Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Online discussion network'

The thesis has its origins in a concern that teacher librarians in schools throughout Australia were disadvantaged in the development of their professional learning due to their professional and often geographical isolation in schools. A listserv (online discussion network) called OZTL_NET was developed to facilitate the enhancement of teacher professional learning for this group of teachers. OZTL_NET has been available to teacher librarians and others interested in teacher librarianship for over nine years. The study sought to determine whether usage of OZTL_NET was associated with the enhancement of teacher librarians’ professional learning. The study also explored the characteristics of teacher professional learning from the literature and sought to determine which characteristics of online communities may contribute to teacher professional learning. A case study design for the research was adopted using a mixed methods approach. The methods of data collection were a web survey and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed and a detailed description of the object of study, OZTL_NET, was provided. A major finding of this study was that usage of OZTL_NET was significantly related to the enhancement of teacher professional learning. It was concluded that online learning communities may provide appropriate contexts for teacher professional learning and that, in relation to the case of OZTL_NET, various aspects of the concept of online learning communities and, to a lesser extent, communities of practice, are portrayed in the listserv. The findings supported the assertion that online learning communities have the potential to enhance the professional learning of teachers and provide opportunities for teachers to learn online. The study also revealed that community building online is a complex and demanding activity. Usability and sociability factors must be carefully considered and developed over the lifetime of the community. This process should include input from the community, the leadership of which should be broad-based and inclusive. Two broad principles emerged from the research that provide guidance for the management of listservs for teacher professional learning online. First, the study revealed that involvement and collaboration were critical ingredients in teacher professional learning online. Involvement was portrayed not only in the learning that ensued from the interactivity that necessarily underpins the sharing of tacit knowledge through information exchange and professional discussion between and among subscribers online but also by individuals through less obvious means such as lurking, archive searches and off-list communications. In terms of collaboration, this study found that in addition to high levels of trust, subscribers experienced a strong sense of collegiality and support as members of OZTL_NET. Second, the major finding above confirms that involvement and collaboration are strongly related to individual and collective orientations of teacher professional learning. The broad concept of individual or collective orientation recognises that teacher professional learning occurs in both orientations online as it does offline. Teachers have long recognised their colleagues as their major source of professional information. The difficulty in the past has been in the identification of a means by which teachers can readily access a wider pool of colleagues with whom they can discuss important issues, seek advice and so on. This is particularly important for teachers who are professionally isolated as a consequence of their teaching speciality (such as teacher librarians) and those who are geographically isolated making real time meetings with colleagues expensive and/or impracticable. In this context listservs such as OZTL_NET can play a critical role in providing the infrastructure to support distributed models of teacher professional learning online.

Aquesta tesi tracta d'algoritmes i fenòmens complexos en xarxes.

En la primera part s'estudia un model de neurones estocàstiques inter-comunicades mitjançant potencials d'acció. Proposem una tècnica de modelització a escala mesoscòpica i estudiem una transició de fase en un acoblament crític entre les neurones. Derivem una regla de plasticitat sinàptica local que fa que la xarxa s'auto-organitzi en el punt crític.

Seguidament tractem el problema d'inferència aproximada en xarxes probabilístiques mitjançant un algorisme que corregeix la solució obtinguda via belief propagation en grafs cíclics basada en una expansió en sèries. Afegint termes de correcció que corresponen a cicles generals en la xarxa, s'obté el resultat exacte. Introduïm i analitzem numèricament una manera de truncar aquesta sèrie.

Finalment analizem la interacció social en una comunitat d'Internet caracteritzant l'estructura de la xarxa d'usuaris, els fluxes de discussió en forma de comentaris i els patrons de temps de reacció davant una nova notícia.
This thesis is about algorithms and complex phenomena in networks.

In the first part we study a network model of stochastic spiking neurons. We propose a modelling technique based on a mesoscopic description level and show the presence of a phase transition around a critical coupling strength. We derive a local plasticity which drives the network towards the critical point.

We then deal with approximate inference in probabilistic networks. We develop an algorithm which corrects the belief propagation solution for loopy graphs based on a loop series expansion. By adding correction terms, one for each "generalized loop" in the network, the exact result is recovered. We introduce and analyze numerically a particular way of truncating the series.

Finally, we analyze the social interaction of an Internet community by characterizing the structure of the network of users, their discussion threads and the temporal patterns of reaction times to a new post.

