bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Conceptualization of a Research Model for the Measurement of e-Government 2.0 Readiness in the Developing Countries
Authors: Vasileios Yfantis , Usoro Abel , Dimitrios Tseles
Published: December 2012

This chapter explores the potential of Web 2.0 utilization in developing countries through the concept of e-government. Successful implementation of the Web 2.0 concept has to combine both technological and human factors. Thus, this chapter proposes a conceptual model that will measure e-government 2.0 readiness. The conceptual model is based on a combination of the Technology Acceptance Model, Theory of Planned Behavior, and indexes from the United Nation’s database. South Sudan is used at the end as a brief case study of the potential of e-Government 2.0. Future research should validate the empirical model. Meanwhile, the implications of the model are presented.
Toward Web 2.0 Integration in Indonesian Education
Authors: Mutohar Agus , Hughes Joan E.
Published: December 2012

Numerous efforts have been made to reform education to address globalization both in developed and developing countries. The integration of technology in education has been one vital reform effort in developing countries to prepare graduates for 21st century workplaces, which are digitally robust. Web 2.0 technologies are becoming prominent educational and workplace tools. This literature review of Indonesian government policies, NGO initiative reports, and contemporary research explores the integration of Web 2.0 in Indonesian education using an ecological perspective by introducing the Indonesian national educational policy and laws, describing national and non-government organizations’ initiatives focused on Web 2.0 integration, identifying salient national and local challenges preventing Web 2.0 integration, and proposing strategies for future planning and research. Challenges identified include lack of technological facilities, an absence of technology standards in education, a standardized testing culture, lack of coordination between government levels (national to local), lack of professional development, and a need for strong school technology leadership. The authors recommend Indonesia engage in comprehensive, visionary planning for Web 2.0 integration with strategies to meet local needs, invest in professional development and technology specialist positions, and advance mobile Web 2.0 computing and BYOT/D initiatives. Future research could examine how ecological factors at the national, provincial, and local levels coordinate to best establish Web 2.0 integration in education at the school level.
Facilitating the Egyptian Uprising
Authors: Alkazemi Mariam F. , Bowe Brian J. , Blom Robin
Published: December 2012

It has been suggested that social media offers important organizing tools for activists in countries where free expression is curtailed and news outlets are handcuffed by government censorship. The 2011 revolution in Egypt offers an opportunity to examine the extent to which social media fulfills the role that free journalism plays in more democratic societies. By analyzing messages posted in Arabic by activists from one of the largest Egyptian opposition groups, this study attempts to see what role Facebook played in the revolution. This chapter aims to fill a gap in scholarly understanding of the event while simultaneously contributing to the understanding of the importance of social media tools for activists and organizers. The results show that the organizers used Facebook largely to communicate a mixture of expressions of national pride, news events, and calls for mobilization on the ground to support their revolutionary efforts.
Using Social Media Technology to Improve Collaboration
Authors: Stevenson Garron , Van Belle Jean-Paul
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the use and adoption of micro-blogging within a large South African financial services company. This is done by means of a case study, which draws on three sources of data: user demographics, messages posted, and a survey focused on adoption and usage. The research objective was to evaluate enterprise micro-blogging’s effectiveness as a collaboration tool, which enables informal communication among staff working in project teams. The analysis used a technology acceptance model as the theoretical framework but a more descriptive approach was used to investigate the actual use patterns as well as the barriers and benefits experienced by the users. Even though distinct barriers to adoption were uncovered, by focusing on creating the right groups within the tool and increasing management contributions potential users of micro-blogging platforms, these barriers can be reduced.
Web 2.0 as a Foundation for Social Media Marketing
Authors: Podobnik Vedran , Ackermann Daniel , Grubisic Tomislav , Lovrek Ignac
Published: December 2012

