Maria del Carmen Calatrava Moreno

On Successful Team Formation: Statistical Analysis of a Multiplayer Online Game

Teamwork plays an important role in many areas of todays society, such as business activities. Thus, the question of how to form an effective team is of increasing interest. In this paper we use the team-oriented multiplayer online game Dota 2 to study cooperation within teams and the success of teams. Making use of game log data, we choose a statistical approach to identify factors that increase the chance of a team to win. The factors that we analyze are related to the roles that players can take within the game, the experiences of the players and friendship ties within a team. Our results show that such data can be used to infer social behavior patterns.

Ranking factors of team success

As an increasing number of human activities are moving to the Web, more and more teams are predominantly virtual. Therefore, formation and success of virtual teams is an important issue in a wide range of fields. In this paper we model social behavior patterns of team work using data from virtual communities. In particular, we use data about the Web community of the multiplayer online game Dota 2 to study cooperation within teams. By applying statistical analysis we investigate how and to which extent different factors of the team in the game, such as role distribution, experience, number of friends and national diversity, have an influence on the teams success. In order to complete the picture we also rank the factors according to their influence. The results of our study imply that cooperation within the team is better than competition.

On the uncertainty of interdisciplinarity measurements due to incomplete bibliographic data

The accuracy of interdisciplinarity measurements is directly related to the quality of the underlying bibliographic data. Existing indicators of interdisciplinarity are not capable of reflecting the inaccuracies introduced by incorrect and incomplete records because correct and complete bibliographic data can rarely be obtained. This is the case for the Rao–Stirling index, which cannot handle references that are not categorized into disciplinary fields. We introduce a method that addresses this problem. It extends the Rao–Stirling index to acknowledge missing data by calculating its interval of uncertainty using computational optimization. The evaluation of our method indicates that the uncertainty interval is not only useful for estimating the inaccuracy of interdisciplinarity measurements, but it also delivers slightly more accurate aggregated interdisciplinarity measurements than the Rao–Stirling index.

Strategic E-Tourism Alternatives for Destinations

Destinations face the already well known problem of a proper positioning in the electronic market place. This includes, besides other issues, mainly the problem of a sustainable business model and booking support. In this paper the Austrian case is described, which is somehow special since Austria was once a leader in e-tourism, both w.r.t. to academic as well to industrial achievements. However, this has changed over the last years. This change was also recognized by major stakeholders, leading to a study to (a) analyse the current situation, and (b) to identify strategic alternatives as future options. These strategic alternatives were based on the results of a status quo analysis of the national and international e-tourism situation, including a website analysis of national and international tourism organisations, interviews with representatives of Austrian organisations and an analysis of IT trends relevant to the tourism industry. The paper describes the results of these analyses, specifies the problem and, finally, presents the identified alternatives. Regarding the latter, the focus is on the description of a so-called “open service platform”, which contains means to support cooperation, online distribution, innovation as well as research.

On the motivations to enroll in doctoral studies in Computer Science — A comparison of PhD program models

While student motivation has been intensively researched, only a few studies cover motivation at doctoral level and even less focus on doctoral education in Computer Science. In this paper we investigate the motivation of graduate students to pursue doctoral studies specifically in Computer Science. We interviewed 63 doctoral students, from two different doctoral models (traditional and structured) in Finland and Austria, on their initial reasons and experiences that led them to enroll in doctoral studies. We identified five disjoint main motivational drivers that relate with different aspects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Together with a measure of the strength of their initial motivation, we develop clear motivation profiles of different doctoral program models. We observed that students in structured programs were mainly driven by extrinsic motivation while participants in traditional European doctoral studies were mainly influenced by intrinsic factors. Our results give a practical overview of student motivation for the enhancement of student selection, support, and supervision processes in doctoral programs.

Becoming an interdisciplinary scientist: an analysis of students’ experiences in three computer science doctoral programmes

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to identify how and why doctoral students do interdisciplinary research. A mixed-methods approach utilising bibliometric analysis of the publications of 195 students identified those who had published interdisciplinary research. This objective measurement of the interdisciplinarity, applying the Rao-Stirling index to Web of Science and Scopus citations, allowed for a comparison of students’ interdisciplinary research outcomes from three different computer science programmes: a traditional programme, a multidisciplinary doctoral school and an interdisciplinary doctoral college. Applying a sociocultural approach, interviews with the 15 most interdisciplinary students were analysed to understand how dispositions and experiences of students and factors of the different programmes affect the circumstances and processes of becoming an interdisciplinary early career scientist. The data indicate that student motivations, previous skills and knowledge interacted with policies and programme structures including type of funding and supervisor expectations to play a crucial role in interdisciplinarity at the doctoral level. These factors can give rise to interdisciplinary research even in programmes without interdisciplinary focus and compromise the interdisciplinary goals of interdisciplinary programmes.

Towards a flexible assessment of higher education with 360-degree feedback

Quality management procedures at higher education institutions tend to use industrial quality models to demonstrate effective performance. Such models evaluate resources and results, but fail to address the quality of the educational processes. In this paper we provide an overview of the most common quality management frameworks used in higher education institutions and discuss their application, strengths and shortcomings. Furthermore, we present the conceptual basis of a flexible assessment methodology inspired by the 360-degree feedback, that aims to circumvent the shortcomings of the previous frameworks while providing additional possibilities for result analysis.

Insights into PhD Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration, Partnership and Competition in Computer Science

Many complex problems demand innovative approaches that combine knowledge from different scientific disciplines (Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Engineering, 2005; Frodeman et al, 2010). Cross-disciplinary research is therefore gaining importance as an intellectual partnership of demarcated domains of specialised inquiry. In order to prepare future generations of scientists to solve complex problems between and beyond the boundaries of single disciplines, efforts are being made to transform doctoral education.

A multiple-perspective analysis of doctoral interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinary and assessment initiatives are two parallel educational paradigms that are being increasingly implemented in higher education institutions. Our study combines these two paradigms in order to assess the significance and performance of factors and processes that facilitate interdisci-plinarity at the doctoral level. Using the 360-degree feedback methodology, we integrate the perspectives of different academic stakeholders in the assessment, namely students, post-doctoral researchers, professors, directors, visiting professors and research funding agencies. Therefore, this study not only provides a global assessment but also informative intermediate results, such as analyses on the alignment and discrepancies of stakeholders as well as the identification of priorities for improvement. This paper presents the development and implementation of this multiple-perspective assessment within an academic context and discusses the results of its application in a European faculty of computer science where several doctoral programs with different approaches to interdisciplinarity co-exist.

General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units in Service-Oriented Architectures

Over the last decades, graphics processing units have developed from special-purpose graphics accelerators to general-purpose massively parallel co-processors. In recent years they gained increased traction in high performance computing, as they provide superior computational performance in terms of runtime and energy consumption for a wide range of problems. In this survey, we review their employment in distributed computing for a broad range of application scenarios. Common characteristics and a classification of the most relevant use cases are described. Furthermore, we discuss possible future developments of the use of general purpose graphics processing units in the area of service-oriented architecture. The aim of this work is to inspire future research in this field and to give guidelines on when and how to incorporate this new hardware technology.