Search results for " US"
showing 10 items of 8047 documents
SearchBot: Supporting voice conversations with proactive search
2018
Searching during conversations and social interactions is becoming increasingly common. Although searching could be helpful for solving arguments, building common ground, and reinforcing mutual assumptions, it can also cause inter-actional problems. Proactive search approaches can enrich conversations with additional information without neglecting the shared and established social norms of being attentive to ongoing interaction. This demo showcases SearchBot, a tool that minimizes the issues associated with the practice of searching during conversations. It accomplishes this by tracking conversational background speech and then providing continuous recommendations of related documents and e…
A Cooperative Coevolution Framework for Parallel Learning to Rank
2015
We propose CCRank, the first parallel framework for learning to rank based on evolutionary algorithms (EA), aiming to significantly improve learning efficiency while maintaining accuracy. CCRank is based on cooperative coevolution (CC), a divide-and-conquer framework that has demonstrated high promise in function optimization for problems with large search space and complex structures. Moreover, CC naturally allows parallelization of sub-solutions to the decomposed sub-problems, which can substantially boost learning efficiency. With CCRank, we investigate parallel CC in the context of learning to rank. We implement CCRank with three EA-based learning to rank algorithms for demonstration. E…
Replacing Project Managers in Information Technology Projects
2015
According to anecdotal evidence, project managers working on information technology (IT) projects are occasionally replaced, although the literature on information systems (IS) and project management (PM) makes little mention of it. With a view to narrowing this knowledge gap the authors examined the reasons behind the practice. The authors took an interpretive approach to the data gathering and analysis, and collected descriptions about replacing project managers (RPM) from interviews and questionnaires (n=43). The concept of contradiction served as a lens through which to identify the underlying reasons. Contradiction refers to statements asserting or expressing the opposite of another st…
Enhancing the experience of online users of open education
2014
The limited adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) has kicked off the launch of several projects to search for possible solutions. One of these projects is “Open Educational Ideas and Innovations” (OEI2). The goal of this project is to find alternatives for increasing the uptake of OER and facilitating the collaborative development of OER. To enhance the experience of the users of open education, we interviewed twelve educators and researchers from different higher education institutions across Europe focusing on gathering insights about idea sharing experiences. In this paper, we present our key findings based on these interviews and outline some recommendations for our next open edu…
Learnings from the Finnish Game Industry
2016
The motivation behind our research was the rapid growth and business wins of world-class Finnish game companies, like Supercell, as well as the success of other game companies in Finland. In particular, Supercell's growth is something that has not been heard of before and this raised the interest to research what game companies have been doing right. Supercell is not the only Finnish success. Rovio is also well known and has the roots for success from few years before. There are also other game companies in Finland that have succeeded and this motivated us to investigate what is happening behind the game industry and what could be learned from there that could be applied to other software i…
Investigating serendipity in recommender systems based on real user feedback
2018
Over the past several years, research in recommender systems has emphasized the importance of serendipity, but there is still no consensus on the definition of this concept and whether serendipitous items should be recommended is still not a well-addressed question. According to the most common definition, serendipity consists of three components: relevance, novelty and unexpectedness, where each component has multiple variations. In this paper, we looked at eight different definitions of serendipity and asked users how they perceived them in the context of movie recommendations. We surveyed 475 users of the movie recommender system, MovieLens regarding 2146 movies in total and compared tho…
Schemata, Acculturation, and Cognition : Expatriates in Japan's Software Industry
2016
This multiple case based empirical study expands the knowledge around North American software and IT workers in Japan as well as the expatriate literature and discussion of cognitive schemata in cross cultural settings. The study includes eleven individuals, nine of them in software. Evidence of selection, rejection, and adjustment of cognitive schemata found in Japan's business world is presented. Changes in schemata drive cultural adjustment and acculturation. North American software and IT workers in Japan must maneuver through unfamiliar and often complex schemata to motivate, lead, manipulate, and communicate with coworkers and partners and thereby gain success.
Understanding Social OER Environments—A Quantitative Study on Factors Influencing the Motivation to Share and Collaborate
2014
Social software environments are increasingly used for open education: teachers and learners share and collaborate in these environments. While there are various possibilities for the inclusion of such social functionalities for OER, many organizational, individual and technological challenges can hinder the motivation of teachers to share and collaborate in these environments. Current research cannot explain what barriers teachers face in social OER environments and how those challenges influence their motivation to engage in such environments. An exploratory factor analysis was used in the context of schools and higher education institutions to investigate the possible barriers to engagin…
Issues in e-learning quality assurance
2011
As a decisive factor, the future of any discipline rests on quality, and e-learning is no exception. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, the contribution from various fields such as education, technology, and economy are needed to achieve quality, thereby creating rich learning experience. Undertaking such a task is challenging according to Pawlowski and Ehler (2006) because "it is necessary to find a valid perspective and definition of quality. This requires an answer to the question for which processes of educational scenario quality development has to be carried out, which quality and according to which perspective it is defined." Being diverse and situational/context dependent, there s…
Best Practices for International eSourcing of Software Products and Services from the Service Providers' Perspective
2015
This research analyzes how eSourcing service providers can execute the Information and Communications Technology-enabled international sourcing of software-intensive systems and services (eSourcing) effectively. The extant literature falls short of providing a detailed enough set of best practices and supporting classes of information systems to help providers to manage and deliver effective services. This research presents a set of best practices for international eSourcing service providers to facilitate the execution, improvement, and management of international eSourcing services. The practices help providers to establish and execute a mature eSourcing life-cycle in order to overcome th…