The study introduces an alternative analytic framework for the investigation of online discussion forums. It focuses on the social dynamics occurring in online discussion threads situated within a tertiary e-learning context, and advocated by social learning theories. Online discussion forums are perceived as conducive environments for the evolvement and support of collaborative and socio- constructivist learning. However, the literature reviewed, revealed a growing need for finding empiric frameworks for ascertaining the materialisation of these perceptions. Attempting to address the identified need, the study adopts ethnomethodological notions, complemented by Structural Analysis approach, to produce an alternative analytic frame called the Event Centre (EC) approach for the study of online discussion forums. The theoretical framework chosen in this study enables the investigation of online discussion forums as systems of relations rather than aggregations of individuals. The EC approach enables the visual representation of networks of people interacting with each other and at the same time presenting the content discussed in each interaction. Applying the EC approach to a set of 131online discussion threads, enabled the discovery of social dynamics occurring within the discussion threads. Preliminary investigations of these visually represented dynamics revealed two overarching patterns. One depicting uni directional interactions in which all participants referred to a single message and a second one depicting sequences of interactions organised in chain like patterns. The study suggests that these overarching patterns may imply different perceptions of knowledge as enacted by the participants, and hence possibly reveal different perceptions of teaching and learning through which it may be possible to detect collaborative and social constructivist processes. The study suggests that the visual patterns introduced should be perceived as abstractions of particular events, implying their generalisability and hence possible application to different data sets.

This work outlines the theoretical underpinnings, method, results, and implications for constructing a discussion list analysis tool that categorizes online, educational discussion list messages into levels of cognitive effort. Purpose The purpose of such a tool is to provide evaluative feedback to instructors who facilitate online learning, to researchers studying computer-supported collaborative learning, and to administrators interested in correlating objective measures of students’ cognitive effort with other measures of student success. This work connects computer–supported collaborative learning, content analysis, and artificial intelligence. Method Broadly, the method employed is a content analysis in which the data from the analysis is modeled using artificial neural network (ANN) software. A group of human coders categorized online discussion list messages, and inter-rater reliability was calculated among them. That reliability figure serves as a measuring stick for determining how well the ANN categorizes the same messages that the group of human coders categorized. Reliability between the ANN model and the group of human coders is compared to the reliability among the group of human coders to determine how well the ANN performs compared to humans. Findings Two experiments were conducted in which artificial neural network (ANN) models were constructed to model the decisions of human coders, and the experiments revealed that the ANN, under noisy, real-life circumstances codes messages with near-human accuracy. From experiment one, the reliability between the ANN model and the group of human coders, using Cohen’s kappa, is 0.519 while the human reliability values range from 0.494 to 0.742 (M=0.6). Improvements were made to the human content analysis with the goal of improving the reliability among coders. After these improvements were made, the humans coded messages with a kappa agreement ranging from 0.816 to 0.879 (M=0.848), and the kappa agreement between the ANN model and the group of human coders is 0.70.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003.
Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiv, 151 p.: ill. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Charles R. Hancock, College of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-129).

Group work and online discussions are not new terms in education and are important activities for Information Systems students. It has become important because it encourages creative thinking and provides more efficient problem-solving approaches. Online social networking sites, like Facebook, have pedagogical potential and the consideration of its academic application should not be ignored by lecturers or students. The main problem identified in this thesis is that the awareness and application of the emerging pedagogical potential of online social networking sites, like Facebook, especially for the purpose of group work and online discussions, is limited among Information Systems lecturers and students. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of awareness and application of Facebook as an academic tool by Information Systems lecturers and students, and whether it can enhance the learning experience of students, related to the effectiveness of group work and online discussions. The perceptions of both Information Systems lecturers and students were recorded by means of questionnaires and interviews. It was found that most lecturers and students were aware of Facebook’s pedagogical potential. However, the consideration and application of Facebook as an academic tool, by lecturers and students, are limited. From a cultural perspective, it was found that students from a private institution, where no Learning Management System was implemented, as well as black students, showed increased levels of utilisation and performance, in terms of enhanced learning experienced, on the academic groups on Facebook. The researcher developed a model for the academic application of Facebook for Information Systems students, based on the Task-Technology Fit and the Social Software Performance Model theories. This study concludes with the recommendation that Information Systems lecturers and students should become increasingly aware of and consider the pedagogical potential of Facebook as a supplementary tool and with suggestions for future research.
Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2010.
Informatics
unrestricted

