The nature of communication structures of university students in an international web-based computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) course

Communication, the flow of ideas and information between individuals in a social context, is the heart of educational experience. Constructivism and constructivist theories form the foundation for the collaborative learning processes of creating and sharing meaning in online educational contexts. The Learning and Collaboration in Technology-enhanced Contexts (LeCoTec) course comprised of 66 participants drawn from four European universities (Oulu, Turku, Ghent and Ramon Llull). These participants were split into 15 groups with the express aim of learning about computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). The Community of Inquiry model (social, cognitive and teaching presences) provided the content and tools for learning and researching the collaborative interactions in this environment. The sampled comments from the collaborative phase were collected and analyzed at chain-level and group-level, with the aim of identifying the various message types that sustained high learning outcomes. Furthermore, the Social Network Analysis helped to view the density of whole group interactions, as well as the popular and active members within the highly collaborating groups. It was observed that long chains occur in groups having high quality outcomes. These chains were also characterized by Social, Interactivity, Administrative and Content comment-types. In addition, high outcomes were realized from the high interactive cases and high-density groups. In low interactive groups, commenting patterned around the one or two central group members. In conclusion, future online environments should support high-order learning and develop greater metacognition and self-regulation. Moreover, such an environment, with a wide variety of problem solving tools, would enhance interactivity.

Performance measurement and management in a collaborative network

This study concerns performance measurement and management in a collaborative network. Collaboration between companies has been increased in recent years due to the turbulent operating environment. The literature shows that there is a need for more comprehensive research on performance measurement in networks and the use of measurement information in their management. This study examines the development process and uses of a performance measurement system supporting performance management in a collaborative network. There are two main research questions: how to design a performance measurement system for a collaborative network and how to manage performance in a collaborative network. The work can be characterised as a qualitative single case study. The empirical data was collected in a Finnish collaborative network, which consists of a leading company and a reseller network. The work is based on five research articles applying various research methods. The research questions are examined at the network level and at the single network partner level. The study contributes to the earlier literature by producing new and deeper understanding of network-level performance measurement and management. A three-step process model is presented to support the performance measurement system design process. The process model has been tested in another collaborative network. The study also examines the factors affecting the process of designing the measurement system. The results show that a participatory development style, network culture, and outside facilitators have a positive effect on the design process. The study increases understanding of how to manage performance in a collaborative network and what kind of uses of performance information can be identified in a collaborative network. The results show that the performance measurement system is an applicable tool to manage the performance of a network. The results reveal that trust and openness increased during the utilisation of the performance measurement system, and operations became more transparent. The study also presents a management model that evaluates the maturity of performance management in a collaborative network. The model is a practical tool that helps to analyse the current stage of the performance management of a collaborative network and to develop it further.

Invenio@HGF: Collaborative repository infrastructure

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Collaborative Customer Relationship Management in Business-to-Business Firm's Strategy

The objective of this thesis is to study the presence of collaborative customer relationship management in a firm’s strategy. In addition the thesis explains specific implementations of collaborative CRM, and CRM in general, by each case company. The sample consists of five Finnish business-to-business companies through applying multiple-case study method. The data is collected through face-to-face interviews with employees knowledgeable of the case company’s CRM processes. The qualitative data is analyzed through coding and shows that two out of five case companies have adopted and are using collaborative CRM in their strategy and operations. These case companies see collaborative CRM as an important driver for the company, through customer focus and market orientation. The rest of the case companies are either in the process of moving towards collaborative CRM or have given little consideration to it. The results show that collaborative CRM is in use, and that each company modifies it to meet their exact aspirations. The major challenge in the process is to fully grasp the importance of a shared vision that can translate into collaborative efforts in CRM and business strategy.

Kuali OLE: A Collaborative ILS Partnership

Presentation of Robert H. McDonald at the Library Network Days, October 22, 2014 in Helsinki. – Esitys Kirjastoverkkopäivillä 22.10.2014 Helsingissä

Reading the human Y chromosome: the emerging DNA markers and human genetic history

Reading the human Y chromosome: the emerging DNA markers and human genetic history.

