Yun-Ke Chang

Collaborative Learning in Wikis.

Yun-Ke Changa,∗, Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyob, Hla Thanc, Zarchi Tunc and Zhujun Wangc aWee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Jalan Bahar, Singapore bInstituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico cSchool of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Jalan Bahar, Singapore

Personal Digital Information Resources Management Behavior

With the growth and the increasing complexity of digital resources, it is clear that individuals may have to depend on various types of information management tools to organize and retrieve information needed to carry out their personal or professional tasks. With new web applications, “users are provided with the tools and platforms to undertake their own collaborative content creation and distribution”. However, it may also worsen the information retrieval problems, for more information resources means higher needs for proper management in order to find needed information in the right format at right time. We assume that user’s PIM behavior with PCs will have impact on how they will perform PIM in other environments. There is a need to reassess the existing PIM tools and testing formerly claimed theories of PIM behavior in the context of today’s digital information environment. This paper reports on the findings of a survey conducted with 118 computer users to investigate their information organization and retrieval strategy and the factors that affect their choices of adopting different strategies. The results should shed some light of personal information behavior that may aid the design and implementation of the future PIM tools that optimize advanced technology.

COLLABORATIVE FACTORS AFFECTING KM PROCESSES

AbstractA central part of KM is to encourage collaborative practices. Human and social factors play an important role in the creation, sharing, and use of knowledge. There is a need to closely investigate some of the human and social factors that are involved in KM processes. This is an exploratory study in which twenty-five granted projects were studied, employing an online questionnaire. The operationalization of human and social factors was studied utilizing Ward’s method of hierarchical cluster analysis. Snowball sampling was employed, and fifty people participated in this study.

Coordination Mechanisms Illustrated with Project Management Using the Viable System Model (VSM) as Organizational Framework

Besides authors of classic management who devoted ample works to comprehend coordination, comparatively hardly any other scholar has given a meticulous consideration to the coordination problem in organizations. Coordination is a necessity when two or more entities are interdependent and have to interact to achieve objectives, and essentially, it is the integration of independent endeavors to achieve collective objectives. Individuals and teams need to share their resources, skills, and knowledge to carry out complex tasks and achieve shared goals. In other words, individuals and teams are interdependent. A number of the mechanisms of coordination are profoundly entrenched on social routines and rituals, which complicates the effort to understand its nature. This article conceptualizes mechanism of coordination using the Viable System Model (VSM) as an organizational framework. The Viable System Model also provides a platform that allows to show the coordination mechanisms in the organizational context. While VSM includes coordination processes, it is not very specific, and coordination issues involve the whole organization and cannot be addressed only with feedback and control mechanisms. Consequently, an application that allows extending the usual context of the VSM is discussed. The amalgamation of these concepts is applied to the specific subject, the problem of coordination, having project management as an illustration. Although information and communication technologies (ICTs) have contributed in the praxis to reduce coordination problems, little effort has been undertaken to understand this phenomena. To bridge this knowledge gap, the present article addressed partially this necessity, using project management as an example.

Multimedia Chinese Web Search Engines: A Survey

The objective of this paper is to explore the state of multimedia search functionality on major general and dedicated Web search engines in Chinese language. The authors studied: a) how many Chinese Web search engines presently make use of multimedia searching, and b) the type of multimedia search functionality available. Specifically, the following were examined: a) multimedia features - features allowing multimedia search; and b) extent of personalization - the extent to which a search engine Web site allows users to control multimedia search. Overall, Chinese Web search engines offer limited multimedia searching functionality. The significance of the study is based on two factors: a) little research has been conducted on Chinese Web search engines, and b) the instrument used in the study and the results obtained by this research could help users, Web designers, and Web search engine developers. By large, general Web search engines support more multimedia features than specialized ones

An Active Cinema Experience: A Study on User Expectation and Perceived Gratifications of a Real-time Animated Film System

Active Cinema is a brand-new cinematic experience in which the audiences emotion will be detected and the style of the scenes in the film will change in order to bring the audiences emotion to the state desirable by the film maker. This paper reports on a user study to understand the expectation and motivation of potential audience of the proposed active cinema, as well as to investigate the various aspects of gratification. The factors that may cause majority of data dispersion in our sample, and the overall users experience and expectations of interaction modes are also discussed.

A Comparison between Museum, Hotel, and Tourist Sector Sites in a Country in Southeast Asia

The objective of this study is to compare three different kinds of portals in a country in Southeast Asia using a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria for e-commerce sites. The three types of business including hotels, museums, and tourism sectors were selected randomly. Three independent observers evaluated fifteen sites, and their results were consolidated to a single data set for analysis. Multidimensional Scaling was used to reveal patterns found in the data. The two dimensions in the MDS map were found to be associated with user perceived trustworthiness and transaction speed. In general, tourism sites do better in navigation and content categories; hotel sites do better in interface and reliability categories. Museum sites have more similarity as they are closer to each other in the MDS map. However, foreign language support was not observed on websites.

Personal Information Management Tools Revisited

AbstractFacing a rapidly growing collection of digital resources, users are challenged to organize their personal digital resources in such a way that they can be re-accessed and re-used when they are needed in the future. Personal Information Management (PIM) tools are designed to help users to achieve that. However, questions remain whether these tools are able to meet users requirements and expectations. Survey questionnaire was used with 119 participants. The results suggest that most respondents are comfortable with the existing PIM tools, and they are capable of managing digital resources of different characteristics and shelf life. This paper reports the results of a study in how users manage their personal digital resources in terms of types of digital resources, memory and cue functions, and effectiveness of existing PIM tools and usefulness of certain information structures. Our findings reveal that users actually prefer to have PIM tools that are able to handle multi-format digital resources. These findings may provide valuable insight into how PIM tools can be made more versatile and usable for organization of personal digital resources.

Search Engines' Help Systems

The help information provided by search engines can facilitate its users information seeking process or hinder it. This study analyzed 20 search engines on how their help systems are placed and organized. Help systems are separated into pre-search help system, and post-search help system, and six aspects of help systems were investigated, including navigation, design elements, technical help, conceptual help, terminological, and strategic aspects. A general taxonomy of existing help systems of search engines is provided as the result. The proposed taxonomy may be used as the framework to develop questionnaire for further study in stereotyping search engine users.

Spanish web searching tools: An exploratory study

Web search engines are now major tools that people use to find information on the Web. Few studies have examined the extent and functionality of these Web searching tools that support Spanish-speaking users. Our study identified 72 publically available Spanish-language-supporting Web search engines. The research questions are the following: a) What Web searching tools are available to Spanish speaking users?, b) What are the features of these tools?, c) What are the current web search engine restrictions? d) What are the functionalities of multimedia Web search engines that allow searching in Spanish? The Web functionality methodology developed by Tjondronegoro and Spink was adapted and modified to examine the functionality of Spanish Web search engines. The findings include: (1) limited set of Web search features for Spanish-speaking users, (2) a lack of Spanish language interfaces, (3) lack of functionality in 18% of the Web searching tools examined, and (4) due to the high interest in Spanish language media, a need for multimedia Web search tools to support Spanish language users. Further research is needed to examine the needs of Spanish language users and the development of Spanish language Web search tools.