Doctor of Philosophy
The thesis of this study is that two seemingly disparate research disciplines can be coalesced to develop an effective pedagogical framework for educational design in the context of networked learning. That contention is grounded in, and inspired by, the rapid developments in educational technologies which have greatly changed the landscape in teaching and learning in higher education over the last decade. The study attempts to add to the corpus of contemporary learning theory which sees students not merely as passive recipients of knowledge, but as active participants in the learning process, having much greater control over their selection of technological learning tools, learning resources and learning methodologies. This is very much in line with the shift from the traditional focus on content design and knowledge transmission towards a more student-centred design for knowledge co-construction, a development which demands the type of new thinking about the design of learning tasks and learning resources contained in this study. Also set out are new lines of action for the fashioning of a collaborative learning environment, for community interaction and the sharing of knowledge, and for promoting good teaching and learning practice. The central argument of the study is that such pedagogical goals may be attained by juxtaposing the theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL) and pattern languages. These have not, thus far, been used in combination. SFL is a well established theory in the study of language, and is used in this thesis to help analyse and classify discourses produced and shared by teachers and students in networked learning. Pattern languages have their origin in architecture. Design patterns can be used as a means of representing and sharing important and specific empirical research results and design experiences. This new knowledge can be used to support and improve the quality of educational design. The study has two central components. The first uses the SFL theoretical framework to demonstrate how text is used as a key medium in networked learning. In other words, it is argued in this section that the quality of texts has a direct impact on the quality of learning and learning outcomes. The quality of text is assessed by means of a detailed discourse analysis of selected texts. This process involves deconstructing, identifying and capturing the linguistic resources and language strategies used in the texts. The detailed discourse analysis also illustrates and reveals how language is used in the construction of knowledge and the promotion of collaboration in teaching and learning. The second component centres on the argument that SFL provides valuable language knowledge which can be represented by using Alexander’s design patterns. New knowledge encoded in these design patterns can be used by teachers and designers as reusable and shared resources to help them improve their design work. The empirical research was carried out in three phases. The first involved a) the identification of text patterns of discourses used in networked learning based on detailed discourse analysis; b) Interviewing experienced academic staff to identify their perspectives on good online teaching practices and success factors. The second phase involved using the data which emerged from these interviews and discourse analysis to model illustrative patterns. (Here, illustrative means that due to the scope of the study, it is only possible to develop a limited number of patterns to illustrate the methods used for pattern development. It is not the intention to develop a full repository of design patterns in this study). In the third (validation) phase the patterns were reviewed by two groups of academic staff, with the aim of improving these patterns. Improved patterns were then tested on a group of educational design students for their usefulness and application. It is concluded from this research that it is possible to develop design patterns which ensure the best use of linguistic resources in both the teaching and learning process. Finally, it is argued that the combination of SFL and pattern languages provides a promising theoretical framework for the complex and demanding task of educational design. Future research could make use of such a framework to explore a fuller application of the pattern- based approach for the representation of new knowledge for educational design. Suggested additional research directions include finding new ways of capturing a new pedagogical approach to mobile learning and blended learning. Also, a promising direction could be the use of SFL Appraisal theory (Martin, 2000) for the investigation on how students construct interpersonal relationships (appraise peer work) in online joint projects. In the conclusion, it is contended that through its exploration of new ground in the use of SFL and pattern language theory in the construction of education design patterns, the study makes a significant contribution to knowledge in the field of networked learning.

The aim of this qualitative case study is to gain greater insight into the impact of online synchronous (chat) interaction on the learning process from a sociocultural constructivist perspective in the context of an online undergraduate unit. Given the sparse research on the effectiveness of chat interaction in supporting knowledge construction processes, few appropriate analytical methods available for examining educational chat discourse, together with the pedagogical imperative to determine the extent to which the real-time computer-mediated communication (CMC) mode satisfies student learning needs, this study fills the gaps in current research by examining the impact of chat interaction in facilitating participation, knowledge construction, and quality of online learning experience of two different online tutorial groups. Although the literature largely regards chat interaction as fragmented and characterized by interactional incoherence that disrupts the dialogic knowledge construction process, findings from this single-embedded case study of tutorial groups 1 and 4 (G1 and G4), involved in weekly critical discussions on set-readings over 11 weeks (one semester), show that chat interaction is more structured and complex than the literature suggests. This study utilizes a new methodological design that integrates discourse and social network analytical methods which are triangulated with self-reports of learning experiences from an online survey instrument. The application of a refined Exchange Structure Analysis coding instrument (Kneser, Pilkington, & Treasure-Jones, 2001) with social network analysis (Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Scott, 2000) to transcripts of chat interaction shows educational chat discourse to be coherent; reflecting the typical structure of pedagogical classroom exchanges. Findings from this study further establish that chat interaction enables participation opportunities in tutorial discussions which are valued as important, with variations in levels of participation within and between groups suggesting a pattern of active and peripheral participation which is not necessarily detrimental to learning. Chat interaction is also found to facilitate collaborative sharing of individual understandings and critical negotiation of meaning which are characteristic of the knowledge construction process, in the form of information-sharing and topic development phases in the exchanges of both groups. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to determine the exact form of knowledge constructed, individual and mutual appropriations of shared knowledge through chat interaction are reported by both groups. A between group comparison of available tutor scaffolding reveals consistently weak G1 tutor presence compared to strong G4 tutor support at the initial learning stages with gradual withdrawal of scaffolding over time. These results suggest differences in quality of online educational experiences which are confirmed by findings that compared to G1, G4 reported greater satisfaction with more chat tutorial factors; indicating an overall more positive, higher quality of experience with collaborative learning and group work processes afforded by the chat interaction. With its methodological design, instruments, and findings, this study contributes to existing knowledge on online interaction, advances on previous studies regarding impact of chat interaction on learning, and offers directions for future work in the fields of educational technology, linguistics, and group dynamics in educational social networks. When extrapolated to comparable cases, findings from this study could guide the pedagogical design of collaborative-constructivist learning activities that takes into account the role of chat interaction in the construction of learning conversations.