In the Web 1.0 era, users were passive consumers of a read-only Web. However, the emergence of Web 2.0 redefined the way people use information and communication services—users evolved into prosumers that actively participate and collaborate in the ecosystem of a read-write Web. Consequently, marketing is one among many areas affected by the advent of the Web 2.0 paradigm. Web 2.0 enabled the global proliferation of social networking, which is the foundation for Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing represents a novel Internet marketing paradigm based on spreading brand-related messages directly from one user to another. This is also the reason why Social Media Marketing is often referred to as the viral marketing. This chapter will describe: (1) how social networking became the most popular Web 2.0 service, and (2) how social networking revolutionized Internet marketing. Both issues will be elaborated on two levels—the global and the Croatian level. The chapter will first present the evolution of social networking phenomenon which has fundamentally changed the way Internet users utilize Web services. During the first decade of 21st century, millions of people joined online communities and started using online social platforms, about 1.5 billion members of social networks globally in 2012. Furthermore, the chapter will describe how Internet marketing provided marketers with innovative marketing channels, which offer marketing campaign personalization, low-cost global access to consumers, and simple, cheap, and real-time marketing campaign tracking. Specifically, the chapter will focus on Social Media Marketing, the latest step in the Internet marketing evolution. The three most popular Social Media Marketing platforms (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare) will be described, and examples of successful marketing case studies in Croatia will be presented.
Virtual Collaborative Learning
Authors: Tawileh Wissam , Bukvova Helena , Schoop Eric
Published: December 2012

New technologies are used increasingly to enhance people’s lives in many fields, and education is a very important sector that can benefit from technological development. The idea of using technology to facilitate and enhance learning, known as electronic learning, has led to the development of a wide range of applications and implementations worldwide. Electronic learning can offer new opportunities for developing countries by increasing access to education and improving learning outcomes. This chapter presents Virtual Collaborative Learning (VCL) as a modern technology-enhanced team-learning arrangement based on a constructivist learning paradigm. By utilizing Web 2.0 tools to empower and enhance classical e-Learning methods, VCL reaches far beyond classical Web-Based Training. Opportunities and challenges of VCL for developing countries will be discussed based on a long European teaching and research experience.
Relevance of Mesh Dimension Optimization, Geometry Simplification and Discretization Accuracy in the Study of Mechanical Behaviour of Bare Metal Stents
Authors: Gagliardi Mariacristina
Published: December 2012

In this paper, the authors propose a set of analyses on the deployment of coronary stents by using a nonlinear finite element method. The goal is to propose a convergence test able to select the appropriate mesh dimension and a methodology to perform the simplification of structures composed of cyclically repeated units to reduce the number of degrees of freedom and the analysis run time. A systematic study, based on the analysis of seven meshes for each model, was performed, gradually reducing the element dimension. In addition, geometric models were simplified considering symmetries; adequate boundary conditions were applied and verified based on the results obtained from the analysis of the whole model.
Subspace Discovery for Disease Management
Authors: Namayanja Josephine , Janeja Vandana P.
Published: December 2012

This paper identifies key subspaces for better disease management. Disease affects individuals differently based on features such as age, race, and gender. The authors use data mining methods to discover which key factors of a disease are more relevant for particular strata of the population using bin wise clustering. The authors use a case study on Metabolic Syndrome (MetS). MetS is a combination of abnormalities that occur in the body during the processing of food and nutrients. A number of definitions have been studied to classify MetS. No clear criterion exists that can generally fit into a single satisfactory protocol. This domain encompasses a variety of demographics in society, leading to an implication that different criteria may be appropriate for different demographic strata. The authors address this issue and identify the cross section of demographic strata and the disease characteristics that are critical for understanding the disease in that subset of the population. Findings in real world NHANESIII data support this hypothesis, thus the approach can be used by clinical scientists to narrow down specific demographic pools to further study impacts of key MetS characteristics.
Social Credential-Based Role Recommendation and Patient Privacy Control in Medical Emergency
Authors: Chun Soon Ae , Kwon Joon Hee , Lee Haesung
Published: December 2012

Emerging Health Information Technologies (HIT), such as Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Personal Health Records (PHR) systems, facilitate access to and sharing of patients’ medical data in a distributed environment. The privacy protection of medical information is a pressing issue with the use of these medical technologies. In this paper, the authors present a Patient-controlled Privacy Protection Framework, which allows a patient to specify his or her own privacy policies on their own medical data no matter where they are stored. In addition, the authors extend this basic framework to medical emergency situations, where roles and users may not be limited to an organizational boundary. To enforce patient’s privacy policies even in emergency situations, the authors propose the Situation Role-based Privacy Control model and a social network-based user credential discovery method to recommend a situation role to candidate users. The authors present a mobile prototype system and two experiments to show the feasibility of our approach.
Colored vs. Black Screens or How Color Can Favor Green e-Commerce
Authors: Pelet Jean-Eric , Papadopoulou Panagiota
Published: December 2012

