Agency,sociomateriality, and configuration work

Social informatics research offers insights into the relationship between information technologies and social contexts. However, the material roles of information technologies, and their interplay with the agentic work of social actors, have not been addressed. Drawing on a field study of 37 mobile knowledge workers, we examine the dual material roles (enabling and constraining) played by information technologies in their work practices. We also investigate how these workers exert agency by fashioning multiple information technologies into a functioning digital assemblage. Although information technologies provide consequential affordances that enable mobilization of work across spaces and times, they simultaneously present design-driven, local, organizational, and temporal technological constraints that require mobile knowledge workers to engage in “configuration work” to make information technologies function effectively. Building on a sociomaterial perspective, we further discuss the interplay of information technologies and work practices enacted by mobile knowledge workers, in which both human and technological agency are materialized.     

Speaker adapted dynamic lexicons containing phonetic deviations of words

Speaker variability is an important source of speech variations which makes continuous speech recognition a difficult task. Adapting automatic speech recognition （ASR） models to the speaker variations is a well-known strategy to cope with the challenge, Almost all such techniques focus on developing adaptation solutions within the acoustic models of the ASR systems. Although variations of the acoustic features constitute an important portion of the inter-speaker variations, they do not cover variations at the phonetic level. Phonetic variations are known to form an important part of variations which are influenced by both micro-segmental and suprasegmental factors. Inter-speaker phonetic variations are influenced by the structure and anatomy of a speaker＇s articulatory system and also his/her speaking style which is driven by many speaker background characteristics such as accent, gender, age, socioeconomic and educational class. The effect of inter-speaker variations in the feature space may cause explicit phone recognition errors. These errors can be compensated later by having appropriate pronunciation variants for the lexicon entries which consider likely phone misclassifications besides pronunciation. In this paper, we introduce speaker adaptive dynamic pronunciation models, which generate different lexicons for various speaker clusters and different ranges of speech rate. The models are hybrids of speaker adapted contextual rules and dynamic generalized decision trees, which take into account word phonological structures, rate of speech, unigram probabilities and stress to generate pronunciation variants of words. Employing the set of speaker adapted dynamic lexicons in a Farsi （Persian） continuous speech recognition task results in word error rate reductions of as much as 10.1% in a speaker-dependent scenario and 7.4% in a speaker-independent scenario.     

Structuring collaboration in mixed-ability groups to promote verbal interaction,learning, and motivation of average-ability students

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously grouped fourth-grade boys (n=164) were randomly assigned to a structured collaboration condition or an unconstrained comparison condition. Results indicated positive effects of structured collaboration on average-ability students’ achievement, motivation, and contribution to the group interaction. Another positive result was that structuring collaboration did not lower the scores of the high and low-ability students on these measures.     

Argumentation-Based Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ABCSCL): A synthesis of 15 years of research

Learning to argue is an essential objective in education; and online environments have been found to support the sharing, constructing, and representing of arguments in multiple formats for what has been termed Argumentation-Based Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ABCSCL). The purpose of this review is to give an overview of research in the field of ABCSCL and to synthesize the findings. For this review, 108 publications (89 empirical studies and 19 conceptual papers) on ABCSCL research dating from 1995 through 2011 were studied to highlight the foci of the past 15 years. Building on Biggs’ (2003) model, the ABCSCL publications were systematically categorized with respect to student prerequisites, learning environment, processes, and outcomes. Based on the quantitative and qualitative findings, this paper concludes that ABCSCL environments should be designed in a systematic way that takes the variety of specific conditions for learning into account. It also offers suggestions for educational practice and future research.     

Quality assurance strategies for affiliated institutions of HE: a case study of the affiliates under National University of Bangladesh

Presently, education is considered as the main weapon for national development. However, this tenet has been challenged by several economists. Their findings give rise to a further question: whilst expansion of education increases globally, what is it exactly that continues to hinder a country’s progression? There is no short answer, but one major area of concern is the quality and relevance of the education available. Research for this paper, the first of its kind in Bangladesh, has been carried out by interviews and observation in the affiliates of the National University of Bangladesh, where 80 % of the students in higher education are the underprivileged. The findings show that the legislators ignore the fact that quality of education in the affiliates is perceived as important.     