The major purpose of this dissertation was to measure quality of preselected public discussions (in form of comments) generated on popular online social network Facebook. We used Discourse Quality Index as the main instrument to collect and analyze our empirical data. In particular, we measured how the quality of our discussions corresponded to the preconditions of Habermasian ideal discourse perception. In our analysis, we highlighted the role of Web 2.0 based online communications environments to support, promote or, possibly, neglect traditions and principles of deliberative democracy. Our results revealed that quality of the discussions we analyzed is not good enough; consequently, they cannot be considered by policymakers and have positive impact on decisions made. The main reasons of that are: a) audience polarization; b) dissensual political discourse; c) low participants’ scientific and political literacy; d) not serious or light role that participants undertake in the discourse.
Disertacija siekiama įvertinti pasirinkto socialinio tinklo viešojo diskurso potencialą demokratinių procesų palaikymui. Tirtos viešosios klimato kaitos diskusijos (komentarai) socialiniame tinkle Facebook. Empiriniams duomenims surinkti ir apdoroti naudojamas Diskurso kokybės indeksas: įvertinta, kaip analizuojamų komentarų kokybė atitinka idealųjį habermasiškąjį diskurso kokybės supratimą. Analizuojant ir interpretuojant surinktus duomenis, įvertintos Web 2.0 komunikacijos charakteristikos (kaip galimybės ir kliūtys svarstomosios demokratijos procesams palaikyti); taip pat aptarti klimato kaitos moksliniai ir politiniai aspektai (aktualizuojant rizikos komunikacijos ir deliberatyviosios demokratijos teorines prieigas). Tyrimo rezultatai atskleidė, jog analizuotų viešų komentarų kokybė yra nepakankama, kad galėtų daryti konkrečią įtaką politinių sprendimų priėmimo procesuose. Pagrindinės to priežastys: a) auditorijų poliarizacija; b) nesutarimais grįsta politinė diskusija; c) nepakankamas dalyvių mokslinis ir politinis išprusimas; d) nerimtas dalyvių nusiteikimas.

Le développement du Web 2.0 a donné lieu à la production d'une grande quantité de discussions en ligne. La fouille et l'extraction de données de qualité de ces discussions en ligne sont importantes dans de nombreux domaines (industrie, marketing) et particulièrement pour toutes les applications de commerce électronique. Les discussions de ce type contiennent des opinions et des croyances de personnes et cela explique l'intérêt de développer des outils d'analyse efficaces pour ces discussions. L'objectif de cette thèse est de définir un modèle qui représente les discussions en ligne et facilite leur analyse. Nous proposons un modèle basé sur des graphes. Les sommets du graphe représentent les objets de type message. Chaque objet de type message contient des informations comme son contenu, son auteur, l'orientation de l'opinion qui y été exprimée et la date où il a été posté. Les liens parmi les objets message montrent une relation de type "répondre à". En d'autres termes, ils montrent quels objets répondent à quoi, conséquence directe de la structure de la discussion en ligne. Avec ce nouveau modèle, nous proposons un certain nombre de mesures qui guident la fouille au sein de la discussion et permettent d'extraire des informations pertinentes. Il existe des mesures centrées sur l'analyse de l'opinion qui traitent de l'évolution de l'opinion au sein de la discussion. Nous définissons également des mesures centrées sur le temps, qui exploitent la dimension temporelle du modèle, alors que les mesures centrées sur le sujet peuvent être utilisées pour mesurer la présence de sujets dans une discussion. La présence de l'utilisateur dans des discussions en ligne peut être exploitée soit par les techniques des réseaux sociaux, soit à travers notre nouveau modèle qui inclut la connaissance des auteurs de chaque objet message. De plus, une liste de messages clés est recommandée à l'utilisateur pour permettre une participation plus efficace au sein de la discussion.