This paper presents the results of an exploratory qualitative study conducted with 26 consumers about their use of computer screen savers. The results show how the use of screen savers remains almost nonexistent. Unknown or taking too long to apply, this feature is not attractive to persons interviewed who do not use it for sustainable development purposes. The paper presents the results of this qualitative study, offering an interpretive analysis of the reasons and factors explaining this type of computer user’s behavior. The paper also discusses the potential of using screensaver functionality in e-commerce websites, particularly in the Mediterranean region. In this direction it looks into how this could be provided by the establishment of two elements - a browser and a website extension, which will be tested in a future online experiment.
Information Technology and Supply Chain Management Coordination
Authors: Carrus Pier Paolo , Pinna Roberta
Published: December 2012

Logistics Service Providers (3PL) have become important players in supply chain management. In a highly competitive context characterized by “time compression”, a successful strategy depends increasingly on the performance of Logistics Service Providers as they play a key integrative role linking different supply chain elements more effectively. However, the role of the information technology capability of these 3PL has not drawn much attention. The research question is: can IT be viewed as a fundamental supply chain management coordination mechanism? If so, does IT capability of third party logistics providers to improve performance in the supply chain and become a bigger factor in a strategic buyer-3PL relationship? By drawing on earlier research on the supply chain management coordination mechanism, the IT capability of third party logistics providers, a case study is conducted.
E-Service Research Trends in the Domain of E-Government
Authors: Islam M. Sirajul , Scupola Ada
Published: December 2012

Government ‘e-service’ as a subfield of the e-government domain has been gaining attention to practitioners and academicians alike due to the growing use of information and communication technologies at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. This paper conducts a thorough literature review to examine the e-service research trends during the period between 2005 and 2009 mostly in terms of research methods, theoretical models, and frameworks employed as well as type of research questions. The results show that there has been a good amount of papers focusing on ‘e-Service’ within the field of e-government with a good combination of research methods and theories. In particular, findings show that technology acceptance, evaluation and system architecture are the most common themes, which circa half of the studies surveyed focus on the organizational perspective and that the most employed research methods are case studies and surveys, often with a mix of both types of methodologies.
Technical Audit of an Electronic Polling Station
Authors: Alaiz-Moreton Hector , Panizo-Alonso Luis , Fernandez-Diaz Ramón A. , Alfonso-Cendon Javier
Published: December 2012

This paper shows the lack of standard procedures to audit e-voting systems and also describes a practical process of auditing an e-voting experience based on a Direct-recording Electronic system (D.R.E). This system has been tested in a real situation, in the city council of Coahuila, Mexico, in November 2008. During the auditing, several things were kept in mind, in particular those critical in complex contexts, as democratic election processes are. The auditing process is divided into three main complementary stages: analysis of voting protocol, analysis of polling station hardware elements, and analysis of the software involved. Each stage contains several items which have to be analyzed at low level with the aim to detect and resolve possible security problems.
Policy Cycle-Based E-Government Architecture for Policy-Making Organisations of Public Administrations
Authors: Walser Konrad , Riedl Reinhard
Published: December 2012

This article outlines a business and application architecture for policy-making organisations of public administrations. The focus was placed on the derivation of processes and their IT support on the basis of the policy-cycle concept. The derivation of various (modular) process areas allows for the discussion of generic application support in order to achieve the modular structure of e-government architectures for policy-making organisations of public administrations, as opposed to architectures for operational administration processes by administrations. In addition, further issues and spheres of interest to be addressed in the field of architecture management for policy-making organisations of public administrations will be specified. Different architecture variants are evaluated in the context of a potential application of the architecture design for policy-making organisations of public administrations. This raises questions such as how the issue of interoperability between information systems of independent national, state, and municipal administrations is to be tackled. Further research is needed to establish, for example, the level of enterprise architecture and the depth to which integration in this area must or may extend.
The WAVE Platform
Authors: Lee Deirdre , Menda Yojana Priya , Peristeras Vassilios , Price David
Published: December 2012

The growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offers governments advanced methods for providing services and governing their constituency. eGovernment research aims to provide the models, technologies, and tools for more effective and efficient public administration systems as well as more participatory decision processes. In particular, eParticipation opens up greater opportunities for consultation and dialogue between government and citizens. Many governments have embraced eParticipation by setting up websites that allow citizens to contribute and have their say on particular issues. Although these sites make use of some of the latest ICT and Web 2.0 technologies, the uptake and sustained usage by citizens is still relatively low. Additionally, when users do participate, there is the issue of how the numerous contributions can be effectively processed and analysed, to avoid the inevitable information overload created by thousands of unstructured comments. The WAVE platform addresses what the authors see as the main barriers to the uptake of eParticipation websites by adopting a holistic and sustained approach of engaging users to participate in public debates. The WAVE platform incorporates argument visualisation, social networking, and Web 2.0 techniques to facilitate users participating in structured visual debates in a community environment.
Assessment and Confidence Estimates of Newborn Brain Maturity from Sleep EEG
Authors: Schetinin V. , Jakaite L.
Published: December 2012

