel de la Torre-Díez and Miguel López-Coronado

PSICONNECT: A PLATFORM FOR COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MEDICAL STAFF, CAREGIVERS AND PATIENTS WITH PSYCHIATRIC PROBLEMS

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Diego Velasco-Morejón, Borja Martínez-Pérez, Isabel de la Torre-Díez and Miguel López-Coronado

A STUDY ON SMART SELF-GOVERNANCE FOR A HYPER AGED AND DEPOPULATING SOCIETY

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Bolormaa Battsogt and Takashi Kobayashi

COMPARING WRITTEN CASE STUDIES TO VIRTUAL CASE STUDIES: APPLICABILITY IN NURSING EDUCATION

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Daniel Cliburn and Kristin Lee 125

E-SKILLS CHALLENGES IN BULGARIA Elissaveta Gourova, Nikifor Ionkov and Mila Dragomirova

AN OPEN SOURCE SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE EDUCATION SYSTEM WITH REDUCED SUPPORT REQUIREMENTS

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J. Mark Pullen and Nicholas K. Clark

EVIDENCE-BASED DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A MOBILE CURRICULUM-BASED MEASUREMENT SYSTEM FOR LOW-RESOURCE SETTINGS

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Carmen Strigel

DEVELOPING A SYSTEM OF PRE-QUALIFYING ONLINE STUDENTS USING ACTIVITY THEORY

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Jose Rene Tubilleja

IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL PARTY PREFERENCE IN POLITICAL STOCK MARKETS

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Tobias T. Kranz, Florian Teschner, Philipp Roüast and Christof Weinhardt

APPLIED COSINE SIMILARITY ALGORITHM IN POLITICS: THE CASE OF MACEDONIAN PARLIAMENT

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Visar Shehu, Nuhi Besimi and Adrian Besimi

A COMPREHESIVE APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

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Blerta Abazi Caushi, Agron Caushi and Zamir Dika

BUILDINGS MAINTENANCE SUPPORTED ON VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY A. Zita Sampaio and Augusto M. Gomes

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BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING USING ACTIVITY PATTERNS

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David Grünert and Thomas Keller

SHORT PAPERS THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY LOCAL GOVERMENT

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Takayoshi Kawai

A CREATION METHOD OF APPROPRIATE AXES FOR ORGANIZING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENTS AND ITS APPLICATION FOR A CYBER CURATOR SEARCH

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Takafumi Nakanishi, Kiyotaka Uchimoto and Yutaka Kidawara

USING NARBS FOR UNSTRUCTURED BIG DATA ANALYTICS: POLITICAL ANALYSIS

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Ananda Mitra and Sanjay Mamani

AP SELECTION CRITERIA FOR ENHANCED INDOOR POSITIONING METHOD USING IEEE 802.11 RSSI MEASUREMENTS

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Jun Gyu Hwang, Seok Hun Shin and Joon Goo Park

DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY IN EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS: A SOFT SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY APPROACH

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Casey Wilson

SOFTWARE FOR CREATING AND EDITING LATEX DOCUMENTS, DESIGNED FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED USERS

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J. Prada Sanmiguel, C. Moreno Chaparro, L. C. Martini and J. Larco

FROM COMPUTER FUNDAMENTALS TO DIGITAL COMPETENCE, EXPERIENCES FROM TRANSFORMING A COURSE

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Bengt Nykvist

CREATION AND ANALYSIS OF GEOMETRIC FIGURES AND THEIR TACTILE VISUALIZATION THROUGH A BRAILLE PRINTER

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C. Moreno-Chaparro, L. C. Martini, L. León Q., J. Prada Sanmiguel, J. Larco and E. Rivas

THEATER IN CYBER SPACE: AN INTERACTIVE ART PROJECT SOLUTIONS IN RUSSIA

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Nikolay Borisov and Irina Tolstikova

REFLECTION PAPERS 3D PRINTING AND CO-CREATION OF VALUE

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Lillian Clark, Levent Çallı and Fatih Çallı

DEMAND DRIVEN E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES: A CALL FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE FACTORS INFLUENCING END USERS ADOPTION OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES Eltahir Kabbar

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ESOCIETY ACROSS BORDERS: REGIONAL IDENTITY AND OPEN SOCIETAL INNOVATION

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Celina Raffl and Katharina Große

REVIEWS USABILITY OF A SOFTWARE FOR DIET CONTROL USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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Tiago Ungaro Bardella, Leonardo Ramon Nunes de Sousa, Hilcea Santos Ferreira, Nizam Omar, Sandra Maria Dotto Stump and Ismar Frango Silveira

CHALLENGES TO HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA: BRACING UP FOR THE CHANGES THROUGH CHANGE MANAGEMENT

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Vijay Srinath Kanchi and Anil G. Rao

ENRICHING SOCIAL LEARNING THROUGH BIG DATA THEORY AND PRACTICE IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

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Lee Schlenker

POSTERS A STUDY ON THE SOLUTION THE DIGITAL DIVIDE OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN KOREA

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W. H. Na , J.M.Kim, I.K.Lee and S.Y.Lee

EXPERT SYSTEM FOR NUTRITION EDUCATION COMBINING POINTS SYSTEM DIET AND FOOD GUIDE PYRAMID

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Hilcéa Santos Ferreira, Robson de Souza Resende, Tiago Ungaro Bardella and Nizam Omar

DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNING AND U-LEARNING-BASED COMPUTER VOCATIONAL EDUCATIONAL COURSE FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED PERSON

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Byung-Seop Song, Kum-Min Rhee and Dong-Ok Kim

SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES : BASED ON WEB SERVICE

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J. S. Park, Y. R. Kang, E. Y. Choi, M. Kong, I. K. Lee and W. H. Na.

AN INVESTIGATION OF JAPANESE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ONLINE PRIVACY CONCERNS ABOUT SMARTPHONE USAGE

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Yukiko Maruyama

CHANGING STUDENTS’ SUPPORT MODEL FROM SPECIALIZED TUTORS TO UNDERGRADUATE “MONITORS”: A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE Rosália Morais Torres, Maurício Rodrigues Botelho, Cláudio de Souza, Simone Ferreira dos Santos, Cristina Duarte Silva and Nara Lúcia Carvalho da Silva

AUTHOR INDEX

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FOREWORD These proceedings contain the papers and posters of the 12th International Conference e-Society 2014, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society, in Madrid, Spain, 28 February – 2 March, 2014. The 12th International Conference e-Society 2014 aims to address the main issues of concern within the Information Society. This conference covers both the technical as well as the non-technical aspects of the Information Society. Broad areas of interest are eSociety and Digital Divide, eBusiness / eCommerce, eLearning, New Media and eSociety, Digital Services in eSociety, eGovernment / eGovernance, eHealth, Information Systems, and Information Management. These broad areas are divided into more detailed areas (see below). However innovative contributes that don't fit into these areas have also been considered since they might be of benefit to conference attendees. Topics related to e-Society are of interest. These include best practice, case studies, strategies and tendencies in the following areas:  eSociety and Digital Divide: Connectivity may imply social coherence and integration. The opposite may result as well, when systematic measures are taken to exclude certain individuals or certain groups. Papers are welcomed on the next keywords: Social Integration, Social Bookmarking, Social Software, E-Democracy, Social Integration  eBusiness / eCommerce: Business Ontologies and Models, Digital Goods and Services, eBusiness Models, eCommerce Application Fields, eCommerce Economics, eCommerce Services, Electronic Service Delivery, eMarketing, Languages for Describing Goods and Services, Online Auctions and Technologies, Virtual Organisations and Teleworking  eLearning: Collaborative Learning, Curriculum Content Design & Development, Delivery Systems and Environments, Educational Systems Design, E-Citizenship and Inclusion, eLearning Organisational Issues, Evaluation and Assessment, Political and Social Aspects, Virtual Learning Environments and Issues, Web-based Learning Communities  New Media and eSociety: Digitization, heterogeneity and convergence, Interactivity and virtuality, Citizenship, regulation and heterarchy, Innovation, identity and the global village syndrome, Internet Cultures and new interpretations of “Space”, Polity and the Digitally Suppressed  Digital Services in eSociety: Service Broadcasting, Political Reporting, Development of Digital Services, Freedom of Expression, E-Journalism, Open Access  eGovernment /eGovernance: Accessibility, Democracy and the Citizen, Digital Economies, Digital Regions, eAdministration, eGovernment Management, eProcurement, Global Trends, National and International Economies, Social Inclusion  eHealth: Data Security Issues; eHealth Policy and Practice; eHealthcare Strategies and Provision; Legal Issues; Medical Research Ethics; Patient Privacy and Confidentiality

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Information Systems: Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Intelligent Agents, Intelligent Systems, IS Security Issues, Mobile Applications, Multimedia Applications, Payment Systems, Protocols and Standards, Software Requirements and IS Architectures, Storage Issues, Strategies and Tendencies, System Architectures, Telework Technologies, Ubiquitous Computing, Virtual Reality, Wireless Communications. Information Management: Computer-Mediated Communication, Content Development, Cyber law and Intellectual Property, Data Mining, ePublishing and Digital Libraries, Human Computer Interaction, Information Search and Retrieval, Knowledge Management, Policy Issues, Privacy Issues, Social and Organizational Aspects, Virtual Communities, XML and Other Extensible Languages

The e-Society 2014 Conference had 118 submissions from more than 25 countries. Each submission has been anonymously reviewed by an average of four independent reviewers, to ensure the final high standard of the accepted submissions. Out of the papers submitted, 24 received blind referee ratings that signified acceptability for publication as full papers (acceptance rate of 20%), while some others were published as short papers, reflection papers and posters. The best papers will be selected for publishing as extended versions in the Interactive Technology and Smart Education (ITSE) journal (ISSN: 1741-5659) and also in the IADIS International Journal on WWW/Internet (ISSN: 1645-7641). The conference, besides the presentation of full papers, short papers, reflection papers and posters, also includes a keynote presentation. Special thanks go to Prof. Dr. Peter Kerkhof, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, for his keynote presentation As we all know, a conference requires the effort of many individuals. We would like to thank all members of the Program Committee (144 top researchers in their fields) for their hard work in reviewing and selecting the papers that appear in this book. We would also like to thank all the authors who have submitted their papers to this conference. Last but not least, we hope that everybody has a good time in Madrid and we invite all participants for next year edition of the International Conference e-Society 2015. Piet Kommers, University of Twente, The Netherlands Conference Program Chair Pedro Isaías, Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University), Portugal Conference Chair Madrid, Spain February 2014

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PROGRAM COMMITTEE PROGRAM CHAIR Piet Kommers, University of Twente, The Netherlands

CONFERENCE CHAIR Pedro Isaías, Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University), Portugal

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Abdulsalam Yassine, Alcatel-lucent , Canada Adam Grzech, Wroclaw University Of Technology, Poland Adam Wojciechowski, Poznan University of Technology, Poland Adam Wojtowicz, Poznan University Of Economics, Poland Agnese Augello, Icar - Istituto Di Calcolo E Reti Ad Alte Prestazi, Italy Albena Antonova, University Of Sofia, Bulgaria Alejandro Fernandez, Lifia - Universidad Nacional De La Plata, Argentina Aleksandar Dimov, University of Sofia St. Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria Alfredo Milanim, University Of Perugia, Italy Alfredo Pina Calafi, Public University Of Navarra, Spain Ali Fawaz Shareef, Institute for Research and Innovation, Villa Colle, Maldives Ann M. Shortridge, University Of Oklahoma-HSC, USA Arif Altun, Hacettepe University, Turkey Aristomenis Lampropoulos, University Of Piraeus, Greece Armin Shams, Sharif University of Technology, Iran Arthur Tatnall, Victoria University, Australia Awie Leonard, University Of Pretoria, South Africa Bardo Fraunholz, Deakin University, Australia Basilio Pueo, University Of Alicante, Spain Boong Yeol Ryoo, Texas A&M University, USA Boyan Bontchev, Sofia University St. Kl. Ohridski, Bulgaria Bruce Chien-ta Ho, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan C K Lok, HKCAAVQ, Hong Kong Carlo Simon, Provadis School Of International Management And Te, Germany Carmine Gravino, University Of Salerno, Italy Cesar Alberto Collazos, University Of Cauca, Colombia

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Charles Owen, Michigan State University, USA Christos Georgiadis, University Of Macedonia, Greece Claire Matthews, Massey University, New Zealand Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, Ludwig-maximilians University Munich, Germany Dan Dumitru Burdescu, University of Craiova, Romania Darina Dicheva, Winston-salem State University, USA David Boehringer, University Of Stuttgart, Germany David Cabrero Souto, University Of A Coruña, Spain Demetrios Sampson, University Of Piraeus & CERTH, Greece Despina Garyfallidou, University Of Patras, Greece Dessislava Petrova-antonova, University Of Sofia, Bulgaria Dimitris Alimisis, School Of Pedagogical And Technological Education, Greece Dorina Kabakchieva, University Of Sofia, Bulgaria Efthymios Alepis, University Of Piraeus, Greece Egbert Sánchez Vanderkast , National Autonomuos University Of Mexico, Mexico Elissaveta Gourova, Sofia University , Bulgaria Elpida Tzafestas, University of Athens, Greece Eltahir Kabbar, ADWC - HCT, United Arab Emirates Elvira Popescu, University Of Craiova, Romania Erwin Bratengeyer, Danube University Krems, Austria Esther Del Moral, Universidad De Oviedo, Spain Euclid Keramopoulos, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of T, Greece Eugenia Kovatcheva, University of Library Studies and Information Tech, Bulgaria Fani Zlatarova, Elizabethtown College, USA Fausto Fasano, Università Degli Studi del Molise, Italy Federica Sarro, Università Degli Studi Di Salerno, Italy Federica Vatta, University Of Trieste, Italy Frank Bongers, Dialogic, Netherlands Frina Albertyn, Eastern Institute Of Technology, New Zealand Geoffrey Skinner, The University Of Newcastle, Australia George Tsihrintzis, University Of Piraeus, Greece George S. Ioannidis, University Of Patras, Greece Giuseppe Lugano, COST Office, Brussels, Belgium Giuseppe Scanniello, University of Basilicata, Italy Gustavo Rossi, Lifia - Universidad Nacional De La Plata, Argentina Haluk Unaldi, Paradigma Consultancy, Turkey Hans-Dieter Zimmermann, FHS St. Gallen University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland Hentie Wilson, University Of South Africa, South Africa Hiroyuki Mitsuhara, The University of Tokushima, Japan Hossein Sharif, Sharif University of Technology, Iran Ignazio Passero, Università Degli Studi Di Salerno, Italy Inga Hunter, Massey University, New Zealand Isabel Solano Fernández, University Of Murcia, Spain Jacques Steyn, Monash University, South Africa

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Jan De Bruin, Tilburg University, Netherlands Janusz Sobecki, Wroclaw University Of Technology, Poland Jarogniew Rykowski, Poznan University Of Economics, Poland Javier Paris, University Of A Coruña, Spain Javier Sarsa, Universidad De Zaragoza, Spain Jeanne Schreurs, Hasselt University, Belgium Joan-Francesc Fondevila-Gascón, Universitat Abat Oliba CEU (UAO CEU) and Cable Stu, Spain Juan Huete, Universidad De Granada, Spain Julian Warner, The Queen's University Of Belfast, United Kingdom Kamelia Stefanova, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria Katerina Kabassi, TEI of the Ionian Islands, Greece Katerina Sinitsa, International Research And Training Center, Ukraine Keri Logan, Massey University, New Zealand Klaus P. Jantke, Fraunhofer Idmt, Germany Lars Knipping, Berlin University Of Technology, Germany Laura M. Castro, University of A Coruña, Spain Levent Yilmaz, Auburn University, USA Lourdes Villalustre, Universidad De Oviedo, Spain Mahmoud Abaza, Athabasca University, Canada Manuel Gentile, The National Research Council (CNR), Italy Manuel Gomez Olmedo, University Of Granada, Spain Marco Temperini, Sapienza University of Roma, Italy Maria Madiope, Unisa, South Africa Maria Spante, University West, Sweden Mario Allegra, Cnr-itd, Italy Mark Pullen, George Mason University, USA Matjaz Gams, Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia Maurice Mulvenna, University Of Ulster, United Kingdom Michele Risi, University of Salerno, Italy Mieczyslaw Owoc, University of Economics Wroclaw, Poland Mikael Collan, Lappeenranta University Of Technology , Finland Mike Joy, University Of Warwick, United Kingdom Nikolaos Konstantinou, National Technical University Of Athens, Greece Oleksiy Voychenko, International Research And Training Center For Inf, Ukraine Olga Georgieva, Sofia University, Bulgaria Paul Cunningham, IIMC, Ireland Pavel Azalov, Pennsylvania State University, USA Pawel Swiatek, Wroclaw University Of Technology, Poland Peter Parycek, Danube-University Krems, Austria Petra Poulová, University Of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic Philippos Pouyioutas, University of Nicosia, Cyprus Prashant R Nair, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, India Rafał Wojciechowski , Poznan University Of Economics, Poland

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Rainer Alt, University of Leipzig, Germany Rajavelu Loganathan, Abu Dhabi Women's College, United Arab Emirates Rajendra Kumar, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, USA Rob Van Kranenburg, Sociotal.eu, Belgium Roger Hartley, University Of Leeds, United Kingdom Roland Kaschek, The University of the Faroe Islands, The Faroe Islands Ryo Takaoka, Yamaguchi University, Japan Saba Saravady, Amrita University, India Samia Kamal, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom Serap Kurbanoglu, Hacettepe University, Turkey Sharefa Murad, University Of Salerno, Italy Shinobu Hasegawa, Japan Advanced Institute Of Science And Technology, Japan Shuli Kang, University Of Southern California, Usa Simona Ottaviano, National Research Council Of Italy, Italy Stephan Verclas, T-Systems International Gmbh, Germany Takao Terano, Tokyo Institute Of Technology, Japan Tanya Todorova, State University Of Library Studies And Informatio, Bulgaria Tasos Ptohos, University of Westminster, United Kingdom Tassos Mikropoulos, The University Of Ioannina, Greece Timo Lainema, Turku School Of Economics, Finland Tobias Meisen, Rwth Aachen University, Germany Vasiliki Spiliotopoulou, ASPAITE Patras, Greece Vijayan Sugumaran, Oakland University, USA Vincent Ng, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Vincenzo Deufemia, Universita' Degli Studi Di Salerno, Italy Weichang Du, University Of New Brunswick, Canada Willy Picard, Poznan University Of Economics, Poland Wojciech Cellary, Poznan University of Economics, Poland Wolfgang Hürst, Utrecht University, Netherlands Yavuz Akpinar, Bogaziçi University, Turkey Yongjian Fu, Cleveland State University, USA

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KEYNOTE LECTURE THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY CORPORATIONS: EFFECTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA SENTIMENT AND CORPORATE REPUTATION

By Prof. Dr.Peter Kerkhof, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract A growing body of research shows that consumer opinions posted on social media affect sales. For a growing number of companies, this is a reason to become active on social media. For example, after a slow start, a large majority of the largest US corporations that make up the Fortune 500 is now active on social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Most of these brands use social media to spread their content and to engage in conversations with the general public and with their own customers.So far, the evidence for any effect of corporate social media activities is limited. I will present the results of research we are currently conducting into the effects of corporate social media activities on both a micro level (development of sentiment within social media conversations) and a macro level (effects of corporate social media activities on corporate reputation). The results of an analysis of social media conversations between a company and its customers shows that sentiment in social media conversations rises after a company responds to customer complaints. Also, in a longitudinal study we studied the reciprocal relations between exposure to corporate social media activities and corporate reputation. The results show that corporate reputation predicts familiarity with and exposure to corporate social media activities, but that exposure to corporate social media activities also predicts a positive development in corporate reputation one year later. Importantly, both the micro and macro effects of corporate social media activities appear to be mediated by acts that humanize a corporation by making it look more open, empathic and responsive to consumer needs.

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Full Papers

12th International Conference e-Society 2014

INFLUENCING FACTORS FOR PURCHASE OF VIRTUAL AND DIGITAL GOODS Mayank Sharma, Pradeep Kumar and Bharat Bhasker Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow

ABSTRACT Social networking sites have become a hub for personal interactions and business transactions in Internet. Social apps exist in these social networking sites and thrive in the environment provided by them. The network effect observed in social networks provides ideal way to spread word of mouth about the products and services. Motivated by these facts, companies are focusing more on social networking sites to promote their products and identify new sources of revenue generation. One such nascent way is by sale of virtual and digital goods through social apps in social networking sites. Social networking sites provide a platform for social apps and the features favoring the growth of users in social apps. Apart from sale of virtual and digital goods, the word of mouth intentions of user to spread the information about such social apps and their virtual and digital goods is extremely important. Word of mouth helps social app providers to increase their user base and influence the purchase decision for their virtual and digital goods. To the best of our knowledge, research in this area is growing, with limited studies exploring the business potential involved with purchase of virtual and digital goods. The objective of our paper is to identify the influencing factors for purchase decision and word of mouth of virtual and digital goods in social apps existing in social networking sites. In our exploratory study, we incorporated Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), social influence, social app usage among other constructs. Our findings from our empirically validated research model indicate that the social self-image expression is an important determinant of both purchase intention and word of mouth of virtual and digital goods. Also, the adoption of social networking sites affects the social app usage which in turn affects the purchase intention of virtual and digital goods. KEYWORDS Social networking sites, social apps, TAM, word of mouth, purchase intention, virtual goods, digital goods.

1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, the popularity of social networking sites and the apps used in them has grown significantly. The social networking site provides the environment for development of such apps. It also enables user-touser interactions and development of an online community. These interactions in social networking sites have lead to the tremendous growth of social apps. Some social apps such as Farmville, Mafia Wars have unprecedented success stories (MacMillan, 2009). Farmville has around 80 million users with its parent company Zynga (Cashmore, 2010). The social apps with functionalities as text/video chat, photo and video sharing provides utility to users thus contributing towards the development of a community. Many social apps have revenue model which involves sale of virtual and digital goods. Virtual good example can be a prop used by an avatar in an online game. Digital good example can be music files, software, digital files etc. One of the important effects observed in social networks is network effect. This network effect contributes towards information exchange which in literature is referred to as word of mouth. Word of mouth (WOM) is informal, person-to-person communication between an individual and another in regard of a product, brand, organization, or service (Anderson, 1998). WOM through user interactions contributes towards the popularity and growth in number of users for social app and social networking sites. The network effect in social networking site makes the success of social apps, such as Farmville, unprecedented through WOM. Thus, it is imperative that we should investigate the factors contributing towards the word-of-mouth for the social apps and virtual and digital goods.

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Another important effect which is to be measured is purchase intention of virtual and digital goods existing in social apps. The purchase intention in social networking sites has been studied from various perspectives. Wang et al. (2012) studied purchase intention from the perspective of communication among social media users, Kim et al. (2011) studied from the customer value perspective and Lu et al.(2010) studied from the trust perspective. The purchase intention is the antecedent towards the actual purchase of virtual and digital goods. The current study focuses on two key determinants of success of social apps existing in social networking sites namely, purchase intention and WOM of virtual and digital goods. The success of social apps and the impact of interactions through social networking sites make an interesting case to study the influencing factors behind these phenomena. The business model which understands these underlying factors is likely to show a robust growth of social apps. Moreover, since social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn have millions of users interacting with each other actively on daily basis, it becomes a great market space for companies to sell their products and market them through the social apps. The virtual and digital goods which may/may not resemble the real world entities provides a means to engage the users of social apps and translate this engagement into business value. With advent of companies, like Zynga, based solely on social apps the study of key factors involved with this phenomenon becomes extremely important. The objective of this study is to enlist and analyze the impact of the influencing factors which affect the outcomes of interest such as purchase intention and WOM of virtual and digital goods existing in social apps in social networking sites. To accomplish it we use Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989), as the base model, and include the other affecting external variables. We study the relationships of these factors and their effect on each other. Following which we measure the significant relationships and propose the research model of our study. In this study, we took an unbiased sample of users of social apps in social networking sites and developed a survey questionnaire based on supporting literature. We then analyzed our proposed model based on the linear regression and validate it with empirical data. Our study reveals that the factors self-efficacy and social influence along with Technology Acceptance Model affects the social app usage, which then drives the purchase intention and WOM. Other factors such as, social self-image expression and the attributes of virtual and digital goods also affect the purchase intention and WOM. Our paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we provide the theoretical background along with the constructs used in our study. Next we discuss the hypotheses and our research model in Section 3. In Section 4, we discuss our research methodology, data collection, and its analysis, followed by the results. Finally we conclude in section 5.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Every social app existing in the social networking sites has certain attributes. These attributes becomes essentially the sum of parts which tends to make the whole app more attractive for a user to use. Our literature review first tries to classify these attributes of the social apps based on the perspectives of the stakeholders involved. This is a novel classification to identify the key attributes based on existing literature. The stakeholders involved in these social apps are firstly social networking site which provides the platform/environment for building of these social apps and the user connectivity. The features of these social networking sites thus become extremely important to be taken into account while assessing the success/failure of a social app. Some of the social apps may be provided by the social networking sites itself which acts as utilities for the users of social networking site. For example, in Facebook a chat/messaging service is an app which provides the users to post messages privately among a closed set of users. While a newsfeed is an app with functionality in the Facebook to provide the public feeds of friends and pages. The features of the social networking site thus become important to be taken into account. The second stake holder involved in the social apps existing in social networking sites are the users. The users leverage upon the social apps to fulfil their particular need(s) addressed by the social apps. The users motivated by variety of reasons seek a certain fulfilment of needs. These motivations can be categorized based on the e-commerce literature into the hedonic, utilitarian and social motivations (Lehdonvirta, 2009).

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The shopping motivations from various social networking sites can be classified into utilitarian and hedonic attributes. The utilitarian attributes are the attributes which relates to the utility or functionality of the social apps. These attributes can influence the purchase intention and word of mouth (WOM). WOM is informal, person-to-person communication between an individual and another in regard of a product, brand, organization, or service WOM usually involves information exchange (Anderson, 1998). With regard to word of mouth researchers have examined the conditions under which consumers are likely to rely on others’ opinions to make a purchase decision, the motivations for different people to spread the word about a product, and the variation in strength of people’s influence on their peers in WOM communications. As we are measuring the purchase intention of virtual and digital goods, it is imperative that we take into consideration the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) and use it as the backbone to study the purchase intention. As per TAM, the intention of use a system, in this case being social networking site and the social app existing in it, is affected by the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of system. The perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have also been explored in conjunction with perceived enjoyment, social influence (Venkatesh et al., 2003) among various other attitudinal variables. Since we are studying the user purchase intention of virtual and digital goods in a social networking site environment, sense of belonging is used to incorporate this context. Sense of belonging is considered a very important factor for participation in the community. A sense of belonging grows from active participation and experience in a community and thus is essential to be used in context of social networking sites. We also use self-efficacy in our study. Self-efficacy is a behavioural concept which was first proposed by Bandura (1977) and is defined as the belief "in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. Self-efficacy has been studied in conjunction with TAM as an antecedent to the TAM variables. Venkatesh (2000) found it as important determinant of perceived ease of use of information system.

3. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES We first hypothesize the purchase intention of virtual and digital goods. The purchase intention of any item in from a website has been seen to be linked with use of that website and the browsing time spend of the website (Kim et al., 2011). In our study, to account for the degree of app usage in social networking sites we borrow the concept of social media product browsing (Mikalef et al., 2013) and include it as social app usage. We define social app usage in our case as the “degree to which users of social networking sites engage in the process of using such sites to browse and use apps”. In our case, the amount of time user spends on a particular social app in social networking site, and the intensity with which it uses that social app will positively affect purchase intention of virtual and digital goods from that social app. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 1a: Social app usage will positively affect purchase intention of virtual and digital goods As discussed earlier, the attributes of virtual and digital goods can be classified into the functional, hedonic and social aspects. To include these aspects in our study, we use customizability for functional attributes of virtual and digital goods. Similarly, we use aesthetics attribute to account for the hedonic aspect of virtual and digital goods, and lastly, we use social self-image expression to account for the social aspect of virtual and digital goods. Kim et al. (2011) defines social self-image expression as “an aspect of social value and is the perceived capability of a digital item to enhance one’s image in the eyes of others”. The social self-image expression is linked with the user trying to project him/her as best possible among the other users of that social app. In this process s/he tries to enhance the image linked with social app by buying the virtual and digital goods and using them in social app to uplift his/her status. The scenario is best explained when we take some social games as example where one user tries to get ahead of other users of the social app and to do so purchasing of virtual and digital goods becomes a good stepping stone. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 1b: Social self-image expression will positively affect purchase intention of virtual and digital goods Social app usage, as we discussed earlier, represents the degree to which user browses and uses the social app in social networking site. The virtual and digital goods existing in the social app thus are likely to be affected by social app usage. Thus, we hypothesize

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Hypothesis 1c: Social app usage will positively affect word of mouth of virtual and digital goods Social self-image expression makes the user to browse and use virtual and digital goods in order to boost the image of user in eyes of others. By spreading the information and use of virtual and digital goods is a way to enhance his/her image among other users of that social app. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 1d: Social self-image expression will positively affect word of mouth of virtual and digital goods Social networking site affinity relates to the use of social networking site. Thus, it is likely to affect social app usage. Also, the user-to-user interaction among friends and peers of social networking site is likely to affect social app usage. Thus, we hypothesize Hypothesis 2a: Social networking site affinity will positively affect social app usage Hypothesis 2b: Social influence for using an app will positively affect social app usage Aesthetics and customizability are the attributes of virtual and digital goods. Some users are likely to look for the utility aspect of these virtual and digital goods which give more weightage to the customizability aspect. For example, a game card designed to level up and provide you some super power in Mafia Wars is likely to drive the usage of it as the users who does not have much time to play Mafia Wars. Also, if some other user weighs the hedonic aspect of the virtual and digital goods, then it is likely to buy the item which has some aesthetic appeal. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 2c: Aesthetics of virtual and digital goods will positively affect social app usage Hypothesis 2d: Customizability of virtual and digital goods will positively affect social app usage TAM variables namely, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are likely to affect the social networking site affinity. When a user finds a social networking site, easier to use and its features useful, it is more likely that s/he will use it. Also, when a user enjoys the experience of social networking site features, s/he is more likely to use it in voluntary context (Venkatesh, 2000). Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 3a: Perceived ease of use will positively affect social networking site affinity Hypothesis 3b: Perceived usefulness will positively affect social networking site affinity Hypothesis 3c: Perceived enjoyment will positively affect social networking site affinity Aesthetics and customizability of virtual and digital goods provides a user to express him/her to other users. The interactions and the social status among peers of social apps make the attributes of virtual and digital goods an important factor to affect the social self-image expression. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 4a: Aesthetics of virtual and digital goods will positively affect social self-image expression Hypothesis 4b: Customizability of virtual and digital goods will positively affect social self-image expression Hypothesis 4c: Self-efficacy will positively affect social self-image expression From the extended TAM (Venkatesh, 2000), we know that social influence is an important driver of perceived usefulness. Also, perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use as per TAM affect the perceived usefulness. Hence, we hypothesize Hypothesis 5a: Social influence of using an app will positively affect perceived usefulness of social networking site Hypothesis 5b: Perceived enjoyment from using a social networking site will positively affect perceived usefulness of social networking site Hypothesis 5c: Perceived ease of use of a social networking site will positively affect perceived usefulness of social networking site A high sense of belonging is expected to lead to greater participation of user in the social networking site. This greater participation in a voluntary context is likely to results in perceived enjoyment of using a social networking site. Thus, we hypothesize Hypothesis 6a: Sense of belonging to a social networking site will positively affect perceived enjoyment from using a social networking site. Self-efficacy of social networking site relates to the ability and skills that an individual possesses to use a social networking site. This ability and skills of a user helps him/her to enjoy the experiences of social networking site and thus contribute positively to usefulness, ease of use and enjoyment of social networking site. Thus, we hypothesize Hypothesis 7a: Self-efficacy of social networking site will positively affect perceived ease of use of a social networking site

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Hypothesis 7b: Self-efficacy of social networking site will positively affect perceived usefulness of a social networking site Hypothesis 7c: Self-efficacy of social networking site will positively affect perceived enjoyment from using a social networking site H6a Sense of belonging

Perceived enjoyment H5b

H7c

H5c

Perceived ease of use

Perceived usefulness H7a H7b

Self-efficacy

H3c H3a

H5a Social influence

Social networking site affinity

H2b

H2a

H1a

Social app usage

H2d

Customizability

H3b

Purchase Intention of virtual/digital goods

H1b H4b

H4c

H2c

H1c Social self-image expression

Aesthetics H4a

H1d

Word of mouth of virtual/digital goods

Figure 1. Proposed research model and hypotheses

From our hypotheses formulation we thus propose our research model as shown in Figure 1. This research model combines the TAM with other constructs such as social influence, self-efficacy and sense of belonging, social app usage along with the attributes of virtual and digital goods. We study how these variables affect the purchase intention and word of mouth of virtual and digital goods through an empirical study.

4. METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS For capturing the user’s perception we build a survey instrument based on measurement scales borrowed from the literature. While the measures are based on previously validated instruments in the literature, the current study re-validates these measures, as recommended by Straub (1989). To accomplish our data gathering an online survey was created on online survey hosting site and the link was sent with emails to the respondent explaining the nature of study. Similarly paper based survey was also used to get responses from other respondents. We conducted a survey from September, 2013 to October, 2013. Each respondent was asked to fill the survey if they had any prior experience of the online social networking site and the social apps. The response to survey was voluntary and optional to submit so that there will be no confounding effects from coercing subjects into participation. They were also asked to mention the online community and the social app to which they mostly associate with and were part of it. In total 195 responses were received and retained after pre-processing of data. After collecting the responses the data was cleaned and invalid responses were discarded. Then we used SPSS version 17.0 to calculate the reliability and validity of the constructs used. We also then conducted linear regression among the constructs used. This way the significant relationships among constructs were identified. Our study sample has avid users of social networking sites using on an average of 1-2 hours daily. Among all the users near to one third of sample users had a past experience of purchasing from social networking sites.

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Table 1. Reliabilities of constructs used Scale

Number

Chronbach’s

of items

alpha

in scale Social networking site affinity Perceived ease of use Perceived usefulness Sense of belonging

6

0.863

3

0.848

4

0.795

5

0.800

Self-efficacy

5

0.809

Perceived enjoyment Social app usage

3

0.776

4

0.836

Social Influence

2

0.891**

Aesthetics

4

0.941

Customizability

3

0.894

Social self-image expression Purchase Intention

4

0.942

4

0.900

Word of Mouth

4

0.883

** Spearman brown coefficient

To measure reliability we calculated Chronbach alpha for each of the construct used in our research model. The result of the reliability test is shown in Table 1. All Chronbach’s alpha values were above the 0.70 threshold, indicating that the scales had high reliabilities (Nunnally, 1978). Social Influence is two item scale so we calculate the Spearman-Brown statistic for it which comes out as 0.891 showing a good reliability. Factor analysis shows that the items of each of the construct used load on their respective factors except for the aesthetics, customizability and social self-image expression. The items of these constructs load on the single factor indicating they belong to a higher concept. We termed this higher factor as Attributes of virtual and digital goods which comprises of the aesthetics and customizability of virtual and digital goods as well as the social self-image expression of a user. Thus, we have empirically validated result of the hedonic, functional and social attributes of virtual and digital goods as suggested by Lehdonvirta (2009). Though, we have established that aesthetics, customizability and social self-image expression belong to one factor but still we are using them as separate constructs in order to identify their individual effects in our research model. To further investigate our initial understanding of research model we conducted linear regression. This will assess our research question and hypotheses. Our research model helps us to explain 47.1 % of the variance for the purchase intention of virtual and digital goods and 42.8% of the variance for the word of mouth of virtual and digital goods. The regression analysis for our hypothesized model is shown in Table 2. The significant factors for each regression are shown with asterisk mark in table. For example, social self-image expression and social app usage are significant factors for the purchase intention of virtual and digital goods.

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Table 2. Linear regressions results for all the hypotheses Variable

Purchase intention of virtual and digital goods R2=0.471 ; F= 63.135 (**p 150 mg/dL

Modifiable Non-modifiable

Modifiable

Modifiable

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1.2 State of the Art and Motivation Currently, there are many applications to calculate the absolute risk factor, presented as Web sites or mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. Some examples are the following: Risk Assessment Tool for Estimating Your 10-year Risk of Having a Heart Attack (NIH, 2013); Heart disease risk calculator (Mayo Clinic, 2012); Heart Attack Risk Assesment (American Heart Association, 2012); QRISK®2-2013 risk calculator (ClinRisk, 2013); Australian absolute cardiovascular disease risk calculator (National Vascular Disease Prevention Alliance, 2012); Pfizer Cardiovascular Risk Calculator (Pfizer, 2011); FEC Cardiovascular Risk Calculator (FEC, 2011) among Web platforms and Cardiac Risk Calculator (TonicMinds, 2013) and Heart Risk Calculator (Meprosoft, 2013) among mobile apps. These platforms have many advantages but also many disadvantages. Among the disadvantages, the most relevant are the following: not including graphs in the results; not including information about the calculator or the method used; results shown in a poor informational way; not taking into account some parameters which can affect the CVD risk; not intuitive introduction of the data; only one method is developed. In order to remove these disadvantages, the objective of this paper is the development of a Web platform, accessible from any PC, tablet or smartphone with Internet connection, where the users will be able to know their absolute CVD risk factor by filling a questionnaire, using different algorithms. Besides, authorized personal will be able to access to the statistics of the questionnaires and the use of the platform. This work will be based on different studies done by experts and, using some calculations with the data introduced by the user, will be able to obtain the probability of the patient of suffering a CVD. This probability will be displayed in a table, indicating the method used in the calculations. It will also show some graphs with the evolution of the risk thorough the years for each of the methods used. Additionally, we will show in this paper some of the statistical data obtained from the use of the platform and the data introduced by the users (anonymous users, as no personal records are necessary for the use of the platform).

2. METHODS The first step for the development of the Web platform was the documentation and research about the existing applications for calculating the CVD risk. Some of these platforms are mentioned in the Introduction Section, but we found and studied many more. Besides, we also developed a peer-reviewed literature search in order to find and study papers related to CVDs and their prevention, and about models to calculate the risks to suffer them. In this work, we have selected 3 different algorithms for calculating the CVD risk: the Framingham algorithm, the most used; and 2 variations of the SCORE algorithm, developed in Europe. The Framingham algorithm was designed in a prospective work by Wilson et al (1998). The patients studied were 2489 men and 2856 women 30 to 74 years old at baseline with 12 years of follow-up. During the 12 years of follow-up, a total of 383 men and 227 women developed CHD, which was significantly associated with categories of blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and HDL cholesterol. Hence, this algorithm depends on several parameters of the patients: sex, age in years, total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, diabetes and smoking habits. The formula to calculate the Framingham risk is the following: Where S is the 10-years survival factor, different from men and women:

And B is obtained from: Where G is a constant also different from men and women:

And L is calculated through an equation that uses the mentioned parameters. The SCORE project was initiated by Conroy R.M. et al (2003) to develop a risk scoring system for use in the clinical management of cardiovascular risk in European clinical practice. The project assembled a pool of

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datasets from 12 European cohort studies, mainly carried out in general population settings. There were 205178 persons (88080 women and 117098 men) representing 2.7 million person years of follow-up. There were 7934 cardiovascular deaths, of which 5652 were deaths from coronary heart disease. Ten-year risk of fatal cardiovascular disease was calculated using a Weibull model in which age was used as a measure of exposure time to risk rather than as a risk factor. Separate estimation equations were calculated for coronary heart disease and for non-coronary cardiovascular disease. These were calculated for high-risk and low-risk regions of Europe. Two parallel estimation models were developed, one based on total cholesterol and the other on total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol ratio. The total SCORE risk for a specific region (low-risk or high-risk) is obtained from: Where RCD10 is the coronary disease risk and RNCD10 is the non-coronary disease risk. Each risk is the result of the following equation: Being S10(age) a function dependent of the age of the patient and some parameters related to the type of disease (coronary and non-coronary) and the type of the region. It also takes into account the current age of the patients but also their age in ten years:

For the design of the Web platform we have chosen PHP as the language for the server because it covered our necessities and it also offered many options for programming different services. We selected MySQL for the database of the application since it is open-source (free) and it has the necessary services for our requirements. In the client side, we opted for the languages HTML, javascript and CSS. For the creation of the graphs the library JPGraph has been used, since it is very simple and offers many possibilities.

3. RESULTS The platform is currently available on the URL http://cardio-alert.net63.net/marco.html and consists of 4 parts: the initial page or start-up page, risk models page, the risk calculator page and the administrator page. In this section these different pages will be explained. The last subsection will show some statistical data obtained from the administrator page.

3.1 Initial Page The default language of the application is Spanish, but it can be changed to English at any moment using the corresponding button. The initial page is structured with 3 frames: header, menu and body. In the part of the header (blue color) it is displayed the application title, the current day and the language selection. The menu (green color in Spanish and light blue color in English) contains the different links of the platform. The body of the page shows the contents of the links of the menu. This page just gives a slight notion of CVDs, and is intended to capture the attention of the Internet user by showing a number of commentaries quite clarifying about the major impact of these diseases in our society.

3.2 Risk Models Page This page describes mainly in which consists the risk prediction models. It is help information for the user and contains specific material about the creation of the methods for calculating the CVD risks, indicating that the values obtained are indicative since they are based on probability distributions. It also warns the user about the different algorithms which are created for a specific zone so they can provide unlike results in other zones. Finally this page talks about the most important algorithms currently available, Framingham algorithm and its versions (Classic Framingham, Framingham by Category, Framingham new charts, European Societies, British Societies, New Zealand and Sheffield), the SCORE algorithm, the PROCAM algorithm and the INDANA project.

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3.3 Risk Calculator Page This page explains each of the parameters used for estimating the risk. When the user press the button Calculator, the form with all necessary data for the calculation of risk by the three methods mentioned will be opened. Before sending the file .php with the information, there are some javascript functions that perform some checking in the information introduced. This page also has a Help button which will show an emergent window with information for filling in the form fields. If any of the fields is left unfilled or is incorrectly filled the system warn the user of this issue. If all the fields are correctly introduced, after pushing the button Send, the form is sent to the server using the POST method. In the server there are executed the following instructions:  Collect the data from the form.  Open/modify/close the files .txt where the statistical data of the administrator page are stored.  Calculate the CVD risk using the 3 methods mentioned for 10 years.  Store some data from the form and the values obtained in the database.  Generate the corresponding graphs. In Figures 2 and 3 there are shown some snapshots of the calculator and the results.

Figure 2. Calculator

Figure 3. Results of the calculator

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3.4 Administrator Page

Figure 4. Snapshot of the administrator page

This page is the one dedicated to the administrator. It requires a login and a password and, after checking the correct values of them, it provides access to the administrator page. In this page a statistical table of the use of the calculator is shown. Below this table there are there are several pull-down menus and a button of Show Results. With these menus we can choose the method and a parameter in order to show a graph of the use statistics dependent on the parameter and the method selected. Hence, if we choose the method Framingham y the parameter Age, we obtain a graph similar as the one shown in Figure 4.

3.5 Statistical Data from the Use of the Platform In this section some statistics from the use and the data introduced by the users will be shown. Referring to the data of the use we know that the calculator has been used a total of 187 times, 103 times were used by men and 84 by women. It is important to state that 187 is the total number of uses of the calculator, not the number of different users, being possible that the same user can have used the platform more than once. The age interval most common is 50-60 years, followed by 30-40 years and 1. This is exactly what we empirically calculate in the portfolio analysis for judgment bias.

