Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Collaborative approach'

WICKRAMARATHNE, T. L. (M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering) A Belief Theoretic Approach for Automated Collaborative Filtering (May 2008) Abstract of a thesis at the University of Miami. Thesis supervised by Professor Kamal Premaratne. No. of pages in text. (84) Automated Collaborative Filtering (ACF) is one of the most successful strategies available for recommender systems. Application of ACF in more sensitive and critical applications however has been hampered by the absence of better mechanisms to accommodate imperfections (ambiguities and uncertainties in ratings, missing ratings, etc.) that are inherent in user preference ratings and propagate such imperfections throughout the decision making process. Thus one is compelled to make various "assumptions" regarding the user preferences giving rise to predictions that lack sufficient integrity. With its Dempster-Shafer belief theoretic basis, CoFiDS, the automated Collaborative Filtering algorithm proposed in this thesis, can (a) represent a wide variety of data imperfections; (b) propagate the partial knowledge that such data imperfections generate throughout the decision-making process; and (c) conveniently incorporate contextual information from multiple sources. The "soft" predictions that CoFiDS generates provide substantial exibility to the domain expert. Depending on the associated DS theoretic belief-plausibility measures, the domain expert can either render a "hard" decision or narrow down the possible set of predictions to as smaller set as necessary. With its capability to accommodate data imperfections, CoFiDS widens the applicability of ACF, from the more popular domains, such as movie and book recommendations, to more sensitive and critical problem domains, such as medical expert support systems, homeland security and surveillance, etc. We use a benchmark movie dataset and a synthetic dataset to validate CoFiDS and compare it to several existing ACF systems.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, 2006.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on June 19, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 138-151). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-186).
(cont.) to encourage the interconnection of planning and mainstream information technology. We find that the PAMML framework can lower costs by leveraging mainstream technology, simplify the most basic data sharing activities, yet still allow organizations with different levels of technical sophistication to collaborate. PAMML captures the semantics of spatial planning problems, allowing them to be decomposed into fundamental information processing operations. Regarding user interfaces, we show that PAMML's structure allows multiple end user applications aimed towards different audiences to be easily built from the same core PAMML document.
This thesis examines systemic problems with the way information is managed and processed in planning support systems. We find evidence of these problems when we attempt to: develop an analysis without spending most of the time gathering and organizing data sets; or build an analysis that can be re-run at low cost; or implement systems that interact collaboratively with those of other experts. This research starts with the hypothesis that these problems are related and systemic, and that a new paradigm of information management is needed if we can hope to address them effectively. The research is divided into two main sections. First, we develop a theory about how information flows within and across planning organizations, and use the MassGIS buildout analysis to understand how physical planning is done in a cross-jurisdictional, real-world setting. We find that modern organizations do are good at creating and disseminating information, but find it difficult to keep users' copies of published information up-to-date. Furthermore, the technology for building interactive front-ends to analytic models is poorly matched to user needs, and the technology for enabling cross-organization collaborative analysis is non-existent. In the second part of the thesis, we re-architect the information framework, guided by our new theoretical foundation and findings from practice. This new framework is based on Web services, an emerging technology for connecting information systems across organizations. It is called the Planning Analysis and Modeling Markup Language framework, or PAMML, consisting of an information processing vocabulary expressed in XML Schema, Web services based on the schema, and guidance on how to best use the framework
by Raj R. Singh.
Ph.D.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76).
by Winston Dali Chang.
M.Eng.