Electroencephalograms (EEGs) recorded from sleeping newborns contain information about their brain maturity. Although these EEGs are very weak and distorted by artifacts, and widely vary during sleep hours as well as between patients, the main maturity-related patterns are recognizable by experts. However, experts are typically incapable of quantitatively providing accurate estimates of confidence in assessments. The most accurate estimates are, in theory, provided with the Bayesian methodology of probabilistic inference which has been practically implemented with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) integration over a model parameter space. Typically this technique aims to approximate the integral by sampling areas of interests with high likelihood of the true model. In practice, the likelihood distributions are typically multimodal, and for this reason, the existing MCMC techniques have been shown incapable of providing the proportional sampling of multiple areas of interest. Besides, the lack of prior information increases this problem especially for a large model parameter space, making its detailed exploration impossible within a reasonable time. Specifically, the absence of information about EEG features has been shown affecting the results of the Bayesian assessment of EEG maturity. In this chapter, authors discuss how the posterior information can be used in order to mitigate the problem of disproportional sampling in order to improve the accuracy of assessments. Having analyzed the posterior information, they found that the MCMC integration tends to oversample the areas in which a model parameter space includes EEG features making a weak contribution to the assessment. This observation has motivated the authors to cure the results of MCMC integration, and when they tested the proposed method on the EEG recordings, they found an increase in the accuracy of assessment.
An Ontology-Driven Approach to Clinical Evidence Modelling Implementing Clinical Prediction Rules
Authors: Corrigan Derek , Hederman Lucy , Khan Haseeb , Taweel Adel , Kostopoulou Olga , Delaney Brendan
Published: December 2012

Diagnostic error is a major threat to patient safety in the context of the primary care setting. Evidence-based medicine has been advocated as one part of a solution. The ability to effectively apply evidence-based medicine implies the use of information systems by providing efficient access to the latest peer-reviewed evidence-based information sources. A fundamental challenge in applying information technology to a diagnostic clinical domain is how to formally represent known clinical knowledge as part of an underlying evidence repository. Clinical prediction rules (CPRs) can provide the basis for a formal representation of knowledge. The TRANSFoRm project defines the architectural components required to deliver a solution by providing an ontology driven clinical evidence service to support provision of diagnostic tools, designed to be maintained and updated from electronic sources of research data, to assist primary care clinicians during the patient consultation through delivery of up to date evidence based diagnostic rules.
Detecting Cyber Attacks on SCADA and Other Critical Infrastructures
Authors: Coutinho Maurilio Pereira , Lambert-Torres Germano , Borges da Silva Luiz Eduardo , Lazarek Horst , Franz Elke
Published: December 2012

Nowadays, critical infrastructure plays a fundamental role in our modern society. Telecommunication and transportation services, water and electricity supply, and banking and financial services are examples of such infrastructures. They expose society to security threats. To safeguard against these threats, providers of critical infrastructure services also need to maintain the security objectives of their interdependent data networks. As an important part of the electric power system critical infrastructure, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems require protection from a variety of threats, and their network infrastructures are potentially vulnerable to cyber attacks because security has not been part of their design. The diversity and lack of interoperability in the communication protocols also create obstacles for anyone attempting to establish secure communication. In order to improve the security of SCADA systems, anomaly detection can be used to identify corrupted values caused by malicious attacks and injection faults. The aim of this chapter is to present an alternative technique for implementing anomaly detection to monitor electric power electric systems. The problem is addressed here by the use of rough set theory.
Fortifying Large Scale, Geospatial Networks
Authors: Murray Alan T. , Grubesic Tony H.
Published: December 2012

Large scale, geospatial networks—such as the Internet, the interstate highway system, gas pipelines, and the electrical grid—are integral parts of modern society, facilitating the capability to communicate, transport goods and services between locations, and connect homes and businesses to basic necessities like water and electricity. The associated management and protection of this critical infrastructure is a challenging task because it is often compromised or damaged by natural disasters, human error, or sabotage. Further, the cascading effects associated with disruptions can impact related interdependent infrastructure, such as supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA). In this context, although the protection and/or hardening of network elements can reduce disruptive impacts, the cost to protect all equipment in the system is prohibitive. The purpose of this chapter is to detail an optimization approach for selecting elements on a network to be protected, under budget constraints, in order to maximize system performance if one or more components are damaged or destroyed. Applications results for a large scale, geospatial network are explored and presented, illustrating problem complexities as well as the potential for informed strategic investment decision making. The implications for SCADA systems relying on large scale geospatial networks, including the public Internet, are also discussed.
Compression Artifacts in Modern Video Coding and State-of-the-Art Means of Compensation
Authors: Unterweger Andreas
Published: December 2012