5. RESULTS In this section, the empirical results from the collected data on the EIX including 09/22/2013 are presented. First we show that participants exhibit a strong and significant judgment bias on the EIX’s party market. This result corresponds to previous findings in the existing literature on judgment bias in prediction markets. Using the party preference data as presented in Table 1 and traders’ portfolio on our test day t=09/22/2013, we measure the judgment bias. The results for ξt,party are listed in Table 3. Recall that a ξ > 1 means that a group of traders holds a greater value in their own preferred contract than all traders on average. The result indicates that this is true for all major parties. For supporters of CDU/CSU, who ‘only’ hold 62% more in their own contract, the effect is not very strong. Parties with small numbers of participating supporters, such as LINKE and Piraten, seem to be the ones to rely the most on their own preferred contract. However we must keep in mind that there is no statement about significance of the effect yet. A smaller number of traders allows for higher variance. (The rest-of-field contract has been left out since the concept of ’rest-of-field-supporters’ does not make sense.) Table 3. Judgement bias per party

ξt,party N(party)

CDU/CSU

SPD

LINKE

Grüne

FDP

AfD

Piraten

1.62 27

2.05 23

7.23 14

3.29 20

4.00 21

1.95 153

9.30 6

Notes: The smaller ‘N’ in comparison to Table 2 results from participants without unbalanced portfolio for party.

We want to examine, if an individual’s preference for a given party is linked with his ‘biased investment characteristics’. As ‘biased investment characteristics’, we use the ratio of an individual’s investment in stocks of that particular party to the individual’s overall investments. Hence, we conduct one simple OLS regressions per party; describing the ‘investment characteristics’ by an intercept and a dummy variable indicating the individual’s preference for party. All seven regressions are significant to the 0.1%-level. As a robustness check we construct a time series with the values of ξ, since they are time dependent. In order to do this, all relevant data (like portfolio structure) must be counted back in time. In general ξ is well above 1 for all parties and increasing over time towards the election. The time series of ξ values provide a

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good robustness check. From the data we see that the judgment bias is aggravated for the underdog parties (FDP, Grüne, Die Linke, Piraten, AfD) compared to the established parties (average of 5.15 vs. 1.84). According to the adjusted Heath et al. questionnaire we identify 21.6% of answerers as tactical voters which seems to be a relatively high figure. Unfortunately there is no reference number for Germany as a whole. One might assume that tactical voters do not exhibit the wishful thinking bias to the same extent as non-tactical voters. We compare these two classes of participants and find no statistical difference (average ratio invested in preferred contract: 0.43 vs. 0.39, p-value: 0.72). Finally, we build a model to predict party preference by analyzing portfolio data. Specifically, we use a simple tree based classification model. We predict the party preference of a participant p using the percentage of invested play-money per party and additionally the net number of shares bought in each party.

Figure 3. Classification Tree for Party Preference

Figure 3 shows an excerpt from the resulting model. In order to test the validity of our model, we split our sample in a training (~63%) and a validation (~37%) set. In our out of sample test, the model correctly classifies 70% of all instances. The party wise detection rates (e.g. AfD: 93% vs. CDU/CSU: 53%) suggest that a higher number of supporters in the training set leads to better results. Keep in mind that the base rate is 1 in 8 or 12.5% –given that each participant could prefer one of the 8 parties. Moreover, as we used the most intuitive and straightforward method to model the data, more predictor variables (e.g. gender, age, other trading behavior or activity) or better methods such as random forest, support vector machines, or neural networks are very likely to yield better models. Hence, we conclude that prediction market data enables researchers and practitioners to classify their trading population very easily.

6. CONCLUSION The motivation behind this paper is to understand how the increasing importance and possibilities of online prediction models change the way people think of events like elections. While elections used to be like ’blackboxes’ in past times, they seem to have become predictable, almost to the point where the candidate with the best data analysts will win the election as stories like Issenberg (2012) would have us believe. Political Stock Markets are one of the new continuous available prediction methods. They are based on the assumptions that market prices (in an abstract form of predictions) are set by rational unbiased traders. The key question that we address in this work is whether and to which extent traders stay objective or if they are biased by their own preferences. We collect the participants’ preferences using questionnaires directly accessible from the trading website which are simple and do not require much time. This helps obtaining a quite high number of answered questions and subsequent data to analyze. Surprisingly, although this is most personal question we ask amongst multiple other questions, it is still the most frequently answered question. It seems like traders are very eager to identify themselves as supporters of their preferred parties, which leads to the conclusion that most traders have strong opinions and that their political opinions are among the reasons for trading. This strong opinion does influence how they trade and act in the market, even though they are incentivized to not to. Through a portfolio level analysis of trading data matched with survey data we are able to consistently predict voter intention in our market population. Moreover, we provide evidence that the bias

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is consistent over all parties but elevated for underdog parties. Surprisingly, analyzing subgroups we find no difference in the bias between tactical and non-tactical voters. As the bias is so consistent for subgroups and preference, we are able to provide a straightforward prediction model to infer a trader’s party preference by analyzing his trading behavior with 70% accuracy. This is important because it might reduce participants’ perceived as well as their effective anonymity which is sometimes highlighted as a major reason for prediction markets’ success.

REFERENCES Arrow, K. J., R. Forsythe, M. Gorham, R. Hahn, R. Hanson, J. O. Ledyard, S. Levmore, R. Litan, P. Milgrom, F. D. Nelson, G. R. Neumann, M. Ottaviani, T. C. Schelling, R. J. Shiller, V. L. Smith, E. Snowberg, C. R. Sunstein, P. C. Tetlock,P. E. Tetlock, H. R. Varian, J. Wolfers, and E. Zitzewitz, 2008. Economics: The promise of prediction markets. Science, Vol. 320, No. 5878, pp. 877–878. Babad, E., Hills, M. and O’Driscoll, M., 1992. Factors Influencing Wishful Thinking and Predictions of Election Outcomes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 461–476. Babad, E. and Katz, Y., 1991. Wishful Thinking–Against All Odds. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 23, pp. 1921–1938. Babad, E. and Yacobos, E., 1993. Wish and Reality in Voters’ Predictions of Election Outcomes. Political Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 37–54. Berg, J., Forsythe, R., Nelson, F. and Rietz, T., 2008. Results from a Dozen Years of Election Futures Markets Research. Handbook of experimental economics results, Vol. 1, pp. 742–751. Berlemann, M. and Schmidt, C., 2001. Predictive accuracy of political stock markets: Empirical evidence from a European perspective. Working paper, Discussion Papers, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes. Bitkom, 2013. Online-Kampagnen entscheiden die Bundestagswahl. Available online at http://www.bitkom.org/de/presse/8477_76080.aspx.; accessed on 18th November 2013 Erikson, R. S. and Wlezien, C., 2008. Are Political Markets Really Superior to Polls as Election Predictors?. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 190–215. Fisher, S. D., 2004. Definition and Measurement of Tactical Voting: The Role of Rational Choice. British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 152-166 Forsythe, R., Nelson, F., Neumann, G. R. and Wright, J., 1992. Anatomy of an Experimental Political Stock Market. The American Economic Review, Vol. 82, No. 5, pp. 1142–1161. Forsythe, R., Frank, M., Krishnamurthy, V. and Ross, T. W., 1998. Markets as Predictors of Election Outcomes: Campaign Events and Judgement Bias in the 1993 UBC Election Stock Market. Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 329–351. Hillygus, D. S., 2011. The evolution of election polling in the United States. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 5, pp. 962–981. Issenberg, S., 2012. How President Obama’s campaign used big data to rally individual voters. Available online at http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/509026/how-obamas-team-used-big-data-to-rally-voters/. accessed on 18th November 2013 Jacobsen, B., Potters, J., Schram, A., van Winden, F. and Wit, J., 2000. (In)accuracy of a European political stock market: The influence of common value structures. European Economic Review Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 205–230. Rothschild, D., 2009. Forecasting Elections: Comparing Prediction Markets, Polls, and Their Biases. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 73, No. 5, pp. 895–916. Snowberg, E. and Wolfers, J., 2010. Explaining the favorite-longshot bias: Is it risk-love or misperceptions? Working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research. Sjöberg, L., 2009. Are All Crowds Equally Wise? A Comparison of Political Election Forecasts by Experts and the Public. Journal of Forecasting Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 1–18. Teschner, F., Mazarakis, A., Riordan, R. and Weinhardt, C., 2011. Participation, Feedback & Incentives in a Competitive Forecasting Community. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Shanghai, China, pp. 1–14. Paper 16. Uhlaner, C. J. and Grofman, B., 1986. The race may be close but my horse is going to win: Wish Fulfillment in the 1980 Presidential Election. Political Behavior Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 101–129. Wolfers, J. and Zitzewitz, E., 2004. Prediction markets. Working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research.

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APPLIED COSINE SIMILARITY ALGORITHM IN POLITICS: THE CASE OF MACEDONIAN PARLIAMENT Visar Shehu, Nuhi Besimi and Adrian Besimi South East European University

ABSTRACT This paper presents the application of the cosine similarity algorithm as a basis for grouping similar political representatives’ speeches in the Macedonian Parliament. In this paper we present both techniques related to information retrieval (data extraction, scraping and organization) from the official website of the Macedonian Parliament, as well as application of text mining algorithms with the purpose of extracting relevant and previously hidden information from the large text corpus. The paper also describes statistical approaches undertaken to transform speeches from their textual representation into quantitative representation. KEYWORDS Text mining, cosine similarity, data extraction, scraping, government, open data.

1. INTRODUCTION Modern governments today are getting more and more dependent on technology especially with the introduction of various eGovernment services, the notion of paperless society, online government etc. With the benefits of using technology for better governance, we are facing the caveat of the data paradox. The saying: “We are data rich, but information poor!” is a reality that many enterprises and governmental institutions are facing. This is an area where we believe things can improve. As we will see in this paper, we present an approach that will not only introduce the open data concept in the Macedonian government but also present state of the art data mining and data visualization techniques, so this data is accessible and understandable to the general public. The main idea of this project is organizing all discussions in the Macedonian Parliament since the first session of this parliament held in 1991. In this paper we will cover algorithms used to calculate document similarity and present the benefits of similarity measures in the process of extracting knowledge from discussion in the Macedonian political ecosystem. Additionally, the paper also covers topics from information retrieval, the process of processing and organizing unstructured data and entity extraction. By applying similarity measures, we want to compare the ideas of different politicians and see if there are similarities between them. Additionally, we will present the process of comparing political parties, groups of representatives and even representatives against themselves from the past. We believe that this research will allow the general public determine whether their representatives are expressing their ideas in an independent fashion, or their ideas are closely tied to the political party they represent. Furthermore we want to determine how consistent have been certain politicians through time and what have been the main factors for any possible change in consistency.

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2. INFORMATION RETRIEVAL 2.1 The Data Scrapper The main difference between data mining and web mining consist mainly in the fact that data mining relies on huge amounts of data and applies various mining techniques whereas web mining tries to find patterns in the scope of World Wide Web. Our approach aims to apply similarity between speech transcripts published on the web site of the Macedonian parliament. The problem with this data is that there is no evident structure and also there is a diverse number of file formats being used (pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf …). In order to parse all these data we relied on automatic and semi-automatic data gathering techniques. The aim of these techniques is to map these documents and organize them in a relational database model. According to Fernandez et. al., "a scraper is an automatic agent that is able to extract particular fragments out of the web". Therefore there is no surprise that many tools are available for web data scraping. Some of them have been analyzed in (Bharanipriya et. al.) and as a conclusion by the authors there are always parts that lack the most important thing, putting the data in the right structure. Issues presented on the above mentioned paper can be related to the issues we faced while building our crawlers.

2.2 Extraction of Relevant Entities and Data Organization The scraped data in the form collected up to this point are not usable for further analytics. A proper extraction of relevant entities into a database schema was necessary in order to proceed with the similarity measures. The process of extraction and analysis of data from HTML documents has been studied extensively in the past. It is no surprise that there are many various tools and methods how to solve such issues. Some rely on Document Object Model (DOM) tree to extract known data while some, such as (Liu et. al.) rely on utilizing the visual features on the Web pages to implement the extraction. Entities that we wanted to extract from the web site of the Macedonian Parliament were: entities that would describe representatives (name, last name, political affiliation …), speeches and discussions. The detailed process is being discussed in the following chapters. Before any analysis has been performed one needs to preprocess and clean the downloaded documents. During this phase the text corpus had to be cleaned from unnecessary words and entities had to be extracted. To remove unwanted words we devised a blacklist of words which were removed from the original extracted text. The blacklist is stored in a database and can be updated by need, enabling us to dynamically add stop words as soon as we identify them.

2.2.1 Extraction of the Representative Data In the case of the Parliament of R. of Macedonia, the web content had a standardized visual feature on all pages where the representatives profile and related data were stored. Using a simple script that retrieves the content of the website while targeting specific items using DOM tree a successful retrieval of the members of the parliament data is done. This data are further organized into a Representative structure inside the database where the important information such as: Assembly details, Representative Full Name, Representative CV and Representative Political Party are stored and organized into the database. In Figure 1 one can see the two types of data, the web content and the organized structure of the database. This data is relevant for further use with the extraction of speeches and the mapping between each speech and the corresponding Representative of the Parliament. Unsurprisingly, there were issues we faced when extracting text data. Most issues were either related with the inconsistent method of writing the documents or spelling errors. E.g.,:  Some documents contain “FirstName LastName” format others “LastName FirstName”  Some documents contain “:” to determine new speech, some do not  In some cases there are no spaces between phrases  Sometimes a phrase ends with brackets “)”

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In order to overcome such problems in some cases we had to consider manual pre-processing of some documents. The entities extracted by these documents allow us to build a profile of who discussed in the speech, the date when the discussion occurred, whether the discussion was a reply to another politician and what law was being discussed for. Since documents do not have a common organization, it is a challenge to extract all that information. A verification step is executed in order to make sure the names of representatives are extracted correctly. This is done by comparing with a database containing the list of all elected representatives in the parliament and upon successful matching we can safely conclude that the correct entity has been found.

Figure 1. Comparison of the unstructured web data vs. the structured database for the case of the Parliament of R. of Macedonia

2.2.2 Extraction of Speeches from Documents and their Organization The second set of data needed to be extracted from the documents was related to political speeches, their organization and the mapping to the political representative. The document organization was not that promising at all (Figure 2). In the figure below you can see that the only way to distinguish between different speeches is the bold name followed by a colon. This is also a relief because what could be found is at least the beginning of a new speech, we can also distinguish the whole paragraph or a speech needed to be extracted as one part. This way the one speech extracted from the document with a further processing can be transformed into a data structure where the following content is collected: Document details, Date of the parliamentary session, Representative name and the full speech. All the speeches are then recorded on the database and they are mapped to the corresponding Representative already present in the database. This way we end up having a structure data inside the database (Figure 3).

Figure 2. The sample document of parliamentary session transcript

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Finally all the organized speeches were processed automatically to extract phrases and words from them. A bag of words (Manning et. al. pg. 109) technique was utilized to weight every document, by calculating word frequency extracted from every speech. The organization of the data allows us to drill down and roll-up in multiple levels of granularity: find statistics for a word used in a phrase, speech, parliamentary session or even for a longer periods of time. The resulting structures were further used to evaluate similarity between documents. Furthermore we had to identify only important words in a document. To do this we used the well known tf-idf method (Manning et. al. pg. 117), which is designed to automatically assign weight to words in a document. To do so, it calculates two important statistics:  The frequency of a word in a document (tf)  The inverse document frequency determines whether the same word is common an all documents or it is a rare case for this particular document (idf) Since some politicians tend to use their own distinct words in their speeches, we have modified the idf method to only check for common words appearing in documents generated by them.

Figure 3. Sample document data extraction and mapping to database

3. TEXT SIMILARITY MEASURES Numerous similarity measures techniques have been proposed that aim to determine how similar two observations are. Among the popular existing methods are the Jaccard similarity [6] which is designed to compare two binary vectors. This distance aims to create multidimensional binary vectors that mark the existence of each word in a document. It does not however consider how many times a word appears in such a document. This was one of the main reasons why this method was not considered in our system, even though performance vise this method excels among others. Another common way to find the similarity between different texts is to use the lexical matching method where appropriate weights are added in all lexical units that occur in both documents or texts [1]. This method is considered to be the simplest method and probably the fastest, it does not do any semantic similarity between texts, but rather only calculate the similarity of two document vectors based on frequency.

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The Levenshtein distance (Levenshtein 1966) is yet another metric that aims to determine the similarity between strings. It tries to establish how many edits will it take to turn one string to another. This distance has been shown to be very efficient when measuring the difference between two words but will require much more time to determine the difference between phrases or even larger documents. In order to determine the similarity between larger corpuses of text, a well known algorithm is the cosine similarity measure (see Han et. al.). Each element of this vector represents the word and the frequency of occurrence for that word. Table 1. Sample Cosine Similarity table

To calculate the similarity between two document vectors one needs to apply the following equation:

where ||A|| is the length of the first vector and ||B|| the length of the second vector also known as Euclidian norm of vector A = (A1, A2, …, Ap), defined as square root of (A1+A2+…+Ap). The result of the above equation will always be in the interval [0,1] because it measures the cosine of the angle between two vectors x and y. If the angle between the two vectors is 90 degrees so the result would be 0 and there is no similarity between the two vectors. The closer the cosine value to 1, the angle is smaller and there is more similarity between the vectors. However, the cosine of the angle applies only for the positive space, therefore we can safely assume that negative values are of no concern. Due to its simplicity and efficiency, this algorithm was the chosen one for developing our system. Another important benefit of using the above algorithm is that each word can have its own weight determined by its frequency.

3.1 Application of Cosine Similarity in Discussions made on the Macedonian Parliament As discussed previously we have applied the bag of words model for all speeches in the Macedonian parliament. There are different granularity levels: one can create a profile for a politician in a given time period or can roll-up and see summary of all speeches made by a politician during his entire career. The same information can be retrieved against political parties, groups of representatives etc. Having this in mind we have the benefit of calculating similarity not only between representatives or political parties, but also compare the same politician against himself. This way we have the added value of evaluating consistency of a certain politician. However, it does introduce the problem of a large number of document vectors that is constantly increasing with the addition of new documents in our database. Additionally there is always the problem of representing this information to the general audience. The first problem, of having multiple document vectors has been resolved by keeping a cache of a similarity matrix. This matrix gets updated every time a new document is introduced in our database. Even though the process of building the similarity matrix is time consuming and the matrix is rather large, the benefit of using such a cache performance vise overcomes these issues.

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To solve the second problem, we have developed a web based portal where we introduce our results 1. By using state of the art visualization techniques, we display much more information than similarity measures. The web site allows users to navigate through the profiles of each politician, browse similarities, analyze trends through time and evaluate the consistency of a politician or political party.

Figure 4. A screenshot of the VoxPolitico portal

4. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT In this paper we have presented a novel system that aims to promote transparency and accountability in the Macedonian parliament. By applying state of the art text mining techniques, we have laid the foundation towards a platform that will monitor every speech made by politicians in the Macedonian parliament. The paper discusses only a minor part of a more complex text mining platform. By focusing on similarity measures we have shown the type of information that can be mined by the huge amount of text available in the web site of the Macedonian parliament. There is much to be done to improve the system we have presented in this paper. Major efforts have been dedicated in the introduction of time series text mining and association rule discovery that will help us analyze relationships between events and topics. Additionally a major improvement of the system would be if we could implement sentiment analysis that would help us determine the context of each discussion in the Macedonian parliament. Finally, since we are using the bag-of-words model, we can easily implement statistical learning techniques in the form of Bayesian Classifiers for the purpose of classifying speeches into categories such as political, economical, security etc. This will allow better searching, categorization and browsing of speeches. Furthermore the system can be extended to include speeches made by politicians outside the parliament. This can be implemented by crawling electronic media for statements made by politicians being monitored. A similar approach would be to apply a similar system for the purpose of monitoring electronic media. This way we would be able to determine trends, bias as well as how much different media 'borrow' from each other. Finally, we could correlate the statistics gotten by speeches made with the actual voting record of politicians. This however, could not be implemented automatically since the voting history is not available online. One has to dig through the historical archives of the Macedonian parliament for the purpose of determining how each politician has voted in every parliamentary session; a task that would be require a tremendous amount work done.

1

For more information check: http://www.voxpolitico.org

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The current status of this system is beyond its theoretical foundation. The web site is online at http://voxpolitico.org and has proven to be a very helpful tool for the general audience, journalists and researchers studying political sciences and communications. Based on the comments by our users and the media coverage it has gotten, we have realized that the tool has had a positive impact on promoting governmental transparency and it is used to hold representatives accountable based on their statements from the past. The web site has been praised by both politicians and journalists considered as an invaluable tool that promotes democratic values through the use of ICT.

REFERENCES Christopher D. Manning et. al., 2008, Introduction to Information Retrieval, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England Jiawei Han et. al., 2011, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, 3rd Edition, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Mihalcea, R. et. al., 2006, Corpus-based and knowledge-based measures of text semantic similarity. In AAAI, Vol. 6, pp. 775-780. Bharanipriya, V., et. al., 2011, Web content mining tools: a comparative study. International Journal of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, pp 211-215. Fernández Villamor, J. I., et. al., 2011. A Semantic Scraping Model for Web Resources-Applying Linked Data to Web Page Screen Scraping. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, Volume 2, pp 28-30 Liu, W., et. al., 2010. Vide: A vision-based approach for deep web data extraction. Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions, pp 447-460. Courtney Corley and Rada Mihalcea. 2005. Measuring the semantic similarity of texts. In Proceedings of the ACL Workshop on Empirical Modeling of Semantic Equivalence and Entailment (EMSEE '05). Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg, PA, USA, 13-18. Inderjit S. Dhillon, Dharmendra S. Modha. 2001, Concept Decompositions for Large Sparse Text Data Using Clustering, Machine Learning, Vol. 42, pp. 143-175 Mikhail Bilenko and Raymond J. Mooney. 2003. Adaptive duplicate detection using learnable string similarity measures. In Proceedings of the ninth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (KDD '03). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 39-48. Karnik, A.; Goswami, S.; Guha, R., 2007, Detecting Obfuscated Viruses Using Cosine Similarity Analysis, Modelling & Simulation. AMS '07. First Asia International Conference on , Vol., no., pp.165,170 Levenshtein, V.: 1966, Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions and reversals, Soviet Physics Doklady, Vol. 10, pp. 707–710. Jaccard, P.: 1901, Etude comparative de la distribution florale dans une portion des Alpeset des Jura, Bull. Soc. Vaudoise Sci. Nat 37, 547–579 Jaro, M.: 1989, Advances in record-linkage methodology as applied to matching the 1985census of Tampa, Florida, Journal of the American Statistical Association pp. 414–420. Jaro, M.: 1995, Probabilistic linkage of large public health data files, Statistics in medicine 14 (5-7), 491–498.

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A COMPREHESIVE APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS Blerta Abazi Caushi1, Agron Caushi1 and Zamir Dika2 1

Faculty of Business and Economics, SEE-University Faculty of Contemporary Sciences, SEE-University Ilindenska n.335, Tetovo, Macedonia

2

ABSTRACT The main idea behind this paper is to emphasize the nature of the changes that Higher Education Institutions (HEI) encounter due to technology and how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play an important role in reshaping the university setting in the business oriented and competitive environment. However while HEIs use ICT for making the change happen, the use of ICT itself becomes a challenge. In this paper, we discuss the changing landscape of the university and we distinguish the different information systems in HEIs using a framework that divides them in four categories. Each category incorporates distinct information systems that support separate activities in the university environment. Afterwards, we move into identification of the most pressing IS issues through review on research about HEIs for a fourteen year period (2000 – 2013). We pinpoint these issues from the outcomes of a huge survey conducted in more than 2000 education institutions, and conclude with emphasizing the importance of recognizing these trends and issues especially in terms of reducing costs, strategic planning and following the upcoming stream of generation Z students. KEYWORDS Higher Education, Information Systems, ICT, Higher Education Information Systems, Trend Analysis

1. INTRODUCTION It is the era of technological society. It is impossible to think of a business, institution or an entity without adoption of a certain type of information and communication technology (ICT), especially without information systems in place to support the process workflow. The same applies to Higher Education Institutions (HEI). ”Technology is in the process of taking over the traditional values of without exception” [1] – and is well seen in the way universities around the world operate nowadays. There are patterns that show that the traditional University will not succeed if it doesn’t adopt the changes. HEI’s are in the process of designing appropriate IS to ensure sustainable development and meet the constantly changing need for market oriented learning. The landscape of a contemporary university consists of students that prefer to get their degree completely online or to some extent, students that want to have access to the information in anytime and anywhere in and outside the campus, and moreover, students that want to get the specific skills to penetrate the labor market as soon as they graduate. Traditional classroom lectures are slowly being replaced by video lectures [2]. Universities are going online as the students already are. Today’s youth is hyper-connected through Internet and social media. They even have a name: generation Y [3]. They are the most technologically-savvy generational group so far, growing up entirely in the age of personal computers and electronic gadgets. They use all forms of technology. They use Internet for research, school work, to stay in touch with friends, use email and social networks to contact teachers. While universities are learning to cope with Generation-Y, Generation-Z is coming. This generation of students has a much higher need for technology-based stimulation than previous generations, leading to a disinterested attitude to traditional methods of education [4]. On the other hand, the comfort level of technology for many teachers is relatively low, compared with that of their students. This combined with the fact that many universities are drastically under-funded and unable to deliver the high

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technology which is imperative to these students, leads to a new challenge for universities. Universities should redesign their IS frameworks to cope with these dynamic challenges. In this paper we distinguish the information systems used in HEI, derive the most pressing issues for HEI’s for fourteen year (2000-2013) period and we analyze the evolution of this issues and the reason why they are so important. We do this analysis by looking at a huge survey conducted in more than 2000 education institutions. At the end we look at the future challenges for universities, i.e. future trends in technologies. We conclude this paper with the recommendation for the universities on how they should approach these issues.

2. INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN HEI In its rudimentary, “information systems, are an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data and for delivering information, knowledge, and digital products”[5]. Businesses use the information systems to run their daily operations, manage their supply and customer chains, and attract new customers. Governments use IS to offer services to citizens. HEI’s use IS to support most of the activities, starting from student registration to student graduation, to faculty support and administration. The purpose of information systems in HEI does not only focus in increasing value and efficiency of the processes that universities have, but also meeting the needs of the students, parents, government as well as society. The integrated campus management systems [6] in higher education, due to the Bologna process, are created as a result of the consideration of the integrated application systems that help improve the administrative processes in education. Institutions of HE invest in these enterprise application not only to improve, but to integrate all functional areas of the organization. Some universities implement a vendor based solution, other customize open-source solutions, while others use their human capital and IT talent to integrate themselves their existing information systems. While there are advantages and disadvantages of each of the option abovementioned, it is out of the scope of this paper to discuss in details these characteristics. Different authors classify information systems in higher education in different ways. However, we found that grouping the distinctive systems according to their functionality best fits the clarification for HEIS. The major functions that are supported by information systems in higher education can be categorized in four major areas: (1) Education Activities, (2) Research Activities, (3) Business Activities, and (4) Management Support. This separation of information systems in university setting is supported by a research from Zornada and Velkavrh [7]. Table 1. Categorization of Higher Education Information Systems

MANAGEMENT SUPPORT IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS Business reports, controlling, decision support systems, quality assurance

   

SUPPORT OF EDUCATION ACTIVITIES student information system, portals/CMS, e-learning systems, library systems, etc.

   

SUPPORT OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES research information systems, library systems, support for project work, research software, etc.

SUPPORT OF BUSINESS ACTIVITIES  human resource management systems,  financial and accounting IS,  administrative IS, etc.

In Table 1 above, we show examples of information systems for each category. Information systems that support education activities are mainly systems that serve the core functionality of universities as teaching, keeping student records, library, etc. These systems are very important for universities as they are the systems with whom students and instructors interact with. The second category of information systems supports another important function of universities, which is research. These systems include research information systems, library information systems, etc. The third category supports mainly the departments and these systems are the closest to corporate information systems. Examples of information systems that support business activities are financial and accounting information systems, human resource management

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systems, etc. The fourth category of information systems support the managerial level and serve for business reporting, decision making, business intelligence, control, and support the major functions of the managers. As seen from the table 1, in a perfect setting, the input for management activities comes from the systems in the other three areas. To be able to use the data from all these systems there is a need for integration of functional silos. However, integrating information systems from different functional areas or implementing Information and Communication Technologies can be a complex task. These issues can range from technological to organizational and human related issues [8] [9]. Next, we identify most frequented issues for a 14 year period and focus on three main issues that universities face and elucidate briefly how these issues have evolved throughout the years.

3. IDENTIFYING TRENDS AND ISSUES IN HEIS A recent study conducted by OECD, reports that “the long-term economic advantage to an individual of having a tertiary degree instead of an upper secondary degree is over 175 thousand of US dollars for a man and over 110 thousand US dollars for a woman” [10]. This is one of the reasons that the number of the students persuading higher education has increased a lot during the last decade. On the other hand, Universities have to handle this flux of students and meet their expectations. Moreover, as mentioned above, HEI’s will face the generation Z students very soon, and they are all technology savvy students. To do so, Universities have to make changes in their curricula, add technology into teaching and learning process to keep up with the market developments, link with the private sector to provide the students with the skills required by the labor market, as well as make sure that the faculty is up to date with the research and with the technology use that pertains to their specific course. [11]. Institutions of HE have to change their operational processes to achieve efficacy and effectiveness in terms of cost savings and increase of value. Current market conditions for HEI are very competitive. To achieve sustainability, Universities have to invest in ICT solutions, create or adopt information systems, as well as create a setting that will fulfill student needs. They face many challenges and issues that we have collected and represented for a fourteen year period, starting from year 2000 to the year 2013.

3.1 Methodology For this paper we used the data provided by EDUCAUSE Core Data Services (CDS). Educause performs a yearly survey in more than 2000 education institutions around the world starting from year 2000. Only in the last year (2013), there were 2250 education institutions that participated in the survey, out of which 770 have fully completed the survey. The survey is consisted of eight modules: 1) IT Organization, Staffing, and Financing, 2) IT Support Services, 3) Educational Technology Services, 4) Research Computing Services, 5) Data Centers, 6) Communications Infrastructure Services, 7) Information Security, and 8)Information Systems and Applications. The survey has 138 questions that vary from central IT organization, staffing, and financing (M1) to characteristics of the institution's information systems, regardless of whether they are operated or supported by central IT (M8). As a result of this survey, each year Educause publishes a report called CDS Executive Summary Report, and an article called Top Ten IT Issues. Our approach was to identify the issues that appeared on the top-ten list for each year. After we merged all the issues from each year in one joint list, we identified the common issues that appeared every year. The result was a list with 36 issues that HEI’s faced during this period. We created a matrix where we marked by numbers the issues according to the year that appeared and at what position it was for that year. Ordering them by the frequency of appearance, we came up with the most pressing issues for the period 2000-2013. The reason why we chose to sort them by frequency of appearance in the last 14 years was to find the issues that are persistent, because we reason that the issues that appear more frequently in the list are more important rather than looking only at the data from the previous year. Looking at this matrix from historical perspective we can see that many issues appear frequently on the list. Based on the data, the issues that most frequently appear on the top ten IT issues during the period 2000 – 2013, are illustrated in Table 2 below.

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As can be seen from the Table 2, during this fourteen year period, issues regarding IT and its implementation vary from finding the sources to fund the investments, to faculty development, infrastructure and student support. Below, in the section Results, we focus on the first three most pressing IT issues that Universities face during this period. We try to explain in more depth the reasons why they are important and what Universities do to face them.



Enterprise systems

















IT strategic planning

















IT Infrastructure/Cloud











IT Governance



















Faculty Development









Security management



Business continuity IT staffing and HR









Frequency





2013

2006





2012

2005





12

2011

2004





14

2010

2003







2009

2002







2008

2001



E-learning environments



2007

Issue Funding IT

2000

Table 2. Top ten most pressing issues for the period 2000-2013 based on frequency Contribution of the authors based on the 14 reports for Top-Ten IT Issues: 2000–2013

















































12 11 ❸

10 9 8

























7 7





5

3.2 Results In this section we focus on the main three IT issues shown in Table 2. These three are the most frequented issues that appear during the period 2000-2013, and they are placed almost in each year in the top 5 most important issues.

3.2.1 Sources to Fund IT Investment by Universities Clearly, based on the survey, funding IT has been always been an issue for the universities. As seen from the figure 1, funding IT is one of the most frequented IS issue for higher education, appearing on the top first or second place for twelve years in a row (2000-2011), and then dropping a bit in 2013 to the 7 th place, to move up to the 6th place this year.

Figure 1. Funding IT 2000-2013 Based on the 14 reports for Top-Ten IT Issues

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Generally speaking, the most important part of this issue has changed in nature from year 2000 to now. In the beginning, i.e. year 2000, the biggest burden in this issue is to seek funding to renew and replace PCs, administrative systems, network infrastructures, and instructional support. The same concerns are in the following 5 years, to fund the support of the technologies in place and find finances for the new ones. From year 2006 and on, we see a change in the mindset of the administrators, where they focus on facilitating successful IT funding efforts in aligning funding with institutional priorities, support innovation, making the CIO a member of the institution's cabinet and budget committee. One of the main concerns during this period becomes requests funding strategic projects that will realize cost savings. As for example [12], the most interesting trends for saving costs as well as optimizing services are the following: virtualization, cloud/grid computing, software as a service (SaaS), web-based, open-source software applications, wikis, portals, shared documents, shared work spaces, and web-based tele/videoconferencing, integration of CMS/LMS with social networking sites, collaboration tools, etc. This period from year 2009 and on is about investing in highly talented IT staff that will facilitate the transition. The last two years, and especially now (2013), the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service estimates that “50 percent or more of the IT budget may be in support of administrative information technology, with far fewer resources devoted to information technology for teaching and learning or research” [13].

3.2.2 Creating Virtual Environments Another, issue that frequently appears on the list is e-learning and online learning. In the figure 2, we can see that e-learning environments have been very popular during the period 2000 – 2011. However, as most of the universities have already solved the issues with e-learning, this is not one of the priorities of universities the last two years.

Figure 2. E-learning environments 2000-2013 Based on the 14 reports for Top-Ten IT Issues: 2000–2013

As illustrated in the figure, the pressing issue of e-learning environments, together with the distance education has dropped significantly from year 2000 to 2008, increasing again from 2009-2013 among the first five top issues. On the contrary, in the last two years, it doesn’t appear at all. The reason for this change is mainly the understanding of what consists e-learning environment. Keeping in mind that year 2000-2005 was the beginning of the usage of the internet for commercial use; it is no wonder that we see a transition in the graph from year to year. In year 2000, most universities had started to develop asynchronous learning environments and services to support students involved outside of the campus. It is the beginning of the idea of delivering education outside of the classroom. It is the period where the main concern is whether these new environments will increase the student productivity. From year 2002 and on we see a slight shift from the traditional classrooms to more network based teaching, and the beginning of the transformation of the institutions. The efforts are mainly in creating hybrid learning experiences for the students both on-campus and out. The e-learning these years is more like an alternative and enhancement to traditional learning. It is in the year 2005 that these programs become available at colleges and universities in different formats, as certificates, diplomas, degrees, or postbaccalaureate programs. From year 2006 E-learning comes to light from its initial form as an “an add-on to traditional education” to “mission-critical component of the educational environment” [14]. The next two

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years, the role of the e-learning environments is still of crucial interest, but doesn’t not appear on the list, or at least appears last, since the focus is mainly in the development of the learning management systems to facilitate learning for both traditional classroom and online students. This issue takes a new direction during 2009-2011, being now recognized as teaching and learning with technology. This are the years of the rapid development of technology-based learning tools, and as seen in the graph, it rises in the top three most important issues by year 2011 for CIO and IT leaders in HEI. According to the study [15]: “This rise in strategic importance is evidence that technology has moved beyond the data center and institutional administrative systems and is now part of daily life for faculty and students”. Of no surprise, the e-learning component does not appear in the list of the last two years. The reason behind is that e-learning is now embedded in all other efforts, and continues to be of strategic value to organizations.

3.2.3 Integrating Applications through Enterprise Applications The third most important issue based on frequency is Enterprise Systems. During the period 2000 – 2011, this has been one of the main concerns of the universities. As you can see from the figure 3, enterprise systems have always ranked high in the issues that HEI’s face.

Figure 3. Enterprise systems issue 2000-2013 Based on the 14 reports for Top-Ten IT Issues: 2000–2013

Many universities have implemented or are planning to implement enterprise systems because they include many of the functionalities required by Higher Education Institutions [16]. According to a study conducted by ECAR [17], the top three reasons for implementing ERP’s are: replacing aging legacy systems, improve services, and transform how the institution operates. The universities that have implemented these systems have reported positive end results, which are illustrated on table 3 below. Table 3. ERP Benefits in HEI's Source: G.Seo, Challenges in implementing ERP systems in Large Organizations: Similarities and Differences Between Corporate and University Environment ERP Benefits in Higher Education Institutions Campus wide integration on a common system Create a more seamless integration between technology and education delivery by providing a single platform based on new technologies Reduce or eliminate manual processes Improve internal communications Establish a self-service environment for employees Improve self-service environment for students and faculty Enable higher availability of administrative systems Enhance strategic decision making and planning capabilities Provide accessible, user-friendly administrative and Support sophisticated data analyses for use in decision-making student support services

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However, we should also consider that this implementation usually is costly and is accompanied with difficulties and time consumption. According to the same study [17], universities that have implemented ERP’s state that the difficulty is around 3.52 for financial modules, 3.53 for HR, and 3.80 for student on a scale 1-5 where 5 is “very difficult” and 3 is “about the same”. The same report brings into light that managing the process and organizational change in ERP implementation were rated as more difficult than the technology. Although enterprise systems have been a hot topic during the last decade, they do not appear as one of the priorities for the last two years (figure 3). The reasons behind this are two. First, by 2011 most of the universities have already implemented an ERP. In line with this, we should stress out the difference between ERP solutions from early 2000’s, where ERP had only the core functionality as finance, student services, and human resources, and ERP’s decade later, where ERP’s are much more complex and have almost every functionality needed from an higher education institution, including CMS, LMS, library, business intelligence, etc. The second reason, why ERP’s do not appear on the list, after year 2011, is that there are new important topics appearing the last two years such as cloud computing, SaaS, BYOD, and mobile technologies.

3.3 New Challenges in HEIS The latest articles on Higher Education information Systems emphasize some new trends emerging from corporate world as Big data, Cloud computing, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) [18]. The same trends appear on the Gartner’s list of the top ten trends for the last years. These three trends pose a very big issue for the IT department. Managing data is becoming a useful and powerful tool for universities to create trends for enrollment, create factbooks, optimize spaces, benchmark with competing institution, as well as improve communication and collegiality [19]. Cloud computing on the other hand has frequently made top list of the trends of different market research companies. In accordance with this, Gartner’s series of reports named “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends” of the recent years [20], list cloud computing as one of the top trends of the corresponding year. Also, according to a report from ECAR, [21], around 50% of the universities reported that they use at least one SaaS application. In translation, this means that IT departments are losing control over the IT environment. For this reason, higher education institutions should think of the IT from strategic perspective, and rather than following newest technologies. They should think on how these technologies can help in achieving institutional goals. Especially with cloud strategy, it is almost unenviable not to have one, since so many resources and learning opportunities are online. On the other side, because moving into cloud provides reduction of the IT infrastructure costs, more and more campuses will take advantage of these benefits [22].

4. CONCLUSION Our approach for analyzing and identifying the main issues and trends in IT and information systems that institutions of Higher Education face, as the main theme of this paper, represents the starting point for the process of shaping the IS in the higher education institutions. The usual approach for designing the information technologies for information systems consists of the analysis of the current landscape where the HEI operates, and as a result institutional strategies for allocation of resources in this area are produced, which not always follow the trends and issues in information systems from other institutions. The proper reference of information systems trends and issues during the design of IS for higher education institutions, in addition to the vital role of adaptation to real environment, is very important for designing sustainable and long-lasting solutions. The identification of trends and issues in IS, as well as ensuring that HEI’s except for their landscape take into account the technology trends and issues, leads to reduction of the costs. Since costs of deployment of IS are embedded in every business process of the university, we recommend that institutions of HE incorporate in their strategic planning, projects that will produce cost savings and increase of value. In order to achieve sustainable and permanent reduction of costs, necessarily, the practical landscape of the university should efficiently be integrated with the trends. This integration should be backed up with scientific approach, so that they can be embedded during the preparation of strategic plans in this area.

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The trends and issues are also very important for the creation of information systems that will follow the incoming generation Z from cultural perspective and will provide dynamic adaptation to their lifestyle as well as the global culture. All in all, we need to look at IT through several different perspectives. First, HEIs should be focused on improving cost savings and efficiencies. Second, they should be concentrate on including appropriate IS in their strategy. Last, they should strive to create strategic advantage through focusing on the upcoming generations, on their culture, and expectations to extend the customer value proposition.

REFERENCES [1] Jacques Ellul, John Wilkinson, 1967, The Technological Society, Random House [2] Nathan Harden, 2012,The End of the University as We Know It, The American Interest, [3] Alison Black, 2010, Gen Y: Who They Are and How They Learn, Educational Horizons, v88 n2 p92-101 [4] Jones, V., Jo, J., & Martin, P. (2007). Future Schools and How Technology can be used to support Millennial and Generation-Z Students. International Conference Proceedings of Ubiquitous Information Technology (pp. 886-891). [5] Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/287895/information-system [6] The Bologna Process - Towards the European Higher Education Area, European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/bologna_en.htm [7] Zornada, Leo, and Tamara Bertok Velkavrh. "Implementing ERP systems in higher education institutions." Information Technology Interfaces, 2005. 27th International Conference on. IEEE, 2005. [8] Arthur J. Herbert, III, PMP and Edwin T. Cornelius, III, Ph.D, 2006, ERP 101: A Primer for busy Executives, Collegiate Project Services [9] Goeun Seo, 2013, Challenges in Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in Large Organizations: Similarities and Differences Between Corporate and University Environment, Composite Information Systems Laboratory (CISL), Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [10] OECD, 2012, Education Indicators in Focus, 2012/06, [11] Lars Sondergaard and Mamta Murthi, 2012, Skills Not Just Diplomas: Managing Education for Results in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, World Bank, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ECAEXT/Resources/101411_FullReport.pdf [12] Anne Scrivener Agee et al., 2009, Top-Ten IT Issues 2009, Educause Review, [13] Educacause, 2003, Funding Information Technology, Educause Executive Briefing, [14] Barbara I. Dewey and Peter B. DeBlois et al., 2006, Top-Ten IT Issues 2006, Educause Review, https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0633.pdf [15] Bret L. Ingerman, Catherine Yang et al., 2011, Top-Ten IT Issues 2011, Educause Review, [16] Ahed Abugabah and Louis Sanzogni. 2010, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System in Higher Education: A literature Review and Implications. World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 71 (2010). [17] Paula King et al., 2002, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System in Higher Education, ECAR Research Bulletin, Volume 2002, Issue 22 [18] Susan Grajek et al., 2013, Top-Ten IT Issues 2013, Educause Review, [19] Tableu Software, 8 Ways Universities Are Making an Impact with Data, Tableu Software Whitepaper, < http://www.tableausoftware.com/learn/whitepapers/8-ways-universities-are-making-impact-data> [20] Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014, Gartner, [21] Richard Katz et al., 2009, Demystifying Cloud for Higher Education, ECAR Research Bulletin, Volume 2009 issue 19 [22]D.A. Barber, 5 Higher Ed Tech Trends for 2012, Campus Technology,

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BUILDINGS MAINTENANCE SUPPORTED ON VIRTUAL REALITY TECHNOLOGY A. Zita Sampaio and Augusto M. Gomes Technical University of Lisbon, Dep. Civil Engineering Av. Rovisco Pais 1, Lisbon, Portugal

ABSTRACT The text presents the description of a research work that has as its main objective the development of a technological tool to support the maintenance activity of buildings, with resort to new information and visualization technologies. There were analyzed three main components of the building: roofs, facades and interior walls. A building’s roof covering of ceramic tiles constitutes a component of its surrounding and possesses an important function in the performance of an edifice, namely in its protection against the permeation of moisture and rain water; Facade coatings play a significant role in the durability of buildings, since they constitute the exterior layer that ensures the protection of the wall against the aggressive actions of physical, chemical or biological nature; The paint coating applied to interior walls conveys their aesthetic character, performs an important function of protection, and is exposed to agents of deterioration related to the building use. A survey of the main anomalies that occur in these components, the respective causes and the adequate interventions, in order to plan maintenance strategies was conducted. The information collected serves as a basis in the implementation of applications using interactive visualization technologies, to support the planning of building maintenance. During this work the basic knowledge related to the materials, the techniques of rehabilitation and conservation and the planning of maintenance is outlined and discussed in addition, methods of interconnecting this knowledge with the virtual applications were explored. The implemented prototypes were trialed in real cases. This research work brings an innovative contribution to the field of maintenance supported by emergent technology. KEYWORDS Construction, Maintenance, Inspections, Interaction, Virtual Reality.