Hospital falls among medical-surgical inpatients are a safety concern. Inpatient falls that lead to significant injuries may be reduced by fall intervention education, which can lead to the preparedness of the patient and care providers. Orlando's deliberative nursing process theory and the plan-do-check-act model were applied to address the project practice-focused question that explored whether the education of staff nurses on fall prevention interventions would reduce the incidence of falls during a 2-month period. The purpose of the project was to implement and evaluate nursing staff education on the Morse fall scale, an evidence-based fall-prevention intervention. Evaluation of staff nurse knowledge related to use of the scale and data that indicated the number of patient falls were collected before and after implementation of the education project. The education project was effective in decreasing fall rates from 4.2 to 3.4 falls per 1,000 days over a 2-month period; it also resulted in an average Morse fall scale assessment score of 90%. The implications of this project for positive social change include protecting patients from injury and promoting safety through the identification of high-risk patients and application of individualized fall-reduction interventions. The outcome of the project demonstrated that falls can be prevented through improved education and the use of fall interventions.

Humanitarian disasters are expected to increase 5-fold over the next 50 years. In 2010 a total of 385 separate disasters killed over 297,000 people worldwide, affected more than 217 million others and caused US$ 123.9 billion of economic damages. It is suggested that the scale of resource dedicated to logistics provision in response to disasters accounts for upwards of 80% of the total budget, hence humanitarian logistics both as a practice and a research topic is very much in the spotlight. Consequently, this research addresses what is argued to be the under-representation of humanitarian logistics in the literature and the associated lack of empirical research focussed on the management of the supply chain. Collaborative working has been promoted as a Silver Bullet in many areas of Supply Chain Management and is contended to be a mechanism to prevent organisations optimising solely their own results rather than integrating their goals and activities with others to benefit overall end user value. Collaborative techniques inherent within commercial supply chains have not been observed in the humanitarian relief chain. This study investigates why this is the case, as this lack of collaboration is reported to lead to inefficiency; which at worst results in increased humanitarian suffering and additional loss of life. Hence, the findings reveal ways to advance collaborative working within the humanitarian relief supply chain. Criticism is levelled at the predominance of quantitative methodologies in current research within humanitarian logistics. This study addresses this gap as well as the calls for more cross-organisational case studies within the field, by adopting a multi-case, qualitative approach based on the triangulation of data gathered during a series of in-depth interviews and focus groups across 4 separate humanitarian relief organisations. Data interpretation is through content analysis to identify specific patterns and themes. The research concerns itself with the response immediately following the onset of a disaster. This limited scope helps to address issues surrounding the generalisability of a purely qualitative approach whilst also maintaining control over data volume; however, there are still ample opportunities for significant theoretical and practical contribution. The findings identify specific barriers to collaborative working within the sector; in particular, themes and patterns within management and control, understanding and training, relationships, and military involvement have surfaced. Outcomes also have implications for commercial supply chain managers who are increasingly faced with challenges that no longer obey the traditional rules of forecast driven certainty and predictability, and are therefore, expected to adopt the more event driven, agile and flexible approaches that are already a reality for their humanitarian sector counterparts. The study concludes with the development of a conceptual generic model of the humanitarian supply chain that includes a number of significant issues which, if addressed will improve collaboration and thereby benefit overall efficiency and effectiveness to the general betterment of future relief provision.

Better integration of human cultures and ecological communities is needed to sustain the health of people and the land. The inherent difference between concepts and things themselves, and the cultural disconnection between intellectual-conceptual and physical-material work, are implicated in environmental problems. Landscape designbuild is an opportunity to reconnect words, actions, and the land, to set convincing, practical examples for clients to follow, and to foster a mutually beneficial 'culture of habitat' (Nabhan).A collaborative home and landscape design project was undertaken with a family of three. Fieldwork involved a variety of interactive design techniques combining dialogue AND direct experience. The project ended with the completion of a conceptual design but did not reach construction stage before the close of fieldwork.'Embodied conversation' describes the design process, characterized by alternating modes of interaction, turn-taking, negotiation of differences, and emergence of meaning and purpose. This approach heightened participants' awareness of their environment and generated a variety of useful design ideas, but better procedures were needed for moderating the pace of interaction and for making durable decisions. By balancing dialogue and direct experience, a 'conversational' approach to ecological designbuild work can help participants make sense of and use of their habitat in a way that reconciles human needs with ecological functions.
Master of Landscape Architecture

Current methods employed to develop collaborative applications have to make decisions and speculate about the environment in which the application will operate within, the network infrastructure that will be used and the device type the application will operate on. These decisions and assumptions about the environment in which collaborative applications were designed to work are not ideal. These methods produce collaborative applications that are characterised as being inflexible, working on homogeneous networks and single platforms, requiring pre-existing knowledge of the data and information types they need to use and having a rigid choice of architecture.