This chapter describes and explains common as well as less common distortions in modern video coding, ranging from artifacts appearing in MPEG-2 Video, MPEG-4 Part 2, H.264, and VC-1 to scalable and multi-view video coding based distortions, including the proposals for next generation video coding (NVC). In addition to a discussion about avoiding these artifacts through encoder-side measures, a state-of-the-art overview of their compensation at the decoder side is given. Finally, artifacts emerging from new sophisticated coding tools in current and upcoming video coding standards are discussed.
Performance Scalable Motion Estimation for Video Coding
Authors: Sorwar Golam , Murshed Manzur
Published: December 2012

Motion estimation is one of the major bottlenecks in real-time performance scalable video coding applications due to high computational complexity of exhaustive search. To address this, researchers so far focused on low-complexity motion estimation and rate-distortion optimization in isolation. Proliferation of power-constrained handheld devices with image capturing capability has created demand for much smarter approach where motion estimation is integrated with rate control such that rate-distortion-complexity optimization can be effectively achieved. It is indeed crucial to provide such performance scalability in motion estimation to facilitate complexity management in such devices. This chapter presents an overview of motion estimation. Beginning with an introduction to the importance of motion estimation, it systematically examines various motion estimation techniques and their strengths and weaknesses, focussing primarily on block-based motion search. It then examines the limitation of the existing techniques in accommodating performance scalability, introduces a promising approach, Distance-dependent Thresholding Search (DTS) motion search, to fill in this gap, and concludes with future research directions in the field. The authors suggest that the content of the chapter will make a significant contribution and serve as a reference for multimedia signal processing research at postgraduate level.
State-of-the Art Motion Estimation in the Context of 3D TV
Authors: Estrela Vania V. , Coelho A. M.
Published: December 2012

Progress in image sensors and computation power has fueled studies to improve acquisition, processing, and analysis of 3D streams along with 3D scenes/objects reconstruction. The role of motion compensation/motion estimation (MCME) in 3D TV from end-to-end user is investigated in this chapter. Motion vectors (MVs) are closely related to the concept of disparities, and they can help improving dynamic scene acquisition, content creation, 2D to 3D conversion, compression coding, decompression/decoding, scene rendering, error concealment, virtual/augmented reality handling, intelligent content retrieval, and displaying. Although there are different 3D shape extraction methods, this chapter focuses mostly on shape-from-motion (SfM) techniques due to their relevance to 3D TV. SfM extraction can restore 3D shape information from a single camera data.
Resilient Video Coding via Improved Motion Compensated Prediction
Authors: Nyamweno Sunday , Satyan Ramdas , Labeau Fabrice
Published: December 2012

Motion compensated prediction (MCP) is at the heart of modern video compression standard because of its ability to remove temporal redundancies. However, MCP is responsible for temporal error propagation, which can result in severe quality degradation in lossy environments. In this chapter, the authors present two innovative methods of improving MCP to be more resilient to packet losses. In the first method, the motion trajectory is used to develop a novel distortion weighting technique, and the second method exploits the presence of Intra macroblocks in previously coded frames to develop increase robustness.
A 2D Barcode Validation System for Mobile Commerce
Authors: Kuo David , Wong Daniel , Gao Jerry , Chang Lee
Published: December 2012

The wide deployment of wireless networks and mobile technologies and the significant increase in the number of mobile device users has created a very strong demand for emerging mobile commerce applications and services. Barcode-based identification and validation solutions are considered an important part of electronic commerce systems, particularly in electronic supply chain systems. This paper reports a mobile-based 2D barcode validation system as part of mobile commerce systems. This barcode-based validation solution is developed based on the Data Matrix 2D-Barcode standard to support barcode-based validation in mobile commerce systems on mobile devices. The paper demonstrates its application by building a mobile movie ticketing system.
Interactive Rendering of Indoor and Urban Environments on Handheld Devices by Combining Visibility Algorithms with Spatial Data Structures
Authors: Silva Wendel B. , Rodrigues Maria Andréia F.
Published: December 2012