Submitted by Clebson Anjos (clebson.leandro54@gmail.com) on 2016-02-16T18:57:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3221315 bytes, checksum: 94313947399127dabbb2e2accdc35325 (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-16T18:57:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3221315 bytes, checksum: 94313947399127dabbb2e2accdc35325 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-05-08
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES
The development of studies on education distance learning courses or e-learning, have become common in the current academic-scientific assumption, as the increasing number of courses in this category of education and the possibilities of collaboration between participants brought by the Environment Virtual Learning (AVA). Online discussions established make students engaged in the sharing of information and knowledge, in order to establish prospects for interaction with other students. In this sense, this work aims to investigate the potential generated by the use of Social Network Analysis techniques (ARS) applied to the analysis of the interactions between students of a distance learning course that establish communication in online discussion forums, to ascertain patterns of interaction that may have influence on student learning. The results show that by applying the degree of centrality metrics, centrality intermediation and closeness centrality related to student achievement express a linear correlation between such variables, showing a trend in the performance of the same throughout the course in order to provide teachers information to support the development of strategies for monitoring and management of student learning in distance learning courses.
O desenvolvimento de estudos referentes a cursos de educação à distância, ou E-Learning, têm se tornado frequentes no cenário acadêmico-científico atual, visto o número crescente de cursos ministrados nessa categoria de ensino e as possibilidades de colaboração entre os participantes interposto pelos Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem (AVA). As discussões online estabelecidas tornam os alunos engajados na partilha da informação e do conhecimento, de modo a estabelecer perspectivas de interação com outros alunos. Neste sentido, esta dissertação visa investigar o potencial gerado pelo uso de técnicas de Análise de Redes Sociais (ARS) aplicado à análise das interações entre alunos de um curso à distância que estabelecem comunicação em fóruns de discussão online, a fim de conhecer padrões de interação que podem ter influência na aprendizagem do aluno. Os resultados obtidos evidenciam que através da aplicação das métricas de centralidade de grau, centralidade de intermediação e centralidade de proximidade relacionadas com o desempenho do aluno é obtida uma correlação linear entre tais variáveis, demonstrando uma tendência no desempenho do aluno ao longo do curso, de forma a propiciar aos professores informações de apoio ao desenvolvimento de estratégias para monitoramento e gerenciamento da aprendizagem de alunos em cursos a distância.

Since the emergence of the Internet, scholars have had mixed opinions regarding its role in influencing levels of political participation. Two frameworks, the mobilization and the reinforcement theses, were created from these opposing views. The introduction of social networking websites (such as Facebook) offers new platforms with which to test these opposing theories on. This study investigates the Facebook group ―Canadian‘s against Proroguing Parliament,‖ to determine: 1) what the members' motivations were for participating in the group, 2) whether the group attracted formerly marginalized voices to participate on the group, or simply reinforced those who were already active in the political process, and 3) whether the participation of members on the group translated into offline or real world political participation. The findings suggest that the group‘s members had a variety of reasons for joining the group. As well, the findings suggest that the group both mobilized reinforced its participants. Finally, the data indicates that in some instances, the group‘s members translated their online participation into real world political activity.
171 leaves ; 29 cm

碩士
國立中央大學
資訊工程學系
103
Collaborative Learning (CL) along with the changing of the teaching environment, the way how students interact has also changed. The rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) lets the teaching environment turn into online teaching. Deriving from MOOCs, Small Private Online Course (SPOC) incorporates the concept of Blended Learning (BL), which combines the advantage of MOOCs and face-to-face teaching. In this context, implies an enormous amount of consideration of group division factors and information volume when teachers organize groups. In the face of an unprecedented workload size, organizing groups manually is extremely time consuming and difficult for teachers. In this thesis, we make use of the advantages of the conditions of SPOC, retrieving the social network of students on the online discussion board, then the heterogeneous division of groups based on academic results is the supplementary to do grouping. In addition, this thesis makes use of edX, a representative platform of MOOCs, and develops the group division modules based on the format of the online discussion boards of the platform. There are two experiments in this thesis are the first semester, second semester. In the first semester, we compared with the way of grouping by students themselves, the method which brought out by this thesis do a better job in learning performance in spite of the satisfactions is worse. During second semester, the experimental group’s grade still higher than the control group, but the posttest in the second semester is worse than the first semester. We look forward to the results of this thesis can help teachers to solve problems about grouping in this context.