1. INTRODUCTION The main aim of a research project PTDC/ECM/ 67748/2006 (Sampaio and Gomes, 2011), was to develop virtual models as tools to support decision-making in the planning of construction management and maintenance. Virtual Reality (VR) technology can support the management of data throughout the lifecycle of a building, allowing interaction and data visualization. Factors such as the constant exposure of the coating materials, like ceramic tiles in roofs and facades, stones and painted surfaces in facades and interior walls, to the weather, pollutants and the normal actions of housing use, linked to its natural ageing and, in some cases to the unsuitable application of construction materials or systems of painting give rise to its deterioration and to the appearance of irregularities, which can negatively affect its performance as both an aesthetic and a protective element. A building’s roof covering of ceramic tiles constitutes a component of its surrounding and possesses an important function in the performance of a building, namely in its protection against the permeation of moisture and rain water. The weather significantly influence the state of use of peripheral walls of the building once the humidity through the wall thickness causing anomalies in the inner surface of the wall. According to Lopes (2004), in normal conditions of habitation use and when correctly applied, a paint coating can remain unaltered for about five years. Since these building components is exposed to bad atmospheric conditions and natural use of the house, the materials frequently show an evident degree of deterioration, requiring maintenance interventions. To perform maintenance activities a survey of failures in the building must be conducted in order to arrive at the best solution for repair and maintenance.

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Establishing suitable maintenance strategies for this type of coating is based on the knowledge of the most frequent irregularities, the analysis of the respective causes and the study of the most adequate repair methodologies. Currently, the management of information related to the maintenance of buildings is based on the planning of action to be taken and on the log of completed work. The capacity to visualize the process can be added through the use of three-dimensional (3D) models which facilitate the interpretation and understanding of target elements of maintenance and, furthermore, the possibility of interaction with the geometric models can be provided through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology. The developed VR models can be considered as useful computer tool with advanced visualization capacities in the maintenance field. The kind of building material that composes the roofs, façades and the interior wall has a continuous lifestyle, so requires the study of preventive maintenance (the planning of periodical local inspections) and of corrective maintenance with repair activity analysis. The models of maintenance facilitate the visual and interactive access to results, supporting the definition of inspection reports, whether in new constructions or those needing rehabilitation. The three-dimensional (3D) model of the building linked to a data base concerning maintenance produces a collaborative virtual environment, that is, one that can be manipulated by partners interested in consulting, creating, transforming and analyzing data in order to obtain results and to make decisions. Namely, inspection reports can be defined and consulted by different collaborators. The process of developing the interface of each application considers these purposes. These applications can be easily transported to any building place in order to obtain adequate anomaly surveillance and a consequent methodology of rehabilitation, supported on the data base. The interaction and the data visualization allowed by the models turn these applications simple and direct to work with. The VR technology is actually used in areas like education as a teaching support tool or in planning processes concerning industry as a collaborative tool. In architectural design studio, Abdelhameed (2013) applies micro-simulation function, inside a virtual reality environment, using the VR Studio program, in order to provide the students with an effective tool to select and visualize a structural system and its construction process. Sampaio and Martins (2014) present didactic VR models applied to the construction of bridge field, and developed a set of learning activities for students, in the Engineering Graphics subjects, in order to acquire, develop and improve their levels of spatial skill and, for that purpose; they have structured training with VR, Augmented Reality (AR) and PDF3D technologies. Fillatreau et al. (2013) develop a framework for immersive industry checklist-based project reviews, combining immersive navigation in the checklist, virtual experiments and multimedia update of the checklist, relied on the integration of various VR tools and concepts, in a modular way, and Menck et al. (2013) uses VR as a tool for collaboration to exchange information and data has increased significantly over time in production-related areas.

2. INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS The implemented prototypes, concerning three building components, roofs (Afonso, 2013), facades (Gomes, 2010) and interior walls (Rosario, 2011), incorporate interactive techniques and input devices to perform visual exploration tasks. To support each system a data base was created which included a bibliographic research support made in regard to the closure materials used in the roof, and interior and exterior walls of a building, anomalies concerning different kinds of covering material, and corrective maintenance. Repair activities were also studied. The programming skills of those involved in the project had to be enhanced so that they could achieve the integration of the different kinds of data bases needed in the creation of the interactive model. The interactive applications support on-site inspections and the on-going analysis of the evolution of the degree of deterioration of the coating materials. The following computational systems were used in there development and the scheme of links between software is presented in Figure 1:  AutoCAD, in the creation of the 3D model of the building (based on drawings presented in Figure 2);  EON studio for the programming of the interactivity capacities integrated with the geometric model (Figure 2 shows the main interface);  Visual Basic in the creation of all the windows of the application and in the establishment of links between components;  Microsoft Access on the definition of a relational database.

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VR model

3D model

EON Studio

AutoCAD

Interface Microsoft Visual Basic

Data base Microsoft Access

Figure 1. Scheme of links between software.

Figure 2. Technical drawings and the 3D model of the building and the EON studio interface.

2.1 The VR Model of Roofs The roof covering is the most effective element of a building’s surrounding in its edification performance, and, as such, must be efficient in the face of mechanical, thermal, solar radiation and water action (Harrison, 1996). The functional requirements to be fulfilled are essentially defined in terms of habitability, safety, durability and economics. Although several covering materials can be applied in the execution of pitched roofs, the most frequently applied covering in Portugal is the ceramic tile. The tile covering ensures the continuity of the architectural tradition, allows the creation of visual effects through the variety of shapes and ancillary parts, offers a good performance in the face of atmospheric agents and a high durability and is, furthermore, an ecological product, for it is non-toxic, is renewable and biodegradable (Garcez, 2009). As the covering performs a predominant role in the protection of buildings, namely against moisture permeation, it requires a greater attention in regards to the analysis of its deterioration process. The developed VR application supports the inspection activity (Afonso, 2013). Concerning the pathology analyses and the maintenance planning, as a way to optimize the inspection process and the diagnosis of anomalies associated with the roof covering, it was necessary to create a classification system that encapsulated the information collected on this theme. Therefore four categories on the elements typology were considered: the elements that compose the covering support structure (SS); the ones that constitute the current surface of the covering (CS); the elements considered as singular covering points (SP); the ones that form the rainwater draining system (DS). An in-depth study on the anomalies that might occur, and the most likely causes associated with the different elements of the roof, are contained within the database. To each anomaly one or more probable causes in its occurrence is specified, as is the recommended intervention as a way to eliminate it. To maintain the ease in structuring the database, the causes and the intervention are both linked to the anomaly. Table 1 illustrates two examples of anomalies associated to the type of element (current surface and singular covering points), respective provable causes and recommended interventions.

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Table 1. Anomalies associated to respective causes and recommended interventions.

The implemented interface (Figure 3) allows the user to perform, intuitively, an inspection to an inclined roof. The first step in using the application is, naturally, to identify the building to be analyzed and the respective roofing characteristics. Upon opening the selected file it is possible to manipulate the model, through functions that allow the moving of a camera around it and by the selection of covering elements to be identified and monitored. Each element to be monitored must be identified so as to be included in the application’s database (Figure 3). During this process the camera must be focused on the element so the coordinates, of position and orientation, to be associated to it are accurate, thus being available for use in subsequent interactions (selection and visualization of an identified element, Figure 3).

Figure 3. The VR model of roofs interface.

The filling out of a new anomaly chart (Figure 4) or the viewing of existing charts’ data is made available through the interface anomaly chart accessed by the main interface. In the anomaly chart the scroll-down menu referring to the anomaly field shows the anomalies that have been registered in the database in association with each of the types of elements. So, for example, in relation to the covering element, belonging to the current surface group, the associated anomalies are shown in the scroll-down menu. The causes and intervention modes were equally associated to the anomalies, and, therefore, by selecting the respective control buttons, the probable causes and recommended “Intervention” fields are filled-out with the database records connected to the selected anomaly. The severity of the anomaly can be characterized according to three parameters (low, medium and high), reflecting the previously realized study. The value shown in this field is then used in the element’s color change in the virtual model, through the emission of information to EON, altering itself according to the severity of the anomaly, green for low, yellow for medium and red for high (Figure 4).The inspection chart interface also comprises a photo insertion zone, thus it is possible to add photographs taken in the inspection location or other images related to the element being analyzed, forming a considerably relevant complementary information for the subsequent study of repair/maintenance relative to the observed severity.

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Figure 4. The anomaly chart interface and color alteration of elements.

The user of this application can conduct inspections at any time, access the registered information and the virtual model and, thus, supported by the historical, define adequate plan for the roof maintenance or reparation work. Such will only be possible by storing all the information inserted into the application, as well as the changes made to the building’s virtual model in a previous inspection, allowed by the application. Since the application is based on clear and systematized information there can be a reduction in inspection subjectivity, and it may be used by different technicians. Thus, the information collected by technicians becomes clear and objective, which permits an easier analysis of the inspection data.

2.2 The VR Model of Façades The façades VR model allows interaction with the 3D geometric model of a building, visualizing components for each construction (Gomes, 2010). It is linked to a database (Table 2) of the corresponding technical information concerned with the maintenance of the materials used as exterior closures. Table 2. Anomalies in facades and associated repair solutions and methodologies. Anomaly

Specification of the anomaly

Detachment

Repair solution

Repair methodology

Fall in areas with deterioration of support

1º Removal of the tiles by cutting grinder with Replacement of the the aid of a hammer and chisel; coat (with use of a 2º Timely repair of the support in areas where the detachment includes material constituent repair stand as with it; necessary) 3º Digitizing layer of settlement; 4º Re-settlement layer and the tiles.

Failure of the support (wide cracks with welldefined orientation)

1º Removal of the tiles by cutting grinder; 2º Removal of material adjustment in the Replacement of the environment and along the joint; coat (with repair of 3º Repair of cracks, clogging with adhesive cracks in the material (mastic); support) 4º Settlement layer made with cement in two layers interspersed with glass fibre; 5º Re-settlement layer and the tiles.

Cracking / Fracturing

The visualization of the pathology data of these exterior closure materials requires an understanding of their characteristics (Gomes and Pinto, 2009): Types of material: painted surfaces, natural stone panels and ceramic wall tiles; Application processes: stones (panel, support devices, adherent products); ceramic tiles (fixing mechanism, procedures); painted surfaces (types of paint products, prime and paint scheme surface, exterior emulsion paints, application processes); Anomalies: dust and dirt, lasting lotus leaf effect, covering power, insufficient resistance to air permeability or weatherproof isolation, damaged stones or ceramic tiles, alkali and smear effect, efflorescence, fractures and fissures; Repair works: surface cleaning, wire truss

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reinforcing, cleaning and pointing of stonework joints, removing and replacement of ceramic wall tiles, removing damaged paint and paint surface, preparing and refinishing stone panels. The VR model interface is composed of a display window allowing users to interact with the virtual model, and a set of buttons for inputting data and displaying results (Figure 5). For each new building to be monitored the characteristics of the environment (exposure to rain and sea) and the identification of each element of the façades must be defined (façade orientation, double or single exterior wall, and area and type of coating). Characteristics of building and façades

Inspection interface

Figure 5. The main and inspection interfaces of the VR application.

Once each monitored element has been characterized, several inspection reports can be defined and recorded and thereafter consulted when needed. An inspection sheet (Figure 5) is accessed by the main interface. Using the drop-down menus of the interface, the user can associate the characteristics of the observed anomaly to a façade element; the type of anomaly, the specification, details and the probable cause of the anomaly, an adequate repair solution and pictures taken in the building. After completing all fields relating to an anomaly, the user can present the report as a pdf file. The developed software is easy to handle and transport for on- site inspections and comprises information of the causes, solutions and methods for repairing. As the 3D model is linked to a database in an interactive environment and has a friendly interface to deal with this knowledge, it allows a collaborative system. With this application the user may fully interact with the program referring to the virtual model at any stage of the maintenance process and analyze the best solution for repair work. It can also support the planning of maintenance strategies.

2.3 The VR Model of Painted Walls The material most frequently used in the coating of ordinary interior walls of buildings is paint. The durability of the painted coating depends on the environment in which it is used, and on the surface it is applied to as well as the rate of deterioration of the binder in the paint. Irregularities manifest themselves in various ways and in different degrees of severity. According to Coias (2009), in normal conditions of exposure and when correctly applied a paint coating can remain unaltered for about five years. Based on the study made of the causes of the anomalies, specific methodologies for their resolution were established. The developed VR application supports on-site inspections and the on-going analysis of the evolution of the degree of deterioration of the coating (Rosario, 2011). The VR model identifies each interior wall surface, in each of the rooms of the house, as independent elements. The application is supported by a database, composed by the most common irregularities (Figure 6), their probable causes and suitable repair processes, which facilitate the inspection process. In addition, the model assigns a color to each of the coating elements, the colors defined by the time variable, so that the evolution of the deterioration of the coating material is clearly shown through the alteration in color. The main interface of the application gives access to the inspection and maintenance modules (Figure 7). On an on-site inspection visit, the element to be analysed it selected interactively on the virtual model and using the inspection interface, the specialist can select the irregularity included in the list of the database, which corresponds to the observed defect, and can select also the probable cause and the prescribed repair methodology (Figure 7). The inspection data is recorded and associated to each monitored element, allowing subsequently, the planning of repair works, thus providing a tool for the definition of a rehabilitation strategy.

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Figure 6. Common defects in painted interior walls: swelling, efflorescence, cracking and blistering. Table 3. Anomalies and associated repair methodology. Classification

Alteration in colour

Deposits

Changes in texture

Reduction in adhesion

Inspection

Anomalies Yellowing Bronzing Fading Spotting Loss of gloss Loss of hiding power Dirt pick-up and retention Viscosity Efflorescence Sweating Cracking Chalking Saponification Peeling Flaking Swelling Maintenance

Repair methodology - Cleaning the surface and repainting with a finish both compatible with the existing coat and resistant to the prevailing conditions of exposure in its environment

- Cleaning the surface. - Removal by brushing scraping or washing; - repainting the surface; - When necessary apply sealer before repainting. - Proceed by totally or partially removing the coat of paint; - Check the condition of the base and proceed with its repair where necessary; - Prepare the base of the paint work. Inspection sheet

Figure 7. The main interface of the virtual application and an inspection sheet.

In addition, the model assigns a color to each of the coating elements, the colors defined by the time variable, so that the evolution of the deterioration of the coating material is clearly shown through the alteration in color. The main interface of the application gives access to the inspection and maintenance modules (Figure 7). On an on-site inspection visit, the element to be analysed it selected interactively on the virtual model and using the inspection interface, the specialist can select the irregularity included in the list of the database, which corresponds to the observed defect, and can select also the probable cause and the prescribed repair methodology (Figure 7). The inspection data is recorded and associated to each monitored element, allowing subsequently, the planning of repair works, thus providing a tool for the definition of a rehabilitation strategy. The VR application allows the user to monitor the evolution of wear and tear on the paint coating in a house. For this, technical information relative to the reference for the paint used, its durability and the date of its most recent application must be added to each element through the maintenance interface (also accessed from the main interface, Figure 7). The period of time between the date indicated to examine the building and the date when the paint was applied is compared to the duration advised for repainting. The value given for this comparison is associated to the Red, Green, Blue (RGB) parameters which define the colour used for wall in the virtual model, from pale green (colour referring to the date of painting) to red (indicates that the date the model was consulted coincides with that advised for repainting, Figure 8).

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Technical information of the paint

Figure 8. Chromatic alteration of the coating according to its state of deterioration.

3. CONCLUSION The presented VR applications support the inspection activity of roofs, facades and painted interior walls and promote the use of IT tools with advanced graphic and interactive capabilities in order to facilitate and expedite the maintenance process. The VR capacity of chromatic alteration was applied in two of the models allowing users to see, in the virtual environment, the state of gravity of anomalies or conservation of the coating materials. The information about pathologies, causes and repair methods, collected from a specialised bibliography, has been organised in such a way as to establish each model database to be used as a base for the drawing up of a tool to support building maintenance. The main aim of the applications is to facilitate maintenance enabling the rapid and easy identification of irregularities, as well as the possible prediction of their occurrence through the available inspection record. This analysis has been shown as playing an important role in conservation and in the reduction of costs related to the wear and tear of buildings and contributes to the better management of buildings where maintenance is concerned.

REFERENCES Abdelhameed, W. A. 2013. Virtual Reality Use in Architectural Design Studios: A Case of Studying Structure and Construction, Procedia Computer Science, Vol. 25, 2013, pp. 220-230. 2013 Afonso, L. P. 2013. Virtual Reality Technology Applied to the Maintenance of Roofs, MSc thesis in Construction, Lisbon, Portugal. Coias, V. 2009. Inspections and Essays on Rehabilitation of Buildings. Lisbon, Portugal, IST Press, pgs 448, ISBN: 978972-8469-53-5, (2ª Ed.) 2009. Fillatreau, P., Fourquet, J.-Y., Le Bolloc’h, R.m, Cailhol, S., Datas, A., and Puel, B. 2013. Using virtual reality and 3D industrial numerical models for immersive interactive checklists, Computers in Industry, Volume 64, Issue 9, Dec. 2013, pp. 1253-1262 Garcez, N. 2009. Inspection and Diagnosis System of Inclined Roofing Siding. MSc thesis in Aerodromes, Lisbon, Portugal. Gomes, A. M. and Pinto, A. P. 2009. Didactic Text of Construction Materials, TULisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. Gomes, A. R. 2010. Virtual Reality Technology Applied to the Maintenance of Facades, MSc thesis in Construction, Lisbon, Portugal. Harrison, H. W. 1996. Roofs And Roofing - Performance, Diagnosis, Maintenance, Repair and the Avoidance of Defects. London: BRE. Lopes, C. 2004, Anomalies in Painted Exterior Walls: Technic of Inspection and Structural Evaluation, Construlink Press, Monograph, nº22, Lisbon, Portugal, March/April 2004. Menck, N., Weidig, C., and Aurich, J.-C. 2013. Virtual Reality as a Collaboration Tool for Factory Planning based on Scenario Technique, Forty Sixth CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems 201, Procedia CIRP, Vol. 7, 2013, pp. 133-138. Rosario, D. P. 2011. Virtual Reality Technology Applied to the Maintenance of Painted Interior Walls, MSc thesis in Construction, Lisbon, Portugal. Sampaio, A. Z., and Gomes, A. M. 2011. Virtual Reality Technology Applied as a Support Tool to the Planning of Construction Maintenance, research project PTDC/ECM/ 67748/2006, FCT, Lisbon, Portugal. Sampaio, A. Z., and Martins, O. P. 2014. The application of virtual reality technology in the construction of bridge: The cantilever and incremental launching methods, Automation in Construction, Vol. 37, January 2014, pp. 58-67.

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BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING USING ACTIVITY PATTERNS David Grünert and Thomas Keller ZHAW, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Institute for Business Information Management and Technology Switzerland

ABSTRACT Various manufacturers offer BPM suites that are powerful instruments in the automation of business processes. These are used in automation projects to create both functional and technical models of business processes. Typically, business process modeling and technical modeling are conducted in consecutive sub-projects and handled by different people. This article analyzes the difficulties that arise in the context of such a two-level approach and shows how these might be addressed using activity patterns and a customized process model. The proposed approach aims to combine the business process modeling and the technical modeling by allowing automated transformation to take place between the two models. KEYWORDS Business process modeling, activity pattern, code generation.

1. INTRODUCTION In executing automation projects, processes are usually first modeled on a business level before they are automated. Many believe that the functional requirements must be formally determined using a suitable model before the technical modeling can begin. Although such a sequential approach might appear logical, it must be considered that business process modeling and technical modeling each have a different purpose. Business process modeling focuses on documenting existing processes, and perhaps also on their optimization from a functional perspective. The project team is usually experienced in business process modeling in the context of projects intended to streamline work processes or to achieve certification. The technical modeling that follows this aims to support the business processes by using suitable IT tools. Possible starting points include the automated assigning of tasks, the monitoring of time limits, or the substitution of paper documents. [5,7,8] Unfortunately, the track record of many automation projects is not great. The problems that arise are multifaceted and range from implementation issues during the development phase to missed optimization targets in the implementation phase, poor maintainability, or the inability to expand the solution once it is operational. We believe that many of these problems derive from an unsuitable process model and inadequate modeling. In the following, these problems are described in more detail.

2. PROBLEM ANALYSIS The first problems usually arise with the transfer from business process modeling to technical modeling, as soon as automation begins. Due to the lack of technical focus during business process modeling, it may be difficult to make a smooth deduction from the business process model to the technical model. It must also be noted that the correct use of business process notation during business process modeling is no guarantee that the resulting process can be transferred into a technical model.

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In our experience, it is primarily the activities that present problems in their implementation. Elements like Gateway, Messages, and Events can usually be transferred to a technical model quite easily. In the worst case, the way the activities were formulated can result in the whole business process being more or less useless for automation; not all mapping problems are as serious, however. Three cases are described in the following.   

Business process activities have no corresponding activity on the technical level. Such a situation indicates that there is a modeling error, which can be corrected by modifying the business process model. Necessary technical activities are missing from the business process model. This situation is common because not all technical activities are business relevant. The main challenge is to effectively integrate the additional technical activities into the business process model. Activities in the business process model require several sub-activities on the technical side. This situation is not problematic as long as these are genuine sub-processes. In such a case it is enough to add the description of the corresponding sub-process to the activity in question. More difficult is the situation where based on the new sub-activities the borders between the activity in question and subsequent activities must be redefined. This may affect gateways, messages, etc. in the business process model, and a new business process may have to be designed as a result.

Other problems that frequently occur in the implementation phase include the insufficient performance of the implementation or failure to achieve optimization goals that have been set. Possible reason is that process optimization is carried out in the course of business process modeling, without considering the subsequent automation and its technical impact. Such optimizations which appear to be useful from a business perspective may turn out to make little or no sense during automation. In addition, the potential benefits of an automation are not always fully utilized because its potential is not considered at optimization phase. For instance, in the course of business process optimization, the same person is assigned to handle a business case for as long as possible in order to keep the number of role/task switches involved at a minimum. Especially in such cases, however, an automation solution can help to make collaboration efficient even when there are many switches involved. In the course of operation, problems can arise because business process modeling and technical modeling are not linked.  

Changes at the business process level often lead to the need for complex adjustments at the technical level. There is also a risk that the maintenance and further development of the system become more difficult with every change. Because the two models are dependent on each other, they usually only really correlate at the time when they are set up. Every further adjustment, especially on the technical side, causes the two models to move further apart.

3. SOLUTION APPROACH: USING ACTIVITY PATTERNS The goal of modeling using activity patterns as it is proposed here is to alleviate or even eliminate the problems that have previously been described. To this end, a new approach for business process modeling is presented here, including the necessary activities on the technical side and the respective procedure for creating the models. Process automation using activity patterns is characterized by the fact that only the business process model is produced manually, while the corresponding technical model is generated automatically. In order for this automated transformation to be technically possible, one needs not only a business process model but also a data model and customized activity patterns. The relationships between the individual components are shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. The Relationship of Business Process and Technical Model in Modeling Activity Patterns

Business process modeling using activity patterns works similar to traditional business modeling. What is different is that for each type of activity a pattern is defined. This enables the business process model to be created using a common business process notation such as BPMN. Changes primarily affect the choice of the elements to be placed in the model:    

All activities must be selected from a list of available activity patterns. An activity pattern defines a particular type of action. The activities that are placed in the model, i.e. the so-called “instances” of the activity patterns, must be configured for the task they represent. If there is conditional branching in the business process (exclusive gateways), the conditions in question must be connected to elements from the data model. Start and intermediate events require additional configuration data.

The activity patterns and the data model provide the information which is required for the automatic generation of a technical model. The patterns and the data model are typically the responsibility of the automation expert. Activity patterns are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. The data model defines the structure of all the data managed in a particular business case. The data model mainly depends on the application domain and can frequently be deduced by adapting existing models from related applications or by using suitable standards such as eCH [10]. The data model also enables the taking into consideration of application-specific data. In additional to changes in model content, there is typically also a change in the distribution of roles within a project team. Figure 2 shows such a possible distribution of responsibilities between the business expert and the automation expert with regard to the elements shown in Figure 1. The main role of the automation expert is to create the data model and implement, or adapt, the activity patterns. This task requires collaboration with the business expert. In some cases, it can also be handled in part by the business expert alone.

Figure 2. Use Case Diagram for Business Process Automation Using Activity Patterns

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The creation of the business process model consists of two main tasks. The first task, positioning and linking the activities as well as identifying parallel or exclusive sub-processes, is handled by the business expert. For the second task, configuring the elements, a division of labor between the business expert and the automation expert may be indicated. In addition to expert knowledge, those involved must also closely understand the possibilities of the activity patterns used. The configuration of the patterns is the actual intersection of business process and technical modeling.

4. RELATED RESEARCH In the past, the term “pattern” was mainly used in connection with business process modeling of business processes, particularly to describe so-called “workflow patterns” (or “process patterns”). The concept, described in [1] and [6], identifies possible assemblies of activities in order to map e.g. a synchronization or parallel execution. Workflow patterns help the modeler to proceed systematically in creating a business process model that reflects reality as closely as possible. As described in [9], workflow patterns can also simplify modeling. In contrast to our work, the automation of processes is not focused on in these references, and no patterns are defined at activity level. The concept introduced in [3] takes a similar direction as our own approach. In particular, it suggests the reuse of seven generic workflow activity patterns (WAP) to accelerate and facilitate modeling. A possible implementation using modeling tools is described in [4]. In addition, [2] describes an empirical study that examines how often the proposed patterns are found in real processes. A revised version of the WPA concept was presented in [13]. Like the patterns presented here, the seven WPAs are SESE fragments (single entry, single exit). Unlike our patterns, WPAs require typically two roles, one acting as sender, one as receiver. Furthermore, WPAs contain multiple activities and possibly gateways when modeled in BPMN while our patterns can always be represented with a single activity. To make the difference between WPAs and our patterns clearer, one might name our patterns “task activity patterns” (TAP). The fact that TAPs can be represented with a single activity also facilitates their integration into existing BPM-Suites. In [12], forty different workflow data patterns are identified. Although these patterns only deal with data perspective of workflows, they are more similar to our patterns than the WAPs are. Unlike our patterns, the set of data patterns is not suited to replace all possible activities in a business process. Another approach to close the gap between business processes and its implementation as workflows is BPEL [8]. However, it is less powerful than the BPM notation and has limitations regarding integration of systems and user interaction. It has not become widely used in industry.

5. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITY PATTERNS This chapter discusses the individual activity patterns and their configuration options. The patterns that are introduced here were developed in the context of two automation projects in the public sector. They were deduced from two actual application cases and have been generalized to ensure that the patterns did not have any characteristics which are specific to the application domain in question. A point that is still unclear and that is currently being examined in more detail is the question whether the patterns listed here are sufficient for automation solutions for other domains. A show case implementation is available at [11].

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Opening a business case Closing a business case

Editing process data

Refining process data

Exporting process data Importing process data Decisionmaking

Completing the task

Creating an event Recording an event

Opening a new business case is usually one of the first activities of the process; possibly, a preliminary examination may be conducted beforehand. The purpose of this activity is to establish a clear ID for the business case and to create a new instance for process data. The pattern can also be used within a business case in order to open a new, independent case. When a business case is completed, its process data can be moved to an archive, or status information can be used to mark the case as completed. Completing a business case can either by realized as an independent pattern or integrated directly into the final event element. This can be useful in cases where no user interaction is necessary for completing the business case. The completion of the case can be made possible at any time in connection with an event pattern. The ultimate goal of any activity is to change, modify, or delete the data of a case. The pattern enables the user to display and manipulate some or all of the case data. This pattern will usually offer extensive configuration options, such as choosing the data to be displayed, deciding how they are displayed, editing possibilities, and rules for automatic manipulation. The option to display only selected data can be useful because often only a small part of the process data is actually relevant for a certain activity. In addition, process data may be available in binary form, e.g., as PDF or image data. These can be displayed and manipulated using an embedded editor or by calling up an external application. An interesting option is the automatic manipulation of process data. Before or after displaying the user task, certain process data can be automatically changed, or the creation of a task can be dispensed with altogether. This latter option can be used to automatically adapt state variables. Refining process data is neither about manipulating existing process data nor about entering new data. The purpose of this pattern is merely to associate existing data with each other and process them. The processed data are either used temporarily and deleted again after the activity is completed, or they are permanently added to the process data in the form of a document. The purpose of the export of data is either to store the process data in an external system or to send documents to other process participants by regular mail or by e-mail. In the latter case, the required documents may be created in a previous activity of the type . When data is imported, information is retrieved from external systems and stored in the process data. The import can be called up either periodically, occur at specific times in the process, or be triggered by an event, such as the arrival of a message. Decision-making is merely the act of processing process data, which is something that could also be realized using this pattern. Nevertheless, we decided to employ a specific pattern for this purpose, on the one hand because decisions are frequent, and on the other hand because this will make it possible to better cover certain functions that are specific to decision-making. For an example of configuration options and the user task created as a result, see 0 and 6.3 The task pattern formulates a task for the user. To complete the task, the user can be shown process data but he or she will not be able to manipulate them. All the user can do is signal that the task has been completed. The pattern can be used, for instance, to map user activities on external systems. This pattern is used to create all events which are used by external systems or by the automation solution itself. In contrast to the pattern used for the export of process data, an event typically has a low amount of data, such as the event type and the business case’s ID. The pattern to record events can model all actions that are triggered by external systems or started manually by the user. This allows, among other things, for the mapping of ad-hoc processes.

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6. EFFECTS FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT One effect the approach described above has on project management concerns the skills of those involved in the project. The following is an attempt to show what this might look like:

Phase Establishing the current state of the business processes Defining how the processes should be (optional) Developing data model(s)

Standard profile Business analyst

With Activity Pattern Business analyst

Business analyst

Business analyst

Business IT specialist

Defining a GUI concept

Business IT specialist

Establishing further (non-) functional requirements Implementation Validation

Business IT specialist

Business analyst, business IT specialist Business analyst, business IT specialist Business IT specialist

IT specialist Business IT specialist, Business analyst

Business IT specialist Business IT specialist, Business analyst

As the table indicates, the IT specialist is no longer needed. This is based on the assumption that the activity patterns are already validated for a particular domain and no adjustments are necessary. The development of the data models and the definition of the GUI concepts can possibly be handled by a well-trained business analyst, with occasional support, where required, from a business information specialist. In general, there is a tendency away from profiles involving technical competencies in favor of profiles involving business competencies. However, this statement just results from observations based on two projects and is by far not representative.

7. CONCLUSION The concepts described in this article were developed for genuine automation projects and have therefore already been successfully implemented and tested. The experiences from these projects show that business process modeling using activity patterns is a promising approach to effectively deal with the mapping, optimization, and maintenance problems identified in Chapter 3. We are convinced that business process modeling using activity patterns is suitable for other domains. It remains to be seen whether the identified activity patterns in the public sector are also sufficient for other domains. This is a question which is currently being addressed in some student projects. On the other hand, we are working with providers to develop modeling tools for the concepts described in this article.

REFERENCES [1] Atwood, D., 2006. BPM Process Patterns: Repeatable Design for BPM Process Models. Data on the Web: www.bptrends.com. [2] Thom, L. H., et al, 2007, Workflow Patterns for Business Process Modeling. International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'07, Trondheim, Norway. [3] Thom, L. H., 2006. A Pattern – based Approach for Business Process Modeling. Porto Alegre, Brasil. Data on the Web: http://www.biblioteca.ufrgs.br/bibliotecadigital/. (Thesis). [4] Thom, L. H., et al, 2007. Extending Business Process Modeling Tools with Workflow Pattern Reuse. International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems ICEIS’07, Funchal, Portugal.

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[5] Scheer, A-W, 2010. Business Process Automation: ARIS in Practice. Springer, Berlin [6] Russell, N., et al, 2006. Workflow Control-Flow Patterns: A Revised View. BPM Center Report BPM-06-22, BPMcenter.org. [7] Stiehl, V., Prozessgesteuerte Anwendungen entwickeln und ausführen in BPMN. Dpunkt, Heidelberg [8] van Lessen, T., et al, 2011. Geschäftsprozess automatiseren mit BPEL. dpunkt, Heidelberg [9] Gschwind T., et al, 2008. Applying Patterns during Business Process Modeling. BPM 2008 Lecture Notes on Computer Science LNCS, pp. 4-19, Data on the Web: www.zurich.ibm.com/csc/bit. [10] eCH, Standards für e-Government in der Schweiz, Data on the Web: http://www.ech.ch. [11] Grünert, D. and Keller, Th., 2013. Show case implementation for an activity based business process modeling, http://srv-app-w-027.zhaw.ch:8000/. [12] Russell, N., et al, 2005. Workflow Data Patterns: Identification, Representation and Tool Support. In: Proc. 24th Int’l Conf. on Conceptual Modeling (ER’05), LNCS 3716, pp. 353 -368. [13] Thom, L. H., et al, 2009. Activity patterns in process-aware information systems: basic concepts and empirical evidence. International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 4(2):93–110.

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THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA BY LOCAL GOVERMENT Takayoshi Kawai Tokai University of Department of Media Studies

ABSTRACT We inquired about how the local government uses social media. Moreover, we analyzed about how the local government is evaluating use of social media. As the result, it turned out that the local government uses twitter, facebook, and youtube. On the other hand, we have understood that the local government omitted evaluation sufficient about a public-relations policy. We proposed the multimodal assessment about public relations, and showed the framework which can be analyzed about whether the result according to the purpose is demonstrated.

KEYWORDS Socialmedia, local government, evaluation

1. BACKGROUND In recent years, practical use of the social media by a local government is progressing in Japan. Especially the local government came to use social media positively focusing on twitter after the Great East Japan Earthquake. On the other hand, "city sales" and "city promotion" which solicited the charm of the area are also performed in many local governments. There is an example for which social media are utilized in this city promotion. Many researches are done about practical use of the social media by the local government. However, research of whether what we do with the project evaluation of the practical use of the social media by the local government is insufficient. Practical use of the social media by the local government continues to be predicted. So, it is useful to conduct analysis with the viewpoint of evaluation.

2. PURPOSE Based on such a background, by this research, the present condition of social-media practical use of a city government is clarified, and it aims the proposal in which what kind of project evaluation is possible by the difference for the purpose of the use.

3. METHOD This research was mainly done by two methods. First, we checked the general situation of the city government by the questionnaire which went to the argument in the study group about the public-relations of a city government which served as the chairman. Next, the argument about the state of the Facebook practical use by the local government in the WOM marketing conference method committee -- and, Analysis of the hearing about the Facebook practical use to Fukuoka, Hamamatsu, and Nagareyama and the Facebook page which added Takeo as a contrast example in addition to the above was conducted.

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4. DETAILS 4.1 The Study Group about the Public-Relations of a City Government In the study group about the public-relations of a city government, it had a discussion based on the multimodal assessment method of the local government public relations which we have proposed. From September 23, 2012 to October 9, the questionnaire was carried out for the section chief specializing in city government public relations of 810 governments across the country, the reply from 431 governments was obtained, and we conducted quantitive and qualitative analysis.

4.1.1 Multimodal Assessment Method of Public Relations The multimodal assessment method of the local government public relations consist of four evaluations of the behavior of local government publicity work. - The cost effectiveness evaluation on the basis of a taxpayer's conviction based on logic model (Fig. 1),

Figure 1. Logic model in public-relations measure

- The behavior modification evaluation on the basis of the media practical use strategy model for government public-relations (Fig. 2),

Figure 2. Media practical use strategy model

- The collaboration realization evaluation on the basis of the framework of the local area management (Fig. 3),

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Figure 3. Local area management diagram

- The participation person growth evaluation on the basis of the way of thinking of the SECI model which Ikujiro Nonaka and others presents (Fig. 4)

Figure 4. SECI model (based on Ikujiro Nonaka)

4.1.2 Questionnaire Survey Moreover, we argued about evaluation being important also about practical use of the local government's social media. The questionnaire survey mentioned previously was conducted on the basis of these, and the following result was obtained. The local governments who answered "We use social media as a public-relations tool" are 194 cities. This is 45.0% of the local government who answered. 14 local governments have answered "Social media are the pillars of public relations" to the question "how you have positioned social media in the whole public relations. "When checked about the use situation of each social-media tool, the result as shown in Table 1 was obtained. Table 1. Social-media practical use situation classified by kind in local government (n= 431)

Blog Twitter Facebook Mixi(Japanese SNS) Local SNSs Youtube niconico-doga(Japanese) Ustream Pintarest

number 31 136 74 1 13 79 1 10 1

% 7.2 31.6 17.2 0.2 7.7 18.3 0.2 2.3 0.2

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The following description was obtained as a result of asking by free description about the purpose of using social media. "Improvement in name recognition of an image character", "By disseminating information widely out of the area, many people can know a city." "It is no charge.", "The government can see a civic reaction. (it is a real name and there are many positive reactions) ", "There is an advantage which diffusibility dislikes in quantity in social media. Moreover, there is an advantage of being easy to notify. Therefore, (a)guidance to the website about city promotion can be performed. (b)information can be diffused in short time. " About the investment framework of social media, it is as in Table 2. The local government who has placed the full-time position member is slight. Even if it includes additional post, there are few local governments who have placed the specific personnel in charge. This is observed. In addition, the answer of "those who are not taking charge of public-relations business holding an additional post", and "the specific individual with skill applying" was contained in "other" replies. Table 2. Social-media use situation in the local government (n= 195)

The personnel who take charge full-time position member additional post member rotation system part-time-service personnel other

number 12 126 29 3 34

% 6.2 64.9 14.9 1.5 17.5

There is a question "what kind of subject and trouble there are when the local government uses social media." The local government of 12 chose "since it is not different from the conventional public-relations media, such as PR papers and a web page, we cannot understand the necessity of using social media" as a reply to this question. We estimate this reply that the local government is what realizes the effect about use of social media. However, the local governments who have enacted the guideline and use plan about social-media practical use are only the 131 governments. This is 2/3 of the whole. Among these, it is the 66 governments "which are enacted and exhibited" and it is the 65 governments "which are not exhibited although enacted." Attention is required unless 1/3 of the local government using social media has a guideline and a use plan. The result about the evaluation of effectiveness of social media is shown in Table 3. The local governments who are not performing project evaluation about public relations including social media are 286 and 2/3 of the whole. About use of social media, the local governments who are performing evaluation of effectiveness are the small 22 governments, and have only about 10% also by a ratio. Table 3. The measuring situation of the public-relations effect in the local government(n=428)

Evaluation of effectiveness of social media / other public-relations media only social media only other public-relations media no media

number 15

% 3.5

7 120 286

1.6 28.0 66.8

About the 22 governments which have measured the public-relations effect of social media, it checks using Table 4 what kind of evaluation index is used. Since there is little government which answered, it is difficult to state clearly, but the government which is performing evaluation about social media has a possibility of utilizing the broader valuation basis, compared with the government which is performing only public-relations evaluation except social media.

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Table 4. Situation of public-relations evaluation in the local government

The side of evaluation

evaluation about social media number

cost effectiveness behavior modification collaboration realization participation person growth

2 16 2 3

% 9.1 72.7 9.1 13.6

evaluation only the public relations of those other than social media number % 30 25.0 93 77.5 7 5.8 3 2.5

4.2 WOM Marketing Conference Method Committee It argued about how it is possible to evaluate the performance of Facebook practical use of the government by the method committee. We investigated concretely a Fukuoka kawaii division, Hamamatsu, and Nagareyama moricom and Takeo as Facebook practical use of the government further, and decided to check. The following contents of a hearing were acquired about the universe 4 government this time. In the three governments except Takeo, it has checked having positioned Facebook as media to which collaboration with a private sector is urged, and considering the target as a tool of the clarified charm solicitation.

4.2.1 Fukuoka Kawaii Division Fukuoka city made the kawaii division the "virtual administrative district", and people who live in the Fukuoka outskirts of a city think of it as that as for which attachment to Fukuoka and affiliation will are made to a form. Substantial "administrative services" to virtual administrative district people is needed in that sense. Since it is only a "resident card" now, it will further inquire from now on. It also becomes a place of the inner communication between the kawaii inhabitants of a ward. It may be able to search by analyzing access to a kawaii division. There are no responses, like the number of tourists increases by a kawaii division. When a company in the city becomes a kawaii division supporter, it becomes a channel from the kawaii division Facebook to a company page. This thinks that it can also become an evaluation index.

4.2.2 Hamamatsu City Formal Facebook The metropolitan area is targeted at present. It is trying to be made at the site to which weariness does not come. The proposal of the site design was received from the student who makes a design in the city. It is not visible what kind of effect off-line had. From now on, it is necessary to perform navigation to a related site firmly on the basis of the brand message "the town of success in life." They plan to use as a tool for conveying the mayor's words or producing a sense of crisis to tsunami.

4.2.3 Nagareyama City Facebook Page "moricom" "moricom" is not pushing forward the existence of Nagareyama. It is the Facebook page for getting the person of the metropolitan area who is looking for the place to live in instead of those who are looking for Nagareyama to find it. Therefore, the persons involved in Nagareyama do not feel meaning for my having it carried out unconsciously "Like". Contents unrelated to the city sales which targeted the metropolitan area made into the purpose are assigned to twitter practical use. "moricom" avoids the impression without arrangement. Facebook becomes the seeds of cooperation with a private sector. It is a cause of the tie-up. Facebook is functioning as a mechanism of showing the sectional view of an advance situation. Although it will flow in twitter, it is important that it is fixable one by one by Facebook. This can show charm.

4.2.4 Takeo City Formal Facebook In the hearing which we performed in 2011, the opinion that Facebook is utilized for visualization of administration has been acquired.

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4.2.5 Small Summary We analyzed a Fukuoka kawaii division, a Hamamatsu formal Facebook page, Nagareyama Facebook page "moricom", a Takeo formal Facebook page from each December 6, 2012 to March 7, 2013 using three axes. Three axes are the number of posts, the number which made "Like" each page itself, and an interaction rate. In addition, an interaction rate is the sum of the number of "Like", the number of shares, and the number of comments per 1post.(Fig. 5) There are not many posts relatively in Fukuoka "kawaii division." However, an interaction rate is high. Moreover, the number which made it the page itself "Like" is large. Nagareyama "moricom page" is in the tendency same about the number of posts and an interaction rate as Fukuoka. But, a circle is small. On a Takeo formal Facebook page, although it posts frequently, an interaction rate is small. The number which made it the page itself "it is good" is the number of the same grades as Fukuoka which differs in a size of population greatly. Hamamatsu is in those middle positions. By uniting these with the hearing to each city, and examining them, Facebook page of Fukuoka and Nagareyama is utilized as area public relations as part of the city promotion which solicits the charm of the area, In Takeo, Facebook page has used in order to visualize the present condition of administration.