This dissertation describes a novel technique to creating a simulated team of agents through observation. Simulated human teamwork can be used for a number of purposes, such as expert examples, automated teammates for training purposes and realistic opponents in games and training simulation. Current teamwork simulations require the team member behaviors be programmed into the simulation, often requiring a great deal of time and effort. None are able to observe a team at work and replicate the teamwork behaviors. Machine learning techniques for learning by observation and learning by demonstration have proven successful at observing behavior of humans or other software agents and creating a behavior function for a single agent. The research described here combines current research in teamwork simulations and learning by observation to effectively train a multi-agent system in effective team behavior. The dissertation describes the background and work by others as well as a detailed description of the learning method. A prototype built to evaluate the developed approach as well as the extensive experimentation conducted is also described.
ID: 029809360; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 305-314).
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Engineering and Computer Science

Multilingualism in classrooms is currently prompting debate and has significantly impacted on schooling in South Africa over the last decade. At present South African educators face the challenge of coping with and finding solutions to culturally and linguistically diverse urban school contexts that did not exist before. In many South African communities young learners, without any prior knowledge of English, are placed in English preschools. Preschool teachers have the demanding task of preparing these multilingual preschoolers for formal schooling in English, and, in addition, are pressurised by parents or caregivers who expect their children to be fluent in English by the time they enter primary school. A group of preschool teachers in a specific urban, multilingual preschool context expressed concern about multilingual preschool learners’ academic performances and their future, and requested advice and support. Consequently a need was identified for speech-language therapists to make their expertise available to multilingual preschool learners, as well as to their preschool teachers. To address this need, an exploratory, descriptive, contextual research design, incorporating the quantitative perspective, was selected to describe the specific educational context of multilingual preschools in the Pretoria Central Business District (CBD) and Sunnyside area. A descriptive survey was conducted and two survey techniques were employed to collect the data, namely a questionnaire and a test battery. The questionnaire was used to collect information from 32 teacher participants to investigate the needs and strengths of preschool teachers and multilingual preschool learners. The test battery was utilised to collect data on the language and communication proficiency in English of 30 learner participants. Results indicated that the teacher participants perceived certain personal challenges while supporting the preschool learners acquiring English as Language of Learning and Teaching (ELoLT). These teachers expressed a need for knowledge and support. They also reported that the multilingual preschool learners in the research context had to communicate in ELoLT despite it being an unfamiliar language. Some of the multilingual preschool learners displayed behaviours that could be indicative of negative influences on their self-esteem. The language and communication assessment revealed that many learner participants’ comprehension and expression in ELoLT were insufficient for learning and that they required support for academic success. In addition, the results support the claim that an integrated view of the multilingual learners’ communication abilities need to be established across contexts, by combining assessment strategies, such as naturalistic and structured assessment, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives. The results of the empirical research was used to propose a service delivery model for the acquisition of ELoLT in the research context. This proposed model may be an effective approach to provide supportive intervention to multilingual preschool learners with linguistic barriers to learning. In addition, initial stage intervention guidelines for the basic level ELoLT learner were offered in response to the needs of the specific community. These guidelines may provide a basis for the planning of intervention strategies to preschool teachers who were concerned about the education and future of multilingual preschool learners.
Thesis (DPhil (Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2007.
Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
Unrestricted

Theatre Triad is a new approach to devising collaborative ensemble theatre starting with the three main components of Performance: Voice, Movement, and Text. These components were deconstructed and reconstructed in pairs as the basis for the devising process. The performance process begins with creating an ensemble followed by four steps: exploring the theatrical genres affiliated with the pairings of Voice and Movement, Movement and Text, Voice and Text, and completed with reintegrating all three components. Through this process many things occur, a new play is created, ensemble members focus on exploring the elements of acting and performance, and a strong foundation of acting skills is laid for young actors. Theatre Triad can also be used as a method for teaching a number of courses in Devising Theatre or Acting classes. In this paper you will learn how Theatre Triad works as both a production approach and method in actor training.