This work presents a comparative study of various combinations of visibility algorithms (view-frustum culling, backface culling, and a simple yet fast algorithm called conservative backface culling) and different settings of standard spatial data structures (non-uniform Grids, BSP-Trees, Octrees, and Portal-Octrees) for enabling efficient graphics rendering of both indoor and urban 3D environments, especially suited for low-end handheld devices. Performance tests and analyses were conducted using two different mobile platforms and environments in the order of thousands of triangles. The authors demonstrate that navigation at interactive frame rates can be obtained using geometry rather than image-based rendering or point-based rendering on the cell phone Nokia n82.
Information Technology Project Outcomes
Authors: Badamas Muhammed A.
Published: December 2012

Enterprise IT projects can end up costing much more than initial estimations, taking much longer time than expected or delivering benefits below expectations. The success or failure of IT projects, however, depends on the project managers. Many reasons are attributed to the success or failure of an IT project. The major stakeholders who are involved in IT projects are the right people to provide these reasons. This study was conducted among IT project managers in the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan area to find out the most important reasons that projects succeed or fail. Washington-Baltimore metropolitan is a major hub of IT activities because of the location of the U.S. Federal Government, several government agencies and the presence of many IT contactors in the area. The study provides metric for comparing reasons for success or failure of IT projects with those projects not located in the area.
Supporting Social Interaction in Campus-Scale Environments by Embracing Mobile Social Networking
Authors: Yu Zhiwen , Liang Yunji , Yang Yue , Guo Bin
Published: December 2012

With the popularity of smart phones, the warm embrace of social networking services, and the perfection of wireless communication, mobile social networking has become a hot research topic. The characteristics of mobile devices and requirements of services in social environments pose challenges to the construction of a social platform. In this chapter, the authors elaborate a flexible system architecture based on the service-oriented specification to support social interaction in a university campus. For the client side, they designed a mobile middleware to collect social contexts such as proximity, acceleration, and cell phone logs, etc. The server backend aggregates such contexts, analyzes social connections among users, and provides social services to facilitate social interaction. A prototype of mobile social networking system is deployed on campus, and several applications are implemented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance (in terms of response time and energy consumption) of our system. A user study was also conducted to investigate user acceptance of our prototype. The experimental results show that the proposed architecture provides real-time response to users. Furthermore, the user study demonstrates that the applications are useful to enhance social interaction in campus environments.
Engendering Interaction, Collaboration, and Reflection in the Design of Online Assessment in Language Learning
Authors: Wang Yuping , Chen Nian-Shing
Published: December 2012

As suggested by its title, this chapter situates online assessment in language learning in complete online mode as opposed to blended learning (i.e., campus-based learning supported by online components), or traditional distance language learning with no online components. Online language learning discussed in this study has its own inherent characteristics. Typically, this type of learning features the physical separation of learners from one another and from their education providers. Consequently, without the support of sophisticated online educational technologies, the provision of interaction, collaboration, and reflection, the fundamental elements in modern education would be problematic. This chapter discusses the framework developed for the design of online assessment that engenders interaction, collaboration, and reflection, by taking advantage of advanced online educational technologies. Examples of online assessment design drawn from the assessments implemented in an online Chinese program at Griffith University, Australia, are evaluated to establish the validity of the proposed design framework. These discussions also lead to recommendations for online assessment design for online language learning.
Practising Language Interaction via Social Networking Sites
Authors: Orsini-Jones Marina , Brick Billy , Pibworth Laura
Published: December 2012

This chapter reports on the evaluation of language learning SNSs carried out by “expert students” who are training to become Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. While stressing the positive features available on these sites and novel ways in which they can enable personalised language learning, this study also focuses on some troublesome aspects that occur when learners engage with Web 2.0 tools. It discusses how initial motivation towards these tools can turn into frustration, mirroring the results of a previous autoethnographic study carried out on SNSs. It also illustrates how these global ubiquitous platforms pose a dilemma for language practitioners who work within institutional teaching settings. Teachers recognize the language learning potential of these tools, but are also worried by the ethical threat they can pose, which can normally be avoided, or at least moderated, within institutional proprietary and “less exciting” platforms.
Scaffolding Role of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environment on Collaboration and Academic Literacy
Authors: Zhao Ke
Published: December 2012