5. CONSIDERATION AND CONCLUSION The consideration drawn from the details of research is as follows. Although practical use of the social media in the local government is increasing, the use tool has much twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, and the local government who is using other tools is restrictive. Moreover, about use, problems, such as insufficiency of a guideline, insufficiency of an investment framework, and a shortage to evaluation of effectiveness, are large. On the other hand, some local governments are carrying out multi-sided evaluations, such as (a) cost effectiveness evaluation, (b) behavior modification evaluation, (c) collaboration realization evaluation, (d) participation person growth evaluation. Especially, in the advanced local government, it is clarifying the purpose of utilizing social media, and is improving evaluation possibility. About practical use of Facebook in administration public relations, the purpose and the actual condition are various, and evaluation for a partial numerical value is difficult. However, it is considered to be to some extent possible by the 3 axis analysis carried out this time to check the compatibility a practical use result and for the purpose of enforcement. By the above, although social-media practical use of the local government shows progress, it is still in an intermediate stage. To clarify compatibility of the purpose and practical use is desired by taking a many-sided evaluation technique from now on.

REFERENCES Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton(1996) "The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action", Harvard Business Review Press Takayoshi Kawai(2009),"City promotion-work which makes the charm of the area", Tokyo Horei Syuppan (in Japanese) Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi(1991)" The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation", Oxford University Press Tom Watson, Paul Noble(2005) "Evaluating Public Relations: A Best Practice Guide To Public Relations Planning, Research & Evaluation", Kogan Page Ltd

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A CREATION METHOD OF APPROPRIATE AXES FOR ORGANIZING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENTS AND ITS APPLICATION FOR A CYBER CURATOR SEARCH Takafumi Nakanishi, Kiyotaka Uchimoto and Yutaka Kidawara National Institute of Information and Communications Technology 3-5 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, 619-0288, Japan

ABSTRACT We show the new cyber curator search method retrieves users by creating or selected axes. In the current method, almost search or retrieval methods were done per each datum. For example, current systems retrieve some data corresponding to a user’s query to an appropriate data. That is, current systems focus on each data. We cannot understand the perspective of a focused issue by one tweet any more. Therefore, current search or retrieval systems do not correspond to the current social media situation. Therefore, axes selection is very important to organize all big data for user’s understanding. In this paper, we show an example of the creation of three axes for a cyber curator search – Expertness, Authority, and similarity of user’s interest. This method is the one of the example methods for browsing data set with the organizing of the selected axes. You note that almost other search method provides the list of each data or user’s link, because, their purpose is browsing for data itself or a user’s page itself. However, this method represents each data or user itself in points on the three axes Euclidean space, because our purpose is represented of quick overview of focused data set. It means that this system provides deviation of user’s interest, authority and expertness. KEYWORDS Social media user, cyber curator search, selection of appropriate axes, big data analysis. Authority, expertness.

1. INTRODUCTION Many people are playing a major role in the social media. The social media services are increasing and increasing. The one of the solution is found persons that curate interesting things corresponding to user’s interests. Recently, a curator has been one of the focused keyword. Some users aggregate the newest data concerning to the topic, analysis by using these data by themselves and summarize the result concerning to the topic. These users naturally publish the summary concerning to the topic. These persons call cyber curator. We obtain the interest data without taking what is good and leave what is bad for obtained data if we will search curators corresponding with us. Therefore, it is important to search the curator corresponding to user’s interests. However, data on the social media are increasing explosively. Actually, we will understand nothing and will only be tired only from looking at the time line on social media. In addition, each data is fragmental data. For example, a tweet is the only sequence of less than 140 words. We only can obtain notices but cannot understand the perspective of a focused issue by one data. That is, it is important to get a quick overview of the data deviation of big data for new knowledge discovery in the big data era. In order to get a quick overview of the data deviation for all big data, it is important to create appropriate axes, to map these data into creating axes and to visualize or browse these data on the selected axes. In this paper, we propose creating axes for getting a quick overview of the big data deviation for new knowledge acquisition. When we can map all data into axes which are represented in the elements for constituting the purpose, we can visualize the data on the same axes and we can see data deviation. In addition, we can get a quick overview of the current state of user’s purpose. As an example, in this paper, we focus on curators on the Twittersphere. We consider that a curator collects information, and analyzes and

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saves them as my memo mainly. In order that a curator publishes on the social media such as twitter, we can share the important results. Therefore, we have to achieve the curator search method. This paper contributes to the following:  We propose a new analysis method by creation axes and mapping all data into these axes.  We show an example application of a cyber curator search method in the Twittersphere.  This method gets the data set from the user’s query and represents each data or user itself in points on the three axes Euclidean space, because our purpose is represented of quick overview for focused data set.

2. NEW KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION CREATION AXES AND MAPPING DATA In the current method, almost search or retrieval methods were done per each datum. For example, current systems retrieve some data corresponding to a user’s query to an appropriate data. That is, current systems focus on each data. We cannot understand the perspective of a focused issue by one tweet any more. Therefore, current search or retrieval systems do not correspond to the current social media situation. We have to give the viewpoint to these data. If there are no viewpoints, there is nothing to get to us, they are only a mountain of garbage. The appropriate axes can organize the data set for user’s understanding. The appropriate axes represent the ways to view dataset — viewpoints. By realizing the method, we will create some axes or select these axes freely. This system consists of following three processes: Step 1: Data aggregation by user’s query A user gives a query as keywords which show the things which a user wants to know. It is not necessary to extract applicable data, because it is only good to get whole overview and We do not need to care about the contents of each data. This is a big point of our proposed method. Some researchers try to analyze these big data faster and faster such as data mining etc. However, we consider that the research subjects itself are misstep. For example, when there is much soup, we need the much volume of a container, but there are no persons who drink up all soup for the purpose of tasting. We only know the data deviation on the axes. By this result, we can see an overview of the trend which a user wants to know. Step 2: Create or Select appropriate axes A developer or a user create or select appropriate axes for seeing an overview of a trend which a user wants to know. We show the detail creation method in Section 4. Step 3: Mapping and visualizing aggregated data on the axes The method maps and visualizes aggregated data on the axes. When we can map all data into axes which are represented in the elements for constituting the purpose, we can visualize the data on the same axes and we can see data deviation. In addition, we can get a quick overview of the current state of user’s purpose. By these processes, they provide the way to organize focused data set for user’s perspective understanding. Therefore, our computer science researchers should reconsider new search or retrieval framework.

3. CREATION METHOD FOR AN AXIS – AN EXAMPLE OF SIMILARITY AXIS, AUTHORITY AXIS, AND EXPERTNESS AXIS OF FOR REALIZING CURATOR SEARCH In this section, we show an axis creation method along with an example of similarity axis, authority axis, and expertness axis for realizing curator search. In Section 4.1, we show some assumptions for creation of axes. In section 4.2, we actually formulate the axes for mapping aggregated data.

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3.1 Assumption In this section, we describe three assumptions about similarity of user’s interest, authority and expertness for formalization.

3.1.1 Assumption of Curator’s Similarity of User’s Interest A curator aggregates and analyzes data for not only him/her but also the other users. Therefore, a curator consciously or subconsciously publishes effective survey for the other users. First, it is important to match between curator’s interest and a user’s interest. On this background, we assume as follows; Assumption 1: A curator’s interest is represented in a vector c and a user’s interest is represented in a vector q. Then, similarity of user’s interest is higher when a vector is closer to vector q.

3.1.2 Assumption of Curator’s Authority It is important for a curator to aggregate correct data and information. A curator can publish correct data or information by analyzing aggregated correct data and information. This is directly related to an ability to increase own follower. Authority is one of the important elements for a curator. Therefore, in the case of twitter, when there is a lot of retweet in a certain tweet, the authority of the tweet is high. Assumption 2: A curator’s authority is determined by how many links, retweets or share to the curator’s tweets or descriptions are. This assumption is similar to HITs Algorithm (Kleinberg, 1999). In our pre-experiment, it is hard to trace the information flow from twitter. We cannot define the hub such as HITs Algorithm. When, therefore, we trace all the data flow, we can use the same assumption of HITs Algorithm.

3.1.3 Assumption of Curator’s Expertness A curator needs to be expertness, because a curator aggregates appropriate data and information, analyzes them and publishes the results. We consider that it is easy for an expert to aggregate appropriate data and analyze them. Therefore, a curator can publish a lot of data and information to the other people. Assumption 3: A curator’s expertness is higher; he/she publishes more data and information such as tweets in the expert field.

3.2 Formalization for Curator Search Axes — SI, AI, EI In this section, we formalize three curator axes – similarity index (SI), authority index (AI) and expertness index (EI) along with some assumptions as shown 4.1.

3.2.1 Similarity Index (SI) We show the formulation of an axis – a similarity index (SI). The similarity index represents a degree of similarity between user’s interest and curator’s interest. A curator’s interest is represented in a vector c and a user’s interest is represented in a vector q. The two vectors c, q is represented by using the same elements. Therefore, the similarity index (SI) is represented by a similarity function (sim) of the two vectors c, q. Although an inner product system and a distance system may be sufficient as a similar function, it is necessary to normalize it to the value of -1 to 1. SI = sim(q, c). We try to formalize the other way. A user’s interest is existing similar word set W = {w1,w2, ... ,wN}. A similar word wi represented in a vector wi as same element of user’s interest q. The similarity index (SI) is represented as follows when the similar word wi appears in a curator’s tweet: , where wi represents a similar word vector including j-th user’s tweet, q represents query word vector (representing user’s interest), and N represents the number of similar words including the j-th user's tweets, because we assume that similarity of user’s interest is higher when a vector is closer to query word vector.

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3.2.2 Authority Index (AI) We show the formulation of an axis – an authority index (AI). The authority index represents a degree of authority about curator’s tweets. By the assumption 2, the number of link, retweet or share is important. The phenomenon which the focused curator publishes tweet is represented in A. The phenomenon which curator’s published tweet is linked, retweeted or shared is represented in B. The authority Index (AI) represents as follows: AI = P(B|A) Therefore, the system calculates the authority index (AI) when the system knows the number of curator’s published thing and the number of linked, retweeted or shared.

3.2.3 Expertness Index (EI) We show the formulation of an axis – an expertness index (EI). The expertness index represents a degree of expertness about curator’s tweets. By the assumption 3, the number of publications such as tweets including expert words is important. The phenomenon which the focused curator publishes tweet is represented in A. The phenomenon which expert words appear in curator’s published tweets represented in C. The expertness index (EI) represents as follows: EI = P(C|A) Here, expert words mean similar words wi belong to set W, because these words are expanded from user’s interest. We can regard that curator’s tweets including similar words wi belonging to set W satisfy expertness of user’s interest.

3.2.4 Difference of Previous Method Of course, we can show the list of users (appropriate curator) by order such as a formula: (We call “distance formula”). However, this representation is one of the previous-generation ways. In addition, you note that we do not stick with above three axes.

4. EXPERIMENT We use the Twitter REST API in Japanese Twittersphere in the twitter search (curator candidate extraction) phase. We also use the reflexa Web API (http://labs.preferred.jp/reflexa/about api.html (in Japanese)) in the query expansion phase. The API provides 50 related words by a given query. The similarity index SI approximates as follows: first one is ”1”, second one is ”0.99”, third one is ”0.98”,.... We show the similarity index (SI), authority index (AI) and expertness index (EI) plot of curatorial candidates extracted by twitter search phrase in Fig. 1, 2 and 3. Each figure represents SI, AI and EI values in each curator candidate. We compare each axis SI, AI and EI with all axis. The effectiveness’s for getting overview evaluation of three axes are shown. Fig. 1 shows the result in the case of query ”脳 (brain).” We can see that there are some curator candidates which have high values of both of SI and AI but there are a little about curator candidate which have high values of both of SI, AI and EI. Of course, there are some curator candidates which have high values of EI but has not high value AI. There We consider that there are less retweets because ”brain” is very specific. Fig. 2 shows the result in the case of query ”放射線 (radiation).” This keyword is the one of the most important issues in Japan. Therefore, there are a lot of tweets about radiation. There are a lot of curator candidates which have high values of SI but do not have high values of AI and EI. Furthermore, There are a lot of curator candidates which have high values of EI but do not have high values of SI and AI. There are a lot of curator candidates which have high values of AI but do not have high values of SI and EI. Fig. 4 shows the effectiveness that data deviation is important as the one of the obtaining better information. Fig. 3 shows the result in the case of query ”Windows.” There are a massive of tweets in the Twittersphere, however, there are less curator candidates which have high values of EI. In this case, we consider that a user does not have to track expert information. A user wants to obtain some information when a user only needs such kind of information. Therefore, various twitter users tweets by various expertness levels.

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5. CONCLUSION We show the new cyber curator search method retrieves users by selected axes. The experiment in this paper is the one of the examples.We can see focused data set at various aspects, when we define some axes along with various assumptions. This is an important point. Figure 1,2 and 3 shows output examples of this system. You can see the data set by various aspects and you can find perspective of users in Twittersphere by giving keywords. They provide the way to organize focused data set for user’s perspective understanding.

curator

Figure 1. The each axes value of each curator candidate in the case of query ”脳 (brain).”

better curator.

Figure 2. The each axes value of each curator candidate in the case of query ”放射線 (radiation).”

better curator.

Figure 3. The each axes value of each curator candidate in the case of query ”Windows.”

REFERENCES Kleinberg, J. M., 1999. Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment. J. ACM,46 (5) (September 1999), pp. 604632.

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USING NARBS FOR UNSTRUCTURED BIG DATA ANALYTICS: POLITICAL ANALYSIS Ananda Mitra1 and Sanjay Mamani2 1

Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC 27106, USA 2 Redinfi Technology, Winston-Salem, NC 27106, USA

ABSTRACT There is an increasing availability of unstructured textual data in the depositories of big databases that are constantly produced and updated. Such unstructured data, such as status updates on social media, play the role of narrative bits – narbs – in creating specific stories about an individual, group or institution. A selection of narbs emanating from Egypt following the Arab Spring are analyzed using the theoretical foundation of the narrative paradigm to demonstrate how analytic protocols adapted from Latent Sematic Analysis and Natural Language Programming can be used to extract narrative categories and maps showing the relationship between the categories which together tell a story based on the narbs scraped and harvested from databases. KEYWORDS narb; big data; discourse; narrative; analysis.

1. NARRATIVE ANALYSIS The construct of looking at culture, communication and human behavior and beliefs through the lens of a narrative was suggested by the work of Walter Fisher who in turn based his work on earlier scholars who identified the importance of story-telling and narratives in the process of making meaning of everyday life as people operate within the cultural and social spaces that they occupy (see, e.g., Andrews, 1982; Gadamer, 1982; MacIntyre, 1981; Ricouer, 1977, 1983, 1984; White, 1984). In setting forth the notion that human beings operate not only as a rational and rhetorical being, Fisher suggested, people can also operate as a narrative being where the act of creating and articulating a coherent and rational narrative becomes a part of being human. In doing this, the narrative paradigm offers a different way of analyzing and understanding communication, and the way in which people act. There are many aspects of the narrative paradigm that merit examination in the early Twenty-first Century of Big Data, particularly when the analysis of large data sets seeks to provide an account of how persons come to believe and behave (see, e.g., Kosinski, et. al. 2013). The narrative paradigm suggests that it is possible to examine a story to seek internal coherence and fidelity of a story. Coherence refers to the internal logic of the story to see if indeed all the elements connect in a coherent fashion and fidelity refers to the believability of the story in terms of its truth value. Stories that demonstrate high coherence and fidelity could become the components that supplement the structural part of any big dataset by providing insights into the story and its author. Consequently, using the paradigm, it is possible to understand how people believe and behave by systematically analyzing the stories that are being told. In the case of social media systems these stories appear as collection of narbs that are made up of the different ways people express themselves – from simple status updates to the elaborate process of offering visual information that makes up the elements of the narrative.

2. NARBS AND BIG DATA As discussed elsewhere, a narb is a narrative bit of information that an individual produces every time an individual places information in a digital space (Mitra, in press, 2013, 2012a, 2012b, 2011, 2010). The term

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can refer to an update on social media systems, a micro-blog, and segments of blogs or other personal digital discourse that is available in the virtual space. It is these narbs that make up much of the narrative component of Big Data, and are amenable to narrative analysis. The term has commonly been utilized in discussions of the analysis of large data sets within the realm of computer science as in the case of the work of Weiss and Indurkhya (1998) in the discussion of mining large data sets, just as the term was discussed within the context of macroeconomic measurement and forecasting (Diebold, 2000, 2003, 2012; Lohr, 2013). The key to the idea of Big Data is the fact that this is personalized data that is coming from people who are actively and voluntarily contributing to the compilation of these data sets (see, e.g., Mayor-Schoeberger and Cukier, 2013). Much of the attention on Big Data has focused on the two key components – 1) gathering the large amounts of data and 2) quantitatively analyzing the data to obtain both personal-individualized information as well as information about different groups of people. Generally, the structured data refers to quantifiable elements of the data, which for an individual are things like, gender, age, education, income and other stable and easily measured and quantified attributes. Such data is amenable to numeric analysis, which is the forte of computers, to produce specific statistics about an individual or cluster of people. It is the “unstructured” data that becomes more challenging to analyze and interpret. There are only exploratory and proprietary numerical tools that can extract meaningful statistics from thousands of messages sent, for instance, via Tweeter, or the millions of lines of status updates that are produced by the nearly one billion users of Facebook. All these messages become narrative bits (narbs) of information, and as demonstrated earlier, it is possible to categorize nabs to begin a more careful analysis of Big Data. Narbs serve as the repository of personal and communal narratives that need to be extracted from the data to offer a better understanding of the person and group represented by Big Data. The premise here is not necessarily new; indeed it has been argued that analysis of the material available on the Internet is indeed a process of discursive analysis (see, e.g., Mitra, 1999; Mitra and Cohen, 1998). The combination of the theory of narbs and the availability of narbs in Big Data offers the opportunity of developing the analytic protocol discussed in this essay.

3. THE ANALYSIS The availability of Big Data has posed a significant challenge to the traditional mode of text analysis since that analytical process required the use of human coders who needed to be trained to code the texts while maintaining a high level of inter-coder reliability. The volume of texts available by mining the depository of Big Data is simply too large for effective human coding of the texts to discover the narratives contained in the text. This challenge has been answered by automated processing of texts. This processing has gone through many different developmental stages which began with simple enumeration of the words in a body of texts. This process resulted in large sets of tables which reported the frequency of occurrence of a specific string. Such listings, however, did little to uncover the overall meaning of a series of texts or to point towards the stories that were narrated by the texts. The next development in the realm of automated text analysis led to stages such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) which used complex mathematical processes based in linear algebra and matrix manipulations to begin to discover the relationship between words in a text to not only show the words contained in the text but also how they came together to create specific meanings that could tell specific stories. The LSA process has also been developed into the Latent Dirichlet Allocation/Analysis (LDA) which too applies computational processes to the text to discover specific topics contained in the text. Such tools allow for a quicker and more reliable analysis of large volumes of data that become available from the domain of Big Data. However, the automated analysis systems draw upon such dictionaries, and the process of LSA/LDA, to produce results that show what specific opinions are expressed in a text. The opinion analysis thus produces a more detailed analysis of the stories contained in the narbs of Big Data. In most such cases the analyst has little control on contextualizing the analysis and relies on the dictionaries for the automation. However, texts do not operate in a vacuum. As has been pointed out in years of research on text analysis, it is knows that texts are often connected with other texts – thus the notions of inter-textuality. Similarly texts have multiple meanings – thus the notion of polysemy. Texts are also sensitive to the culture within which it is produced. Yet, much of the automated analysis miss these nuances of texts that are fundamental to the way in which texts are able to tell stories and illuminate specific attributes of the author as suggested in the narrative paradigm. In the analysis offered here, the automation is coupled with contextualizing of the dictionary and offering an intermediary step that mimics the traditional coding process of earlier textual analysis allowing for the recognition and incorporation of the context under which the unstructured big data has been produced. This is the process that was used on the narbs extracted for this case study.

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4. POLITICALCONTEXT The specific instance used in this essay uses narbs extracted from the public blogs of several individuals who have narbed about the state of politics and international relations in the context of the political movements in the Middle East. For the current case study 3,066 self-text- narbs were scraped representing the narbs of sixteen individuals over the period of January 2012 to June 2012. This was about an 18 months after the significant events in Tunisia and Egypt that led to significant political changes in Tunisia and Egypt. Those events of the winter of 2011 have been labeled as the “Arab Spring.” These movements had global implications in the realignment of relationships between nations such as Egypt, Israel, United States and other parts of the World. These narbs were analyzed using a standard text analysis tool to elicit narrative maps to illustrate the causal function of the narbs and understand the attitudes expressed in these narbs.

5. NARRATIVE MAPS The analysis results in the production if narrative maps that offer visualization of the narratives by showing the connection between the key categories in the narrative. In these maps, the size of the circle, or node, representing the narrative category indicates the frequency with which that category appears in the narbs, and the thickness of the line between the nodes indicates the strength of the relationship. In this essay only some such preliminary connections are reported.

Figure 1. Narrative map of Arab Spring data

The figure above is built by focusing on all the narbs that dealt with Egypt and the narrative that emerges from those narbs, and it shows that the narbs represent ambivalence about Egypt itself with both positive and negative opinions about Egypt. It also shows that the narrative produced by the narbs centered on Egypt have strong negative opinions about the World, Israel, Washington/US as compared to the other countries in the map. Yet, this is also not a “cut and dried” dichotomized condition where the opinions are only negative or only positive. As in the case of any narrative, there are contradictions, but on balance, as visualized in these maps, the opinion is more negative for some countries as opposed to the others. Given the importance of ‘war’ in this narrative another map, shown below, was produced as well.

The map above demonstrates that the narrative category of war is strongly connected with Israel, Egypt, Washington/USA whereas the narratives do not express similar connections with Tunisia, Palestine or Saudi Arabia

6. DISCUSSION There is little doubt that Big Data would increasingly play an important role in many different kinds of decision making processes ranging from political campaigns to identifying points of threats to national securities. The challenge of analyzing Big Data remains in making sense of the unstructured portion of the

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data. As demonstrated in the case study here, it is possible to consider the unstructured data as sources of narratives when the data is examined through the lens of the narb. The analytic process described in the essay can be applied to any set of narbs independent of the source of the narbs. Big data sets are composed of thousands of narbs; as long as the narbs can be harvested, the narbs can be processed using the protocol described here. The strength of the analytic process described here lies in the fact that the process allows for extracting a set of stories based on the data. These stories can then serve a role in a variety of decision making processes. A second strength of the process lies in the fact that the process is easily replicable. Once a set of narbs related to a particular context have been analyzed, as in this case study, it is possible to use the same set of categories as a veritable ‘dictionary’ and similar narbs could be quickly analyzed by passing the narbs through the sieve of the pre-existing categories and tagging each narb so that the new set of narbs can tell their own stories. That process is of great importance when the narbs might be altering with time, and it is important for the researchers to track the longitudinal changes in the narratives produced by a set of narbs scraped at different points in time. Such set of narbs offer a dynamic narrative where it would be possible to see a set of narrative maps and correlations that show progression during a specific time period. Such information could be of great value when ‘real life’ events could alter the causal narbs individuals produce and it is of interest to see those changes. While the analysis and the protocol presented here offer a way to use the information in narbs to create narrative maps that indicate the attitudes and opinions of the authors it should be noted that there are a large number of narbs that are of little value for the analysis. Very often, the analyst will encounter narbs that do not clearly serve any of the functions discussed earlier. In such cases the analytic process would not be able to use the narbs in creating the components and categories. Such narbs remain un-tagged and are unused in the data analysis process. This would be a loss if there was a limited number of narbs. However, since the focus of analysis is indeed unstructured Big Data, in most cases, the number of narbs are quite large. Thus sufficient narbs can be tagged to create the narrative maps that are the focus of the analysis. It should also be noted that the analytic process described here is not an ‘automated’ process where the narbs go in at one end of a computer program and the maps emerge out of the computer program. While this is often the goal of self-contained systems, that process is untenable since contextual information is critical to creating the limited number of narrative categories from the large number of components that are extracted by the analytic software. This process requires human intervention with knowledge about the narrative context to be able to create the categories. This need for human intervention could be considered a limitation because it does not allow for the creation of a universal algorithm to do global narrative analysis of narbs. Yet, it is precisely because of the fact that a narrative analysis is being attempted that human intervention is essential. Narratives operate in the real space inhabited by people who make sense of the narratives.

7. CONCLUSION Even with the best of automated content and semantic analysis tools, the human researcher plays an important role in providing the context of the analysis. Here the researcher must be the one who is asking the questions and the machine is doing the analysis to help answer the questions using the narrative maps. Sometimes, even in the days of complete automation, a human being must ask the relevant questions to seek the answers from the Big Data that surrounds us.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to thank the Humanities Institute of Wake Forest University for providing support for this research project.

REFERENCES Andrews, J. D. (1982). The structuralist study of narrative: its history, use and limits. In. P. Hernadi (Ed.). The horizon of literature (pp. 99-124). Lincoln, NE: The University of Nebraska Press. Barthes, R. (1975). S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York, NY: McMillan.

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Dalziel, S. (January 14, 2011). IBM computer beats human Jeopardy champs. The Inquirer. Retrieved on June 3, 2013 from: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1937273/ibm-beats-human-jeopardy-champs Diebold, F.X. (2003), Big Data Dynamic Factor Models for Macroeconomic Measurement and Forecasting: A Discussion of the Papers by Reichlin and Watson. In M. Dewatripont, L.P. Hansen and S. Turnovsky (eds.), Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, Eighth World Congress of the Econometric Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 115-122. Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument, Communication Monographs, 51, 1–22. Fisher, W. R. (1985a). The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration, Communication Monographs, 52, 347–367. Fisher, W. R. (1985b). The Narrative Paradigm: In the Beginning, Journal of Communication, 35, 74–89. Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Fisher, W. R., & Filloy, R. A. (1982). Argument in drama and literature: An exploration. In J. R. Cox and C. A. Willard (Eds.), Advances in argument theory and research (pp. 343-362). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Gadamer, H. G. (1982). Truth and method. New York, NY: Crossword Publishing. Hill, K. (February 16, 2012). How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. Forbes. Retrieved on May 31, 2013 from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teengirl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/. Humphries, M. (September 28, 2011). Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account. Geek. Retrieved on May 31, 2013 from: http://www.geek.com/news/facebook-stores-up-to-800-pages-of-personal-data-per-useraccount-1424807/. Kosinski, M., Stillwell D. J., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Lohr, S. (February 1, 2013). The Origins of ‘Big Data’: An Etymological Detective Story. The New York Times. Retrieved on May 31, 2013 from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/the-origins-of-big-data-an-etymologicaldetective-story/. MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue: A study in moral theory (2nd ed). Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press. Mayer-Schonberger, V. and Cukier, K. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. New York, NY: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Mitra, A. & Cohen, E. (1998). Analyzing the Web: Directions and Challenges. In (S. Jones, Ed.), Doing Internet Research. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Mitra, A. (1999). Characteristics of the WWW Text: Tracing Discursive Strategies. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 5(1). Mitra, A. (2010). Creating a Presence on Social Networks via Narbs. Global Media Journal, 9(16). Mitra, A. (2011). Using narratives from social network to manage teacher-student interaction. In (Méndez-Vilas, Ed.), Education in a technological world: communicating current and emerging research and technological efforts. Formatex Research Center. Mitra, A. (2012a). Collective Narrative Expertise and Using the Narbs of Social Media. In (T. Takseva, Ed.), Social Software and the Evolution of User Expertise: Future Trends in Knowledge Creation and Dissemination. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Mitra, A. (2012b). Narbs as a Measure and Indicator of Identity Narratives. In (Dudley, et. al., Eds.), Investigating Cyber Law and Cyber Ethics: Issues, Impacts and Practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Mitra, A. (2013). Mapping Narbs. In (G. Wise, Ed.), New Visualities, New Technologies: The New Ecstasy of Communication. New York, NY: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Mitra, A. (in press). Digital DNA: Managing Identity in Social Networking Sites. New Delhi, India: Rupa Publications. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the Folktale: Second Edition. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Ricouer, P. (1977). The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as text. In F. R. Dallmayr & T. A. McCarthy (Eds.), Understanding and social inquiry (pp. 316-334). Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press. Ricouer, P. (1983). The narrative function. In J. B. Thompson (Ed.), Paul Ricouer, hermeneutics and the human sciences: Essays on language, action, and interpretation (pp. 274-296). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ricouer, P. (1984). Time and narrative (Vol. 1, K. McLaughlin & D. Pellaur, Trans.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Todorov, T. (1977). The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Weiss, S. M. and Indurkhya, N. (1998). Predictive data mining: a practical guide. New York, NY: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

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AP SELECTION CRITERIA FOR ENHANCED INDOOR POSITIONING METHOD USING IEEE 802.11 RSSI MEASUREMENTS Jun Gyu Hwang1, Seok Hun Shin2 and Joon Goo Park2 Kyungpook National University Department of Mobile Telecommunications Engineering 2 Graduate School of Electronics Engineering Daegu, Republic of Korea

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ABSTRACT Nowadays, as LBS(Location Based Service) is becoming popular, location determination technologies for especially indoor environments are getting a lot of attention. Many indoor positioning methods just use RSSI(Received Signal Strength Indicator) measurements. But, the positioning error can be changed depending on the configuration of the APs as well as on RSSI measurements. In this paper, to improve the indoor positioning accuracy, we propose indoor positioning method which use RSSI measurements and DOP(Dilution of Precision) reflecting the configuration of APs. KEYWORDS RSSI, indoor positioning,DOP

1. INTRODUCTION Usually, positioning technology can be classified into two groups, that is, indoor positioning group and outdoor positioning one, respectively. In outdoor positioning group, GPS (Global Positioning System)[1] is dominant technology, however, in indoor positioning one, dominant and powerful method is still not exist. But, indoor positioning method which based on WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) measurements information is becoming a strong candidate method for indoor environments. Usually, Indoor positioning method based on IEEE 802.11 WLAN information just use RSSI(Received Signal Strength Indication). However, general indoor environment such as commercial or office building has a very concentrated and complex AP(Access Point) set. To overcome this problem, in this paper, an enhanced indoor positioning method, additionally, considering AP configuration information is proposed.

2. CHARACTERISTICS OF DOP AND RSSI MEASUREMENTS 2.1 Dilution of Precision (DOP) The effect of satellite geometry is quantified in the measure called Dilution of Precision, or DOP [9]. DOP does not depend on the anything that cannot be predicted in advance. It only depends on the positions of the GPS satellites relative to the GPS location of the receiver. The satellite position is known in advance, and GPS position is also fixed, thus the DOP of GPS system can be calculated even without using the GPS system. How can we define the DOP is poor or good due to satellite geometry? When satellites are located at wide angles relative to each other, this configuration minimizes the error in position calculations. On the other hand, when satellites are grouped together or located in a line the geometry will be poor. DOP is often divided into several components which are listed below [3]:

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VDOP: Vertical DOP HDOP: Horizontal DOP PDOP: Positional DOP GDOP: Geometric DOP These components are used due to the variation of accuracy of the GPS system. The PDOP is most used among other components. The positioning error of PDOP is calculated from the data of GPS receiver multiplied by range error which is given as: Positioning Error = Range Error ∗ PDOP

(1)

A DOP of 2 means that whatever the range error were, the final positioning error will twice as big. For example, if the user estimated range error (UERE) is 20 meters and the PDOP is 2, the final positioning error will be 40 meters (20 x 2).

2.2 Computation of DOP As a first step of computing DOP, consider the unit vectors from the receiver to satellite i [4] : (2) where: x, y, z : position of the receiver xi, yi, zi : position of satellite However, we consider the indoor environment. So there is no need for the height variable z. Correcting the above vector (3) where: x, y : position of the receiver xi, yi : position of AP The formula (3) in matrix form is given by:

(4)

The first three elements of each row of A are the components of a unit vector form the receiver to the indicated satellite. The elements of the fourth row when consider the fourth satellite. Since the number of AP is three for indoor positioning, thus we assume the fourth AP at the infinite and set every element to 1.

Formulate the matrix, Q, as: (5) From Q, the DOP can be calculated as: (6)

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2.3 RSSI Measurements The RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) define a measurement of the RF energy and the unit is dBm. The RSSI is decreased exponentially as the distance from AP increased. Because of these characteristics, in this paper we used RSSI attenuation model and is given as [5]: (7) (8) In (6) the n is the attenuation factor, parameter A is the offset which is the measured RSSI value at 1m point apart from AP. And the d is distance from AP and A. This parameter reflect indoor propagation environment. Because the RSSI is a sensitive parameter, it is can affected by environment significantly. Figure 1 shows RSSI attenuation as distance.

Figure 1. RSSI attenuation according to the elapsed distance

In practical situations, many factors that can affect RSSI value exist such as furniture, walls and person. These factors can produce signal scattering and multi-path effect. It also can result in positioning error. In order to reduce positioning error, proper parameter determination is necessary.

3. POSITIONING ERRORS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RSSI AND DOP First of all, we should understand the relationship of positioning error between RSSI measurements and DOP, separately. High RSSI value and low DOP can potentially increase the positioning accuracy. Thus according to above statement, if we can select the AP combination that can produce RSSI value which is high and DOP value is low, then we can get a higher positioning accuracy. So we should establish the relationship of positioning error between RSSI and DOP. we used [6] system. When visible access points (APs) are close together or located in a line , the distribution of AP is said to be weak and the DOP value is high, when far apart, the distribution of AP is strong and the DOP is low. As shown as Figure 2, AP1,AP2, and AP3 are located in a line, the DOP value of range A is high, however, the DOP of range B is low because the access points (APs) are far from each other.

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Figure 2. AP selection criteria

However, there are many different configurations of access points (APs) combination, such as combination A of AP1, AP2 and AP3, combination B of AP1, AP2 and AP4 or combination C of AP1, AP3 and AP4 and so on. In general, if don't consider the DOP, the best AP selection is that every access points (APs) has a relative high RSSI value. So that we should select the combination A to locate can get a higher positioning precision than selecting the combination B. But according to the description of DOP, we can know that APs are grouped together or located in a line the geometry will be poor and located at wide angles relative to each other, this configuration minimizes the error in position calculations. So if adopting DOP, we should select combination B to locate because the RSSI value of AP4 approximate AP3 and configuration status of AP4 is better than AP3. Through the analysis of the positioning error, we can find the relationship between RSSI value and DOP value. So we can determine the factor of positioning error between RSSI and DOP. This factor given by

(9) RSSI1, RSSI2,RSSIN: The RSSI of AP1,AP2,APN DOP: the DOP of combination of AP1,AP2,APN : variance of RSSI1,RSSI2,RSSIN The beginning of the expression represents the factor of RSSI. This factor indicates the degree of the amount and distribution of RSSI. and End of the expression represents the DOP. This factor is the linearized value of Table 1. So using these factors, we can select a better combination of APs.

4. PROPOSED POSITIONING METHOD AND SIMULATION 4.1 Proposed Positioning Method We proposed a method that is divided into two steps. First, we select the two APs closest to the MS. This reason is usually detected several APs. Then complexity that compu-tation of factor is increased. So we select these APs. Next, we compare the factor of positioning error between RSSI and DOP. Then combination of APs with the best factor is selected. and we are using a combination for positioning. The algorithm is shown as follows:

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Figure 3. The proposed positioning algorithm

4.2 Simulation We simulate in a 14m x 14m indoor environment. MS is located (7m,7m). APs are existed whole simulation environment. Figure 4 is shown.

Figure 5. Simulation environment

Figure 4. Simulation environment

The attenuation factor n is 2.69. The offset A which is measured RSSI 1m, is -26dBm. Noise is -2dBm. Figure 5 is shown CDF, Existing method and Proposed method . Proposed method CDF have 90% that 2.7m less than, but existing Method CDF have 90% that 3.6 m less than. As shown as Table 3, the positioning err of proposed method is less than that of existing method by 0.6m. The existing method using RSSI attenuation model in WLAN environment. Table 1. Simulation result

Average error Minimum error Maximum error

2.29m

1.66m

1.18m

0.96m

2.50m

2.0m

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5. CONCLUSION This paper propose a enhanced indoor positioning method using IEEE802.11 WLAN RSSI measurements and its AP configuration information. In order to enhance indoor positioning accuracy, we adopt DOP (Dilution of Precision) and propose AP selection criteria. The proposed method in this paper can enhance the positioning accuracy in multiple APs concentrated indoor environment. The simulation results show that the positioning error of proposed method adopting DOP is less than that of existing method by 0.6 m.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work has been supported by the national GNSS Research Center program of Defense Acquiaition Program Adminiatration and Agency for Defense Development

REFERENCES [1] Michael Wright, Dion Stallings, and Dr. Derrek Dunn, "The effectiveness of global positioning system electronic

navigation", SoutheastCon, 2003. Proceedings. IEEE, 4-6 April 2003. Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems, Local and Metropolitan Area Network. Part II: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications, IEEE Standard 802.11, 1999. [3] http://gpsinformation.net/main/dopnontech.htm [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_of_precision_(GPS) [5] Sinwoo Park, Dowoo Park, A sol Kim, Jinhyung Park, Seunghae Kim, and Joo Goo Park, "A Study on enhanced indoor localization method through IEEE 802.11 signal strength measurement" KSII The first International Conference on Internet (ICONI) 2009, December 2009. [6] Cong Zou, A sol Kim, Jun Gyu Hwang and Joon Goo Park, “Enhanced positioning Method using WLAN RSSI measurements considering dilution of precision AP configuration” International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications(ICSNC) 2012, August 2012. [2] IEEE Standard for Information Technology,

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DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY IN EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS: A SOFT SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY APPROACH Dr. Casey Wilson Lancaster University Management School Lancaster LA1 4YX, UK

ABSTRACT This discussion paper proposes a piece of qualitative research that will consider the question ‘can leadership capabilities be developed in early career researchers through the provision of doctoral training programmes?’ The research will use Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology to investigate the current research training provision offered to doctoral students in the Management School at Lancaster University. Through the application of Soft Systems Methodology, the author aims to identify a number of different stakeholder perceptions, including the role of the researcher to unpack questions about whether leadership capability should and is being developed, and to consider the impact such leadership development is having on both new career researchers and the Higher Education Institutions. It is hoped that a number of lessons will be drawn from the research that will inform future research training development and resourcing. KEYWORDS Leadership Development, Research Training and Soft Systems Methodology

1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND In 2010 a common framework and universal language (Vitae 2011) from which to develop researchers’ capabilities was introduced in the form of the Researcher Development Statement (RDS) and the Researcher Development Framework (RDF). The framework is comprised of four domains that provide the knowledge, standards, skills and personal qualities required to develop world-class researchers (Vitae, 2010; 2011) in the UK and enables Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) to plan for and support the personal, professional and career development of their researchers (Vitae, 2010; 2011). A further influential factor on the nature of research training provision has been the realization by many HEI’s that the main purpose of the doctorate has moved away from employment in academia toward a more diverse set of jobs across all employment sectors (QAA, 2011). As such it is increasingly being recognized that leadership potential is highly sought after by employers and that the “research workforce” is the underpinning factor for the future economic well-being of the UK (Vitae, 2013). As such leadership potential is now viewed as integral to research training and is considered to be a valuable and sought after attribute by employers. The aim of this discussion paper is to set the scene and rationale for a proposed piece of qualitative research that will apply Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology in order to investigate the question of whether ‘leadership capabilities in early career researchers can and should be developed through the doctoral training programmes?’ The paper will first consider the initial impact of the changing face of doctoral training provision within HE institutions. This will be followed by a brief discussion around the factors, both institutional and student focused, which influence how HEI’s develop their research training programmes. From these discussions questions will be raised about developing leadership capability in early career researchers. The author will then move on to outline how the proposed research will be undertaken and comment on the potential outcomes of the research.

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2. THE IMPACT OF DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY In the UK there is now a strong commitment to the development of world class researchers across a diversity of market sectors and an increased understanding that for research to have an impact on the economic climate there must be an increased investment in leadership (Vitae, 2011; 2012). The introduction of the research development framework has resulted in many UK HE institutions integrating transferable skills training, career and leadership development into their research training provision. However, it may be suggested that these changes have brought to the surface several issues from both an institutional and student viewpoint. From the institutional perspective many HEI’s are under increased pressure to ensure that doctoral students complete their studies in the minimum time permitted (Pearson and Brew, 2002). However, there is also an expectation that this is achieved at the same time as meeting the demands for providing training which enables students to develop a broader skill set for future employment outside of academia (Pearson and Brew, 2002). In addition, to an increased curriculum of research training there is also the fact that the number of students, both full and part time, wanting to study at doctoral level is increasing and as such many HEI’s are struggling to manage and resource training provision which is both individualized and flexible. Finally from the research student associations perspective there are some concerns about the term “research training” in that it is considered in part to be an attempt to make research education a narrow form of competency based training and in doing so the contribution students make to the production of knowledge is ignored (Smith, 2000). This is an issue that may be compounded when we consider that in the development of research training there is often a tendency to focus on what is perceived to be missing. The missing element is often considered to be the so-called “generic or employable skills” (Pearson and Brew, 2002). The danger in developing programmes in this way is that the generic skills are considered to be extras and they are added into a model to which they are seen as extra content, competing with the existing curriculum and posing for the students the problem of conflicting priorities in their use of time and effort (Pearson and Brew, 2002). From the issues outlined above, two potential questions emerge. Firstly, are Higher Education Institutions able to develop and deliver training programmes which develop leadership capabilities in new career researchers whilst at the same time meeting the individual needs of ‘the researcher’ without appearing to be offering a ‘prescriptive research training agenda’ Secondly, do doctoral researchers care about leadership and want to be better leaders during their PhD studies?

3. THE NEXT STEPS – UNDERTAKING THE SOFT SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY STUDY The suggestion so far within this discussion paper is that in order to effectively answer the proposed question ‘can leadership capabilities be developed in early career researcher through the provision of doctoral training programmes?’ consideration must be given to the fact that the question can be viewed from a number of different perspectives and as such further investigation of the situation must be undertaken. To undertake this investigation Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland and Scholes, 1990) has been chosen, as is a systems approach that is used for analysis and problem solving in complex and messy situations. While initially considered to be a seven stage process Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology has evolved through a programme of Action Research over a 30 year period (Checkland, 1999) from what was considered to be Mode 1 to Mode 2. The Methodology can be considered to be “an organized process of thinking your way to taking sensible ‘action to improve’ the situation” (Checkland and Poulter, 2006). There are two streams of analysis in Soft Systems Methodology – the ‘logical’ stream and the ‘cultural’ stream. The ‘logical’ stream in which the research/practitioner makes use of tools such as Rich Pictures, Root Definitions and Conceptual Models to gain an understanding of the components of the whole system, from the perspectives of the stakeholders. Through the modeling of potentially relevant systems, alternative solutions are proposed and structured discussion can be undertaken about change to improve the situation. The ‘cultural’ stream helps the researcher/practitioner to gain an understanding of the social and political aspects within the situation and the wider organizational context. This understanding helps the researcher/practitioner to see whether the possible solutions being proposed will fit with the situational/organizational context under investigation.

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While the methodology is considered to be a very flexible process it does have an organized way of tackling problematical situations, and as such contains four different kinds of activities: 1. Finding out about the situation; 2 making some purposeful activity models; 3 using the models to question the real situation; 4. Define and take the action to improve the situation (Checkland and Poulter, 2006). While this discussion paper is currently an embryonic idea and no formal SSM investigation has as yet been undertaken, the author, through their work with current doctoral students, has identified at least three different stakeholder perspectives. These stakeholders have a delicate relationship with a number of issues. Some of these issues have been identified within this discussion paper in the form of the following stakeholder evaluation questions: Stakeholder 1: Doctoral Students o o

Do doctoral students care about leadership and want to be better leaders? What is the impact of leadership training on their professional development?