Du fait du développement de nouveaux produits (NPD) dans l’industrie, l’organisation devient de plus en plus complexe, ceci est dû notamment à la complexité même des produits. Dans ce contexte, le MBSE (Model Based Systems Engineering) et les approches collaboratives, qui adressent ces complexités, ont été reconnus pour leurs facultés à améliorer le NPD. Une implémentation réussie d’une conception collaborative du type MBSE, doit permettre de gérer ces deux complexités. Cette thèse de doctorat a pour objet l’étude de projets de conception collaborative MBSE au sein des équipes françaises chez des équipementiers automobiles et aéronautiques, afin de mettre en avant l’amélioration du développement des produits. La conception collaborative du type MBSE est assimilable à un système organisationnel complexe, impliquant des vues ou dimensions différentes. Ainsi, l’identification de ces dimensions, leur définition et l’étude de leurs interactions constituent le premier objectif de cette recherche. La compréhension de chacune d’entre elles pour améliorer la collaboration entre les différents membres du projet, est le deuxième objectif.Le troisième et dernier objectif de cette thèse est de proposer des systèmes socio-techniques (STS), assistant la collaboration. Les résultats de cette recherche, fournissent une méthodologie pour manager la complexité organisationnelle dans des projets collaboratifs du type MBSE. Elle est le produit d’une combinaison de quatre méthodes permettant la caractérisation de ses dimensions (processus, acteurs, objets et outils), tout en définissant leurs interactions. Ces méthodes assistent respectivement : 1) La description et l’évaluation de ces projets avec une perspective systémique 2) l’établissement d’une vision partagée du travail 3) l’analyse des coopérations entre les acteurs, et 4) le développement de STS tels quels des environnements collaboratifs et des supports collaboratif de capitalisation. L’implémentation en industrie des méthodes proposées, processus et recommandations, a montré comment la mise en avant de la collaboration dans les projets de design MBSE, permet d’améliorer l’ensemble du développement de produit
The organisational complexity implied by New Product Development (NPD) within the industry, is often induced by the complex nature of the products themselves. In this context, MBSE (Model Based Systems Engineering) and collaborative approaches address those complexities and have been recognised by their contribution to improve the NPD processes. A successful implementation of a collaborative MBSE design would allow to manage both complexities. This PhD thesis describes an investigation on collaborative MBSE design projects within French teams in automotive and aeronautics companies, with the purpose of enhancing them to improve product development. We understand collaborative MBSE design as a complex organisational system which implies different views or dimensions. The identification of those dimensions, their definition and the study of their interactions constitute the first objective of this research. Understanding each dimension in order to improve collaboration between the project members is the second objectivedeuxième objectif.The third and last objective of this research is to propose Socio Technical Systems (STS) supporting this collaboration. The results of the thesis provide a methodology to manage organisational complexity in collaborative MBSE design projects. The methodology is a combination of four methods assisting the characterisation of the MBSE dimensions (people, process, information objects and tools), while defining their interactions. These methods support respectively: 1) The assessment and description of collaborative MBSE design projects from a systemic perspective 2) The establishment of a shared vision of the work 3) The analysis of the cooperation among the actors 4) The development of STS such as collaborative environment and a collaborative capitalisation support. The implementation of the proposed methods, process and guidelines in the industry has shown how the enhancement of collaboration in MBSE design projects can improve the overall product development