Paul and death : a study in psychological coping

The present investigation looks into the attitudes toward death in Paul’s authentic letters, and puts them in relation to modern theories of psychological coping. Drawing on psychologically-oriented hermeneutic theory, and theories about psychological coping in particular, I argue that each case of psychological coping must be understood in its historical situation as strategies emanating from a specific person’s subjective appraisal (cf. Pargament, Lazarus and Folkman). Paul’s letters frequently refer to persecution and violent death. To aid in psychological coping is often integral to the purpose of the letters, which makes the perspective of psychological coping akin to their genre. In the course of a tentatively assumed chronological order of 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon, Paul moves from the perception of Jesus dying for the faithful to the understanding of dying with Jesus. His coping strategies concerning death are gradually transformed from conservative and deferring coping styles, to a more self-directing coping style, to collaborative and transformative coping styles, and finally to a new sense of deferring coping style in prison. The last case of deferring coping carries the traits of generosity and flexibility even in the face of death, which is in contrast to his previous letters. Through his correspondence, we see Paul’s attitude toward death transformed from denial to reaction, to processing, to acceptance (cf. Lindemann, Kübler-Ross, Bowlby, Parkes, among others). His strategies also shift in accordance with these understandings. Denial is accompanied by diversion, threat by aggression, processing by rumination, and acceptance by joy. The study shows the hermeneutic benefits of reading Paul’s letters as the rhetorically framed expressions of a person in a particular historical situation. The letters open small windows through which we can glimpse the coping process of a person of antiquity. In adopting the method of psychological exegesis, the study shows that the variety of attitudes toward death in Paul’s letters makes sense from the perspective of psychological coping. The psychological aspect of these letters is an underexamined richness that can extend into areas of contemporary individual and group identity, and from there to public policy and ethics.

Patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading in Portuguese

According to the concepts of cognitive neuropsychology, there are two principal routes of reading processing: a lexical route, in which global reading of words occurs and a phonological route, responsible for the conversion of the graphemes into their respective phonemes. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the patterns of cerebral activation in lexical and phonological reading by 13 healthy women with a formal educational level greater than 11 years. Participants were submitted to a silent reading task containing three types of stimuli: real words (irregular and foreign words), nonwords and illegitimate graphic stimuli. An increased number of activated voxels were identified by fMRI in the word reading (lexical processing) than in the nonword reading (phonological processing) task. In word reading, activation was greater than for nonwords in the following areas: superior, middle and inferior frontal gyri, and bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right cerebellum and the left precentral gyrus, as indicated by fMRI. In the reading of nonwords, the activation was predominant in the right cerebellum and in the left superior temporal gyrus. The results of the present study suggest the existence of differences in the patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading, with greater involvement of the right hemisphere in reading words than nonwords.

Language-specific aspects of reading acquisition: the case of Russian

We have investigated Russian children’s reading acquisition during an intermediate period in their development: after literacy onset, but before they have acquired well-developed decoding skills. The results of our study suggest that Russian first graders rely primarily on phonemes and syllables as reading grain-size units. Phonemic awareness seems to have reached the metalinguistic level more rapidly than syllabic awareness after the onset of reading instruction, the reversal which is typical for the initial stages of formal reading instruction creating external demand for phonemic awareness. Another reason might be the inherent instability of syllabic boundaries in Russian. We have shown that body-coda is a more natural representation of subsyllabic structure in Russian than onset-rime. We also found that Russian children displayed variability of syllable onset and offset decisions which can be attributed to the lack of congruence between syllabic and morphemic word division in Russian. We suggest that fuzziness of syllable boundary decisions is a sign of the transitional nature of this stage in the reading development and it indicates progress towards an awareness of morphologically determined closed syllables. Our study also showed that orthographic complexity exerts an influence on reading in Russian from the very start of reading acquisition. Besides, we found that Russian first graders experience fluency difficulties in reading orthographically simple words and nonwords of two and more syllables. The transition from monosyllabic to bisyllabic lexical items constitutes a certain threshold, for which the syllabic structure seemed to be of no difference. When we compared the outcomes of the Russian children with the ones produced by speakers of other languages, we discovered that in the tasks which could be performed with the help of alphabetic recoding Russian children’s accuracy was comparable to that of children learning to read in relatively shallow orthographies. In tasks where this approach works only partially, Russian children demonstrated accuracy results similar to those in deeper orthographies. This pattern of moderate results in accuracy and excellent performance in terms of reaction times is an indication that children apply phonological recoding as their dominant strategy to various reading tasks and are only beginning to develop suitable multiple strategies in dealing with orthographically complex material. The development of these strategies is not completed during Grade 1 and the shift towards diversification of strategies apparently continues in Grade 2.

Designing gamification for collaborative learning in group work

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is a teaching and learning approach which is widely adopted. However there are still some problems can be found when CSCL takes place. Studies show that using game-like mechanics can increase motivation, engagement, as well as modelling behaviors of players. Gamification is a rapid growing trend by applying the same mechanics. It refers to use game design elements in non-game contexts. This thesis is about combining gamification concept and computer supported collaborative learning together in software engineering education field. And finally a gamified prototype system is designed.