Stakeholder 2: HE Institutions o o o

Do we want to develop leadership capability within our research training? How do we develop leadership capability? What is the impact of leadership training on new career researchers?

Stakeholder 3: Vitae o o

Do our inputs lead to advanced leadership capability? How do we refine our inputs?

It is therefore proposed that the next steps in developing this discussion paper is to unpack further some of the questions identified and the stakeholders perceptions, including the role of the researcher by investigating the current research training provision offered by the Management School at Lancaster University through the application of Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland and Scholes, 1990).

4. CONCLUSIONS This discussion paper through an initial evaluation of the literature and the author’s own experience of working with doctoral students has raised a number of interesting questions around the ideas of leadership development. Through the application of Soft Systems Methodology to the current research training situation at Lancaster University, where all full time students are expected to spend ten days each year on activities related to developing their skills and competencies and to their professional development, it is expected that by conducting this research a number of lessons around leadership capability development and research training will be identified. It is hoped that the lessons identified will provide insight into whether or not leadership capability is being developed through the doctoral training provision offered at Lancaster. It is also hoped that comment can be made regarding the impact leadership development is or is not having on both new career researchers and HEI’s delivering the training in order to inform future research training development and resourcing.

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REFERENCES Checkland, P. (1999), Systems Thinking, Systems Practice: A Thirty Year Retrospective. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester Checkland, P. and Poulter, J. (2006), Learning for Action. A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology and its use for Practitioners, Teachers and Students. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester Checkland, P. and Scholes, J. (1990), Soft Systems Methodology in Action. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Chichester Pearson, M. and Brew, A. (2002), Research Training and Supervision Development, Studies in Higher Education. 27 (2), pp. 135-150 QAA (2011) ‘Doctoral Degree Characteristics’ The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education 2011. September 2011 Smith, B. (2000) ‘The Challenges of Making Ends Meet in Postgraduate Research Training, in: M. Kiley & G Mullins (Eds) Quality in Postgraduate Research: Making Ends Meet. Proceedings of the 2000 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, pp. 25-29 Vitae (2010), ‘Researcher Development Framework’. The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited. www.vitae.ac.uk Vitae (2011), ‘An Introduction to the Researcher Development Framework’. The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited. www.vitae.ac.uk Vitae (2012), ‘Leadership Lends on the Vitae Researcher Development Framework’. Version 2. April 2012. The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited. www.vitae.ac.uk Vitae (2013), ‘Leadership Development’ The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited. http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/473651/Leadership-development.html [last accessed 30th December 2013]

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SOFTWARE FOR CREATING AND EDITING LATEX DOCUMENTS, DESIGNED FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED USERS J. Prada Sanmiguel, C. Moreno Chaparro, L. C. Martini and J. Larco University of Campinas, SP, Brazil

ABSTRACT In this paper we present the application LaTEXvoice, which is a software tool that allows reading, creating, editing and compiling Latex files, through the integration of accessibility features aimed at visually impairment people. The main objective of this project is the development of an interactive platform, which allows people with any degree of visual impairment, they can produce easy and friendly a scientific paper in PDF (Portable Document Format) using the Latex language. This application uses speech synthesis and audible interactive controls, which are specially adapted to the needs and constraints that can get to have a visually impaired person. Currently, the program's interface supports three languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese), however in the future seeks to extend its support. KEYWORDS Visually impaired people, Latex, scientific papers.

1. INTRODUCTION Today people with some degree of visual disability, have difficulties in the use of software tools because though they have been developed different types of software, such as screen readers and magnifiers, these do not yet allow overcoming all obstacles to accessibility and functionality in the use of these tools. Nowadays, people with visual disabilities find it difficult to read, edit and create scientists papers, such as books and articles with mathematical formulas documents, because the tools available for this purpose, are not easily accessible and do not have an easy way interaction and user friendly. For these reasons, it was developed LaTEXvoice application, which leverages the power of the Latex language for the composition of scientific texts and integrated into a framework completely developed and thought about the special needs having a visually impaired user. This accessibility was mainly obtained by means implementing the following features:  User interface completely accessible using speech synthesis, which uses TTS voices (Text To Speech) compatible with SAPI4 or SAPI5 (Speech Application Programming Interface).  Adaptation of Latex language, thus facilitating the learning curve for the user.  System support and audible tutorials, which guide the user through the process of layout of the document.  Use of natural language for reading and editing mathematical expressions as well as for each of the instructions Latex used. Compilation errors are also shown and synthesized using a natural language.

2. SYSTEM STRUCTURE LaTEXvoice works on the Windows platform and was developed using the development environment Microsoft Visual Studio C#. The structure of the application can be basically divided into three parts. See Figure 1.

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  

Audible user interface, composed mainly of a text editor, interactive controls and an audible support system. Structure of XML (extensible Markup Language) and TEX (Latex File) generated at runtime, which allow an orderly structure of the project and improve its accessibility. External resources required: MikTeX 2.9 (Latex distribution for Windows), TTS voices, compatible with SAPI4 or SAPI5, which can be installed by the user on his computer, depending on the language of your choice.

User Controls TTS Voices (English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc)

TTS API

Text Editor

Xml Configuration Files. (Document Type, Title, Author, Figures, etc.)

MikTeX 2.9

PDF File

Figure 1. LaTEXvoice Structure.

3. FEATURES 3.1 User Interface The interaction, User - System is done through an interface, composed by menus, user controls and interactive windows that are activated by keyboard which will guide the user in the program interface. Moreover, the program will inform through speech synthesis, the state and the options available in each of these. The audio interface of the application can currently be configured in three languages: Spanish, Portuguese and English, however for correct synthesis and listen is necessary to install a TTS voice in the system (Windows System by default includes a voice in English, which is fully compatible with the program). For other languages, the user can acquire TTS voices distributed by companies such as: Ivona Software, AT&T Natural Voices, Nuance Vocalizer Voice, Acapela Group.

3.2 Text Editor The program incorporates a completely audible text editor, which is adapted to recognize and write Latex code. The language reading in the text editor will also depend on the TTS voices installed on the system. This Text Editor recognizes each user and math expressions defined in Latex code, which are synthesized using a natural language, friendly, and not exhausting to the user. For example an instruction defined as: \input{ ArticleFiles/Abstract }

is synthesized as follows: Latex Instruction: Include Abstract

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3.3 Latex Instructions To create a Latex document, whether an article or a book, it is usually necessary to configure a header or preamble, which are defined parameters such as document type, language, number of columns, font size, paper size, margins etc. For a person with visual impairment this process can be a little complicated and susceptible to the generation and insertion of compilation errors for this reason LaTEXvoice facilitates this process by using an audible interface where the user defines and selects the parameters of its preference and the program is responsible of automatically generating each of the instructions for the chosen configuration. Instructions available in Latex can be written manually, that is, directly on the text editor, or simply can be generated by audible interfaces, which help the visually impaired user to implement these instructions and will ensure error free document in addition to the learning curve of the program will be faster. Should be noted that these interfaces do not implement all instructions Latex currently available, however, these implement the basic instructions for creating and editing a book or scientific article.

3.4 Creating and Editing Articles and Books For the creation of articles and books, the program has the following options and features:  Items or books to one or two columns.  Available languages: Spanish, English and Portuguese.  Interface to create, edit and insert the authors and title of the document. The authors are defined by an interface and the program automatically takes care to include in the final document (PDF file). In the case of a book, the program defines these data with the cover of the document.  Interface to define and edit the Abstract of an article .  Interface to define, edit or remove sections, subsections and subsubsections.  Interface to define chapters or parts of a book.  Interface to import and insert figures  Interface to create and edit tables  Interface to define family, type and font style.  Interface to create, edit and insert mathematical expressions.  Interface to create, edit and insert bibliographic references.

3.5 Natural Language to Synthesize, Instructions and Mathematical Expressions The text editor LaTEXvoice implements the functionality of a text to speech converter, however, this adds an additional processing, which identifies and synthesizes the Latex instruction in a natural language, allowing the visually impaired user, a better understand about what is written in the editor. For example for a Latex statement like the following: \input{ Mydocument.tex } a TTS conventional synthesize the following way: Backslash, input, left curly bracket, Mydocument.tex, right curly bracket. This type of synthesis is not at all friendly, neither easy to understand for the user, so the implemented natural language processing will read the same statement as follows: Include file, Mydocument For mathematical expressions is applied the same concept, for example the mathematical expression:

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A=cos(45º)+sin(90º) written in Latex language: $$A = \cos \left( {45^\circ } \right) + \sin (90^\circ )$$ would normally be synthesized as: Dollars, dollars, A, equal, backslash, cos, backslash, left, left round bracket, left curly bracket, 45, backslash, circ, right curly bracket, backslash, right, right round bracket... etc. Now with this additional processing will simply be summarized as: Mathematical expression, A, equal, cosine, 45 degrees, and sine, 90 degrees.

3.6 Natural Language Synthesis and Debugging The text editor also allows you to find errors in the structure of an instruction before compiling the document. These errors are also synthesized using a user-friendly natural language with additional information for the user. For example for a statement like the following: \input{ document.doc } The program, synthesized as follows: Include file Document.doc, error, files with .Doc extension are not allowed, use files with .tex extension. To compile errors, the program will synthesize the error, indicating the line number, the type of error, and a help to solve it. In this case, the program will speak: Error on line 7, command not found, check the syntax. Pdf Document was not generated.

3.7 Help System The program contains audible help information which can be heard by pressing the F1 key, this information will vary depending on the window that is currently visible and active. It also has an audible tutorial where users are taught to handle the program interface and provides information about each available Latex instruction. Moreover, when a new document is created, they are created a series of XML files, which will store information related to the document settings, for example, document type, number of columns, document title, margins information about the authors, etc. These files allow the user to press for example Ctrl + F2 key, obtain information about the authors, in this case the program speak: First author name, Julian Prada Sanmiguel, institution, Unicamp, department, Decom, etc ... Another example would be, pressing Ctrl + F3, in this case the program could speak:

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Document Type: Article in two columns, page size: A4, upper margin two inches ... etc.

3.8 Other Options Because the LaTEXvoice is oriented to visually impaired people, this program implements some basic operations so that the user does not need to use external programs or this function to perform certain procedures, all of these processes use audible interfaces that are designed for ease of use , enter these functions can be found:  Create and edit folders and tex files.  Navigation system folders.  Detection and configuration of TTS voices installed on the system.  Configuring system speakers.  Sharing Options pdf document. Created, email or upload to Dropbox.

4. CONCLUSION This article describes a program that allows people with some degree of visual impairment, manage to create and edit scientific documents using the Latex language, because today, one of the main obstacles to be encountered by visually impaired person, is not having the right tools, that allow to generate content according to scientific standards and models currently used. Currently on the market there are applications such as screen readers, which attempt to allow and facilitate people with visual impairment, can use software applications, however these applications are not adapted to be fully accessible, this makes this type of readers present malfunction, adaptation, compatibility and very high learning time. For this reason, LaTEXvoice is an ideal tool for generating scientific papers, designed thinking the limitations and difficulties that may come to possess a visually impaired user and trying at all times to facilitate the learning process and tool use. Today the project is in the final stages of development, however it is intended to implement future support for new languages, support for creating Latex templates, improve the system of identification and filtering of errors. In addition, will be implemented in the text editor, a mathematical compiler that allows running algorithms and mathematical calculations inside this.

REFERENCES Borges, Jose A. 1996. Dosvox – Uma nova realidade educacional para Deficientes Visuais. In Benjamim Constant, Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 3. Eberlin, S. 2006. O Software Livre como Alternativa para a Inclusão Digital do Deficiente Visual. Dissertação de Mestrado. Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brasil. Elloa, G. da Costa et al, Ighor, R. Barros and Fechine, J. 2006. Matraca - Ferramenta Computacional para Auxílio a Deficientes Visuais no Uso do Computador. Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, UFCG. Mejia, Paul H. 2012. Application of Mathematical Finance Program designed for visually impaired users In Advances in Information Technology and Applied Computing, ICISCA, Vol 1, pp 315-320. Prada, Julián. 2012. Mathematics software programming resources aimed at visually impaired users - Matvox. Advances in Information Technology and Applied Computing, ICISCA, Vol 1, pp 310-314. Prada, Julián. 2010. Desenvolvimento de um Programa Aplicativo de Uso para Deficientes Visuais que Proporciona a Implementação de Cálculo de Formas Matemáticas num Editor de Texto. Dissertação de Mestrado. Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brasil.

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FROM COMPUTER FUNDAMENTALS TO DIGITAL COMPETENCE, EXPERIENCES FROM TRANSFORMING A COURSE Bengt Nykvist Stockholm University, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences DSV Forum 100, SE-164 40 Kista, Sweden

ABSTRACT The expectations on the individual to be digitally competent in the workplace and in everyday life are ever-increasing. However, it is not apparent what is included in the concept of digital competence. This present study explores an alternative approach to address this issue. Courses on basic computer use are often centred on how computer systems work and/or are focused on “button pressing knowledge”, often focusing on “office programs”. This study describes how a course of this type was modified in order to meet the needs for broader spectrums of competences which arise when information technology penetrates into most parts of our lives. The course, which runs three times each year and has about 200-300 participants each semester, was modified in steps. Course evaluations were continuously used to collect comments from the course participants, this in order to get feedback on different parts of the course and especially to get suggestions on inclusions of new material. The research question of this study is: “In what aspects are course evaluations useful in adaptation of courses to meet changing needs in the information society?” To answer this question, analyses were made of course evaluations collected over the last three years. Comments and suggestions from the course participants were categorized and frequencies of different types of comments and suggestions were calculated. Comments made by the students on the content of the course usually were of the type “would have liked more about xxx” or “less about yyy”. Another common type of comments related to the form of the course, e.g. how the material was presented and what type of learning activities that were used. Suggestions on new content/new topics/new themes related to digital competence to include in the course were very rare. The conclusion is that course evaluations were useful when collecting feedback related to the form of the course and the relative emphasize on different topics, but less useful when trying to obtain suggestions for inclusion of new material. This study is relevant reading for digital competence course organizers but also for course organizers in general. KEYWORDS Digital competence, digital literacy, course evaluation, digital inclusion

1. INTRODUCTION The expectations on the individual to be digitally competent in the workplace and in everyday life are everincreasing. In 2006, digital competence was named by the European Union to be one of the eight key competences for lifelong learning. In United States the Partnership for 21st Century Skills have been advocating since 2002 that “information, media and technology skills” are necessary to succeed in work and life in the 21st century. The research community agrees with the policymakers that today information technologies affect most parts of our lives. There is broad consensus among educators, communication scholars, sociologists, and economists that the development and diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) are having a profound effect on modern life. (Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010, p. 179)

However, it is not apparent what is included in the concept of digital competence. One of the problems is that “competence” as such relates to the individual’s ability to use knowledge to solve a special task. It is obvious that different individuals have different tasks in our society, therefore digital competence means different things for different groups of people. Several attempts to describe the concept of digital competence

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have been made. In “What is digital competence?” (Ilomäki et al., 2011) the authors describe how digital competence relates to concepts like ICT skills, digital literacy, information literacy etc. which often are used as synonyms. The authors also suggest a tentative definition of digital competence: As an interpretation and summary of connecting the different approaches, we suggest that digital competence consists of 1) technical skills to use digital technologies, 2) abilities to use digital technologies in a meaningful way for working, studying and for everyday life in general in various activities, 3) abilities to critically evaluate the digital technologies, and 4) motivation to participate in the digital culture. (Ilomäki et al., 2011, p. 8)

Creating an instrument to measure digital competence is problematic given that “competence”, as mentioned above, has different meaning for different groups of people. Creating an instrument that measures a subset of skills, related to digital competence, can be more fruitful. In “Measuring Internet Skills” (Deursen & van Dijk, 2010) a framework that consists of four Internet skills is suggested: operational, formal, information, and strategic Internet skills. The skills measured in the test are both of the “button pressing knowledge” type, like navigating webpages, and higher level types of competences, such as making decisions based on retrieved information. Another subset of the concept of digital competence is digital literacy. “Challenges to learning and schooling in the digital networked world of the 21st century” (Voogt et al., 2013) describes different frameworks for 21st century competencies, with special attention on digital literacy and the role of technology. The authors claim that 21st century competencies, including digital literacy, are not well implemented in actual educational practices. However there are initiatives to develop assessment frameworks for digital literacy, the authors mention a study that will be finalized in 2014. Despite the work done and the initiatives mentioned above, we still know relatively little about what is relevant digital competence in the information society. Number 2 in the digital competence tentative definition mentioned above; “abilities to use digital technologies in a meaningful way for working, studying and for everyday life in general in various activities” (Ilomäki et al., 2011, p. 8) needs to be elaborated and exemplified with relevant abilities. This present study explores an alternative approach to addressing this issue.

2. FROM COMPUTER FUNDAMENTALS TO DIGITAL COMPETENCE 2.1 The Course This study was made using course evaluations (web based surveys/questionnaires filled out by the students close to course completion) of a course at Stockholm University, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences. The course takes place entirely online. The students typically use 3 or 4 months to finish the course and the course gives 7.5 ECTS-credits which corresponds to 5 weeks of full time studies. The course runs three times each year and has about 200-300 participants each semester. The aim of the course was, when the course was developed in 2007, to provide basic knowledge of computer architecture and operating systems and an understanding of the use of application software and the Internet. Target groups for the course are both professionals and students. Typical student groups are young people, who have not yet started a university program, and students in various university programs who want to include a computer fundamentals course in their degree. Professionals, e.g. K-12 teachers, is another, but smaller, group. High school diploma is required to enter the course.

2.2 The Initial Transformation of the Course Like many other basic computer courses, the course was centred on two topics, how computer systems work and “button pressing knowledge” focusing on “office programs”. In 2010 an initiative was taken to modify the course towards a “digital competence course”. As mentioned in the introduction, digital competence is not very well defined, and the content of the concept varies for different groups. The idea was to step by step change the course to focus on what later was formulated as “abilities to use digital technologies in a

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meaningful way for working, studying and for everyday life in general in various activities” (Ilomäki et al., 2011). An informal survey was made among colleagues and friends to spot these abilities. In 2011 a new version of the course was taken into production, now including several new aspects of computer and Internet use that were little, or not at all, covered in the original version of the course. This new version of the course included:         

The students join social networks and critically evaluate these networks. Digital literacy: the students compare and evaluate information credibility on web sites. The students themselves create and use a blog and a wiki and add material to these. Netiquette: the students evaluate attitudes and use of language and in different net communities. Studies on legislation about publishing personal information on the net, including legal cases. Copyright and licensing issues, including practical use of Creative Commons. Buying and selling on Internet, including how to avoid fraud. Practical use of electronic ID. Ergonomics.

To be able to include new material and activities to the course some of the original material and activities had to be removed or reduced. Removed was an activity where students created and used a database as well as an activity where students designed a plan for a local network at home. The coverage on computer hardware and the use of word processing and spreadsheet programs was also reduced. In the updated version of the course only basic functions of these programs are covered. Students use templates to a create table of contents in a word processing program and use spreadsheet programs for automatic summation and to create simple diagrams. Presentation programs are used, but without fancy animations.

2.3 The Plan: Adding New Topics to the Course based on Suggestions Made in Course Evaluations To gather information for continuous development of the course, and to get suggestions on introduction of new topics, the course evaluations for the three 2011 courses contained the question: “Is there something you think should be added to the course?” (In Swedish: ”Tycker du att det är något som borde läggas till i kursen?”) Even though a total of 62 students answered the questionnaire in 2011, very few suggestions for new topics to be added to the course were received. A few requests were made for more time spent on existing topics, such as “more excel” or “more hardware knowledge”. The only two request for new topics were (translated from Swedish):  

“I would like to know more about how to handle computer problems” ”Mobile virus threats“

The second suggestion, of the two suggestions mentioned above, was implemented in 2012 as a more general topic; security aspects when using smartphones. In 2012, the question in the evaluation was changed to: “Based on my interests and need of knowledge and / or the learning objectives of the course, which areas should be covered more or less? What should be added and what can be removed?” (In Swedish: “Utgående från mina intressen och behov av kunskap och/eller kursens lärandemål, vilka områden borde behandlas mera respektive mindre? Vad borde läggas till och vad kan tas bort?”) This change of the question did not generate more new topics than the previous question. Not a single suggestion from the students on new topics to cover, that was suitable to implement in the course, was received.

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2.4 Further Analyses of Course Evaluations In order to get a better understanding of the types and frequencies of responses in the course evaluations, content analyses were made on the answers to the course evaluations for three courses in 2012 and for two courses in 2013. A summary of the results are presented in table 1. Table 1. Content analysis of answers in course evaluations 2012 and 2013 Response type

Spring semester 2012 6

Summer semester 2012 11

Autumn semester 2012 3

Spring semester 2013 8

Summer semester 2013 10

Total

Comments on course form

2

9

2

3

18

34

Comments on the course content with suggestions for more or less emphasize on existing topics

17

24

4

20

12

77

Comments on the course content with suggestions for new topics

1

3

3

2

3

12

Comments indicating that there is no need for changes of the course

38

Examples of responses corresponding to different response types (translated from Swedish): The examples below are from the summer semester course in 2013 where about 102 students completed the course, 85 responded to the survey and 51 of these responders answered the questions previously mentioned. Comment indicating that there is no need for changes of the course: “Perfect blend - width of course!” “Seems that the course was relevant, there was nothing in the course that I was missing.” “Everything was OK.” “I feel the course took up most of what should be addressed, and I learned a lot!” “No comment.” “I think it was a very complete course, albeit a little basic, but it's good thinking” “I do not think you need to change anything. Everything looks good.” Comments on the form of the course: “I thought that there should have been assignments also in the beginning of the course.” “The only thing I think you should change is making the instructions for assignments easier to understand.” “It feels a bit weird to read a textbook based on PC when you yourself are using a Mac.” “Too much information on the website, messy!” “Less writing texts, more practical tasks related to computer use.” “I am very pleased with the variety of tasks and especially the arrangement of the course.” Comments on the course content with suggestions for more or less emphasize on existing topics: “There should be more assignments focusing on using office programs.” “More info about operating systems and less about the Internet.” “More Microsoft Office.” “Little more office.” “More technical information about computer hardware and how the Internet works. Less about how to use MS Word and web services / blogs.” “I would like to know more about programs such as Excel.” “Perhaps more focus on safe computer use and computer components.” “Would be interesting with more MS Office tips and tricks, and other programs that are used in the workplace.” “I would have preferred to spend less time on social media and more on the fundamentals of software and support on technical problems (i.e. learning things like BIOS and troubleshooting).

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Comments on the course content with suggestions for new topics: “More focus on social media and its pros / cons and also free software! More focus and information about hardware!” “Adding intro to keyboard shortcuts commands on the computer.” “Teach Photoshop. It is super to know, no matter what you're doing.”

2.5 Discussions about Results of the Analyses The students are interested in making comments on the course structure, if the course is well organized, if the instructions are easy to understand or not etc. Writing reflections of this type might release frustration over confusing assignments and other type of dissatisfactions. Comments which request more or less emphasis on existing topics are fairly easy to make without any great effort. Suggestions for new topics however request more reflection, and a course evaluation might not be the place to expect deeper thoughts. The survey is implemented as a web questionnaire. The respondent might be unsure if is possible to go back and forth in the survey in order to change or add to answers already made, and this may impair the possibility to receive extensive and detailed answers to the survey questions. Also, the respondent might not want to spend much time on giving feedback as is not sure how much effort the course organizer will spend on analyzing the results. The suggestions for “more” of a certain topic often concerns computer fundamentals or “office programs” which indicates that these parts of the course should not be completely removed. However, these “traditionalists” don’t seem to be overall frustrated with the course content. About 80% of the respondents in the last course agree or partially agree with the statement “On the whole, I am satisfied with the course”.

3. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSIONS The conclusion is that course evaluations are useful when collecting feedback related to the form of the course and to the relative emphasis put on different topics, but less useful when trying to obtain suggestions for introduction of new topics. Obviously this is the case even for a course that relates to competences we use in our daily lives. One would guess that everybody now and then gets into trouble, frustration or confusion caused by a lack of digital competence, and that this would generate many ideas for new course topics. This, however, does not seem to be the case. The last two semesters Skype has been used for a concluding on-line assessment of the course. During these meetings the students have been asked to suggest new topics to cover in the course. Not even this method generated any suggestions that have been implemented. Obviously other ways to conduct needs assessment in the field of digital competence are necessary. Document analyses (e.g. investigating which new possibilities or problems related to information technology that are currently being discussed in newspapers and magazines), or focus group discussions, could be possible ways to spot “digital competence”-topics relevant in in today's information society.

REFERENCES Deursen, A. V., & Van Dijk, J. A. G. M. 2010. Measuring internet skills. Intl. Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 26(10), 891-916. European Union 2006. Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning Official Journal of the European Union 30 December 2006/L394 Ilomäki, L. et al. 2011. What is digital competence. European Schoolnet (EUN Partnership AISBL).(March.). Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Available 30 nov 2013 at http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework Voogt, J. et al. 2013. Challenges to learning and schooling in the digital networked world of the 21st century. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(5), 403-413. Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. 2010. New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179-225.

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CREATION AND ANALYSIS OF GEOMETRIC FIGURES AND THEIR TACTILE VISUALIZATION THROUGH A BRAILLE PRINTER C. Moreno-Chaparro1, L. C. Martini1, L. León Q.1, J. Prada Sanmiguel1, J. Larco1 and E. Rivas2 1 University of Campinas, SP, Brazil District University of Bogotá - Colombia

2

ABSTRACT This paper presents our results obtained in the development of geometric figures in two dimensions (2D) performed by a novel program developed and intended primarily for people with visual impairments, allowing functions to date not available for this type of users, like accessibility to produce and print geometric designs by self. The program treats the projection and creation of geometric shapes mathematically from the own parameters. Later it depicts their respective tactile representation, obtained by a joint printing on the same sheet of Braille, reliefs, and a common impression in ink designed for people who can see, to facilitate their understanding if they are unaware the Braille format. KEYWORDS Accessibility, Braille, Geometric Figures, Printing Tactile, Relief Braille, Visually Impaired.

1. INTRODUCTION Graphical representations are often used to illustrate functions, and equations in math, and science. Since these graphs are in visual form, they cannot be used by users with visual impairment, the same is true with the drawings of geometric figures useful in different sciences. However, through tactile graphics, images can be understood by people with visual disabilities. This is because tactile graphics are produced by patterns created that can be felt with the fingers. Currently, some programs only allow tactile impressions in relief images that were scanned or digitized, however they doesn't allowing to the visually impaired user can create and formatting geometric figures with their respective tactile and braille print. There are solutions available that offer reproduce different tactile graphics (text, maps, graphics in general, etc.) an example is Tiger and Designer software than with the help of Microsoft Word, Excel and a braille printer package converts graphics from the document in a set of raised dots that try to follow the contour of the image, or print the text in braille if a procedure for conversion was performed. Unfortunately, these applications do not allow the projection itself and creating geometric figures by visual impairments, and have either a voice synthesizer or menus designed especially for people who are blind. Then comes the question: how to provide the visually impaired a computational tool that enables it to create, study, and learn the design of geometric figures useful in exact areas of scientific knowledge? It is believed that the answer lies in a treatment and construction of geometric figures program in a language that is common for people without visual problems and at the same time accessible to the visually impaired, which facilitate the user to create different types of geometric designs in a way simple, fast, and that can be applied in different sciences, because currently there's no a program to perform these functions. It is proposed and developed a completely new application that allows the visually impaired new functions like create, study, and actually work with geometric figures, not just using the Braille language that has serious practical operational limitations with respect to mathematical calculations, and interpretations. Within the project just developed the graphical interpretation of geometric figures must be taken by a tactile visualization, this being possible through interaction with a Braille printer that provides printing dots embossed.

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The user interaction with the program facilitates the independent construction of geometric shapes, impossible until now for visual impairment, manipulation of geometric figures in space, and tactile impression by Braille printer. It will be potential resource that will allow the visually impaired to glimpse an approximation of equality with people who can see, understanding and study geometric representations.

2. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY The proposed methodology and implementation was based in similar applications developed for different authors, and it was focus on the generation, processing, and analyzing geometric figures, with the help of a Braille printer properly installed and programmed, which will feature a tactile description with embossed perspective of a diverse set of geometric figures, along with their description in ink, reliefs, and Braille. Different geometric shapes available in a table within the application allow users to select, and enter data design geometry, so that the visually impaired can complement the study, following the contours of the geometry, locating, identifying by touch feeling and the evolution of picture. It should be emphasized that the program is also able to perform a common impression of the complete graph, that is, beyond the design reliefs; it has inked a representation of figures, and axes along with a text description. Figure 1 shows the layout of the proposed methodology for the printing of 2D geometries and Braille embossing in the form of a block diagram will be detailed throughout this numeral.

Figure 1. Proposed methodology for the generation and printing of geometric figures in ink, Braille,, and with reliefs.

- In the first block, the user selects the type of geometry to draw within a set of options provided by the program through targeted especially for people with visual impairment table. - After selection of the figure, is necessary add the numerical values to build it (vertices, radius, edge, etc.) besides the location parameters in the Cartesian plane (position in x and y axes) and border width. - Once it have selected the figure, introduced the values of the figure, and its corresponding spatial positions own parameters, the program allow to the user to enter additional information regarding the names of axis. - Next, the program produce drawings of geometric figures that are created from mathematical equations, but that will be ignored by the user, which is solely responsible for introducing the basic parameters to the development of the geometric design; however, it without worry about computer calculations, one example of this approach is the case of circle, and ellipsoid, among others.

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- Complementing the entire process of handling graphics and geometric figures, allowing easy interaction to a visually impaired person, it has the block printing in Braille, and reliefs in charge of converting the designs made in a corresponding tactile visualizations form the values and characteristics previously inserted and included printing ink. It should be emphasized that the implementation of the program for a visually impaired person is completely done via a screen reader with voice synthesizer, without the use of the mouse.

3. PARTIAL RESULTS Partial experiments conducted in this work were made using the printer Emprint SpotDot which admits both the issue with the system of reading and writing tactile thought Braille for the visually impaired persons as drawing various shapes reliefs with a high resolution, together with the application program developed. Initially and using MS Paint program with a simple design, we evaluated the ability of the printer to generate a geometric designs with them description of the drawings in plain text with the font Tiger29 Portuguese special to printing Braille in Portuguese language, obtaining the results after the scan shows in figure 2.

Figure 2. Printing ink and reliefs of a curve, and a geometric figure with description text in Braille.

From Figure 2 it can be inferred that the printer correctly interprets the several geometrical designs, but presents difficulties in formatting text, case a special font is used for Braille and producing this as an approximation of the contour, but not in the representation used in reading and coded scripture from six points, which presents a problem in the development and direct printing of any design mixed between geometric figures, and text in Braille a challenge that is addressed in this research. Immediately after performing the testing of different geometric shapes and curves, and find the problem with the descriptive text accompanying the drawings, it was used the subject application program of this research, which was developed in the object-oriented programming language C# (C Sharp) making use of a voice synthesizer integrated to allow for usability by people with visual impairment, assisting in the development and printing geometries process. The first result of the application program obtained from different tests was the impression corresponding to a quadratic function or parable, represented by an equation of the form: f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c. The first results mix the geometric design in conjunction, with the text to be printed on conventional ink for the sighted along with Braille for the spatial understanding of people with visual impairments. The product of the scanned print is shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. Printing ink, with reliefs, and in Braille description of the quadratic function f (x) = ax^2 + bx + c.

It should be noted that the graph generated and printed by the proposed program and presented in Figure 3 draws the mathematical function in the Cartesian plane, but, additionally shows the numerical information of the x and y axes, as well as their names or labels of the figure, allowing a complete examination by the visually impaired users, which in addition to interpreting the dynamics of the function may comprise additional information, facilitating the study of this type of mathematical representation. Once designed the complete design of the quadratic function has successfully, it was created a graph corresponding to a series of circles centered at the origin but with different radius, and border width that enable the differentiation of each one. The different circumferences were constructed from mathematical modeling, and printing the scanned result is shown in Figure 4. Figure 4 corresponding to the print set of circumferences centered at the origin and with different radius values, highlights the fact that the joint design between the development of geometrical figures with the numbers and descriptive labels of x and y axes formatted and printed in Braille the same way as if included in the quadratic function. It stands to vary in each of the drawings from each of the circumferences border width than representing them. Finally, Figure 5 shows the program's ability to draw different types of geometric figures created from mathematical modeling and based on geometric primitives. Moreover, the text information in Braille to facilitate the understanding and analysis of the generated design, and the corresponding Braille printing for the analysis of users seers.

Figure 4. Printing ink, with reliefs in Braille and description of various circumferences.

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Figure 5. Printing ink, with reliefs in Braille and description of various circumferences.

4. CONCLUSIONS It has been constructed a tool, not available until now. The developed program promotes accessibility for people with visual impairment to geometry in 2D, allowing the development of simple and flexible way of a large number of figures printed in high reliefs, as well as the description of the parameters that constitute them as numbering, and naming of chart axes in Braille necessary for blind users. Simultaneously, the entire content of the design is printed in common ink with writing so a seer person who doesn't know Braille can accompany, and interpret both the drawing of geometric figures such as printing text characters. Geometric designs can be printed by MS Paint program without difficulties drafting shapes, however, it presents drawback printing text, converting it into a sequence of points in relief that try to follow the design of the character, but not appropriate in Braille format for visually impaired, hindering their use in practice. It is possible through the elaborate program, developed several types of geometric figures, thereby paves the visually impaired do several trials and get your own conclusions and analyzes that are essential mechanisms for the study, and learning of geometry math applicable to a wide variety of knowledge areas. Currently, it being expanded set of figures in three dimensions on the program with their respective relief printing without using MS Pain, also valuing solid shapes reproduction with 3D printers for further researches.

REFERENCES C. Jayant, M. Renzelmann, D. Wen, S. Krisnandi, R. Ladner and D. Comden, 2010. Automated Tactile Graphics Translation: In the Field. ASSETS’07, Tempe, Arizona, USA, pp 75-82. Instituto Benjamin Constant, 2009. Braille Fácil 3.5a. [Online] Available at: http://intervox.nce.ufrj.br/brfacil. J. Chen, R. Nagaya and N. Takagi , 2012. An Extraction Method of Solid Line Graph Elements in Mathematical Graphs for Automating Translation of Tactile Graphics. Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems (SCIS) and 13th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligent Systems (ISIS), Kobe, Japan, pp. 422-427. J. E. Fernández, 2004. Braille y Matemática, Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE), Madrid, Spain. J. M. Prada Sanmiguel and L.C. Martini, 2012. Mathematics software programming resources aimed at visually impaired users Matvox. Conference of Information Science and Computer Applications (ICISCA 2012), Bali, Indonesia. Ladner, R. E. et al., 2005. Automating Tactile Graphics Translation. ASSETS’05, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. M. I. C. de Freita and S. E. Ventorini, 2011. Cartografia Tátil: Orientação e Mobilidade às Pessoas com Deficiência Visual, UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. S. E. Krufka, K. E. Barner and T. Can Aysal, 2007. Visual to Tactile Conversion of Vector Graphics. IEEE Transaction on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 310-321. Steve, C., 2003. Printing process combining conventional and braile printing with the aid of an off-set-type printing machine. Patent, USA. ViewPlus Technologies, Inc, 2013. ViewPlus Emprint and Emprint SpotDot Ink Cartridge Instructions. Cornallis, Oregon, USA.

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THEATER IN CYBER SPACE: AN INTERACTIVE ART PROJECT SOLUTIONS IN RUSSIA Nikolay Borisov1 and Irina Tolstikova2 1

ITMO University, Kronverkskiy 49, St. Petersburg, Russia St. Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya nab 7/9, St. Petersburg, Russia 2 ITMO University, Kronverkskiy 49, St. Petersburg, Russia

ABSTRACT This article covers different theoretical approaches to Internet and its impact on sociocultural development of society. A lot of scholars develop the issues of cybertheater and analyze several terms related to art performances using innovative technologies. There is a description of the unique interactive theater project realized in the Alexandrinsky Theater (St. Petersburg, Russia). Described experiences of multimedia and communication technologies in theatrical activities allow theaters interact with audience all around the world. KEYWORDS Internet culture, Cybertheater, Interactive Theater, Digital Technology, Alexandrinsky Theater, Russia

1. INTRODUCTION A research of sociocultural specifics of cyber space as a new paradigm of community and its impact on the transformation of social structure was initiated by new social practices, patterns and opportunities of social control. Its philosophical aspect clearly poses the problem of changing the subject of social interaction in the new social conditions. Considering an internet culture as a space in which a person interprets the world where people communicate and realize themselves prescribes a research of human interaction by means of new cultural forms, ways of mutual understanding and overcoming its obstacles. This enforced an increase of interest to the issues of intercultural management with regards to information technologies and digital communication (Tolstikova, 2013). Penetration of modern technologies in various fields of social life has its long-term socioeconomic and cultural impacts. Internet is considered not only as a technological phenomenon of modernization, but also as an economic, political and sociocultural one.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Internet communication as a form of social interaction creates a sociocultural space, highly adapted with its system of values and norms regulators to solve specific problems. Internet technologies are not just an instrument of communication, but also a process needed to be developed. “These challenges will lead to the radical transformation in the business world, but also the changes in an everyday life” (Gates, 2000). Contemporary research on the cyber space issues originates from different philosophical works. The genesis of ideas about the nature of communication goes back to M. Buber, L. Wittgenstein, E. Levinas, J. Habermas, and others. The term of communication was introduced by C. Shennon and N. Wiener in the middle of the XX century. They were the first to analyze the ICT opportunities in terms of sociocultural, political and economic challenges. In the contemporary research there are several approaches to the understanding of Internet as communicative space. The first approach states that information and technologies itself are critical and core factors of a new type of social structure, and with its development of internet technologies the role of

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knowledge and information is to increase (D. Bell, M. Porat, E. Toffler, T. Stonier). The second approach considers internet technologies in terms of communication characteristics: it provides networking of any complexity that is a distinctive feature of Internet as a specific communicative institute (M. Castells, А. Neklessa). The third approach covers the understanding of Internet as a virtual world (A. Buell, М. Weinstein, А. Crocker, М. Paetau). A special approach formed by postmodernism combines the use of methods of hyperbole, metaphor and analogy (F. Guattari, М. Foucault, А. Markham, H. Rheingold). The British scholars, J. Vince and R. A. Earnshaw (Vince and Earnshaw, 2000), introduce an idea of future development of Internet. They focus on the perspectives of theater development in reliance to innovation internet technologies. American media researchers, M. Tribe and J. Reena (Tribe and Reena, 2006), develop the art issues of new technologies such as group projects, appropriation of another product, hacking, collecting and storage issues of electronic art, the problem of creativity in the global network. Invented in 1994, Internet has its significant role in the development of modern art and theater in particular (Muri, 2007). Initially the term Cybertheater was introduced by the Russian kinetic art group Dvizjenije (“Dvizjenije|” in Russian - Motion or Movement). Dvizjenije was an interdisciplinary team that, inspired by the “cosmic” ideas of the Malevich tradition, was concerned with constructivism and kinetic art. They created work across the fields of visual arts, music, design, and education. In 1967, the art group headed by Lev Nusberg performed the play Cybertheater. The performance was an immersive mechanic environment that invited audiences to enter a world both virtual and physical, thus partaking in a communal sensual experience (Chatzichristodoulou, 2012). The UK-based theater researcher M. Chatzichristodoulou develops the concept of cybertheather and offers differentiation of the following terms.  Cyberformance introduced by H. Varley Jamieson in 2000 describes “live performance with remote performers coming together in real time via Internet chat applications” (Varley-Jamieson, 2013). Jamieson aimed to identify an adequate term for the new genre that she and her group Avatar Body Collision were experimenting with, while avoiding polarisations between terms such as real and virtual.  Digital Performance used by B. Smith and S. Dixon (Dixon and Smith, 2007) in 2001 for their project Digital Performance Archive is defined as performance activity with new digital technologies, the webcasted performance and interactive virtual environments including.  Digital Practices offered by S. Broadhurst in her book that came out in 2007 to refer to performance practices that “prioritize such technologies as motion tracking, artificial intelligence, 3-D modelling and animation, digital paint and sound, robotics, interactive design and biotechnology” (Broadhurst, 2007).  Cyber-theater used by M. Causey (Causey, 2003) in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theater and Performance includes a new possibility of interactive access to the performance for audience. (Causey, 2006)  Virtual Theater offered by G. Giannachi (Giannachi, 2004) denotes the theater of the twenty-first century simulates everything, even the viewer. A British theater-researcher J. Parker-Starbuck suggests using a term Cyborg Theater which requires a theater event to contain alive and mediated elements. It expresses an essence of being cyborg or more than human through media. A scholar N. L. Masura explores the nature of Internet Theater in terms of Digital Theater as a type of performance which utilizes both “live” actors and co-present audiences along with digital media to create a hybrid art form revitalizing theater for contemporary audiences. The researcher conducted a survey of a wide range of digital performances (with “live” and digital elements, limited interactivity/participation and spoken words) based on the observations of different performance examples. She identified an art form with the flexibility and reach of digital data and the sense of community found in “live” theater. According to Masura, there are four conditions for creating Digital Theater (Masura, 2007). 1) The theatrical performance should place several performers in the same shared physical space with an audience. The significance of the terms “live” or “liveness” as they occur in theater can not be overemphasized, as it is set in opposition to digital in order to indicate the presence of both types of communication, human and computer created. It is essential that there is an interaction between an audience and art performers.

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2) The performance should use digital technology as an essential part of the primary artistic event, however, not only for archival or broadcast purposes. It is defined not only through the characteristics of being flexible, mutable, easily adapted, and able to be processed in real-time. Digital media comprises the ability to change sound and light, and moreover, images, video, animation, and other content. 3) The performance contains only limited levels of interactivity, in that its content is shaped primarily by the artists for an audience. This indicates an asymmetrical flow of information, rather than an equal exchange due to one-way messages flow from the artists’ play to the audience. However, since its interaction is facilitated through technology, interactivity should apply to the interaction occurring not only between audience and artists but also between humans and machines. 4) The performance content should contain either spoken language or text which might constitute a narrative or story, differentiating it from other events which are distinctly dance, art or music.