碩士
國立政治大學
圖書資訊與檔案學研究所
106
Discussion is the process for a learner coming up with ideas about an issue. Discussion could enhance the understanding of issues and selecting, digesting, and absorbing information in the process. Effective discussion could enhance learning effectiveness. For the immediacy and convenience, online discussion has become an inevitable trend. The “Semantic Network Instant Feedback System (SNIFS)” is therefore designed in this study, expecting to present the semantic network of words used in learners’ discussion contents, assist learners in grasping the question discussion direction, and further effectively enhance online learning effectiveness. With quasi-experimental research, a total of 64 Grade 11 students from two classes of a senior high school in Taipei City are randomly selected as the research subjects for the online discussion of “options of nuclear power generation and coal-fired power generation”. “SNIFS assisted discussion” is applied to 32 students in the experimental group, and general online discussion is used for another 32 students in the control group. The learning effectiveness and technology acceptance of the learners in two groups are discussed the differences. Furthermore, prior knowledge, computer-mediated communication (CMC) ability, and cognitive styles are used as the background variables to discuss the effects on learning effectiveness and technology acceptance. The research results discover that “SNIFS assisted discussion”, compared to general online discussion, shows significant benefits on the learning effectiveness of learners with low prior knowledge and high CMC ability. SNIFS could help learners with low prior knowledge generate more points of view as well as assist those with high CMC ability in enhancing the discussion complexity to have deeper understanding of the discussed issue. In terms of technology acceptance, both the experimental group and the control group present lower scores, revealing low technology acceptance of learners in both groups. In this case, learners in the control group or verbalizers remarkably outperform those in the experiment group on technology acceptance and perceived ease of use. Furthermore, the qualitative data analysis in this study reveals that learners in the control group outperforming those in the experimental group on technology acceptance possibly because learners consider the applied discussion not completely conforming to the demands. The experimental group, on the other hand, has to use SNIFS beyond discussion that increases the system complexity and further affects the fluency in the discussion with the SNIFS system. Based on the research result, suggestions for improving the design of SNIFS and general online discussion and future research directions are proposed in this study. Overall speaking, the SNIFS system developed in this study could help develop the innovative online discussion tool combining online discussion and semantic visualization of discussed words to contribute to the online discussion learning effectiveness.

碩士
亞洲大學
資訊工程學系
102
In this paper, the periodic regularities of user online in social network are evaluated with the number of user postings according to different periodic intervals. First of all, users' postings in social network are downloaded by web agent automatically. Secondly, the details of those postings, such as poster's name, post-time, responser's name, and its response-time, are extracted and collected via text mining techniques. Thirdly, the number of postings are accumulated according to three different periodic intervals, 24 hours/per day, 7 days/per week, and 12 month/per year. Experimental resources were downloaded from one social network, named "PTT", including four discussion groups as "anime", "stocks", "NBA" and "expectant-mother". Experimental results revealed that these users had special surfing habits according to different periodic intervals. These analyses of user online in social network provides important information for researching on internet addiction and seeking appropriate time-intervals for advertisement.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
資訊教育研究所
102
Much existing research of online collaborative learning argue that peer interaction plays an important role in effective collaborative learning. To investigate how peer interaction affects learning, several studies have devoted to discuss peer interaction by analyzing interaction behaviors based on subjective observation or questionnaire study, which lacks a precise and objective analysis of interactive relationships among group members. Instead of using traditional methodologies, this study employs the techniques of social network analysis to mine students’ interaction behaviors in a more structural way to investigate more deeply about the relationships among the interaction behaviors, the attitude toward peer interaction, and learning performance. This research conducted an empirical study to investigate the relationships among interaction behaviors, attitude toward interaction, and learning performance based on social network analysis. We developed a social learning platform embedded with interactive functionalities to simulate a social media for collaborative learning, on which students could discuss with peers about the learning topics by actions of posting, reading, inquiring, replying, and liking. Seventy-four eleventh-grade students in northern Taiwan participated in the experiment and all of their online discussion behaviors were recorded and then analyzed by social network analysis. The research findings are: 1. The discussion quality was highly correlated with learning performance. That is, students performed better in the achievement test had higher quality discussions. In the other hand, reading could improve low achievers’ scores in the test. 2. The reply frequency was correlated with learning performance related with learning effect, and the members situated in the discussion center of social community are better in learning effect. 3. The learning materials posted by the students who had more positive attitudes toward observation and reflection were accessed by peers more frequently. 4. The competitive oriented students involved less in replying peers’ discussions. Since they had fewer opportunities to reflect or give feedback to the discussion, they performed worse than others in the achievement test. From the experiment results, we understand more about the relationships among the interaction behaviors, attitude toward interaction, and learning performance, based on which instructors/researchers can develop effective online discussion activities or learning platforms to inspire suitable interaction behaviors and attitude, and accordingly improve students’ learning performance platform.