Drawing on knowledge building and social cognitive perspectives on academic literacy, this chapter argues for a design framework of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environment featured by Knowledge Forum for Chinese tertiary business English students. An initial design study was reported to evaluate the design effect of CSCL environment on collaboration and academic literacy and to further investigate factors facilitating academic literacy development. Four intact classes with 102 Year One students participated in a 12-week project learning in two different learning environments, namely Computer-Supported Collaborative Inquiry Learning (CSCIL) and Regular Project-Based Learning environment (RPBL). Data was obtained from exam results, survey, essay writing quality, and focus group interviews. Four dimensions of academic literacy were identified and rated. MANOVA analyses showed significant main effects of environment indicating that CSCIL groups have significant higher gains in conceptual understanding and argumentative construction. Contrastive analyses of focus group interview data identify the interplay of social, cognitive, and technological dynamics that facilitate collaborative conceptual understanding and argumentative construction. Implications and further design issues are also discussed.
Developing and Implementing an Online Chinese Program
Authors: Sun Mingyu , Chen Yea-Fen , Olson Andrew
Published: December 2012

The virtual language classroom is becoming more commonplace, and for many instructors it is even a requirement. This chapter aims to present a virtual language classroom case study and to propose a prototype for instructors to develop and implement fully online entry-level language classes, as well as to provide guidelines and recommendations for their reference as they redesign traditional face-to-face language courses to fit the online modality. As the case study progressed, the authors discovered that this new modality of online language instruction poses many challenges. Their research aims to answer questions, such as: 1) is the online instruction in the case study comparable to the face-to-face class? and 2) how can one best balance synchronous and asynchronous components in an entry-level online language (Chinese in specific) course?
Design of Language Learning Software
Authors: Turel Vehbi , McKenna Peter
Published: December 2012

In this chapter, the authors focus on the principles and guidelines that should be borne in mind when designing and developing (interactive multimedia) language software for foreign language learning. The stages of software design and development can be categorized into six separate stages: (1) feasibility, (2) setting up a team of experts, (3) designing, (4) programming, (5) testing, and (6) evaluating. Each stage is vital to the design and development process for cost effective software, and a wide range of principles and guidelines need to be borne in mind at each stage in order to design and develop effective language learning software. Here, the authors focus on the design principles and guidelines that need to be considered while designing and developing language software.
Online Freedom
Authors: Atay Simber
Published: December 2012

This chapter discusses the ’’Online Freedom’’ phenomenon in a hypertextual paragon, in addition to the related cultural, photographical, art historical, mythological, museological, and classical prolongations. Freedom is a holy notion, an idealist principal, which applies symmetrically in the cyberspace. But sometimes, the online lives of local members of the global community could distort the freedom notion. Thus, not forgetting the classical/romantic definition of this notion becomes a cultural strategy, because freedom is essentially an individual awareness situation. The subject is discussed in consideration of Camus’s existentialist humanism, Arendt’s argument over the Authority, Aby Warburg’s Nachleben, labyrinth definitions of Moles and Rohmer, Agamben’s arche, and Hobbes’ idealized individual-state relation.
Accessibility Implementation for Disabled Students in PMBOLD Environments
Authors: Alphin Henry C.
Published: December 2012

Project management theory provides an organized, cost-effective approach to providing an accessible e-learning environment. Such a collaborative project has the opportunity to bring together such professionals as instructional designers, disability services staff, and institutional researchers. Accessibility as an afterthought is a costly approach, and disabled students are a large enough minority to seek equality of opportunity. E-learning accessibility empowers the individual by providing educational content in formats that not only encourage collaboration and learning, but also reduce frustration and develop a sense of inclusiveness. A project manager who understands the importance of e-learning accessibility will be able to grow the project from the ground up in a manner that empowers the disabled, while benefiting all learners.
A Holistic Approach to Evaluating Social Media’s Successful Implementation into Emergency Management Operations
Authors: Westbrook Robby , Karlgaard Tammy , White Connie , Knapic Josalyn
Published: December 2012

As emergency management agencies and organizations implement social media and web technology to support crisis information and communication efforts, many question if present strategies are beneficial. This is especially true if social media is being implemented for the first time or has not been experienced in a live disaster. Studies have been conducted providing information on a variety of interactions between Social Media and Emergency Management (SMEM). However, few have taken a formal scientific approach as a means of measurement providing a ’Comprehensive Performance Metric.’ Performance metrics need to have consistency while providing room for implementing unique measurement criteria for individualized efforts. The authors offer a research design using field studies of real world cases, evaluating rural and metropolitan areas. The result produces a set of ’Best Practices’ through implementation. By offering a means of measuring success, SMEM can continue to evolve by using a methodologically sound approach using social media.
A Fuzzy Decision Support Model for Natural Disaster Response under Informational Uncertainty
Authors: Wex Felix , Schryen Guido , Neumann Dirk
Published: December 2012