3. INTERACTIVE THEATER PROJECT SOLUTIONS IMPLEMENTED FOR THE OPENING OF THE ALEXANDRINSKY THEATER’S NEW STAGE This concept has a great significance and correlates well with a unique example of interactive theater project solutions implemented in one of the prominent St. Petersburg’s theater that dates back to the spring of 2013. This is the Russian State Pushkin Academy Drama Theater, also known as the Alexandrinsky Theater, which is the oldest national theater in Russia. It was founded in 1756 by the Senate’s decree. The history of the Alexandrinsky Theater where almost all important classic works of Russian theater premiered is closely linked to some of the most famous exponents of Russian culture. Many famous Russian actors performed on the Alexandrinsky’s stage and many great directors, such as V. Meyerhold, L. Vivien, G. Kozintsev, G. Tovstonogov, N. Akimov, worked there. Prominent artists, such as A. Benois, K. Korovin, A. Golovin, N. Altman, and great composers, such as A. Glazunov, D. Shostakovich, and R. Shchedrin, collaborated with the theater. The New Aleksandrinsky theater complex comprises three buildings: the new stages building, a media center, and the building housing a center of theater education. The main stage (the “transformer stage”) is equipped with a mechanism with the opportunity to change its spatial configuration dynamically. The unique theater equipment, including modern computer hardware, is installed at the Media Center and throughout the educational facilities. The New Stage’s 10Gigabit computer network is linked to the Internet via a high-speed 1Gigabit external channel. This allows for new information technologies to be incorporated into theater productions on the New Stage, including interactive multimedia solutions and Internet technologies (Borisov et al, 2013). The plays produced for the opening ceremony of the New Stage were all related to the works by Dostoyevsky who was an inveterate theatergoer and a frequent visitor to the Alexandrinsky. The great writer became a symbol of the new theater complex. At the same time, the plays also incorporated new and unique technologies offered to the directors and actors by the New Stage’s high-tech facilities. These original technologies was developed by the group of ITspecialists of St. Petersburg National Research University of Informational Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO University) ( (N. Borisov, D. Stolyarov, P. Shcherbakov, K. Aksarin, A. Smolin) (Borisov et al, 2013). Among these are interactive internet-theater technologies, multistream broadcasting of theater performance, multivisor (multi windows viewer). All these technologies installed on the IT- infrastructure of New Stage at the Aleksandrinsky Theater. Approximately 150 video connection points were placed around the stages and in the halls of the theater complex, allowing more than fifty IP cameras to be moved between them as needed. Each IP camera is capable of processing multiple independent video streams of varying resolutions (up to Full HD) and can be controlled remotely. All camera connection points and Wi-Fi hotspots located throughout the complex are linked to a Gigabit local area network, which is divided into several sub-networks. Along with a system of servers and routers, Wowza Media Sever, which enables controlling multimedia streams, as well as performing conversion, archival, and other operations with them, was chosen to play the role of the technological core of the Internet-based video broadcasting system. For content delivery to the end user, the theater’s local area network is connected to the Internet via a 10-Gigabit channel.

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In order to manage an end users’ access to the interactive solutions that were built, an Internet portal was developed by the ITMO University scholars (V. Zakharkina, I. Mbogo). The use of dynamic content organization and alternative classifiers allowed the developers to forgo multi-layered menus, the traditional means of portal navigation. An alternative approach, based on flexible project systems and social network functionality, was adopted as the basis for the portal’s prototype organization. Each project leader was able to determine the list of the project’s participants, the types of tools used for the project’s information support, the contents and the means of publishing project information on the Internet, and so on. The portal prototype provided access to multiple streams of the interactive Internet broadcast of these shows. To allow the viewers to have an immersive experience of theatrical performances that took place on different stages and in the halls of the theater complex, a system capable of multi-stream broadcasting of all performances was developed, allowing them to be viewed on desktop or mobile computers. A new project, STREAM, was created, allowing Internet viewers to monitor feeds from 24 cameras set to broadcast, in multicast mode, the opening ceremonies of the New Stage. In total, 50 stationary Full HD IP cameras, reporter’s iPads and iPhones, and several Skype feeds were active in the auditoriums and halls of the New Stage during the opening. A multi-stream control system was developed in order to manage 24-stream broadcasts in real time. This control system was implemented as a web application, enabling the administrator to select active streams for any project (including STREAM) and, using a high-level drag-and-drop interface, add attributes and comments to them. At the same time, a scheduling mechanism was implemented to solve resource allocation conflicts (situations where the same resources were requested by different projects). This made possible an uninterrupted 32-hour broadcast of the performances at the opening of the New Stage. A client-side web application prototype allowing the Internet viewer and portal visitor to access and switch between current video streams was developed for the STREAM project. The main problem of multistream broadcasting–the optimization of simultaneous HD-quality video and audio feeds–was resolved using a combination of custom-developed solutions and Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology. A joint project of the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Engineering AXE Theater “THE CHOICE”, which M. Isayev and P. Semchenko created after Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” involved real-time processing of streams from 20 cameras. Based on those feeds, visual effects synchronized with the performance were generated. Processed fragments of the video were sent onto the stage and the screen. The fragments’ recording, processing, synchronization, and screen broadcasting were managed by a computer program developed by the supervision of the authors of the present work. In the NET DRAMA project, the very process of playwriting was turned into performance: four playwrights create a new play in real time. A draft of the script appearing on the screen was edited simultaneously by the playwrights working in a collaborative mode. The viewer sitting in the audience or watching on the Internet could view the emotions on the playwrights’ faces, the changes in the draft of the script that are being made by them, the chat exchanges serving as a link between the playwrights as they develop the script, and the online comments posted by visitors via the Internet portal. In order to allow both the participants and the audience to visualize and interpret the play’s contents an application with an intuitive user interface was developed. INTERACTIVE HALL was another project, which featured a pseudo-holographic system with motionsensor controls based on a Microsoft Kinect sensor. This system allowed audience members in the hall to obtain information on play developments from all stages involved in the opening events (Borisov et al, 2013). There was the experimental project READING that saw the highest number of performers and devices involved. There, a group of actors and volunteers performed continually reading aloud Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. Spatially, the readers were located in different places connected via a variety of connectivity methods (IP cameras, webcams, etc.). Given the novel’s size, its reading took about 38 hours. Even with advance preparations and rehearsals, due to the participant’s diverging reading speeds, it was impossible to pinpoint the exact timing of the beginning of any particular excerpt. Thus, in order to ensure an uninterrupted experience for the viewer, a software application capable of seamless switching between readers’ streams was developed. In order to enable cross-platform mobile access to multi-stream video broadcasts, a solution allowing an automatic detection of the user’s location zone (whether the user is located within the local area network or on the public Internet), operating system, and browser, and based on these criteria, the setting of correct IP addresses, formats, stream bit rates, and other user interface parameters, was developed for the portal. This solution was tested on the most common operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Windows Phone, iOS, Android) and browsers. It was therefore determined that all current requirements for cross-platform software compatibility are met.

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During the opening events, the Wowza media server was receiving about 150 video streams at varying bit rates; at peak times, it was handling up to 400 external connections. Up to 60 streams were being archived. Our analysis of network traffic and server loads showed that the developed system has spare capacity allowing it to handle at least five-fold increases in traffic. The use of external “cloud” computing resources and virtual networks, arranged to allow for growing system capacities dynamically, proved to be unnecessary.

4. CONCLUSION The present level of communication and multimedia technology allows organizing online broadcast of such high quality that it is possible to speak of the remote presence of spectators at a theatrical performance. The discussed Russian projects indicated the opportunity to expand the Russian theater’s audience by interaction with the audiences around the world via internet and a virtual invitation to Internet viewers to participate in a theater performance. Moreover, the Internet-theater offered a new instrument to involve the young generation of the XXI century who considers theater as an old-fashion type of leisure. The important thing is that the theater is directly involved in the organization of broadcasting. No less important is the ability to use modern technology directly into a theatrical performance. Described experience of using multimedia and communication technologies in theatrical activity is the first step, followed by the next steps.

REFERENCES Borisov, N. and Smolin, A., Stolyarov, D., Shcherbakov, P., 2013. Interactive Multimedia Solutions Developed for the Opening of the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Proceedings of the Third International Conference Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage, DIPP2013, Vol. III. Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, pp. 153-159. Broadhurst, S., 2007. Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroaesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA. Causey, M., 2003. Cyber-theatre. Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, p. 341. Causey, M., 2006. Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: from Simulation to Embededness. Routledge, London, UK, p. 48. Chatzichristodoulou, M., 2012. Cyberformance? Digital or Networked Performance? Cybertheaters? Or Virtual Theatres? …or all of the above? Proceedings of Online Symposium on Cyberforman. Online conference. Available at: http://www.cyposium.net/selected-presentations/ [accessed 28/12/2013] Gates, B., 2000. Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy. Warner, NY, USA. Giannachi, G., 2004. Virtual Theatres: an Introduction. Routledge, London, UK and New York, USA. Muri, A., 2007. The Enlightenment Cyborg: a History of Communications and Control in the Human Machine, 16601830. Univ. of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada, p.6. Masura, N., 2007. Digital Theatre: A "Live" and Mediated Art Form Expanding Perceptions of Body, Place, and Community. University of Maryland, USA [dissertation]. Available at: http://www.nadjaart.com/teach/Digital%20Theatre%20Dissertation%20Exerpt.pdf Smith, B. and Dixon, S., 2007. Digital Performance: a History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performances Art and Installation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. Tolstikova, I., 2013. Cultural studies in cyberspace and social interaction in internet. In Information resources of Russia, No 6, pp. 22-26. [in Russian] Tribe, M. and Reena, J., 2006. New media art. Taschen, Köln, Germany. Varley-Jamieson, H., 2013. Cyberformance. Available from: http://www.cyberformance.org [accessed 28/12/2013] Vince, J., Earnshaw, R., 2000. Digital Media: the Future. Springer, London, UK.

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3D PRINTING AND CO-CREATION OF VALUE Lillian Clark1, Levent Çallı2 and Fatih Çallı2 1

Portsmouth Business School , University of Portsmouth, UK Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Sakarya University, Turkey

2

ABSTRACT A digital manufacturing method currently receiving much attention in both academic and popular press is additive manufacturing, more popularly known as 3D printing. Many firms are already utilising 3D printing technology as a flexible, low cost and efficient tool for prototyping. However, 3D printing has implications outside of manufacturing, as this technology has the capability to enable both retailers and consumers to design and produce new products, selecting materials in accordance with their expectations and demands. In addition, as 3D technology improves, consumers will be able to produce their own products from their homes, realising a democratisation of design and production – the so-called “Third Industrial Revolution”. Adapting to these new technologies and the resultant changes in consumer behaviour will in turn require new perspectives and practices in marketing. This paper examines the current state of the 3D printer industry and speculates on the impact this technology will have on co-creation of value within marketing strategies. KEYWORDS 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Co-creation

1. INTRODUCTION If we consider that the First industrial Revolution was underpinned by steam power, and the Second Industrial Revolution was underpinned by the use of production lines to facilitate mass production, then we are now witnessing a Third Industrial Revolution, underpinned by the emergence of digital production methods. In this revolution, products will be designed using digital platforms and then produced anywhere in the world via additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3D printing (The Economist, 2012). For retailers, the ability to quickly produce a model of a product at a reseller’s premises or consumer’s home will have tremendous impact on production and inventory management systems. For manufacturers, mass production platforms, which historically rely on the economies of scale inherent in producing high volumes to reduce unit costs, will lose their importance as key manufacturing costs will primarily comprise two expenditures: the 3D printer itself and the production material (Stefano, 2012). Manufacturers will begin to focus less on the logistics, inventory management and supply chain activities inherent in mass production, and instead focus more on digital product design, 3D research and development, 3D marketing activities and the staff/expertise needed to fulfil these functions (ibid). 3D printing technology is also transforming national R&D strategies, most notably in South Africa where 3D printers are seen as being a key component in bringing SME’s into the country’s innovation network (Campbell et al, 2011). 3D printing technology is being increasingly used in education. In 2012, 3D printer company Stratasys reported that 40% of their sales came from educational institutions (Kharif 2012) and the UK Department for Education has announced a programme to use 3D printers to boost the teaching of STEM and design subjects (Gov.uk, 2013). But perhaps the biggest impact of this Third Industrial Revolution will be on the consumer, as this technology will allow production of simple, every-day products from home. For example, instead of ordering replacement parts for a kitchen appliance from a factory and enduring the long wait times for processing and shipping, consumers will be able to quickly “print” the replacement parts themselves. Or, instead of buying a popular cartoon character figure from a toy shop, children will be able to download 3D models of the character from the internet, make whatever modifications they want, and then produce their own toys from home. In effect, the Third Industrial Revolution will enable the consumer to act as producer as well as customer.

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Overall, 3D printing could have a profound impact on economy, industry structure, market dynamics and consumer behaviour. To specifically understand the impact of 3D printing on marketing, this paper will start with a brief explanation of the current state of 3D printer technology, and then discuss how this technology will affect current marketing practices, in particular the concept of co-creation of value.

2. THE 3D PRINTER INDUSTRY Subtractive manufacturing identifies a product as something that is created by cutting, drilling or sanding raw materials into the desired shape. Additive manufacturing, on the other hand, identifies a product as a set of layers which are then built in stages to create the final product. Using the principles of Additive manufacturing, 3D printers convert digital models of a product to a three-dimensional object by laying down these layers using appropriate materials – the so-called “printing” process. For example, a freely-moving ball-bearing can be manufactured on a 3D printer as a single component, complete with individual balls (Berman, 2012). As a result, many manufacturers are already using 3D printing for prototype production in order to realise the flexibility, cost and time saving advantages inherent in this technology. Until recently 3D printers for home use were prohibitively expensive, costing upwards of USD8,000. In 2012, the first 3D printer designed and priced for home use became available (McKendrick, 2012). This 3D printer, priced at USD499, uses plastic as the raw printing material and can create an object up to 15cm in size. While the supplies used by the printer are relatively affordable (the plastic powder used in the layering process retails for approximately USD44 per kilo), slow processing times and complex software modelling packages have inhibited adoption of the home 3D printer (Additive3D, 2012). However, some retailers are recognising the potential appeal of this technology to consumers and are offering 3D printing services to their customers, where consumers can create “mini-me” models of themselves and their family (Asda, 2013). As of the end of 2012 there were nearly 20 different 3D printer production companies worldwide. Growth rates for the 3D printer industry are projected to be 300% over the next 7 years, with a potential market of USD5.7 billion by 2017 (Gartner, 2013). There are however several other factors, aside from hardware costs and software complexity, that may inhibit consumer 3D printer adoption: 



The limited capacity to support production of multi-material objects. While objects can be produced from a number of single materials such as bronze alloy, plastic, or liquid polymer, production of objects using more than one material has proven difficult, and there currently isn’t even an agreed standard format for 3D printers that incorporates more than one material which also limits the capability to produce electronic components (Nusca, 2012). The growing recognition that 3D printers can potentially create ethical dilemmas by enabling consumers to produce objects that are illegal or harmful. For example, an engineer and amateur gun expert produced a .22 calibre gun using a 3D printer that could pass through a metal detector and was capable of firing 200 shots with no corrosion or abrasion (Beckhusen, 2012).

Applying Diffusion of Innovations theory (Rogers, 2003) to 3D printers, it is clear that this technology is still at the so-called Innovators stage, and it is not yet clear whether this technology will make the successful transition to the visionary Early Adopters, let alone the more pragmatic Early Majority cohort. One factor that will affect home 3D printer adoption will be the marketing strategies used to promote this technology and its related services.

3. 3D PRINTING, CO-PRODUCTION AND MARKETING STRATEGY Firat & Venkatesh (1995), in their description of the postmodern consumer, argue that the distinction between consumer and producers has become increasingly blurred and consumers are demanding a greater role in production. Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004) recognised that consumers could no longer be viewed as “outside the firm” (p.6) and describe the concept of co-creation, where the consumer and the company work together to create a service and/or experience. This co-creation of value has had a profound change on marketing activities, for example in the way social media is used for collaborative consumption and service

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design (Batista and Ng, 2012; Zeleny, 2012), and the importance in marketing strategies of integrating customer involvement in new product development (Svendsen, Haugland, Gronhaug, 2011). However, the concept of co-creation of value has been problematic when the discussion turns to co-creation of the product itself, and Prahalad & Ramaswamy (2004) are at great pains to exclude the concept of product customisation in co-creation of value: “Note what co-creation is not. It is neither the transfer or outsourcing of activities to customers nor a customization of products and services.” (p. 10). Other researchers, in exploring the concept of the consumer-as-producer (the so-called “prosumer”), argue that the prosumer is only of economic significance if “exchange value” for companies is generated (Humphreys & Grayson, 2008). Some industries such as the music industry, recognise the inevitable rise of the prosumer and the potential marketing opportunities for this segment, but are concerned at the potential IP issues inherent in this type of product cocreation (Gamble & Gilmore, 2013). Jimenez et al (2013) propose a taxonomy of co-production, in which they distinguish between customer-company interactions during any stage of production (Co-production), tactile consumer input (Co-manufacturing), mental consumer input (Co-idealation/Co-design), and modification of an existing product (Mass customisation). But it can be argued that 3D printing is all about product co-creation, and can involve any or all parts of Jimenez et al’s taxonomy. In theory, the consumer should (software and hardware limitations notwithstanding) be in a position to create objects as they see fit, either based on an existing product design or from development of a completely new design, with or without specialist assistance. Zeleny (2012) sees self-customisation (p. 452) as inevitable, and 3D printing the platform for this activity. Bastista & Ng (2012) argue that for the fashion industry, 3D printing will be the key to the future of that industry, and suggest that in the future clothing retailers will offer 3D printing services to consumers who do not have home printers. A key problem then arises as the consumer may lack the knowledge or training to successfully design a product. A consumer may wish to create a shoe or a chair using 3D printing, but will lack the knowledge to know what materials are required to build a stable piece of footwear or furniture. One possible response to this dilemma is to offer collaborative design services, whereby a suitable professional works with the consumer to design the object and materials specification, which the consumer can then fabricate themselves (Hermans, 2013). An example of this type of collaborative service is Shapeways, which also provides design tutorials, modelling services and actual production of the object (Steen, Englis and Meyer, 2013). Co-production of products can also affect the consumer’s attitudes towards an organisation, which can have implications for marketing strategies. For example, studies show that in a co-production scenario, a consumer will take more credit if the product exceeds expectations but also more blame if the product falls short of expectations, suggesting that co-production may have a significant role in marketing strategies of those products where customer expectations are uncertain (Neeli and Leone, 2003).

4. CONCLUSION While 3D printer technology is still in early stages as far as the consumer market is concerned, it is feasible that in 15-20 years consumers will be producing basic products using this technology on an on-going basis, either via 3D printer services or from home. In this context, the consumer will become both the producer and the consumer – the democratisation of design and production. For marketers, the 3D printer is a technological innovation that presents both opportunities and challenges. For example, the toy industry has on one hand an excellent opportunity to create a range of bespoke toys for consumers, including dolls or figures based on popular films that also resemble the child (or adult), especially if support on designing and producing the doll is provided such that the consumer does not need to actually own a home 3D printer. On the other hand, 3D printing also enables the consumer to produce their own doll, with no input from the toy company whatsoever. In this case, the marketing challenge would be to provide an engaging consumer experience that would encourage use of their 3D services – in effect, extending co-creation of value to incorporate both the experience and the product. This extended co-creation of value will have a marked impact on business strategies, introducing new intermediaries to support consumers, reducing the power of suppliers if not replacing them altogether, and requiring a redefinition of the product design to product delivery value chain.

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REFERENCES additive3d, 2012. Which is the best 3D printer? Accessed 28/10/13 at http://www.additive3d.com/3dpr_cht.htm Asda, 2013. Create amazing ‘mini me’ versions of your and your family at Asda! Accessed 14/10/2013 at http://tinyurl.com/khs8hz8 Batista, L. and Ng, I., 2012. The emergence of relationship-based retailing – a perspective from the fashion sector, New Technologies, Business Models and Customer Experience, 10-11 December 2012, Oxford UK. Beckhusen, R., 2012. Gun Lobby Loves 3D-Printed Weapons. Accessed 28/10/13 at http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/3d-weapons/ Berman, B., 2012. 3-D Printing: The New Industrial Revolution. Business Horizons, Vol. 55, No. 2, pp 155-162. Campbell, R.I. et al, 2011. Additive manufacturing in South Africa: building on the foundations. Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 17. No. 2. pp 156-162. Firat, F. and Venkatesh, A., 1995. Liberatory Postmodernism and the Reenchantment of Consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22, No.3 pp. 239-267. Gartner, 2013. Forecast: 3D Printers, Worldwide, 2013. Accessed 28/10/13 at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=2598122 Gov.Uk, 2013. New 3D printers to boost STEM and design teaching. Accessed 28/10/13 at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-3d-printers-to-boost-stem-and-design-teaching. Hermans, G., 2013. Wordpress of Objects: Addressing Layman Participation in a Post-Industrial Society. UbiComp’13 Adjunct, September 8-12, 2013, Zurich. Humphreys, A., Grayson, K., 2008. The intersecting roles of consumer and producer: a critical perspective on coproduction, co-creation and presumption. Sociology Compass, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 963-980. Jiménez, Fernando R. et al, 2013. A classification schema of co-production of goods: an open-systems perspective. European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 47, No. 11/12, pp.1841 – 1858. Kharif, O., 2012. 3D Printer Makers Aim at Home Market. Accessed 28/10/13 at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/3d-printer-makers-aim-at-home-market-01092012.html McKendrick, J., 2012. At last: a 3D printer for the home, priced at $500. Accessed 28/10/13 at: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/at-last-a-3d-printer-for-the-home-priced-at-500/23769 Neeli, B., Leone, R.P., 2003. Psychological Implications of Customer Participation in Co-Production. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 67., No. 1, pp 14-28. Nusca, A., 2012. 3D printing: The hype, the hopes, the hurdles. Accessed 28/10/13 at: http://news.cnet.com/830111386_3-57549959-76/3d-printing-the-hype-the-hopes-the-hurdles/ Osak, M., 2012. New technology could reduce dependence on economies-of-scale model. Accessed 28/10/13 at: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/11/28/new-technology-could-reduce-dependence-on-economies-of-scalemodel/ Prahalad, C.K. and Ramaswamy, V., 2004. Co-Creation Experiences: The Next Practice in Value Creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing. Vol. 18. No.3. pp. 5-14. Rogers, E. M., 2003. Diffusion of Innovations (Fifth Edition). Free Press. Steen, M., et al, 2013. The impact of knowledge capabilities on corporate venturing. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Vol. 18. No. 3. pp. 282-297. Stefano, T. F. (2012, 7 20). 3D Printing: A New Dimension for Manufacturing. 1 21, 2013 tarihinde www.ecommercetimes.com: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/75695.html Svendsen, M.F. et al, 2011. Marketing strategy and customer involvement in product development. European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45. No. 4. pp 513-530. The Economist, 2012. The third industrial revolution. Accessed 28/10/13 at http://www.economist.com/node/21553017 Zeleny, M., 2012. High Technology and Barriers to Innovations: From Globalization to Relocalization, International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, Vol. 11 No. 2 pp. 441-456.

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DEMAND DRIVEN E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES: A CALL FOR BETTER UNDERSTANDING THE FACTORS INFLUENCING END USERS ADOPTION OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES Eltahir Kabbar Higher Colleges of Technology, PO Box 41012, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT The aim of this survey paper is to demonstrate that the e-government research domain has been predominantly absorbed by investigating the ‘supply’ side of e-government focusing on the challenges and opportunities that face governments when providing online electronic services. Compared to the relatively large number of studies that looked at the ‘supply’ side of e-government, studies investigating the ‘demand’ for e-government services are scant. In addition, these limited studies lack consensus on what are the factors that influence end users adoption of online government services. Therefore, we call e-government researchers to develop a holistic e-government adoption model that aim at developing a better understanding of the factors that influence the uptake of government online services to ensure the success of egovernment initiatives. KEYWORDS E-government, online services, e-services, End Users, technology adoption.

1. INTRODUCTION Many governments around the world increasingly use internet technologies to provide public services. The egovernment initiatives in many countries have focused on transferring traditional government services to the ‘online’ world. To achieve this, governments have invested many resources to create the technology platform required to ‘supply’ end-users with a range of e-services. However, e-government initiatives have fallen short of their potential to transform service delivery and improve public trust in government (West, 2004). The well-established technology adoption literature shows that perceptions and attitudes of potential adopters’ towards innovations are critical in the successful uptake of these innovations (for example see Rogers, 2003; Davis, 1989). The next section of this paper provides a review of e-government literature focusing on supply side followed by reviewing the limited literature on e-government demand highlighting the lack of consensus among researchers on the factors that influence the use and acceptance of online government services.

2. OVERVIEW OF E-GOVERNMENT LITERATURE 2.1 The Focus on the Supply Side of E-government The majority of the academic literature on e-government focuses on the supply side of e-government; this includes studies on the models of e-government evaluation and practices (Reddick, 2004; West, 2004); effectiveness of implementation and challenges of e-government services (Jaeger and Thompson, 2003); success factors and implementation of E-government initiatives (Jaeger, 2003; Traunmüller and Wimmer,

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2003). However, few studies investigate the demand side of e-government, the level of e-services usage and the factors that influence users’ acceptance of e-government especially within developing countries context (Kabbar and Dell, 2013). Furthermore, Lau (2003) stated that e-government should be value-driven and not technology-driven. He argued that simply using ICTs to digitize already available information and putting it online would not transform government and bring the promised benefits of e-government, such as increased government accessibility to citizen, greater public access to information and more efficient and cost effective government. Instead, the challenge is to understand how new technologies can be used to bring a transformation in the culture and structure of government in order to provide better services to citizens. Similar to the trend in academic research the success of e-government initiatives has been measured from the supply side. Moore (2005) states that e-government services success has been evaluated by measuring government’s service maturity (the level to which a government has developed an online presence) rather than actual adoption of the service.Egger (as cited in Kunstelj, Jukic, & Vintar, 2007) agrees with Moore’s suggestions; he stated that “The dark side of e-government isn’t cost overruns, turf battles of integration issues; it’s low adoption rates. Without customers, the public sector can’t justify large investments in egovernment for much longer” (p. 315).

2.2 Demand for e-government and Usage A small number of studies have looked at the demand side of e-government services in which some researchers attempted to understand end users’ perspectives. Botterman et al. (2003) investigated the demand-side of e-government in a number of EU counties, Switzerland and the US. Their research found that attitudes toward e-government vary from one country to another. They also called for more in-depthinvestigation to understand the regional variations in the acceptance of e-government. In addition, a research project entitled Benchmarking the Information Society in European Regions (BISER) surveyed the usage of e-government services in 28 European regions (from 14 EU Member States), and found that “Generally, the population’s usage of e-government services is very low” (Lassnig and Markus, 2003 p. 145). The study also stated that a large majority of citizens “for whatever reason” prefer to interact with government using traditional methods of communication. This suggests that a closer look at the end users’ perspective on e-government services would provide better understanding of the reasons behind such reluctance to use online services. Tung and Rieck (2005) also investigated the demand side of e-government. The aim of their study was to understand the adoption of e-government services by business organizations in Singapore. The study results show that perceived benefits, external pressure and social influence positively impact on the firm’s decision to adopt e-government services in that country. While the above studies have provided valuable insights into the demand side of e-government research, there is a need for further studies in this area particularly in developing countries contexts because arguably any e-government adoption study critically depends on two aspects. First, the present state of e-government, and second the place where the study is conducted. Governments spent large amounts of public money on the provision of e-government services, yet we know little about what drives people to use such services. Heeks (2003) studied the successes and failures rate of e-government projects in a number of developing/traditional countries and he suggests that more than one-third of e-government projects are total failures; a further half are partial failures; and roughly oneseventh are successes.

3. A CALL FOR A HOLISTIC E-GOVERNMENT ADOPTION MODEL In 2003, Venkatesh along with Davis and other researchers introduced the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) that aims to explain user intentions to use an IS and subsequent usage behavior. The UTAUT model is made up of the following four core direct determinants of usage intention (performance expectancy, effort expectancy social influence, and facilitating conditions) along with another four moderators of key relationships (gender, age experience, and voluntariness).

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It seems natural that e-government researchers employ UTAUT constructs in their studies and indeed some did. However, Li and Kishore (2006) questioned the robustness of UTAUT instruments, stating that researchers “need to apply caution when interpreting the results from the UTAUT instrument” (p. 183). Other researchers suggested extending UTAUT by adding new constructs to address some of the model limitations in a non-organizational context. For example, Carlsson et al. (2006) have reservations about the use of UTAUT model to explain individuals’ decision to adopt technology in non-organizational contexts. One such context will be the adoption of e-government services. They stated that the model was developed to describe and explain adoption of information systems in organizational contexts. Further, they argue UTAUT can be used “as a starting point” to understand adoption decisions of IT in non-organizational contexts. Indeed, end-users’ decision to adopt e-government services is more of an individual, personal decision (Carter and Belanger, 2004). One of the few studies that tested the validity of UTAUT constructs in e-government contexts is Al-Shafi et al.’s (2009) study. In contrast to the 70 percent found by Venkatesh et al. (2003), the study concluded that UTAUT model explains 14.3 percent of the variance in the dependent variables (i.e. of e-government use) and other “unidentified” variance account for the remaining 85.7%. In another study, AlAwadi and Morris (2008) used an amended version of UTAUT model, to study the factors that determine potential users’ adoption of e-government services in Kuwait. The study revealed that only some of UTAUT constructs (performance expectancy, effort expectancy and peer influence) determine end users behavioral intention to use e-government services in Kuwait. Al-Shafi et al.’s, and AlAwdi et al.’s studies are some of the few studies that applied UTAUT in a non western culture. Park et al. (2007) recommend further research into UTAUT’s applicability in non-western cultural contexts. Furthermore, a limited number of authors proposed other conceptual models to understand the factors that influence citizen adoption of e-government (Al-adawi et al., 2005; Kumar et al., 2007). These models hypothesized a number of factors influencing citizen’s adoption of e-government such as perceived security, perceived privacy, and trust in medium (Al-adawi et al., 2005); user characteristics which consist of (perceived risks, perceived control and Internet experience), website design and service quality (Kumar et al., 2007). However, none of the suggested model has been empirically tested and the models were not validated. The different proposed models reviewed in this section do not provide clear consensus on the factors that influence the usage of e-government by potential adopters. From an empirical viewpoint, the limited egovernment adoption literature available also does not provide clear consensus on these factors either. Although some factors that may affect e-government adoption are addressed by UTAUT – relative advantage, compatibility and perceived usefulness (Carter and Belanger, 2004), and added value (Kunstelj et al., 2007) – there are other factors that UTAUT does not address. Public awareness of e-services and trust has been identified as the main decisive factors influencing the use of e-services (Kunstelj et al. 2007; Lassnig and Markus, 2003). Kunstelj et al. also identified security and privacy concerns (which relates to trust) as additional important barriers to e-services use. In addition, Kunstelj et al. acknowledged that all the factors that influence e-government satisfaction and adoption are not fully understood and they called for additional research to determine the important factors influencing e-government. It is clear from the above discussion that e-government literature lacks consensus on what factors influence e-government adoption, particularly in developing countries contexts. Therefore, there is a need for developing a holistic e-government adoption model to enhance our understanding about the factors that influence end users adoption of e-government.

4. CONCLUSION This article calls for the development of a holistic e-government adoption model that aim at developing a better understanding of the factors that influence end users adoption of online government services. This call was raised after reviewing a number of studies investigating e-government adoption over the past decade or so. The reviewed studies indicated that there is a lack of consensus among e-government researchers when it comes to what are the factors that influence end users adoption of online government services. Developing such a holistic model would contribute to addressing a gap in e-government adoption. In addition, the resultant model will enable e-government practitioners to better plan, design, develop, deploy and manage eservices initiatives that meet the needs of users.

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REFERENCES AlAwadi, S., Morris, A. (2008). The use of UTAUT model in the adoption of e-government services in Kuwait. In the proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE. Al-adawi, Z., Yousafzai, S.,& Pallister J. (2005) Conceptual model of citizen adoption of e-government. In the Processing of the Second International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology (IIT’05). Al-Shafi, S., Weerakkody, V., & Janssen, M. (2009). Investigating the Adoption of eGovernment Services in Qatar Using the UTAUT Model. AMCIS 2009 Proceedings. Botterman, M., Ettedgui, E., Graafland, I., & Ligtvoet, A. (2003). Citizens and E-Government: an international comparison of the demand-side of E-Government, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2739, pp. 448–451. Carlsson, C., Carlsson, J., Hyvönen, K., Puhakainen, J. and Walden, P. (2006). Adoption of Mobile Devices/Services – Searching for Answers with the UTAUT. In the Proceedings of the 39th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (HICSS 39). IEEE. Carter, L., Belanger, F. (2004). Citizen Adoption of Electronic Government Initiatives. In: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’04). IEEE. Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Information Technology. MIS Quarterly, 13(3), pp. 319-340. Heeks, R. (2003). Most E-Government-for-Development Projects Fail: How Can Risks be Reduced?. iGovernment Working Paper Series, Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, UK. Jaeger, P.T. (2003). The endless wire: E-Government as global phenomenon, Government Information Quarterly, 20, pp. 323–331. Jaeger, P.T. and Thompson, K.M. (2003) E-Government around the world: lessons, challenges, and future directions, Government Information Quarterly 20, pp. 389–394. Kabbar, E.F & Dell, P. (2103) Weaknesses of the E-Government Development Index. In Uesugi, S. (Ed.), IT Enabled Services. Springer, ISBN: 978-3-7091-1424-7, pp. 111-124. Kumar, V., Mukerji B., Butt, I. & Persaud, A. (2007). Factors for Successful e-Government Adoption: a Conceptual Framework. The Electronic Journal of e-Government 5 (1) pp 63 - 76, available online at www.ejeg.com Kunstelj, M, Jukic, T. & Vintar M. (2007). Analysing the Demand Side of E-government: What Can We Learn From Slovenian Users? Springer Berlin, Heidelberg. vol. 4656, pp 305-317. Lassnig, M., & Markus, M. (2003). Usage of E-Government services in European regions, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2739, pp 143–146. Lau, E (2003). Challenges for E-Government Development. UNDESA: UN. Li, J. and Kishore, R. (2006). How Robust is the UTAUT Instrument? A Multi group Invariance Analysis in the Context of Acceptance and Use of Online 356 Community Web log Systems. In the Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on computer personnel research. Claremont, California USA, pp 183 -189. Moore, D. (2005). The problems of measuring eGovernment progress. Retrieved February 06, 2010 from: http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_58/ Park, J., Yang, S., & Lehto, X. (2007). Adoption of Mobile Technologies for Chinese Consumers. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 8(3) pp. 196-206. Reddick, C.G. (2004). A two-state model of E-Government growth: theories and empirical evidence for US cities. Government Information Quarterly, 21, pp 51–64. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th Ed.). NY: The Free Press. Traunmüller, R., & Wimmer, M.A. (2003). E-Government at a decisive moment: sketching a roadmap to excellence, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2739, pp. 1–14. Tung, L.L, & Rieck, O. (2005). Adoption of electronic government services among business organizations in Singapore, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 14, pp. 417–440. Venkatesh, V., Morris, M., Davis, G., and Davis, F. (2003) User acceptance of information technology: toward a unified view. MIS Quarterly, 27 (3) pp. 425- 478. West, D.M. (2004). E-Government and the transformation of service delivery and citizen attitudes, Public Administration Review 64(1), pp. 15–27. World Bank (2006). A Definition of E-Government. Retrieved February 07, 2009 from: http://web.worldbank.org/

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eSOCIETY ACROSS BORDERS: REGIONAL IDENTITY AND OPEN SOCIETAL INNOVATION Mag. Celina Raffl and Katharina Große (MA) Zeppelin Universität

ABSTRACT Regional identity can help to overcome joint problems in a given area. In some regions no such common identity is established. However, there is nevertheless the necessity to solve joint problems, as they cannot be tackled on a local level. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can enable and support stakeholders from different locales and different actor groups by connecting them, strengthening their network, and providing tools and platforms to collaborate more effectively and efficiently. In such an environment, a common problem-solving capacity can be established. In the reflection at hand we argue that a culture of open societal innovation (OSI) can serve as ideal grounds to support the emergence of a regional identity with increased problem-solving capacity. We base our arguments on the experience and preliminary findings made within the context of an international research project in the cross-border region of the Greater Lake Constance area. KEYWORDS eSociety, open societal innovation, regional identity, problem solving capacity, cross-border regions, ICT, open innovation, social innovation, collaboration

1. THE NEED FOR REGIONAL PROBLEM SOLVING In an increasingly interconnected world, it is not only ideas, communication, and culture that leave the confines of its local origins, but also problems and challenges that stretch across villages, regional or national borders. In order to overcome these challenges, many different aspects have to be taken into consideration. The input of many diverse stakeholders is needed (Willke 2002, 18). In this paper, we discuss how such a multi-stakeholder problem-solving capacity can be enabled. There are two key aspects that need to be addressed. The first one concerns the need for institutions that have the means and strategies for problem-solving and that manage the implementation of developed solutions. These however might have to overcome administrative hindrances – especially in cross-border regions. The second aspect focuses on the challenge that even if such an institution is established, participation of different stakeholders is required. Here, the difficulty lies in the fact that the relevant stakeholders might not share the same cultural, historical, or political backgrounds. They might not be aware that they are facing similar problems and that their experience, insights and knowledge could contribute to solve them. This applies in especially in regions that stretch across national borders. We term this a “lack of regional identity”. It might thus be that despite a shared managing institution, a lack of regional identity hinders joint-problem solving, i.e. open societal innovation. Thus, the main issue addressed in this reflection is: (How) can ICT help to establish a culture of joint problem-solving and thereby foster regional identity? This paper hence will report on the experiences from eSociety Lake Constance 2020 – Open Societal Innovation in the Lake Constance Region. This international research project strives to spark and establish a regional identity in the Lake Constance region in order to create a (common) culture of open societal innovation, turning it into an eSociety. Therefore, relevant actors and stakeholders from politics, public administration and civil society have been identified, as well as promising best practice case studies. Furthermore, relevant actors have been interviewed with regards to their motivation in contributing to open societal innovation.

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The research project additionally initiates different pilot projects and assembles a toolbox to provide interested parties such as politicians, civil society organizations, and the public administration, with a database of available instruments for open societal innovation. This means, for example, that an administration looking for a brainstorming tool could access the project website and search the database for appropriate software or offline methods to facilitate the collaborative generation of ideas.

2. REGIONAL IDENTITY & eSOCIETY It is important at this point to define the term region. In the understanding of the EU Committee of the Regions, a region is a territorial entity which has its own administrative body and is part of the larger organisation unit of the nation state (European Union nd). However, this top-down identification of a region does not necessarily correspond to the area that is concerned by a problem. Therefore, we use a problem-centred definition of region that is commonly used in an economic or travel and tourism context. In the latter, the definition of a region is often related to a common landscape or remarkable topographic feature that attracts visitors, such as the Lake Constance region. The Lake Constance region is one of those regions that stretch across borders. The defined region comprises of the lake-bordering parts of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and also includes Liechtenstein (which has no direct access to the lake) and thus includes actors from these four nation states. Regions defined for political or topographic reasons often have institutions installed that tackle the obvious challenges the region is defined by. In case of Lake Constance, there are international commissions to regulate boating, fishery, and its environmental protection (Hammerl & Gattenhoehner 2003). Apart from reasons that obviously concern the overall region (such as the quality of the water and the integrity of the environment and landscape – as in the Lake Constance Region), there are many other issues that are still tackled primarily on a local level. Largely, because relevant actors or stakeholders are not able to grasp that their solution would profit largely from the synergies of joint problem-solving. There is thus a need to foster the regional identity of the Lake Constance region in order to help the various stakeholders to connect, establish a shared problem-understanding and enable mutual learning within the region. For that matter, the International Lake Constance Conference (Internationale Bodenseekonferenz, IBK) has been established already in the 1970s. Originally motivated by the need to develop common treaties on the water quality, it has now expanded its mission onto helping local actors from the three bordering and the one associated country to create a regional “sense of belonging” and to foster the joint problem-solving capacity through the participation of local communities (IBK 2010). Over the years, the IBK has established eight issue-based sub-groups, each of which has high-level political support from actors of the participating countries. These issues include (1) education, science, and research; (2) health and social issues; (3) culture; (4) environment; (5) transport; (6) economy, work and tourism; (7) regional development; and (8) sustainable development (IBK nd). However, these issue-based groups meet within their own communities once or twice per year. The debates stay within these groups and thus lack in transparency, accessibility for outside actors and the results of the meetings remain uncoupled. The innovative capacity thus is limited. The IBK’s efforts could benefit from the support by initiatives that are enhanced by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in order to move towards true open societal innovation. In the subsequent paragraphs, we will firstly explain the concept of OSI, before describing the role of ICTs. We will conclude with reflecting upon our experiences.

3. OPEN SOCIETAL INNOVATION FOR THE eSOCIETY Open societal innovation (OSI) refers to the adaptation and sustainable use of open innovation approaches from business, adapted and utilized by the state and society to solve societal challenges. By including all relevant stakeholders in the process of problem solving, new innovative potential can be created. The intention is to take up innovation impulses (“outside-in”) to develop them further within society, together with politics and administration, as well as to carry innovation impulses to the outside (“inside-out”). The two approaches can also be combined (“coupled”). Modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) might accelerate these processes. As catalysts, ICTs can help to reach all relevant actors in society and

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support their communication and cooperation. The term ‘societal’ refers to the fact that not only the innovative potential of society is used (open innovation), or innovation is used for the benefit of society (social innovation), but both are combined: from the society for the society (von Lucke et al. 2012; Raffl & Große 2013).

4. THE ROLE OF ICTs Open societal innovation (OSI) is fuelled by the synergies that occur if different people or groups work together in order to solve shared problems. All actors can potentially profit from the experience of others. It is therefore essential to establish an environment that fosters the discussion of local problems in a broader regional context. ICTs can play a crucial role in this task. With the advances towards web 2.0 technologies, cloud services and (mobile) applications, people can now collaborate independently of location and time. People do not have to travel, e.g. across the border to Switzerland or Germany in order to hold meetings. This can lead to the formation of new groups and project teams that otherwise could not have come together due to organizational challenges (von Lucke 2012). People with inconvenient working hours can inform themselves and participate after hours in discussions or contribute in the drafting of documents. ICTs can, in the form of brainstorming tools e.g., facilitate the idea generation of large groups. Software such as adhocracy can help to intelligently structure discussions. Information is available 24/7 and can be visualised to significantly increase understanding. As one of the pilot projects for eSociety Lake Constance 2020, the national museum of Liechtenstein decided to involve citizens in an idea- and creativity competition to design a future exhibition in order to become more interesting and responsive to their visitors. The museum decided to set-up a brainstorming-app integrated into facebook to make use of the low threshold and network effect of the social network. Prizes were offered for the best ideas. Apart from an increased audience, the museum was able to generate many promising ideas for installations and programmes in collaboration with the crowd. While some elements of the collaboration took place offline – like the final prize ceremony – it would have been challenging to gather the participants in an offline meeting and manage the multitude of ideas. Also, it is probable that a significant share of the participants only took part because the integration with facebook allowed them to contribute from their living rooms at their best convenience. Another eSociety Lake Constance 2020 project was a mapping event (similar to the ones based on Open Street Map) utilizing wheelmap.org. This map allows users to add and evaluate the accessibility of public areas for people with mobility handicaps. The researchers organized an event and invited local citizens, in particular volunteer organizations, to jointly map buildings and other public areas by using the freely available wheelmap.org app for smartphones. Locations can be marked as red (not-suitable), orange or green (suitable). Of course, this information also greatly benefits people traveling with luggage or trolleys or families with little children. Local TV reported on the event, and wheelmap.org has seen an increase of use in the region – cities in the greater Large Constance region now integrate wheelmap.org into their official websites. Finally, another example of how ICTs can facilitate the collaboration of public administration and citizens are problem reporting systems. Websites such as fixmystreet.com allow everybody to report on potholes, broken traffic lights or any other disturbances via smartphones. Public administrations are notified and can transparently report on the progress of problem solution. The Lake Constance area has established a similar system: sagsdoch.de (“speak up”). Yet, it goes beyond the traditional problem reporting and allows citizens to proactively make suggestions for public administration, such as restructuring highways, building playgrounds or parks. Citizens thus alert the administration and raise awareness to problems, challenges, and demands and the administration can increase its responsiveness and become aware of issues that otherwise would have escaped its attention. Also, citizens can monitor the problem solution. Additionally, in sag’s doch citizens can propose solutions to problem and thus introduce innovative ideas into the dialogue. Via sagsdoch.de, a citizen proposed a small change in the traffic flow. Once implemented by public officials, traffic jams were reduced significantly.