abstract: Online programming communities are widely used by programmers for troubleshooting or various problem solving tasks. Large and ever increasing volume of posts on these communities demands more efforts to read and comprehend thus making it harder to find relevant information. In my thesis; I designed and studied an alternate approach by using interactive network visualization to represent relevant search results for online programming discussion forums. I conducted user study to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. Results show that users were able to identify relevant information more precisely via visual interface as compared to traditional list based approach. Network visualization demonstrated effective search-result navigation support to facilitate user’s tasks and improved query quality for successive queries. Subjective evaluation also showed that visualizing search results conveys more semantic information in efficient manner and makes searching more effective.
Dissertation/Thesis
Masters Thesis Computer Science 2015

碩士
龍華科技大學
企業管理系碩士班
107
Nowadays, online shopping has become the mainstream of modern people's shopping. How to satisfy the diversified needs of customers in such a saturated market, and to grasp the competitive advantage to create higher profits, improve consumers' evaluation of corporate image, and then achieve customer satisfaction and strengthen Brand loyalty, improve customer evaluation of the company and the willingness to use the Internet to shop. The purpose of this study is to explore whether a sustainable enterprise will become the first choice for consumers to purchase. A company's implementation of social responsibility and assistance to public welfare groups will enhance the corporate image of a company in the hearts of consumers. The research subjects of this study were mainly consumers who used MOMO online shopping. Consumers who had used MOMO shopping network, distributed by online questionnaire, randomly sampled, selected the samples and 320 questionnaires were distributed. The valid questionnaire was 320.Through statistical analysis, it is found that the degree of education has a positive effect on the corporate image. The consumer involvement and the willingness to purchase online are positively affecting the consumer's corporate image evaluation, and the consumer's corporate image. The perception of evaluation will positively influence whether or not to choose online shopping. Consumers' perception of online shopping will positively affect the evaluation of online shopping. Good corporate image evaluation will have positive consumer online shopping perception. Influencing the effect, consumer online shopping perception has a significant positive impact on online shopping evaluation. Corporate image evaluation has an intermediary effect between consumer involvement and shopping perception, corporate image evaluation in online purchase willingness and there is a partial mediation effect between online shopping perception, and online shopping perception has a partial mediation effect between corporate image evaluation and online shopping evaluation.

碩士
國立政治大學
圖書資訊與檔案學研究所
107
Along with the boom of e-learning, online discussion is broadly applied to assist in e-learning and facilitate interactive discussion. Nevertheless, a lot of studies pointed out the problems of online discussion in the grasp of issue discussion directions and the lack of discussion depth and width. How to facilitate learners’ learning effectiveness in asynchronous online discussion therefore becomes a primary research issue. “Semantic Network Instant Feedback System (SNIFS)” is applied in this study to assist learners in online discussion and to collect learners’ learning process behaviors for behavior analyses. It is expected to understand learners’ effective discussion behaviors in the SNIFS assisted learning process and to guide learners to more effective discussion behaviors so as to facilitate the learning effectiveness of online asynchronous discussion. With single-group prior experimental research, G11 students of a senior high school in Taipei City are the research objects. 34 effective samples precede the online discussion about the topic of “the establishment of Da-an River wetland park and the conservation of leopard cat”. Learners’ learning process data are collected in the process. Statistical analysis, cluster analysis, and lag sequential analysis (LSA) are combined, after the experiment, to discuss the correlation between learners’ system operation behavior models and learning effectiveness as well as the learning behavior models of learners with different computer-mediated communication (CMC) ability and personality. It aims to discuss various operation behavior models of learners with different learning effectiveness and different behavior shift models of learners with distinct learning effectiveness, computer-mediated communication ability, and personality. Research results show that learners more deeply understanding the complete content and context of posts, during online discussion with SNIFS, could effectively acquire more information and present better cognition of the discussion issue. In regard to the SNIFS feedback diagram, the discussion topics emphasized in the group are listed for the information with integrated ideas to effectively assist learners in enhancing the cognition of discussion issues. Learners not understanding others’ opinions but merely concerning about the common idea of all learners in the discussion process would not effectively promote the learning effectiveness. Learners with distinct computer-mediated communication ability and personality would appear different behavior models. Learners with high CMC ability would use SNIFS for looking over extra information, while learners with low CMC regard SNIFS as the tool to understand the overall discussion concept. Learners with high extroversion concern more about the ideas different from other groups, while learners with low extroversion would understand more of the difference in the ideas from other groups. Learners with high openness would further understand different discussion contents of other groups, while learners with low openness are used to look over common ideas of all. Learners with high rigor would repeatedly look over the complete post content of different information, while learners with low rigor merely look over the complete post content of some posts, with fewer times and less review of other posts. Based on the research results, suggestions for the application of SNIFS to teaching and the future development direction are eventually proposed in this study. Overall speaking, behavior analyses reveal that different learning behaviors would result in distinct learning effectiveness and learners with different computer-mediated communication ability and personality would show various learning behaviors. It would contribute to the improvement of teaching with online discussion.