Coordination deficiencies have been identified after the March 2011 earthquakes in Japan in terms of scheduling and allocation of resources, with time pressure, resource shortages, and especially informational uncertainty being main challenges. The authors address this issue of operational emergency response in natural disaster management (NDM) by suggesting a decision support model and a Monte Carlo heuristic which account for these challenges by drawing on fuzzy set theory and fuzzy optimization. Deriving requirements for addressing NDM situations from both practice and literature, they propose a decision model that accounts for the following phenomena: (a) incidents and rescue units are spatially distributed, (b) rescue units possess specific capabilities, (c) processing is non-preemptive, and (d) informational uncertainty occurs due to vague and linguistic specifications of data. The authors computationally evaluate their heuristic and benchmark the results with current best practice solutions. The authors’ results indicate that applying the new heuristic can substantially reduce overall harm.
Organizational Conflict and Knowledge Creation
Authors: Varriale Luisa , Briganti Paola , La Peruta Rosaria , Ferrara Maria
Published: December 2012

This study investigates the relationship between organizational conflict and knowledge creation in the Italian health care system in order to identify the main determinants and effects of this relationship. The paper defines this relationship and investigates the interaction between conflict levels, management conflict styles and their effects on knowledge. Considering the innovative characteristic of the subject, the authors propose a multiple method study. First, the authors conducted a qualitative study on the dynamics of conflict and knowledge creation using the focus group technique (38 nurses selected from the Italian health care system). Second, the authors conducted a field study (180 nurses from Italian hospitals). The results show that the participants consider conflict more as a beneficial instrument for the creation of organizational knowledge and, at the same time, there is not always a significant and linear relationship between conflict characteristics and knowledge creation dimensions. Recent theories on organizational conflict underline the strategic role of conflict, as neither positive or negative, but always necessary to preserve and further the survival of a firm. Therefore, the outcomes of the application could prove very important in improving the organizational effectiveness and day-to-day efficiency of hospitals.
Innovative IC Framework in the Non-Profit Sector
Authors: Rija Maurizio , Bronzetti Giovanni
Published: December 2012

The importance of intellectual capital in the non-profit sector generates the need to measure its role in the value creation process. The purpose of the paper is to study the application of intellectual capital within the non-profit sector, by turning attention to resources such as: knowledge, experience, and skills. Organizations, which are able to increase the knowledge of their staff and transform this knowledge into skills to improve services, can easily meet users’ needs and, thereby, become competitive. This contribution proposes to study how people’s knowledge can contribute to increasing social value, which is the non–profit organization’s aim. Furthermore, the goal is to demonstrate how collaboration between staff and volunteers is essential to professional services. Finally, the research proposes a conceptual framework in which intellectual capital helps in defining the strategic issues, which non–profit organizations must tackle in order to achieve their social programs.
Managing Intellectual Capital in Non-Profit Elderly Care Organizations
Authors: Sillanpää Virpi , Laihonen Harri
Published: December 2012

The management of intellectual capital (IC) is considered as a highly promising approach for non-profit organizations (NPO). However, lack of in-depth understanding about the issue and practical tools to support management persists. IC research in the case of NPO’s is still rather generic and conceptual. This paper makes a contribution by describing the practices of IC management in this particular context. The paper describes one possible approach to recognize the key intangibles of non-profit organizations. This approach was applied in three case organizations in order to illustrate the significance of IC from the viewpoint of value creation in services. More generally, the paper illustrates first, the necessity to concretize the strategic perspectives of IC management and second, the need for measurement tools that enable the monitoring of IC.
Harmony Search with Greedy Shuffle for Nurse Rostering
Authors: Awadallah Mohammed A. , Khader Ahamad Tajudin , Al-Betar Mohammed Azmi , Bolaji Asaju La’aro
Published: December 2012

In this paper, a hybridization of Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) with a greedy shuffle move is proposed for Nurse Rostering Problem (NRP). NRP is a combinatorial optimization problem that is tackled by assigning a set of nurses with different skills and contracts to different types of shifts, over a pre-determined scheduling period. HSA is a population-based method which mimics the improvisation process that has been successfully applied for a wide range of optimization problems. The performance of HSA is enhanced by hybridizing it with a greedy shuffle move. The proposed method is evaluated using a dataset defined in first International Nurse Rostering Competition (INRC2010). The hybrid HSA obtained the best results of the comparative methods in four datasets.