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5. LESSONS LEARNT & TAKE-AWAYS In order to find out how the potential of ICTs can be utilized best in order to foster the eSociety in the Lake Constance region, the researchers are engaging in different pilot projects to test various approaches and tools that are known from open innovation, such as crowd-sourcing, idea- and creativity competitions, online brainstorming, etc. From all of these pilot projects, several important lessons learnt can be deducted that will serve as a basis for future undertakings as well as for similar eSociety projects in other regions. Firstly, it is necessary to take into consideration timing and location of offline measures and kick-off events. These underlie traditional collaboration constraints. Attendance on Thursday morning might be low, as the experience from the first mapping event with wheelmap.org demonstrated. (This could be true for any other morning or point in time – depending of course on local culture and customs.) In certain weeks in summer, most people met in popular places might be tourists which have less to contribute to the solution of regional problems in the long run. Secondly, it is important to raise awareness for every project over a variety of different channels. This also needs to comprise the support of traditional media such as local newspapers or flyers. Public administration in the region is an important stakeholder and has in this research project proven as a relevant multiplier in order to reach out to citizens, especially since these institutions are seen as trustworthy. Mostly, it is necessary to clearly outline and describe the reasons why a certain problem or task is of regional importance and to illustrate the (individual) benefits of participation. Furthermore, it is advisable to address issues such as data protection and privacy, especially when social media is used. In this research project, the project team detected a relatively prominent scepticism towards unknown tools. It is essential to decrease these barriers, explain toll functionality and combine offline and online measures. Training and education can help to overcome scepticism and make use of the curiosity that many people show, despite their initial reluctance to engage. This should be seen as a supportive measure to foster open societal innovation. Finally, providing new tools and ways of communication will reach a new audience. It will however, not necessarily bypass culturally-anchored scepticism towards neighbouring communities or the reluctance to cooperate. In order to overcome these initial barriers, it is essential to provide extrinsic incentives to engage people in collaboration. Yet, preliminary research in the region on the motivation of people to engage in open societal innovation projects, such as idea-competitions, mapping parties, crowd-sourced cultural events, has shown, that people are both extrinsically as well as intrinsically motivated to partake, as long as they see that their participation has – at least potentially – a positive impact on their personal life or the life of their families. However, if barriers to participation and a first scepticism are overcome, ICTs, in combination with offline events, can significantly contribute to the creation of an eSociety and therefore overcome the deficits of lacking regional identity – at least in the short run.

REFERENCES Raffl, C. & Große, K. ,2013. eSociety Bodensee 2020 – Offene gesellschaftliche Innovation in der Bodensee-Region – Erster Zwischenbericht. In: Alcatel-Lucent Stiftung für Kommunikationsforschung (Hrsg.): One Stop Europe 2013 – Angewandte Bürgerbeteiligung, Band 103. Auflage, Stuttgart, 2013: 58-66 European Union. (nd). Committee of the Regions. Retrieved from: http://europa.eu/about-eu/institutionsbodies/cor/index_en.htm Hammerl, M., & Gattenhoehner, U., 2003. Lake Basin Management Initiative Experience and Lessons Learned Brief – Lake Constance/Bodensee. Retrieved from: http://www.worldlakes.org/uploads/constance_30sep04.pdf IBK: Internationale Bodenseekonferenz, 2010. Die Internationale Bodenseekonferenz (IBK). Retrieved from: http://www.bodenseekonferenz.org/statut IBK: Internationale Bodenseekonferenz, nd. Handlungsfelder und Projekte. Retrieved from: http://www.bodenseekonferenz.org/Bildung von Lucke, J., 2012. Open Government Collaboration - Offene Formen der Zusammenarbeit beim Regieren und Verwalten. Retrieved from http://www.zu.de/deutsch/lehrstuehle/ticc/JvL-121025-OpenGovernmentCollaborationV1.pdf von Lucke, J. et al., 2012. Open Societal Innovation – The Alemannic Definition Retrieved from: http://esocietybodensee2020.wordpress.com/publikationen/open-societal-innovation-the-alemannic-definition/ Willke, H., 2002. Dystopia. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main.

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REVIEWS USABILITY OF A SOFTWARE FOR DIET CONTROL USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Tiago Ungaro Bardella, Leonardo Ramon Nunes de Sousa, Hilcea Santos Ferreira, Nizam Omar, Sandra Maria Dotto Stump and Ismar Frango Silveira Mackenzie Presbyterian University (Brazil - SP)

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to present a proposal for usability evaluation in terms of an Expert System for diet control using Artificial Intelligence. It also uses fuzzy logic to make reviews of a diet menu in the system. It is expected that the proposed method presents a new approach for nutrition education and a usability evaluation in accordance with the recommendations. KEYWORDS HCI, Usability, Interaction, Diet, Artificial Intelligence.

1. INTRODUCTION There are nowadays many software applications being developed to solve real life problems. The health area can benefit from using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support their professionals to solve problems and to make the right decisions. More specifically in nutrition, computer systems have been used to help the modern man to find a balanced diet, preventing obesity to become the most prominent disease of our society (Bosko et al, 2009). Some of these applications promise to create diets for people but they usually do not fit their needs since they are often poorly formulated and not interactive. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the usability of these applications. According to the ISO/IEC 9126 standard, software usability is defined as: “The capability of a software product to be understood, learned, used, and be attractive to the user when used under specified conditions”. Some of the important characteristics when defining software usability are: understandability, learnability, operability, and attractiveness. Cognitive modeling involves creating a computational model to estimate how long it takes for the users to perform a given task (Rubin, 2008; Yen et al, 2012). It involves one or more evaluators inspecting a user interface by going through a set of tasks by which understandability and ease of learning are evaluated. The user interface is often presented in the form of a paper mock-up or a working prototype; but, sometimes, it might also be a fully developed interface (Dasari, 2013; Harrison, 2013). Many of these computational models are called Expert Systems and claim to deal with uncertainties that are neither represented by any general theory nor employ the most suitable method to solve the problem (Bittencourt, 2001). As the computational tools can assist in nutrition education, we propose the development of an Expert System for controlling the weekly diet of a patient, using AI tools, so that, intuitively, the person is able to digitally follow a proper diet, based on recommendations from a professional in the health area. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the usability of this expert system for diet control, using Artificial Intelligence. Thereby, the methodology applied is presented and some preliminary discussions are shown.

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2. METODOLOGY AND PROPOSED SOFTWARE TOOL There are many software applications and expert systems available on the market today that propose diets and menu planning with nutritional assessment, such as CAMP, PRISM, CAMPER, DietPal e VIE-PNN (Bosko, 2009). The main difference of what we describe in this paper lies on the fact that our proposed tool will allow the registration of multiple users, weekly monitoring each diet, highlighting the daily amount of calories taken and defining, according to its own logic (based on fuzzy logic), if the menu chosen by a user is good or not. Therefore, the user is able to find another choice that best suits his purpose, being influenced by the expert system. Usually, the other software applications available generate food menus for a single user. Our software also uses a fuzzy logic for the individual amount of calories of each food and another which gives a score, at the end of the proposed menu, called fuzzy collective. In both there is a ranking using the same scale which considers the terms bad, poor, regular, good and excellent, distinguished by the amount of calories – of each food item and the collective chosen menu. The expert system called S-Health was recently released by Samsung S4 smartphone, as one of the applications that can daily monitor calories intake, weight and workouts, and calculate the basal metabolic rate (BMR), recommending a daily amount of calories intake for the diet. This application can also pull calories information from a database of common food items (Samsung, 2013). In our case, the proposed expert system should be installed only in standalone platforms, requiring a migration of the code to mobile devices. Furthermore our expert system has the automatic calculation of body mass index (BMI) that is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that applies to adult men and women, helping the user to maintain a proper diet based on his BMI. These values are presented in Table 1 (Bosko et al, 2009; Flegal, 2013). Table 1. Body Mass Index (BMI) Chart for Adults BMI < 18.5 18.5 – 25 25-30 30 & Above

Classification Underweight Normal Overweight Obese

The fuzzy logic proposed here can be divided in two categories: (1) the classification is done according to the amount of calories of each type of food; (2) considers the sum of calories of food items that compose a meal called fuzzy collective. Keeping in mind that a person needs 2500 calories per day, Figure 1 shows these categories and the use of fuzzy logic to represent knowledge to model the inaccurate arguments of a set of possible calories, in this case, making decisions in an uncertain setting composed by the menus (Anantha et al, 2013; Lee et al, 2009; Lee et al, 2011). The fuzzy set theory was used in this expert system to disseminate the classical notion of sets and propositions, providing models for food categories and menus.

Figure 1. Fuzzy Logic Proposals

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The proposed methodology aims at monitoring users´ food intake, including the user's selection, days of the week and food items to be chosen for a particular meal, considering the average consumption of 560 kcal in each meal (Bosko, 2009). This way, the system will display the weekly amount of calories, adapt the menu and evaluate the options chosen, providing a critical profile about the amount of calories recommended by nutrition professionals. It will allow the modification of the menu, after the response of the software, by displaying colors and icons, in a very intuitive way. The choice of each food for a menu reflects the reasoning with uncertainty that is solved by this research proposal, by using a specific fuzzy logic. The adopted approach is empirical and focused on the perception of users and nutrition professionals, through questionnaires about usability issues and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in Experts Systems. The system will be available in a repository for download and analysis, which will be based on the evaluation of interfaces according to heuristics specifications, requiring observation and immersion in the system. Answers should be given on questionnaires about checklists recommended by software evaluation authors, addressing usability in the usage context, form theory foundations and observation of the mediation elements – icons, images and pictures. This conceptual model of the evaluation for usability using checklists is detailed in Aita et al (2012), focusing on social constructivist theories in which the answers range from Excellent (E), Good (B), Sufficient (S), Insufficient (I) to Not Applicable (N). Each question is chosen, sorted and applied according to the following guidelines: (1) Interface General Presentation;, (2) Interface Readability; (3) Navigability, (4) User Adaptation ; (5) Proper Guidance to the User; (6) Proximity and Clustering; (7) Alignment; (8) Standardization and Consistency; (9) Evaluation Mechanism and (10) Pedagogical principles for properly understanding and handling the system. This Expert System is being developed using C# language, since, compared to other programming languages, it presents a good computational performance in Object-Oriented Programming . Besides, its code can be written in any text editor. C# is a C++ based language and was developed to provide portability for distributed applications over network and internet. C# is Microsoft's latest object-oriented programming language developed for .NET platform and .NET is Microsoft’s latest platform technology for creating web services (Bender, 2011; Derezińska, 2009). It also provides an easy way to program based on mobile devices.

3. PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION This paper presents a still ongoing assessment of the usability of an Expert System developed to analyze food intake by individuals, making use of computational techniques and Artificial Intelligence. The presented methodology uses AI techniques to represent knowledge in nutritional diets and a fuzzy logic to deal with uncertainties present in the evaluation process of food intake. It also enables users to make choices according to their eating habits, and then, afterwards, evaluates the chosen menu taking into account different calories levels. As the user creates his weekly menu, the software makes recommendations based on healthy choices, allowing, this way, a nutrition education approach, changing his eating habits, if necessary. It is also expected that the proposed methodology may foster a new practice for nutrition education and a new educational process by the results of the usability evaluation. As a result, there is also the potential for modeling expert systems based on fuzzy logic to calculate the uncertainties present in the process for food evaluation. As prospects for improvement, it is possible to implement the entire system on the internet and mobile devices. As future work, we also plan to implement the system, building up menus for all four meals in the day – breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

REFERENCES Aita, K.S.U., et al. 2012. Avaliação Comparativa das Interfaces dos Sistemas Operacionais UbuntUCA e Metasys. In: Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação. Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brasil. Anantha, S., et al. 2013. Design and Study of Online Fuzzy Risk Score Analyzer for Diabetes Mellitus. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 10(9), 1124. Bender, J., & Mcwherter, J. 2011. Professional test driven development with C#: developing real world applications with TDD. Wrox Press Ltd.

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Bittencourt, G. 2001. Inteligência Artificial: ferramentas e teorias. Florianópolis: Ed. da UFSC. Bosko, A. C. F. et al. 2009. Avaliação Nutricional e Consumo Alimentar de Árbitros da Liga Brasileira de Basquetebol. Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP. Dasari, D. K., et al. 2013. Pinpoint Analysis of Software Usability. In ICCGI 2013.The Eighth International MultiConference on Computing in the Global Information Technology, pp. 63-71. Derezińska, A., & Pilitowski, R. 2009. Realization of UML class and state machine models in the C# code generation and execution framework. Informatica, 33(4), 431-440. Flegal, K. M., Kit, B. K., Orpana, H., & Graubard, B. I. 2013. Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index CategoriesA Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. All-Cause Mortality Using BMI Categories. JAMA, 309(1), 71-82. Harrison, R., Flood, D., & Duce, D. 2013. Usability of mobile applications: literature review and rationale for a new usability model. Journal of Interaction Science, 1(1), pp. 1-16. Lee, C. S., et al. 2009. Ontology-based intelligent fuzzy agent for diabetes application. In Intelligent Agents. IA'09. IEEE Symposium on (pp. 16-22). IEEE. Lee, C. S., et al. 2011. A fuzzy expert system for diabetes decision support application. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on, 41(1), 139-153. ISO/IEC 9126-1. 2001. Software Engineering-Product Quality, Part-1, Quality Model, Geneva, Switzerland: International Standards Organization. Rubin, J. and Chisnell, D. 2008. Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Indianapolis, Wiley Publishing, Inc. Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 – FEATURES. Available at http://www.samsung.com/au/consumer/mobilephone/mobile-phone/smartphone/GT-I9505ZKAXSA-features Accessed on October 27, 2013. Yen, P. Y., et al. 2012. Review of health information technology usability study methodologies. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 19(3), 413-422.

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CHALLENGES TO HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA: BRACING UP FOR THE CHANGES THROUGH CHANGE MANAGEMENT Vijay Srinath Kanchi1 and Anil G. Rao2 1

Librarian & Asst. Professor, Department of Philosophy 2 Principal Moolji Jaitha College, Jalgaon-425002, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT The Information and Communication Technologies that made rapid inroads into almost every aspect of human life in the past two decades or so have not spared higher education sector either, and today we witness a spate of new communication media and methodologies that are bent upon revolutionizing the very foundations of teaching and learning process. But are the stakeholders really geared up to face these ground breaking advents? This paper examines several challenges that popped up out of this surge of technologies in the field of higher education, a field that seems, partially at least, to have been caught unawares. KEYWORDS Information and Communication Technologies; Higher Education, Tablet PCs, eBooks and eJournals, Audio Visuals, Information Literacy.

1. INTRODUCTION Technology is something that is employed to alleviate practical problems of human life by the application of scientific knowledge. But the irony is that the very technologies that are meant to simplify and assuage the challenges could also pose new difficulties when the targeted group is not ready psychologically to accept the new changes or when the group is not adequately information-literate. The success of any technology is dependent on the readiness of an organization to incorporate such innovation into four of its chief domains – viz. 1. The Capital 2. The Workplace 3. The Work and 4. The People. This requires breaking the inertia that is inherent in the system by dexterously employing the principles of change management and encouraging the stakeholders to embrace the changes to their own advantage. Change management is a structured approach to shifting/transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at empowering employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment. The case of Indian higher educational sector is no different in this context as it is undergoing unprecedented transformation in the recent times. India’s Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) as per the year 2010 statistics is reported to be just 16% which is much below the world average of 27%, as well as that of other emerging countries such as China (26%) and Brazil (36%). What's more, the NAAC accreditation report reveals that 62% of universities and 90% of colleges were average or below average in 2010. Even the impact of Indian researchers in various fields is also very depressing with low citation impact - India’s relative citation impact is half the world average. The Government intends to achieve enrollment of 35.9 million students in higher education institutions, with a GER of 25.2%, by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan period as against the 25.9 million students as reported in the year 2010. With such apparently challenging goals ahead, the institutions working in the field of higher education have to brace themselves up to adapt themselves to the changing times.

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Several transformations have taken place in the past two decades in the fields of production and distribution of learning resources such as educational CDs and DVDs, virtual classrooms,availability of plethora of information through internet, computer aided graphics and simulations, video lectures by subject experts and more recently, availability of new gizmos such as Tablet PCs. However the four domains discussed above have their own set of unique and inherent shortcomings which need to be addressed. These limitations are more pronounced in rural and semi urban regions in the fast developing economies such as India where the rural–urban demographic divide as well as the digital divide are wide and gaping. Unless concerted efforts are made by all that are party to the growth and development of higher education, the goals set might just remain utopian.

2. THE FOUR DOMAINS Though Information and Communication Technologies have the potential to radically transform the higher education sector of the country, there are several challenges that need to be addressed with a firm will. Merely pumping money to the sector and expecting the stakeholders to adopt themselves to the technology driven new world will not result in the desired outcomes. The chief problems pestering the four domains are briefly discussed here with some possible remedial measures.

2.1 The Capital Captial refers to the capital and material needed to carry out the work assigned to groups and individuals. Thanks to the new educational policy at the national level that is spelt out in the mission documents such as 'The National Mission on Education Through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT)' and 'Inclusive and Qualitative Expansion of Higher Education in the 12 Five-Year Plan, 2012-17', the Ministry of Human Resource Development of government of India has considerably increased its budgetary allocations for capacity building and infrastructure to higher education institutions compared to the previous five year plan. For higher education, the finance minister pegged an allocation of Rs.16,210 crore for financial year 2013-14 against an allocation of Rs.15,458 crore in the budget estimate for 2012-13. Experts however, were critical that the budget failed to provide any major policy direction on promotion of private money in higher education. The focus now should be, experts argue, on expenditure as often the government fails to spend the entire corpus. The Focus in the 12th FYP is on generation of a new knowledge society from the learners' perspective, satisfying the national and international demands of the society. However the chief weaknesses as identified in NMEICT among others include:  Very low percentage of digital literacy.  Lack of timely and easy availability of knowledge resources to all.  Lack of access devices to digitally bypass shortcomings of Institutions and teachers.  Lack of multi-layered networks for knowledge absorption and knowledge propagation. At the same time, falling costs of hardware and bandwidth, high growth in mobile density, availability of EduSAT, Rapidly expanding Optical Fibre Cable network for terrestrial broadband connectivity and the advent of very low power consumption connectivity & computing devices are identified as the core strengths of Indian higher education scenario. In the last five year plan, the government of India, with an eye to bridge the digital divide and bring the knowledge resources accessible to every student of higher education embarked on an ambitious project of distributing a tablet named Akash at a substantially discounted price to every student pursuing higher education. However the grand project fell on its back much before it took off fully, was shelved and the government of India shrugged off the responsibility of providing cheap tablets as envisioned previously, claiming many alternatives were available in the market and the students should be free to choose the tablet pc of their choice. This lack of consistency - from the time of policy formulation to the time of policy execution - is a poor example that does not go hand in glove with the progress that is idealized. It is not just increase in the plan outlay for the education sector that brings in the desired change, rather it is the commitment to the cherished goals and a resolve to implement - is what would truly transform the higher education sector. Internationalization of education in terms of curriculum, quality rich faculty etc., through improved technology for education delivery is the need of the hour. Establishment of 'One Stop Education Portal’- SAKSHAT by the Ministry of HRD is a welcome gesture in this regard.

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2.2 The Workplace The workplace denotes the physical and psychological working conditions of an organisation. While the higher education institutions receiving government grants for infrastructure development spend much of their funds in construction of buildings and classrooms, the infrastructure and the delivery mechanisms in the libraries often take a back seat. Most of the academic libraries, particularly in the rural areas rely on outdated, traditional methods of procuring and circulating the learning resources and spend almost all their budget on purchasing printed books, hardly considering ebooks and ejournals. The classrooms and libraries are illequipped and there is no serious insistence on the use of audio visuals, simulations, and other internet resource in the classroom delivery. Use of educational technology and ICT is still a far cry in many colleges. A typical reading room of a college library is still an array of benches and book shelves and is devoid of internet enabled desktops. The classrooms still rely on outdated lecture method and the learning resources employed are also only text book based. Teaching still is based on compartmentalized knowledge and there is no effort to convergence and unification of different streams of knowledge.

2.3 The People This is the most important domain for the change management to take effect. Assigning and delegating duties to the staff by the members of managerial group, and making them answerable to the results of his/her individual unit of assignment is a key factor in bringing in the desired change. Lack of motivation, nonchalance and apathy on part of the teaching and library staff to adopt new information delivery mechanisms is evident, while on the other hand the student as well as the teaching community is increasingly adopting mobile and internet technologies for entertainment and other aspects of their daily lives, the same not being carried into the field of academics as much as is desired. Various stakeholders should be effectively communicated the advantages and need for the change in the conventional methods of teaching and learning. There is an urgent need to set up ICT training facilities and making it mandatory to all the teaching staff to undergo training under skills upgrading schemes. The Academic Performance Indicators (API) of teaching staff must necessarily contain an account of number of ICT hours engaged. Personal counselling might also be necessary for certain individuals who are averse to change. While the above describes the shortcomings of teachers, the other stakeholders, viz., the students also find challenges in coping with the technological environment. One of the cheif constraints that limits the students of rural regions from taking advantage of online resources is the language barrier. Students prefer to learn in their native languages and their language competencies, particularly of English are not very encouraging, if not dismal, whereas most of the online resources are produced and distributed in the lingua franca of the present world, the English. The rural students heavily rely on texts published in vernacular languages and these texts fail to reflect the latest findings as it takes time for a new invention or discovery to appear as a translation. This deprives the students of latest developments in their fields of study, affecting their overall quality. To counter this, students are to be encouraged to refer to online resources and keep a journal of their daily activity in the library which should be a reference point in awarding scores in the internal assessments by the teachers.

2.4 The Work The work of an organization is decided by the objectives of an organization. The mission statements, goals, aims and objectives of higher educational institutions must be redrafted so as to conspicuously reflect the institution's ambition to include the ICT based teaching and learning in their curricular activities. The Internal Quality Assurance Cells (IQAC) which generally are confined only to 'on paper' existence must be revitalized with a focus on ICT based quality attainment. Instead of setting up a couple of computer labs with LCD projector facilities, each classroom is to be fitted wifi connected laptops and projectors and every lecture engaged must necessarily contain ICT based inputs. Students using laptops and tablets instead of writing pads and notebooks are to be encouranged with better graded in the internal assessments. Teachers are to employ blogs, video lectures, simulations in delivering the information to the students. Special skill building workshops are to be conducted in the college library so as to make the students information literate – by developing abilities to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.

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3. CONCLUSION As the Buddha puts it, change is inevitable; and as Darwin insists only those survive who adapt themselves to the changing times. The inherent tendencies of inertia in adopting new technologies in the teaching and learning process may cost us dearly if the stakeholders of higher education do not gear themselves up in a timely fashion. The key lies in reformulating our goals and objectives, sticking committedly to the newly spelt goals and working rigorously toward adoption of new technologies in every aspect of teaching and learning, lest developing countries shall ever remain backseaters while the countries who initiated early would be way ahead.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors wish to acknowledge the support and cooperation received from the management of the Society running the college, particularly Shri. Nandkumar Bendale, President, Khandesh College Education Society, Jalgaon for the encouragement and support in carrying out research activities and in the implementation of various innovative ideas in the college campus and causing positive changes to take effect.

REFERENCES Book Kotter, J., July 12, 2011. Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- What's the Difference?. Forbes online. Higher Education in India Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–2017) and beyond http://www.ey.com/IN/en/Industries/ Indiasectors/Education/Higher-Education-in-India--Twelfth-Five-Year-Plan--2012-2017--and-beyond. Government of India, 2011. Mission Document, National Mission On Education Through Information And Communication Technology, Ministry of Information and Technology, New Delhi. Policy Document, 2012. Inclusive And Qualitative Expansion Of Higher Education the 12 Five-Year Plan, 2012-17 University Grants Commission, New Delhi. Conference paper Kanchi, Vijay Srinath and Rao, Anil., 2012. Towards An Information Society: What Can Be Done To Face The Challenges?. IADIS international conference e-Society, 2012. Berlin, Germany, pp. 505-510.

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ENRICHING SOCIAL LEARNING THROUGH BIG DATA THEORY AND PRACTICE IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION Lee Schlenker EMLYON Business School 23 Avenue Guy de Collongue 69130 Ecully, France

ABSTRACT In spite of the increasing amount of data available on student motivations, behavior, and aptitudes, Big Data has had little impact on the quality of higher education. Building upon the foundations of both activity theory and social learning, the author builds a case for the use of user-generated content in improving management education. The work concludes with a demonstration of how we have applied these constructs to the AMATÉ™ platform in both corporate and business education. KEYWORDS Big Data, Little Data, Management Education, Social Learning, Learning Technologies

1. INTRODUCTION Nowhere are the opportunities and the challenges of leveraging user-generated content more apparent than management education. The widespread introduction of course management systems has offered educational institutions increasingly larger data sets of personal, social network and contextual information. [1] The development of interactive learning has produced increasing amounts of unstructured data through intelligent tutoring systems, simulations, and learning games. The recent introduction of mobile technologies has provided a viable platform for addressing Big Data - cloud based, mobile applications are location sensitive, mobile data captures managerial and consumer behavior. The predictable result provides a telling example of the "data deluge"; Locus estimates that the education sector has already accumulated 269 petabytes of data.[2] The concepts of Big and Little Data are inherently intertwined.. The two notions propose complementary visions of how to process the increasing amount of user-generated content being produced continuously through computers, mobile devices and connected objects. If analyzing Big Data can help organizations understand how groups of people interact - Little Data captures what we do as individuals and more importantly, what we know about ourselves. Managing user-generated content in higher education may be less a question of architectures and algorithms than an opportunity to redefine the meaning of learning. If exploiting massive sets of nonstructured data will soon be within the reach of organizations , individuals own Little Data. Big Data can help institutions recruit, manage, or teach better, whereas Little Data can improve both students and or instructor's ability to learn. In practice, the two constructs are interdependent, for the quality of Little Data will bring the value proposition of Big Data into focus. The potential impact of both constructs reside in theirs "relationality" in depicting individual motivations and group behavior.[4] The potential value of these concepts is thus in their serendipity; patterns can emerge in "complex contexts" of unstructured data where best practices "can’t be ferreted out".[5] Has the plethora of data actually improved the quality of higher education? On one hand, researchers are now examining a wide range of issues in the management sciences by using large-scale data sets to explore individual and organizational behavior, communication, and adoption patterns (Laurila et al., 2012). On the

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other, in spite of the near universal student use of the latest information technologies has had little impact on educational experiences and services (Livingston, 2009). If user-generated content is to play a role in enriching formal learning, we need to better gauge the challenges and potential advantages of Big Data for students, instructors and organizations. This "Reflection" paper explores the place of user-generated content in improving the impact of learning technologies in the field of management education. We will begin with a quick review of research on learning technologies to identify the key questions in unstructured data. We will then turn our attention to how pedagogy can bring the value proposition of Big (and Little) Data into focus. We will conclude with a discussion of our use of "social learning" in our current work with the AMATÉ™ platform as an interactive support for management education.

2. RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES If scholarly work on the use of learning technologies has not revolutionized the use of Big Data in education, it has contributed to our understanding of how IT can enhance pedagogical processes. A quick review of research over the last two decades draws our attention to how learning technologies have been used in higher education, how technology has helped shape formal education, and how they reflect deeper "realities" of the context in which we learn. Studies of learning technologies have traditionally focused more on the technology or use scenarios than on the data itself. Learning technologies are designed to support learning through the creation, deployment and management of appropriate technological processes and resources. Bates and Poole (2008) propose a classification of e-learning supports from simple use of technology aids in the classroom, to a course web sites and content management systems to fully online education. Kadrire (2009) suggests that mobile learning provides an extension of formal classroom that can take place anytime, anywhere with the help of a mobile device. Although this perspective on learning technologies brings to light the unique features and functions of these tools, it does not clarify how students to use learning technologies to filter, assimilate and aggregate their subjects of study. The major challenge here is understanding how information technologies influence what and how we learn. As many authors have argued, it is difficult to identify where formal education starts and ends. Walker (2006) points out that learning is essentially about learning perpetually and across contexts. Chan et al. (2006) suggest that the concept of seamless learning might be more appropriate to describe learning processes in which learners use information technology to navigate from context to another. These studies suggest, without necessarily demonstrating how, IT can help or hinder a student's understanding of the importance of context. Such an understanding is critical to management education in particular as students move from simple views of their environment based on transactional relationships to more complex perspectives of interactions based on patterns of collective behavior. Engestrom 's (1996) research has been predicated on the hypothesis that learning technologies have historically shaped the contours of education. First textbooks, then computers, and now mobile applications define the limits and possibilities of formal education. Learning technologies today, whether they be wiki's, blogs or MOOCs influence a student's retention, appropriation and application of targeted knowledge and skills. In this view, the current introduction of mobile phones in the classroom will inevitably influence learning design, objectives and outcomes. The value proposition of learning technologies is open to widespread debate,; as the discussion concerning the relationship between "deep reading" and "deep thinking" has demonstrated (Rajasingham, 2011). As has been suggested previously, the body of literature on learning technologies has evolved over the last two decades : a first generation of authors focused on learning in virtual environments, a second generation examined the impact of technology on pedagogical design, while the third generation explores the use of context-aware technology (Schlenker, 2013). In the last decade, the notion of "seamless learning" has gained in popularity; learning technologies are seen to function as interfaces between learners and their differing social environments (Wong, 2012). If the future of learning technologies is indeed tied to their ability to elucidate context, their success will depend on capturing the objectives, motivations, and actions that shape how learners interact with these environments.

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3. FOCUSING ON CONTEXT Can learning technologies help us learn about management? In universities and business schools, management education is designed to teach the fundamentals, theories and models of managing a business. Management programs deploy learning technologies in organizing activities involving content and direction to help students obtain a recognized level of achievement or performance. Students enroll in management education classes with slightly different objectives: they wish not only to develop their future career potential but also to strengthen the roles they play in their own organizations and industries. The ongoing challenges of management education include understanding how learning technologies can support knowledge and skill acquisition, how they can be adapted to the student's objectives and motivations, and what if anything constitutes best practice. Learning theorists have challenged early and frequently the very premises of e-learning. They have argued that business isn't as much formalizing strategy and models as it is about practice and agility. Moore (1997) has stressed the necessity of interactivity - his transactional distance theory is proposed as a higher form of self-action and inter-action. Naismith et al. (2004) argue that e-learning alone fosters instruction better than learning - understanding the challenges of learning through technology require methodologies based on behavioral , constructivist, situated or collaborative theories. Improving business performance isn't a result of acquiring generic knowledge or skills but of exploring the context in which individuals learn about their jobs, business and careers In this vein Kant and Gyorke (2008) underline the value of cultural historical activity theory, which suggests that artifacts like language, technology, and tools mediate the social aspects of human activity. In other words, management education is influenced by the relationship between personal objectives, actions, and outcomes. In the perspective of activity theory, context itself is defined by the technology, culture, and norms in which we learn about business. The introduction of new learning technologies can improve the context, either directly by facilitating actions and improving outcomes, or indirectly through organizational culture and institutional norms. Advocates of social learning, for their part, have stressed the importance of learning outside the classroom. Social learning suggests that most of what a student retains is acquired from observing others. Rather than the value of the content, it's the richness of the context that counts: students learn from one another through observation, imitation, and modeling. In providing a link between behavioral it's and cognitive learning theories, social learning suggests that the critical success factors for learning technologies are engaging the students, retaining their attention, motivating them to invest in the experience at hand, and encouraging the physical application or reproduction of targeted skills. These perspectives shed light on the pertinence of learning technologies in management education. Social learning is attempt to reflect on the conditions in which learning takes place, rather than a question of adding social media to the repertoire of learning technologies. The effectiveness of learning technologies depends less on storing content than capturing the context in which students learn. Context itself is a shell - learning not only occurs in a context, it creates context through the qualities of interactions between students and their professional environments (Sharples et al., 2007). In short, the impact of learning technologies isn't found in the applications themselves, but in how students, faculty and organizations use these technologies to engage with their professional communities. These perspectives also clarify the potential place of big data in learning about business. As the focus of business shifts from multiplying transactions to enriching interactions, data on the origins, context and outcomes of business practice becomes a fundamental field of study. In markets inundated with data and marketing messages, the student's ability to filter, interpret and aggregate data become a critical business skill. The added value of a professor of management isn't in relating best practices, but in exposing the subtle differences of individual and collective behaviors. Finally, the value of learning technologies isn't found in mimicking the class environment, but in illuminating the realities of business.

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4. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE User generated content can enhance management education by providing a bridge between formal education and the challenges of specific organizations and markets. Web-based technologies today provide management education with a looking glass through which students could study the realities of both individual behavior and organizational dynamics. Learning technologies can incorporate the principles of social learning to enrich the interactions between students and their environments. Geo-localization, usergenerated content, and inductive statistics suggest geographical and social relationships that can focus the attention of management training on the subtleties of human interaction. The AMATÉ ™ digital platform for management education has incorporated a number of design principles to leverage this data to bring both substance and structure to "social learning". The personalization of the learning agenda has been one of the cornerstones of our current projects for both corporate and university training programs. The platform challenges individual learners to develop their professional eportfolios using their profiles, motivations and objectives. Students are encouraged to enrich these profiles through their use, notes, and appreciations of the platform's content. The content itself is presented in the form of a personal library that is filtered and adapted to individual profiles. The platform has been designed around the premise that significant learning takes place outside of the formal classroom. Each student's personal library is available on- and off-line on his or her mobile devices. Each library is device and location independent; students can use any device on all major operating systems (IOS, Android, Windows, and Kindle). Students study, comment, evaluate and discuss the content in class, at work, or on the road whenever they have time for review. In providing the support for management education on the one "tool" that students have with them wherever they go, AMATÉ provides a learning experience perpetually and across contexts. The AMATÉ books themselves are designed to enrich the interactions between the students of management and the proposed content. The texts are written for digital readers using videos, infographics and texts. Students can "write" personal notes and appreciations within the book, and share them selectively with their peers, instructors, or managers. Interactive quizzes, games, and evaluations help the students apply the content to real life situations. Finally, each book can updated with briefs, new cases, or revisions in real time to encourage continuous engagement, and each update is automatically "pushed" onto each student's device. The AMATÉ framework takes into account that management education is grounded in the social, geographical and temporal context in which each student evolves. Each book integrates common synchronous and asynchronous communication tools (IM, email, social media, video-conferencing) to allow the students to reach out to their professional communities. Students and instructors have the ability not only to consult their own notes, but those of their colleagues in real time. These sources of Little Data are collected over time, both within in each book, and between books on similar themes. The aggregate data can both be shared with professional communities and studied to detect patterns of intentions and interactions in group behavior. We are rolling out the AMATÉ platform today is in corporate, training, and management education settings. The Microsoft Corp. uses an AMATÉ manual on Service Logistics to promote discussion and appropriation among the new employees of their regional operational centers. The AMATÉ book-app MUSE™, available in various digital stores, proposes to breach the gap between traditional corporate training and management education on the use of business technologies in the workplace. Finally, the bookapp Mobile Business explores how mobility can change corporate perceptions of innovation, productivity, and strategy. In applying these principles of infinite personalization, mobility, and user-generated content to management education, AMATÉ attempts to put social learning theory to practice. On the individual level, students can draw on the essence of Little Data - personal insight, experience, and suggestions to enrich and extend class discussions in real world situations. On the level of the faculty, instructors can use the resulting data sets drawn from actual student behavior to enhance the pedagogical process. On the institutional level, organizations can glean invaluable insight on how student and instructor interactions shape management education through their own review of aggregate sets of Big Data.

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REFERENCES Bates, A. and Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education, San Francisco: JosseyBass/John Wiley Bonchek, M. (2013), Little Data Makes Big Data More Powerful, HBR Blog Network, Consulted online at http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/05/little-data-makes-big-data-mor/ Boyd, D. and Crawford, K. (2011). Six Provocations for Big Data. A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011. Consulted online at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1926431 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1926431 Chan, T.-W. et al. (2006). One-to-one technology-enhanced learning: An opportunity for global research collaboration. Research and Practice in Technology-Enhanced Learning, 1(1), 3-29. Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R. & Punamäki, R-L. (1996). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kadirire, J. (2009). Mobile Learning DeMystified. In Guy, R. (Ed.), The Evolution of Mobile Teaching and Learning. Santa Rosa, California: Informing Science Press Kang, H. & Gyorke, A. S. (2008) Rethinking distance learning activities: a comparison of transactional distance theory and activity theory. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning,23(3). Laurila, J.K. et al., (2012), The Mobile Data Challenge: Big Data for Mobile Computing Research, in Proc. Mobile Data Challenge Workshop , June 2012, consulted online at http://www.idiap.ch/~gatica/publications/LaurilaGaticaEtal-mdc12.pdf Livingston, A.K.(2009), The Revolution No One Noticed: Mobile Phones and Multimobile Services in Higher Education, Educase Review Online, consulted on 14/12/2012 Locus, J. (2012), Big Data in Education, Horton Works, consulted online at http://hortonworks.com/blog/big-data-ineducation-part-2-of-2/01/2012 Manovich L. (2012), Debates in the Digital Humanities.The University of Minnesota Press, 2012, consulted online at http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2011/04/new-article-by-lev-manovich-trending.html. Moore, M. (1997), "Theory of transactional distance." Keegan, D., ed. Theoretical Principles of Distance Education, Routledge, pp. 22-38 Naismith, L. et al. (2004), ‘Mobile technologies and learning’, Futurelab Literature Review Series, Report No 11; Romero, C., Ventura, S., & García, E. (2008). Data mining in course management systems: Moodle case study and tutorial. Computers & Education,51(1), 368H384. Snowden, D. and Boone, M. , (2007) Leader's Framework for Decision Making, Harvard Business Review , Nov 01, 2007 Walker, K. (2006). Introduction: Mapping the landscape of mobile learning. In M. Sharples (Ed.), Big issues in mobile learning: Report of a workshop by the kaleidoscope network of excellence mobile learning initiative. University of Nottingham. Rajasingham, L. (2011). New Challenges Facing Universities in the Internet-Driven Global Environment, European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, consulded online on 14/12/2012 Schlenker, L. (2013). Mobile Pedagogy, IADIS 2013 (Lisbon), 14/03/2013 Sharples, M., Taylor, J., & Vavoula, G. (2007) A Theory of Learning for the Mobile Age. In R. Andrews and C. Haythornthwaite (eds.)The Sage Handbook of Elearning Research, 221-247. Wong, L.-H. (2012). A learner-centric view of mobile seamless learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(1), E19-E23

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A STUDY ON THE SOLUTION THE DIGITAL DIVIDE OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN KOREA W. H. Na , J.M.Kim, I.K.Lee and S.Y.Lee D. University, Korea H. Inc., Daegu, Korea

ABSTRACT The main objectives for this paper are to introduce action plans for bridging the digital divide in Korea. In this research, the following seven goals were suggested as action plans to eliminate the digital divide: (1) improve the public perception toward persons with disabilities and their lack of accessibility to the information society; (2) provide opportunities for education to all people with disabilities who wish to learn information technology; (3) expand social participation to information sources; (4) establish a universal design of environment, services and products for information services; (5) secure accessibility to the mass media for people with hearing or visual impairment, (6) the improvement of laws and regulations to narrow the digital divide, and (7) Launch preemptive response on mobile based new digital gap and the expansion of Digital inclusion policy for overall population KEYWORDS Digital Divide, Social Integration, IT, Disabilities

1. INTRODUCTION Consequently, a universal design in an information society plays an important role to guarantee opportunity and comfort in peoples’ lives, and the advanced nations in the field of information and high technologies already enact and enforce the guiding principles (such as rules, executive orders and laws). In addition, a lot of accessible devices for information service are invented and used in those nations. The Republic of Korea enacted a law for relieving the digital divide in December 2000. This law defines the basic human rights in an information society and plans the balanced promotion of the development of information field and technologies by guarantying the undifferentiated use of information and network service and regulating the supports of information service for people with disabilities and the elderly. Thus, the main objectives of this paper are to introduce and implement plans for bridging the digital divide in Korea.

2. DISABILITY STATISTIC AND IT USAGE The total population of people with disabilities was estimated to be 2,519,241 in 2012, which means that the ratio of people with disabilities to the nation's total population was 5.0%. The results of the survey found that those with physical disabilities accounted for the highest percentage of the population of people with disabilities (1,333,429 people, 52.9%), followed by those with Hearing Impairment, Visual Impairment, Brain Lesions and Intellectual Disability. Lately, the population of people with disabilities is on the increase due to growth in the general population, the rising incidents of traffic accidents, and changes in the concept of people with disabilities. 48.4% of the nation's total people with disabilities is 60 years of age or older. Also, the definition of a people with disabilities includes those who suffer some types of mental illness or other internal disorders such as kidney failure, heart failure, etc. The usage level of information technology by the 4 minority groups on average is 74.0%. The Level of Information Accessibility is 93.4% of the general population while the levels of Empowerment and Usage are 56.1% and 59.9%. Informationization Level of people with disability from minority groups is 83.4. The Informationization Level in terms of types of

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disability are physically disability (87.0%), auditory/ language disorder (79.8%), visual impairment and Cerebral palsy (70.6%). Cerebral palsy shows the lowest information level compare to other disabilities. The average of minority groups is 46.8%, an increase of 1.2% over the previous year, the gap between the general population is 31.7%, decreased 1.0%p than previous year. Rate of Internet Usage by people with disability from minority groups is 55.5%, a 1.1% increase compared to the previous year. The average of Computer Ownership Rate in minority groups is 68.7%. Computer Ownership Rate of people with disabilities from minority groups is 73.0%, an increase of 1.1% than previous year. Intelligence Production Active Ratio of minority groups shows 20.5%p lower than general population (43.9%). Sharing Information Active Ratio’ is 23.6% shows 19.4%p lower than general population (43.0%). Sharing Information Activity Ratio of people with disability from minority groups is 23.2%. Usage Ratio of Social Network Service (SNS)’ of people with disability from minority groups shows 27.2%. 'Online Community Ratio is 14.4%, it showed 13.5%p lower than general population (27.9%). Online Community Ratio of people with disability from minority groups showed 16.6%. Online Social Participation Activity Rate of minority group is 14.4%, shows 13.1% lower than general population (27.5%). Online Social Participation Rate of people with disabilities from minority groups is 16.6 Online Network Formation Rate in minority groups is 36.5%, which is 21.6% lower than general population (58.1%). People with disabilities in minority group shows 43.6% on Online Network Formation Rate. Mobile Informatization Level of minority group is 27.8% of general population which is significantly lower than PC-based existing Information Usage Level (74.0%). Mobile Informatization Level of People with disabilities from minority groups showing 30.2%. Smart phone Retention Rate of general population is 61.5% and the rate of people with disabilities is 23.1%.

3. LAWS AND POLICIES FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES In March 1999, the Korean Government implemented the “Cyber Korea 21”, a master plan for achieving an information society. The Framework Act on Information-oriented Promotion was revised in December 24, 1998, based on these series of efforts. More specified government initiatives were expected from 1999. The Electric Telecommunication Business Act, amended in September 1998, has detailed provisions about "universal service policy." In addition, The Digital Divide Law was enacted on December 12, 2000. Under this law, a Special Committee for Bridging the Digital Divide should be established to prepare a national plan for ending the digital divide through a joint effort from every sector. Discrimination Act enacted in 2007 prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities regardless of the nature of their disability be it physical or mental.

4. ACTION PLAN FOR BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE In 2003, Korea adapted the action plan for bridging the digital divide. In this initiative, the following goals were suggested as an action plan to deal with the digital divide. (1)Improving the public perception of persons with disabilities. (2)To provide opportunities for education to all persons with disabilities who wish to learn information technology. (3)Expanding of information accessibility in the information society (4)Security of accessibility to the mass media of people with hearing and visual impairment (5)Improvement of laws and regulation to digital divide (6)Launch preemptive response on mobile based new digital gap and the expansion of Digital inclusion policy for overall population

REFERENCES Chung, Y. K. (2002). Korean IT Policy for people with Disabilities. APEC International IT Conference. KSRPD. Information Culture Center of Korea. (2012). IT Usage of People with Disabilities in Korea. ICC. Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. (2012). Survey on the Current Status of the Disabled. KIHSA Na, W.H. (1998). Welfare Information System, Seoul: Hong Ik Jae. Na, W. H. (2003). Total Rehabilitation Theory. Seoul; Hong Ik Jae Press. Na, W.H., et al. (1997). Information Based Society and Persons with Disabilities, Korean Information Culture Centre. Office of the Prime Minister. (2013). Second a five Year Plan for Disabled Welfare.