Ultrastructure and phylogeny of Ustilago coicis

Ustilago coicis causes serious smut on Coix lacryma-jobi in Dayang Town, Jinyun County, Zhejiang Province of China. In this paper, ultrastructural assessments on fungus-host interactions and teliospore development are presented, and molecular phylogenetic analyses have been done to elucidate the phylogenetic placement of the taxon. Hyphal growth within infected tissues was both intracellular and intercellular and on the surface of fungus-host interaction, and the fungal cell wall and the invaginated host plasma membrane were separated by a sheath comprising two distinct layers between the fungal cell wall and the invaginated host plasma membrane. Ornamentation development of teliospore walls was unique as they appeared to be originated from the exosporium. In addition, internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and large subunit (LSU) sequence data showed that U. coicis is closely related to Ustilago trichophora which infects grass species of the genus Echinochloa (Poaceae).     

The mutual impact of personality traits on seating preference and educational achievement

Several studies have investigated the association between students' seating positions and their classroom performance. However, the role of personality traits on seating preference in the classroom has not been well investigated. The aim of the study was to understand how students choose their seats according to their personality traits in a classroom context and the influence of personality characteristics and seat selection on educational achievement. The seating positions of the medical students were recorded on an architectural plan during each class session, and the means and standard deviations of the students' locations were calculated in X and Y orientations. The locations of the students in the class were analyzed based on three architectural classifications: interactional zone, distance from the board, and access to the aisles. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory was used to evaluate the five main personality characteristics of the students. Midterm and final exam scores were used to measure the students' educational achievement. Analysis of variance showed a statistical significance correlation between the interactional zones and both agreeableness and conscientiousness. Mantel–Haenszel analysis showed a statistical significance association between sex and agreeableness and openness to experiences, which was mainly caused by zone II. Among the tested characteristics, a statistically significant relationship was observed between agreeableness and final exam scores. There was a statistical significance difference in openness and extraversion between the students with a high number of absences and their classmates. A relationship between the student's locations in the class, their educational achievements, and some of their personality characteristics are addressed.     

Engineering a General Education Program: Designing Mechanical Engineering General Education Courses

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at our institution created two engineering courses for the General Education Program that count towards second level general science credit (traditional science courses are first level). The courses were designed for the general student population based upon the requirements of our General Education Program and engineering concepts. We explain the results and impact of the classes so as to expand the conceptualization of general education courses and to enable engineering curricula to reach a larger audience as well as to broaden student understanding of the forces shaping their world.     

A security-embedded infrastructure for Tele-Traffic Speed Control

In this paper we introduce a novel approach, relying on intelligent engineering, whereby the maximum speed limit at which vehicles on the road can cruise is controlled from some central or distributed facility. The system, as designed, leverages the use of the ubiquitous cellular infrastructure to cut down the costs involved that would otherwise accrue as a result of the need to build a dedicated traffic control system.In the new system maximum speed limits are transmitted from a Central Control Facility (CCF) to all stretches of roads and highways dispersed across urban areas in a highly dynamic manner. The system uses information arriving via a dynamic feedback system on prevailing weather conditions, road conditions, and bulk of traffic, amongst others, before it would broadcast maximum speed limit information to various destinations. When deployed in its final release, this will be done using a highly automated system with little human intervention.The work presented in this paper elaborates the TTC Network Design and RSU Network Distribution for the Tele-Traffic Speed Control System, to remotely manage, enforce, and control the maximum speed limit allowed on road stretches in rural and urban areas for different vehicle categories.The new system has been deployed successfully in a laboratory controlled environment on three vehicle categories; one category representing passenger vehicles, another buses and commuter transport, while the third representing trucks and freight traffic. It is expected that when the system is fully deployed on the wireless infrastructure, speed-related traffic accidents will witness a drop by more than 65-70% according to known accident statistics.     

Taxonomy of e-readiness assessment measures

To benefit from the advantages of information society, on the one hand, and to be afraid of being left further behind by Global Society and the increase in the digital divide, on the other hand, stimulate countries to be part of Global Information Society. These issues have led policymakers to move towards such a society by identifying the objectives, goals and targets. Planning to achieve these objectives needs a real understanding of the current situation, which is obtained by e-readiness assessment measures. There has been a proliferation of e-readiness assessment measures in recent years that each one has a certain objective. This paper elaborates on and categorizes these measures that help scholars and policymakers to (1) select the measures that fit in with their objectives, (2) prevent the repetitive research, (3) identify the defects and flaws of previous measures and correct them in their own measures, and (4) use the experiences of previous measures to construct their own ones. Based on definitions, objectives, dimensions, methods and approaches, in this paper, the measures are categorized and finally, a measure for e-readiness assessment is presented. Since this measure is a convergence of e-readiness assessment measures, the experienced modelers have consensus on it and it is more suitable to measure e-readiness of countries. Also, it can be exploited as the basis and standard for internationally comparable information society statistics.