An electronic advice network provides employees opportunities to tap diverse experts within the organization at an unprecedented speed and scale. It is formed when an advice seeker initiates an online discussion thread joined by members of various communities, each specializing in a specific domain. This dissertation recognizes the substantial gap in our understanding of how to best harness the performance potential of expertise diversity provided through an electronic advice network within a firm. It thus investigates the process by and conditions under which expertise diversity in an electronic advice network promotes the advice seeker’s learning and performance. A field study was conducted via multi-methods including observation, interviews, and survey at a global company running discussion forums spanning internal virtual communities. The unit of analysis was at the discussion thread level. 190 discussion threads comprising 1,200 participants and associated outcomes (rated by their respective advice seekers) were analyzed. Findings suggest that, for the seeker to realize the performance potential of diverse inputs, discussion participants should facilitate the seeker’s learning by engaging in collective elaboration—articulating the differences and relevance of their diverse inputs. The seeker learned and performed the least when discussion participants were highly diverse but did not engage in collective elaboration. Discussion participants engaged in collective elaboration to the extent that they had previously established shared syntactic and semantic understanding of each other’s expertise domains through participation in each other’s communities. This dissertation contributes to the virtual communities literature by unearthing the relationships between expertise diversity and the advice seeker’s learning and performance and explaining when and how the seeker benefits from the diverse knowledge shared through an electronic advice network. The moderating role of collective elaboration explains why prior research may have found no or even a negative relationship between expertise diversity and discussion outcomes. It also contributes to the team literature by offering boundary conditions for the previous findings on expertise diversity and common ground. The collective elaboration construct can be also adopted by team diversity researchers to better understand where a disruption in the chain of group-level information processing may occur in some diverse teams.
text

South Africa, since 1994, has developed both politically and technologically resulting in an opening of communications both locally and globally. The 2009 national elections had been earmarked as a 'make or break' milestone for the political and social future of the young democracy. This election occurred amidst media analysts‘ concerns for the level of freedom of expression allowed to traditional forms of the South African media. New media, however, is not at present subject to the same regulations. Although a few cases of slander relating, for example, to Facebook have occurred, ephemeral cyber space appears to enjoy a greater degree of freedom of expression than the press and broadcast media. As a result the ability of these traditional forms of media to function effectively as a public sphere may be questioned, and some theorists claim that the Internet may offer an alternative medium for this function. This thesis looks at the potential of online communities to facilitate democratic expression by analysing a Facebook newsgroup text at the time of the election. In my exploration of the Facebook newsgroup Help us stop Jacob Zuma from becoming SA's next President I have analysed the text using two qualitative approaches. The critical discourse analysis traces competing South African discourses relating to the myths of the inherent violence of black men and the inherent racism of whites, the topics of crime and violence, Jacob Zuma and South Africanness. This approach‘s theoretical guidelines enforced a more objective view of the text, although interpretive methods in general grapple with subjectivity at a more observable level than do quantitative methods. The ethnographic hermeneutic component of the research is aimed at "making the obscure plain" (Blaikie, 1993: 28, cited in Neuman, 1997: 68) in the text, as well as documenting the inner workings of the online community and its relation to South African issues at the time of the national election. The findings are then measured against public sphere theory from Habermas' conception of the bourgeois public sphere to revisionist accounts (Fraser, 1997 and McKee, 2005)
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.