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EXPERT SYSTEM FOR NUTRITION EDUCATION COMBINING POINTS SYSTEM DIET AND FOOD GUIDE PYRAMID Hilcéa Santos Ferreira, Robson de Souza Resende, Tiago Ungaro Bardella and Nizam Omar Mackenzie Presbyterian University Rua Piauí 143, Consolação, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

ABSTRACT One of the health topics most discussed in the last years relates to obesity and overweight which are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. Experts agree that all risk factors involved with obesity (heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes etc.) can be improved by a reduction in weight. Most of the diets work for a period of time but have no mechanisms for teaching the patients how to keep the new weight. This paper presents a Ruled-Based Expert System developed to help individuals that need to lose weight, which combines the Points System Diet and the USDA MyPyramid. A nutrition education approach is implemented aiming to reach a balance of food intake linked with healthy choices. An ongoing development of a prototype expert system used for nutrition education by combining the Points System Diet and the USDA MyPyramid is presented. KEYWORDS Health, nutrition education, points system diet, food guide pyramid, expert system.

1. INTRODUCTION The World Health Organization (WHO), created in 1948, is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system, responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends. One of the health topics most discussed in the past years relates to obesity and overweight which are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health. The numbers are astonishing: overweight and obesity are the fifth leading risk for global deaths and at least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. In addition, 44% of the diabetes burden, 23% of the ischemic heart disease burden and between 7% and 41% of certain cancer burdens are attributable to overweight and obesity. (WHO, 2013). On its annual meeting in June 2013, the American Medical Society (AMA) officially recognized obesity as a disease. This has broken the paradigm of obesity being a consequence of a chosen lifestyle exemplified by overeating and/or inactivity, and help changing the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that needs treatment. The experts agree that all risk factors involved with obesity (heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes etc.) can be improved by a reduction in weight. Weight reduction has been shown to improve glycemic control and cardiovascular risk factors associated with insulin resistance in obese individuals with type 2 diabetes (Halpern and Mancini, 2005). The weight loss market has been growing fast, and every day there is a new diet on the media, usually a miracle one. Most of them do not take into account a balanced and healthy diet. Furthermore, there is no use in losing weight without learning to keep the new weight. The Brazilian endocrinologist Alfredo Halpern has proposed a diet based on points (Points System Diet), instead of calories, whose premise is that the individual could eat everything but noting the need to control the number of points eaten in a day and not exceeding an amount previously calculated according to individual´s weight, age, sex and physical activity. According to Halpern (2013), in a traditional diet, the individual that decides to eat a cheeseburger one day, breaking the

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rules, thinks he had blown it and gives up the diet. In the Points System Diet (PSD), there are no forbidden dishes, since on the next day the person compensates the “extravagance” by ingesting fewer points. The advantages of the PSD are the practicality and convenience, since the person can eat anything, provided he does not exceed the limit of points. In addition, the table of points is easier to use than memorizing the number of calories of each food. Another factor that can be positive is that as the individuals have the freedom to eat what they like provided they do not exceed the limit of points, they are more likely not to abandon their diet. On the other hand, the food freedom of choice can make the PSD harmful to health, since it goes against what is meant by a balanced diet, in which foods should be distributed proportionally between carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, protein and fats. On the medium and long terms, depriving the body of essential nutrients to its perfect functioning can cause a number of diseases, such as osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension, for example. In 1992, trying to find links between diet and health, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced the Food Guide Pyramid, recommending the intakes for each food group: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat & beans and oil (USDA, 1992). In 2005 this pyramid was replaced by MyPyramid which takes into account nutrient-rich foods recommended for daily consumption, and offers a personalized approach to healthy eating and physical activity. A reminder of the importance of daily physical is represented by a person climbing steps and the colored bands identify the food groups. (USDA, 2005). Therefore it is very important that the individual tries to vary the menu by not eating only thinking of scoring. It is essential to check and distribute the points between healthy foods so there is no lack of important nutrients in the future. A possible solution could be the combination of the principles: the Points System Diet and the USDA MyPyramid. The use of digital technologies (mobile devices, photos, images, etc.) and Artificial Intelligence can substantially collaborate with stakeholders (patients and physicians) in this matter. In artificial intelligence, expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in conventional programming (Russell and Norvig, 2004). Expert systems are designed to solve a variety of complex problems by reasoning about knowledge by emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. They can support many areas including medicine, engineering, and geology, among others. Albarrán (2005) describes how these kinds of systems can be used to support diabetes treatment, that can be used remotely (Internet) including a strong Educational component. In this context, the objective of this paper is to present an Expert System developed to help individuals that need to lose weight, by combining the Points System Diet and the USDA MyPyramid. By controlling the consumption of points along the day, it would be possible to reach a balance of food intake combined with healthy choices. Therefore, the system proposed has also a nutrition education approach, allowing the individual flexibility of choices but, at the same time, leading to a better long time change in eating habits and behavior. Thereby, the methodology applied is presented and some considerations for further developments are discussed.

2. METHODOLOGY 2.1 Initial Considerations Firstly, an heuristic was developed to map the sum of points that the individual could ingest during the day based on the eight different categories considered in the USDA MyPyramid: carbohydrates, meat, fruits, legumes, vegetables, milk, sweets and oils. This way, it was possible to reach a limit of points in each category, reaching the objective of following the PSD combined with the pyramid, allowing more flexibility. For the purposes of the system, the calculation of total points per day was based on a healthy individual, nearly sedentary, and considered an average between 400 and 500 points per day. It is worth mentioning that this value can be greater or smaller, depending, for instance, on individual´s height and weight.

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Each category was considered individually and its respective items were mapped, taking into account an average of points in each of them. Since the items included in the vegetable category usually low in terms of points and for some items the consumption is free, they were not included in this mapping. Table 1 shows the results of this calculation based on the heuristic. Notice that the sum of total points is 450, which is an average between 400-500 maximum per day: Table 1. Maximum points allowed per day per category Food Category Carbohydrates

Maximum of points allowed per day 125

Meats

60

Milk

65

Legumes

50

Fruits

50

Sweets

70

Oil

30

2.2 System Development A prototype system was developed after mapping the allowed points in each category aiming at helping the individual, based on the items consumed until that moment during the day, to choose the next items, giving hints and advices on the overall concept of a healthy paradigm. The Microsoft C# object-oriented (classbased) programming language was used to develop the application. The system can be used at any moment during the day, preferably after the main meals so the individual is able to control and decide what he is going to eat in the remaining of the day. The user interface provides boxes where the user can choose, in each category, what was consumed and then press “Add/Verify”. After the user chooses all items and presses the button, the system uses an inference engine, based on IF/THEN commands, to generate a report which provides the number of points that can be consumed on the rest of the day, as well as, advices on how to “spend” this in a healthy way. There are eight classes defined in the inference system, representing each food category. When the user runs the software, an object is created for each class, with a consumption limit associated with it, which decrements its value according to the users´ choices. Figure 2 shows the Carbohydrates class with the maximum value instanced by the integer variable “limite_carboidrato”, which receives the value of 125 points.

Figure 2. Example of carbohydrates class, with the maximum limit per day indicated in the red circle

In the system code, food items are distributed in classes that represent food categories. Each object of these classes has a decrementing function that is responsible for checking which items have been selected by the user and subtracting the available points in the category. The objects have a variable that represents the maximum limit of points to be consumed. Figure 3 shows the decrementing function for the Carbohydrates category, where it can be noticed the sentences “if, then” aiming at verifying which food categories were chosen by the user and decrementing the total points from the maximum consumption allowed daily.

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Figure 3. System inference showing how to decrement the maximum limit value allowed to carbohydrates category

Each class has its own inference system, i.e., each object is responsible for decrementing the maximum allowed value per day according to its category, using the function “public void decrementa(String alimento)”, where “alimento” is the string which contains the item consumed and selected by the user in the system. Finally, the system verifies the maximum value left in each object and generates a didactical report.

3. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK The objective of this paper was to present an ongoing development of a prototype expert system used for nutrition education by combining the Points System Diet and the USDA MyPyramid. However the system was not tested yet with the real potential users. Furthermore, the system can be improved by feeding the database with more food items and inserting new inference mechanisms that make available more choices for the individuals. Other adaptations of the system might include individuals with food restrictions or diseases, for instance, diabetes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors thank the Mack Pesquisa and CAPES for their support for this research.

REFERENCES Albarrán, J.A.N. 2005. Sistema Experto em Diabetes. Revista Alternativa, No 5, pp 1-10. Corrêa, A.F. et al. 2012. Avaliação Da Eficácia Da Dieta Dos Pontos E Do Guia Da Pirâmide Alimentar Americana Em Mulheres Com Excesso De Peso. Vitalis Revista Eletrônica, CEUNSP, Vol. I, n I. Halpern, A., and Mancini M.C. 2005. Diabesity Treatments in endocrinology. Vol 4, No 2, pp 65-74. Halpern, A. 2013. Emagreça e Saiba Como. Editora Best Seller. Russel S.J. and Norvig P. 2004. Inteligência artificial. Editora Campus, Brasil. USDA. Official MyPyramidSite. 2005. Available at: . USDA. Food Pyramid. 1992. Available at: < http://www.everydiet.org/diet/food-pyramid-old>. Varella, Drauzio. Obesidade. Available at: http://drauziovarella.com.br/obesidade/obesidade/ WHO, World Health Organization, Obesity and overweight. Fact sheet N°311, March 2013. Available at .

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DEVELOPMENT OF E-LEARNING AND U-LEARNING-BASED COMPUTER VOCATIONAL EDUCATIONAL COURSE FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED PERSON Song, Byung-Seop*, Rhee, Kum-Min * and Kim, Dong-Ok** *Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Science & Technology, Daegu University, Republic of Korea **Doctoral Student, Department of Rehabilitation Science & Technology, Daegu University, Republic of Korea

ABSTRACT In this study, IT(Information Technology) education contents have been developed based on the u-Learning approach for people with hearing impairment, focusing on allowing the user to learn from anywhere and anytime. Specifically, this study applies HTML5 to implementing IT contents(Andriod Application developmental education) for the hearing-impaired person because HTML5 enables the learner to access the contents through both web and mobile device on various platforms including android, Mac OS, and PC etc. Also, the online computer courses are mostly supposed to be compatible with diverse types of mobile devices. However, some of the contents could not be run on applications residing in web and mobile devices because the contents tend to be developed using Flash. HTML5 is the effective way to overcome the compatibility problem. KEYWORDS e-Learning, u-Learning, deaf, hearing impairment, computer, on-line education.

1. INTRODUCTION Hearing-impaired person has huge difficulties in adopting himself/herself to the society due to lack of linguistic concept formation, and as for the educational support for improving this problem, online education may be the optimal educational solution [1]. However, although there are many of online educational courses of computer education and cyber-university educational courses developed for non-disabled people, there are restraints in online computer educational course and access method for hearing-impaired-person. Also, although there are online computer courses for hearing-impaired-person in the U.S., there are sign language videos offered[2] The reason is thought to be due to the sign expression methods about specialized terminologies of advanced educational course of computers for making the hearing-impaired learner to understand the computer program. When considering the differences of learning methods and the distinct elements of e-Learning and u-learning in Lee, Sang-Hee’s research, unlike the e-Learning that is based on networks among computers, as for u-Learning, it is explained as the learning concept that can be obtained and also it is possible to recognize the situation information of learners but also the information between the learners and the objects on real time, through various sensors, chips, tags, and labels built-in terminals and objects based on the network among cordless portable devices, and it is also explained as the learning concepts that can be obtained[3]. As the tablet PC-base that is not web-based but have convenient portability, get prevailed, since it can be expected that system will be more effectively constructed from e-Learning to u-Learning, it is necessary to maximize the educational possibility through e-Learning and u-Learning that enable the repeated learning (exercise) by using various visual tools and sign languages considering the traits of the hearing-impaired person. Antinoro Pizzuto and others (2010) emphasized that incorporated support is necessary in multi-language (sign language, speech, and written answer) used by the hearing-impaired person at the same time as most of hearing-impaired person have difficulties and reading and writing ability when e-Learning environmental program is offered for hearing impaired person[4], and Lee, Man-Woo(2007) emphasized it is

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necessary to design the e-Learning system for e-Learning user interface design for hearing-impaired person[5]. Now is the period in which u-Learning computer vocational education course development is necessary for the necessity of securing the access of computer education as well as effective incorporated education for these hearing-impaired-people. The purpose of this research is as follows. Firstly, a 15-week course of a smart-app development education is developed based on e-learning and u-learning for the hearing-impaired person. Secondly, it is HTML 5-based which allows it to be compatible in web and every mobile OS environment. Thirdly, it is developed to provide user interfaces including: video lessons; adjustment of size and color of subtitles; sign language videos; dictionary for IT-terms; and IT-term search ability as to provide convenience to the hearing-impaired person.

2. BODY OF PAPER As per Table 1, the lessons are composed of educational courses for weeks 1 through15, where each week’s course takes one hour and includes quizzes. Table 1. Contents Composition

15 week course

강의구성(contents composition)

1 week

자바(java)

2~3 week

연산자(operator), 조건문(conditional)

4 week

배열(array), 객체지향언어(object-oriented language), 클래스(class) 변수(variable)와 매서드(method), 매서드 오버로딩(method overloading),

5 week

생성자(constructor) 상속(Inheritance), 오버라이딩(overriding), package와 import, 제어자

6~8 week

(modifier), 다형성(polymorphism), 추상클래스(abstract class), 인터페이스 (interface)

9 week

예외처리(exception handing), 에러(error)

10 week

graphical user interface, 안드로이드

11 week

프로그래밍(android

programing),

development), 개발툴 설치(tool installation)

12 week

옵션설정(setting option), 실습(practice)

13주~15 week

레이아웃(layout), 실습(practice)

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Figures 1. U-learning-based Computer Vocational Educational Course for the hearing-impaired person

The purpose of this study is to research the actual condition of on-line and off-line computer education in order to create more opportunities for the possibility of effective learning and u-Learning - based IT vocational education development of persons with hearing impairments. The following layout classification as in Figure 1 was intended to prevent confusion of the hearing-impaired.

The sign language video and the studying material are separately displayed in left and right sides, and the video lessons are allocated at the lower part of the studying material so that it does not overlap with the sign language video. Also, it was made to allow for automatic changes in size to fit the resolution set for each device. The motivation event function is underlined the salient point of contents. There are four buttons on the right-hand side of the lesson videos, where two of them allow to change the color and the size of the subtitles and the other two allow for IT-term sign language dictionary and IT-term searches for students who do not know the jargons that come up during the lessons. A HTML5 video tag-based video player is realized, and video contents can be played on a multi-browser through this. Also, a full-screen function is provided to allow lesson videos and study materials can be viewed in full-screen modes. Moodle provides various functions as a student management system. In ‘simple survey’, the administrator can practice simple surveys to the students. When students are given assignments from lessons, they can submit their assignments on the submission board, and also can talk to other students through the discussion board. For the IT-term search function, it is related to Wikipedia through the Internet, while an IT-term sign language is also provided to the hearing-impaired which can be found on the option menus on the lesson page.

3. CONCLUSION As online education courses subjected to the general public IT lessons provided at normal computer-training institutions or cyber universities do not have sign language videos nor subtitles, they are not appropriate for the hearing-impaired to study. There is an absurdly little number of IT education courses for the hearing-impaired provided by BAEUMNARA, and they are not compatible to mobile apps either. While recently there are more IT lessons that can be studied using mobile-apps made by Samsung Electronics, SK Telecom, Gyowon and Sigong Media, these are also subjected to the non-disabled people and do not support subtitles nor sign language videos. However, in the latter case, the future work regarding design guidelines needs to be conducted to improve the educational accessibility depending on the level of impairment.

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REFERENCES [1] Kim, Dong-Il. Lee, Hae-Jeong. Son, Ji-Young. 2005. “ Practical Solutions for Establishing Blended e-Learning System to Improve the Quality of University Education”. Asian journal of education. Vol. 6, No. 4. pp 97-123. [2] www.computer-training-sftware.com [3] Lee, Dong-Man. Lee, Sang-Hee. 2009. “The Effects of Ubiquitous Attributes of the u-Learning on Learner's Interactivity and Learning Performance”. Journal of Business Research. Vol.24 No.1. pp. 33-68. [4] Lee, Man-Woo. 2007. “the Design and Implementation of Efficient e-Learning System for the Deaf People”. Joongbu Unversity Doctoral Thesis. [5] Antinoro Pizzuto, E. et. al. 2010. "Language Resources and Visual Communication in a Deaf-Centered Multimodal E-Learning Environment: Issues to be Addressed". Proc. of 7-th Int. Conf. on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010). [6] 배움나라 사이트 www.estudy.or.kr

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SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES: BASED ON WEB SERVICE J. S. Park, Y. R. Kang, E. Y. Choi, M. Kong, I. K. Lee and W. H. Na D. University, Korea H. Inc., Daegu, Korea

ABSTRACT The purpose of this preventive program was to enhance the knowledge and attitude about the sexual abuse of children with developmental disabilities in practical and adaptive ways. For this purpose, behavior modification method and feedback stimulus system were included in the program. Through these mechanisms, the basic skills for expressing the sexual decision making and coping skills for various situations concerned with sexual harassment could be learned. KEYWORDS Sexual abuse, Children with developmental disabilities, Web Service

1. INTRODUCTION Over the past decades, sexual abuse involving young and vulnerable people has emerged as an issue of major social significance. There is little information about the extent and character of these problems, and our failure to appreciate the widespread nature of sexual abuse until recently means that empirical evidence is limited and that we only have a tentative understanding of its patterns in the general population. Estimates are subject to a lack of disclosure, under-reporting and variation in the definitions used by researchers (Glasgow et al. 1994; Vizard et al. 1995). These difficulties are even greater in the field of intellectual disability where even less is known (Balogh, Bretherton, Whibley, Berney, Graham, Richold, & Firth, (2001). It is only in the very recent past, when we as a society have begun to acknowledge, openly discuss, and provide intervention for sexually abused children, that our collective eyes have been opened to abuse of special populations. We seem to be continually discovering, acknowledging, and acting against forms of abuse hitherto covert. As difficult as it is to face these problems directly, we are also finally able to reduce if not eliminate abuses that have been ongoing over time. A historical review will reveal countless acts of abuse, in many forms, that have been ignored through the ages. Today, large strides have been made toward respecting the rights of the individual person, and the protection of special classes. Perhaps now we can say that abuse prevention has finally come of age(Baladerian, 1991). A few researchers and practitioners have challenged the importance of intelligence as the primary determinant of suitability for therapy by adapting therapeutic techniques and using more relevant indicators of ability to participate in therapy (Monfils & Menolascino, 1984; Szymanski & Rosefsky, 1980). Using appropriate indicators such as a client's level of development, ability to form relationships and social adaptability may help practitioners in terms of choosing appropriate therapeutic techniques for clients (Rubin, 1983; Mansell, Sobsey, & Calder, 1992). In Korea, there are seldom preventive program dealing with the sexual abuse for children with developmental disabilities. Also it is hard to find the objective and systematic program that considered the characteristics of children with developmental disabilities. Therefore, the tools that easily utilize by expert as well as beginners in hospital, school, home or rehabilitation facility were needed. Thus, this program considered the characteristics of children with developmental disabilities and actual circumstances of Korea. This program was designed based on web service, so anybody could conduct the sexual abuse prevention session regardless the time or place in Internet Web Service.

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2. CHARACTERISTICS What makes this group so vulnerable? What is behind these troubling statistics? The very nature of the life environment of a person with a developmental disability contributes to their vulnerability. Most people with developmental disabilities live a more "protected" life than do their non-disabled peers. However overprotection might cause vulnerability and high risk for abuse. The following rather common "by-products" of living in an extremely protected environment may increase a person's vulnerability to sexual abuse and exploitation (Muccigrosso, 1991): First, ignorance/lack of knowledge. Not knowing what abuse is: how can one stop abuse if one doesn't understand that it's happening to them? Second, over-compliance. Socialized Vulnerability. Complete dependence on caretakers for much of daily living doesn't support the development of independence skills. It is often easier for the caretaker to do for the individual rather than to teach how to take care of the task. When decisions are always made for you, you don't develop a basis for using sound judgment, and you miss out on the practice necessary for learning how to make important decisions for your -self about who to spend time with, how to handle certain situations, etc. Third, unrealistic view that everyone is your friend. Protection from outside world influences may contribute to the development of a very trusting nature about everyone and everything (this is not safe.) Forth, limited/restricted social opportunities, making the likelihood of developing real friendship and intimacy quite slim. The resulting sense of social deprivation may lead an individual to accept professed affection/attention from people who are not really friends, people who do not mean well, and who may" exploit. Fifth, low self esteem. This is common to many people with developmental disabilities. Clemes and Bean's theory of self esteem suggests there are four essential components to the development of high self esteem: connectedness, uniqueness, models and power. Many people with developmental disabilities have no sense of power over their lives. People who develop little sense of personal power--little ability to control their environment in anyway--are major targets for becoming victims of sexual abuse, as they are used to having others run their lives. Sixth, limited/no assertiveness/refusal skills development. It's easier to have a super-cooperative son/daughter/student. Assertiveness is not often reinforced. Not having practice of: when it's advisable to say NO (even to adult caretakers) increases vulnerability. When it's never OK to say No to an adult, one learns to stop trying, again increasing vulnerability. Considering these characteristics, this program include following factors:       

Constructed based on actual case Practical and detail coping skills according to situations Repeated performance and immediate feedback system Characters and animations for enhancing concentration Providing both workbook and On-line service Subscription for children with hearing impairments Low difficulties for children with developmental disabilities

3. CONTENTS This program include two areas of situations which is the allurement-situation construction and preventing sexual harassment. The allurement-situation construction is consisted with (a) The stranger who asked about direction for somewhere, (b) The guard who asked to follow, (c) The clerk in the town who asked to come in, (d) The stranger who gave a gift, (e) The stranger who pretended as a cop. The allurement-situation construction is consisted with (a) when someone tried to touch one’s body, (b) when friends tried to touch inappropriately, (c) when the teacher tried to touch inappropriately, (d) when the family tried to touch inappropriately, (e) informing the risk of sexual harassment to others.

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Figure 1. Concept of E-Learning Content

The concept of E-Learning Content is as . The client could assess to online web-service whenever they had computer and internet service. The program provides immediate feedback such as alarm and visual stimulation to client. Also the program records and the score of the session could be saved and managed by the server manager.

4. CONCLUSION These days, sexual abuse rises as a social issues, and the frequencies of sexual offending is increasing. Especially, people with disabilities could be the target of these kind of criminal act. Surely, the prior issue is construction of social protection system, but it is also important to learn how they act in the risky situation. This program dealt the situations that could be face in ordinary life. Sometimes it could be danger and sometimes not. The children could learn the skills with concrete process to minimize the risk of sexual abuse. This program allows many people could teach their children, students, or client with developmental disabilities to cope with the risky situation. Through further study, we expect the effects of intervention for preventing sexual abuse could be examined.

REFERENCES Baladerian, N. J. (1991). Sexual abuse of people with developmental disabilities. Sexuality and Disability, 9(4), 323-335. Balogh, R., Bretherton, K., Whibley, S., Berney, T., Graham, S., Richold, P., ... & Firth, H. (2001). Sexual abuse in children and adolescents with intellectual disability. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 45(3), 194-201 Glasgow D., Horne L., Calam R. & Cox A. (1994) Evidence, incidence and age in sexual abuse of children perpetrated by children. Child Abuse Review , 3, 196-210. Mansell, S., Sobsey, D., & Calder, P. (1992). Sexual abuse treatment for persons with developmental disabilities. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 23(5), 404. Monfils, M. & Menolascino, F. J. (1984). Modified individual and group treatment approaches for the mentally etardedmentally ill. In F. J. Menolascino & J. A. Stark (Eds.), Handbook of mental illness in the mentally retarded (pp. 155169). New York: Plenum Press. Muccigrosso, L. (1991). Sexual abuse prevention strategies and programs for persons with developmental disabilities. Sexuality and Disability, 9(3), 261-271. Rubin, R. L. (1983). Bridging the gap through individual counseling and psychotherapy with mentally retarded people. In F. J. Menolascino & B. M. McCann (Eds.), Mental health and mental retardation: Bridging the gap (pp. 119-128). Baltimore: University Park Press. Szymanski, L. S. & Rosefsky, Q. B. (1980). Group psychotherapy with retarded persons. Un L. S. Szymanski & P. E. Tanguay (Eds.), Emotional disorders of mentally retarded persons: Assessments, treatment and consultation (pp. 173-194). Baltimore: University Park Press. Vizard E., Monck E. & Misch P. (1995) Child and adolescent sex abuse perpetrators: a review of the research literature. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36, 731-756.

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AN INVESTIGATION OF JAPANESE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ONLINE PRIVACY CONCERNS ABOUT SMARTPHONE USAGE Yukiko Maruyama Tokai University Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan

ABSTRACT This paper describes the results of a preliminary investigation into Japanese university students’ online privacy concerns regarding smartphone usage. Students who use social networking sites (SNSs) answered an online questionnaire about their online privacy concerns. The results provided some insights for educators. KEYWORDS Social networking sites, university, students, online privacy, smartphone

1. INTRODUCTION Social media sites, including social networking sites (SNSs), Twitter, blogs, video-sharing sites, and buzz marketing sites, are vehicles for the sharing of various types of user-created content on the Internet, and they have infiltrated our daily lives; the diffusion of SNSs in particular has been remarkable. The infiltration of social media sites into our daily life has attracted the attention of many researchers, as it provides new research opportunities in areas such as the motivation to use SNSs and impression management and friendship performance. One important research topic is online privacy, and from another perspective, information disclosure. As social media sites further permeate our lives, the amount of user-created content (blog posts, photos, videos, etc.) on the Internet is increasing. This content often includes information related to users’ daily lives. Exposing one’s personal information on the Internet leads to an increased risk of involvement in various kinds of trouble, both online and offline. Moreover, rapid diffusion of smartphones allows for easy and casual access to SNSs and accelerates the rise of SNS users. In conjunction, the risks related to online privacy increase correspondingly. When accessing SNSs with a smartphone, the user’s information (for example, geographical data generated by the global positioning system [GPS] where users access the SNS) is provided without the user’s awareness. It is necessary for SNS users to be more cautious when accessing SNSs using a smartphone instead of a PC. Though their efforts are often not sufficient, they can be improved by education. This study aims to gain insight into university students’ online privacy concerns with regard to devices and subsequently design educational programs that help students address these concerns.

2. BACKGROUND The associations between online privacy and other factors have been investigated by researchers. For instance, Stutzman (2006) asserted that, compared with traditional methods of personal information disclosure such as campus directories, social networking communities foster more subjective and holistic disclosure of identity. Through comparative analysis of students’ use of SNSs and their feelings about the disclosure of identity information, Stutzman demonstrated that further analysis is warranted on the value and jeopardy of identity information in a social networking community. Fogel and Nehmad (2009) studied risk

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taking, trust, and privacy concerns regarding SNSs among 205 university students in the United States. The results revealed that general privacy concerns and concerns about identity information disclosure were more for women than to men. Meanwhile, there is still little research evaluating the associations between smartphones and online privacy. Kisekka et al. (2013) investigated how smartphone usage affects the extent of private information disclosure. The results showed that those who use a smartphone to access Facebook were less likely to reveal private information compared to those who do not use a smartphone to access Facebook. As the authors pointed out, this result provides a basis for both researchers and designers/developers to address the usability of security and privacy features on SNSs. However, it is necessary to investigate additional factors associated with online privacy behavior with regard to smartphone usage. In this paper, the differences in online privacy concerns pertaining to the extent of smartphone usage is examined.

3. INVESTIGATION A total of 343 university students in Japan answered the questionnaire administered for the current study; all were enrolled in a computer class for beginners. The students ranged in age from 18 to 26, the average age being 20.1 (age data were missing for seven students). There were 261 male students (77.2% of the total) and 77 female students (22.8% of the total) (gender data were missing for five students). In October 2012, students were invited to participate in the study, after being provided information about the aim of the study, and being informed that participation was voluntary and confidential. They were then given a URL through which the survey was conducted as an online questionnaire. The questionnaire had four parts: (1) demographics, (2) social media site use, (3) online privacy concerns, and (4) experiences with and perceptions of social media sites. This study analyzes the answers concerning usage of social networking sites ( Part 2) and online privacy concerns (Part 3). Part 2 was composed of 25 items containing questions about the frequency with which the respondents used certain functions (post, read, etc.) on social media sites (SNSs, Twitter, blogs, video-sharing sites, and buzz-marketing sites), as rated on a five-point Likert-type scale in which “1” indicated “not at all,” “2” indicated “once in a while,” “3” indicated “sometimes,” “4” indicated “often,” and “5” indicated “very often.” Part 3 was composed of 22 items questioning respondents’ concerns regarding the various aspects of their online privacy, as rated on a five-point scale in which “1” indicated “not concerned at all,” “2” indicated “not concerned,” “3” indicated “neutral,” “4” indicated “concerned,” and “5” indicated “very concerned.”

4. RESULTS The breakdown of responses to the question, “How often do you use SNSs?” is as follows: 71 students (20.7%) “never use”; 56 students (16.3%) “use sometimes”; 56 students (16.3%) “use”; 63 students (18.4%) “use frequently”; and 97 students (28.3%) “use very frequently.” All students except those who answered “never use” were subjects of the analysis (answers missing data in Part 3 were also eliminated from the dataset). In total, the remaining 249 students were included in the study. These students ranged in age from 18 to 28, the average age being 20.1 (data were missing for six students). There were 189 male students (75.9% of the total) and 56 female students (22.5% of the total) (data were missing for four students). Regarding smartphone usage, 204 students (81.9%) use smartphones, and 35 of them use conventional mobile phones. A total of 42 students (16.9%) use only conventional telephones, and 1 student (0.4%) does not use either. The students were categorized into three groups—G1, G2, and G3—according to the question, “Which do you more often use, computers or mobile phones/smartphones, when you access SNSs?” Students who answered “computer” or “relatively computer” were categorized into group G1. Students who answered “almost same frequency” were categorized into G2. Students who answered “mobile phone/smartphone” or “relatively mobile phone/smartphone” were categorized into G3. In total, there were 32 students (12.9%) in G1, 50 (20.1%) in G2, and 167 (67.1%) in G3.

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The students’ answers regarding their online privacy concerns were analyzed using factor analysis with promax rotation, and three factors were obtained. The first factor (F1) was “concern about their content being accessed on the Internet by strangers,” the second factor (F2) was “concern about their personal information on the Internet being abused by others,” and the third factor (F3) was “concern that their information would be revealed by others.” One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test the differences in online privacy concerns among the groups. Mean scores of the items included in each factor were calculated and used as dependent variables. The results showed that the mean scores according to groups in F1 was significant [F(2, 246) = 5.443, p < 0.01]. The Tukey test was applied as a post hoc test. The results showed significant differences between G1 and G2, G3. With respect to the answers of seven questions regarding SNS use, there were no significant differences among the groups.

5. CONCLUSIONS In this study, Japanese university students’ online privacy concerns regarding smartphone usage were analyzed. The results showed that there are no differences among groups with respect to their personal information on the Internet being abused by others. It is suggested that, although using mobile phones/smartphones increases the risk of others acquiring and abusing their personal information, students who use mobile phones/smartphones don’t seem to care about it sufficiently. It is crucial to encourage students to be more cautious about using mobile phones/smartphones. With respect to concerns about content, the study showed that mobile phone/smartphone users are more concerned than computer users. Teachers must guide students on how to protect their contents.

REFERENCES Fogel, J., and Nehmad, E., 2009, Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 25, pp. 153–160. Stutzman, F., 2006, An evaluation of identity-sharing behavior in social network communities, iDMAa Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1. Kisekka, V., Bagchi-Sen, S., and Raghav Rao, H., 2013, Extent of private information disclosure on online social networks: An exploration of Facebook mobile phone users, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 29, pp. 2722–2729.

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CHANGING STUDENTS’ SUPPORT MODEL FROM SPECIALIZED TUTORS TO UNDERGRADUATE “MONITORS”: A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE Rosália Morais Torres1, Maurício Rodrigues Botelho2, Cláudio de Souza1, Simone Ferreira dos Santos1, Cristina Duarte Silva2 and Nara Lúcia Carvalho da Silva2 1

2

CETES /Faculdade de Medicina/UFMG – Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brasil Secretaria de Estado de Saúde de Minas Gerais – Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brasil

ABSTRACT In a long distance course divided into 3 teaching modules structured to teach professionals how to interpret electrocardiograms it was very difficult to find cardiologists technically prepared and with availability to work as e-learning tutors. This course target public comprised, potentially, about 4000 medical doctors that work in the public health care system of Minas Gerais state, Brazil, in 843 counties. To meet this challenge it was created a different long distance education model. Although 8 tutors were hired, the proposed pedagogical model was centered on the role of a so-called “monitor”, rather than on that of a tutor. Thus 40 of such “monitors” were selected among undergraduate medical students to provide student monitoring and support throughout the course. They were placed in a specially equipped room and worked in different shifts to guarantee students a 12 hour daily monitoring. Students interacted mostly with monitors and the existing tutors supervised groups of 5 “monitors”. The “monitors”, on their turn, sent tutors more complex questions asked by students. A survey on students’ satisfaction with course methodology and content was carried out at the end of Module 1. 78% of those considered the performance of tutors “satisfactory” and 98% “very satisfactory” that of monitors. 92% of students considered the Module “excellent” or “very good”. 69.8% of the registered students completed the Module, which suggests that the focus on the role of a “monitor” who provided daily and effective monitoring and support of students’ activities prevented students from dropping out of course. The cardiologists tutors were called to interfere whenever their skills were called for, dedicating their time to supervise monitors and advise monitors and students, assuring course quality. Additionally, the hiring of monitors and the consequent decrease in the number of tutors allowed for substantial savings in terms of operational costs.  KEYWORDS e-learning, tutoring, monitoring, educational systems design, virtual learning environments and issues

1. INTRODUCTION Distance education makes possible to give an appropriate answer to the educational needs of a larger number of people, to the extent that it allows educational institutions to deliver to students in different parts of a country or of the world the same quality courses they teach to on campus students. It is specially strategic to a country like Brazil, known for its extensive territory and deep economic, social, and educational contrasts among its different regions. However, distance education courses requires the skills of a multidisciplinary team that includes pedagogical and technological experts. Whatever the pedagogical model chosen, there is always a substantial emphasis on the importance of tutoring to provide students with the needed support to do course activities and make them reach their goals 3, 4, 6. Because tutor is in direct contact with the student, guiding him in his search for knowledge an efficient tutoring contributes greatly to course satisfaction and to a consequent decrease in drop out rates 1,2. However, referring specifically to the medical area, it is very difficult in Brazil, to find medical doctors who have the time and are technically prepared to carry out this function. As a result of such difficulties, our team decided to hire undergraduate medical students for the daily monitoring of students. The medical doctors hired as tutors were then able to devote their time to activities that could hardly be transferred to monitors.

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2. INFRASTRUCTURE AND METHODOLOGY The Department of Health of the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, established a partnership with the Medical School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) to structure and offer a long distance course on how to interpret electrocardiograms. The course target public comprised about 4000 medical doctors who attended to the needs of the population of 853 counties in the state. The course was structured by the Health Technological Center of the Medical School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais and it was divided into 3 teaching modules. The chosen VLE to deliver the course was the Moodle. Taking into consideration the difficulties encountered to hire the necessary number of cardiologists who had either the time and were pedagogically and technically prepared to act as long distance tutors the team devised a different model of student support. This model used undergraduate medical students as “monitors”, who interacted extensively with students daily and who were, on their turn, supervised by reference tutors, that is, cardiologists who solved more complex questions related to course content and who also interacted with students on Forums and chats. The “monitors” were selected through written tests, oral interviews, and CV analysis. Most of them have taken the course on Electrocardiograph that is taught in the Medical course. To provide 624 students registered for the Module 1 with the support they needed, 40 monitors and 8 tutors were hired. Each monitor was responsible for about 15 students and each tutor supervised, and advised 5 monitors. The work of tutors therefore was optimized to the extent that the time of cardiologists was totally devoted to solving problems that could not be handled by monitors, or to offer guidance to monitors. These worked in a room equipped with computers and telephones and took turns so as to guarantee students a 12 hour daily support. Monitors worked from 1 to 2 hours a day on week days and 4 hours on the weekends. The monitors had to keep daily track of students’ computer accesses and interacted with students continuously to encourage them to keep up with course work, using Forum messages, e-mails, telephone calls, SMS. Tutors were also responsible for a Discussion Forum (one for each class) and for a chat with students every 15 days. This model of student support (Figure 1) whose objective was to guarantee continuous interaction between students and the teaching/tutoring team was called “Basic Interaction Unit”. This unit comprised one reference tutor, 5 monitors, and about 80 students.

  Figure 1. Basic Learning Unit Organization

3. RESULTS The first group of students finished the first module in November 2014. A survey on students’ satisfaction with course methodology and content was carried out at the end of this module. The students who completed Module 1 answered the survey and 78% of them considered the work of tutors “satisfactory” while 98% evaluated monitors’ performance as “very satisfactory”. 92% of students thought the module was “excellent” or “very good”. A course attendance of 69,8 % was considered very good by course coordination, considering students’ heterogeneity in terms of group age, digital skills, and access to internet.

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4. CONCLUSIONS The results obtained suggest that the adopted pedagogical model with focus on “monitors”, who provided daily and effective monitoring and support of students’ activities, contributed greatly to course success, as expressed in the low dropout rates of students registered for Module 1.5 The extensive use of monitors to provide students’ support and tutoring did not affect course quality and students’ learning once they were closely guided and supervised by the cardiologists who worked as reference tutors. This model also enhanced the work of the reference tutors, highly specialized medical doctors with little time to dedicate to general students’ support. As they became basically responsible for supervision and guidance of monitors, and the solution of more complex questions related to course content, it was possible for such professionals to concentrate on aspects that really demanded their expertise, assuring course quality. Additionally, the hiring of monitors and the consequent decrease in the number of tutors allowed for substantial savings represented by a reduction of about a quarter of the operating costs for the project..

REFERENCES 1. Almeida, A. et al. Estratégias para o Monitoramento de Ações de Tutoria na Educação a Distância, Itana Stiubiener by A Almeida, from http://ceie-sbc.educacao.ws/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/viewFile/1947/1706 2. Maia, M. C, 2003. O uso da tecnologia de informação para a Educação a Distância no ensino superior, 2003. 294 f. Tese (Doutorado em Administração de Empresas) – EAESP, Fundação Getulio Vargas, São Paulo, from http://bibliotecadigital.fgv.br/dspace/bitstream/handle/10438/2463/74603.pdf?sequence=2. 3. Moran, J. M. Os modelos educacionais na aprendizagem online, from : . 4. Nunes, T. S. et al. Gestão de Tutoria: o papel do supervisor de tutoria. From: seer.ufrgs.br/renote/article/download/15195/8960> 5. Park, J.-H., & Choi, H. J., 2009. Factors Influencing Adult Learners' Decision to Drop Out or Persist in Online Learning. Educational Technology & Society, 12 (4), pp. 207–217. 6. Pastor, R. et al., 2010. A complex tutoring system for e-learning: new evaluation model. IEEE FIE Conference 2010, from http://fie-conference.org/fie2010

297

AUTHOR INDEX Almeida, G. ..................................................... 27 Bardella, T. ............................................. 263, 281 Battsogt, B. .................................................... 109 Besimi, A. ....................................................... 170 Besimi, N. ....................................................... 170 Bhasker, B. ......................................................... 3 Borisov, N. .................................................... 244 Botelho, M. .................................................... 295 Çallı, F. ........................................................... 251 Çallı, L. .......................................................... 251 Caushi, A. ....................................................... 177 Caushi, B. ...................................................... 177 Choi, E............................................................ 289 Clark, L........................................................... 251 Clark, N. ......................................................... 133 Cliburn, D. ..................................................... 117 Connolly, J. ..................................................... 77 Connolly, R. .................................................... 77 Dika, Z............................................................ 177 Dragomirova, M. ............................................ 125 Eckert, L. .......................................................... 45 Ferreira, H. ............................................ 263, 281 Gomes, A. ....................................................... 185 Gourova, E. ................................................... 125 Große, K. ........................................................ 259 Grünert, D. ..................................................... 193 Hollosi, D. ....................................................... 35 Honda, H. ........................................................ 53 Hussey, P. ......................................................... 77 Hwang, J. ....................................................... 219 Ihamäki, P......................................................... 85 Ionkov, N. ...................................................... 125 Kabbar, E. ....................................................... 255 Kanchi, V. ..................................................... 267 Kang, Y. ........................................................ 289 Kasiyanto, S. .................................................... 11 Kawai, T. ........................................................ 203 Keller, T. ........................................................ 193 Kidawara, Y. .................................................. 209 Kim, D. ........................................................... 285 Kim, J. ............................................................ 279 Kobayashi, T. ................................................. 109 Kong, M. ....................................................... 289

Kranz, T. ....................................................... 162 Kumar, P. .......................................................... 3 Larco, J. ................................................. 229, 239 Lee, I. ..................................................... 279, 289 Lee, K. ............................................................ 117 Lee, S. ............................................................ 279 León Q. L. ...................................................... 239 López-Coronado, M. ................................ 93, 101 Mamani, S. ..................................................... 214 Martínez-Pérez, B. .................................. 93, 101 Martini, L. ............................................. 229, 239 Maruyama, Y. ................................................ 292 Mitra, A. ........................................................ 214 Moreno-Chaparro, C. ............................ 229, 239 Na, W. .................................................... 279, 289 Nakanishi, T. ................................................. 209 Ng, V. ............................................................... 61 Nykvist, B. ..................................................... 234 Omar, N.......................................................... 263 Omar, N.......................................................... 281 Oztimurlenk, S. ................................................ 69 Park, J. ............................................................ 219 Park, J. ........................................................... 289 Pullen, J. ........................................................ 133 Raffl, C. ......................................................... 259 Rao, A. ........................................................... 267 Raven, J. ........................................................... 19 Resende, R. .................................................... 281 Rhee, K. ........................................................ 285 Rivas, E. ......................................................... 239 Roüast, P. ...................................................... 162 Sällström, A. ................................................... 35 Samara, K. ....................................................... 19 Sampaio, A. ................................................... 185 Sanmiguel, J. ......................................... 229, 239 Santos, S. ....................................................... 295 Schlenker, L. .................................................. 271 Sharma, M. ........................................................ 3 Shehu, V. ....................................................... 170 Sheng, X. ......................................................... 61 Shin, S. .......................................................... 219 Silva, C. ......................................................... 295 Silva, N. ......................................................... 295

Silveira, I. ....................................................... 263 Song, B. ......................................................... 285 Sousa, L. ........................................................ 263 Souza, C. ....................................................... 295 Ståhlbröst, A. ................................................... 35 Strigel, C......................................................... 143 Stump, S. ....................................................... 263 Takano, H. ........................................................ 53 Teschner, F. .................................................... 162 Tolstikova, I. ................................................. 244 Torre-Díez, I. ........................................... 93, 101 Torres, R. ....................................................... 295 Tubilleja, J. ..................................................... 151 Uchimoto, K. ................................................. 209 Velasco-Morejón, D. ...................................... 101 Weinhardt, C. ................................................. 162 Wilson. C. ....................................................... 225 Zouain, D. ......................................................... 27