In a document retrieval system where data is stored and compared with a specific query and then compared with other documents, we need to find the document that is most similar to the query. The most similar document will have the weight higher than other documents. When more than one document are proposed to the user, these documents have to be sorted according to their weights. Once the result is presented to the user by a recommender system, the user may check any document of interest. If there are two different documents' lists, as two proposed results presented by different recommender systems, then, there is a need to find which list is more efficient. To do so, the measuring tool "Search Engine Ranking Efficiency Evaluation Tool [SEREET]" came to existence. This tool assesses the efficiency of each documents list and assigns a numerical value to the list. The value will be closer to 100% if the ranking list efficiency is high which means more relevance documents exist in the list and documents are sorted according to their relevance to the user. The value will be closer to 0% when the ranking list efficiency is poor and all of the presented documents are uninteresting documents to the user. A model to evaluate ranking efficiency is proposed in the dissertation, then it is proved it mathematically. Many mechanisms of search engine have been proposed in order to assess the relevance of a web page. They have focused on keyword frequency, page usage, link analysis and various combinations of them. These methods have been tested and used to provide the user with the most interesting web pages, according to his or her preferences. The collaborative filtering is a new approach, which was developed in this dissertation to retrieve the most interesting documents to the user according to his or her interests. Building a user profile is a very important issue in finding the user interest and categorizes each user in a suitable category. This is a requirement in collaborative filtering implementation. The inference tools such as time spent in a web page, mouse movement, page scrolling, mouse clicks and other tools were investigated. Then the dissertation shows that the most efficient and sufficient tool is the time a user spent on a web page. To eliminate errors, the system introduces a low threshold and high threshold for each user. Once the time spent on a web page breaks this threshold, an error is reported. SEREET tool is one of the contributions to the scientific society, which measures the efficiency of a search engine ranking list. Considerable work were carried, then the conclusion was that the amount of time spent on a web page is the most important factor in determining a user interest of a web page and also it is a sufficient tool which does not require collaborations from other tools such as mouse movements or a page scrolling. The results show that implicit rating is a satisfactory measure and can replace explicit rating. New filtering technique was introduced to design a fully functional recommender system. The linear vector algorithm which was introduced improves the vector space algorithm (VSA) in time complexity and efficiency. The use of machine learning enhances the retrieved list efficiency. Machine learning algorithm uses positive and negative examples for the training, these examples are mandatory to improve the error rate of the system. The result shows that the amount of these examples increases proportionally with the error rate of the system.

User requirements playa central role in software development processes by bridging the needs of the business to those of the software. In many cases stakeholders need to collaborate to clarify, capture and uncover user requirements in an efficient and effective manner. However, facilitating a group of stakeholders who have got different needs and perspectives is a challenge. Many industry experts have admitted that defining user requirements is the most difficult task of software development. The overall aim of the thesis is to investigate stakeholders' collaboration in facilitated user requirements elicitation workshops and to address the challenges in this field. The research investigates a pattern approach to firstly develop a step-by-step collaborative process that can be used by practitioners in facilitated user requirements elicitation workshops. Secondly, since delivering effective facilitated workshops, especially for novice facilitators is a complex task to achieve, developing a framework that can be used to evaluate the delivery of facilitation services is suggested. This thesis investigates how patterns approach can be applied to requirements elicitation workshops in particular drawing on the field of Collaboration Engineering (CE) that describes patterns of collaboration and the design of collaborative processes. This research follows the Design Science Research (DSR) Methodology. DSR Method defines iterations within a structure that consists of five different research steps: awareness of the problem in the field of the research, suggestions as solutions to the research problem, artefact development, artefact evaluation, and conclusion of research outcomes. DSR is used in the research in two distinctive cases forming two iterative research cycles. As a result of using the method, two artefacts are developed and evaluated in this research. The main outcomes of the research are artefact one, a pattern language designed to be used in facilitated collaborative user requirements elicitation workshops and artefact two, an assessment framework for evaluating the facilitator's performance in the workshops.

Today's complex design projects require teams of designers to work collaboratively by sharing their respective expertise in order to produce effective design solutions. Due to the increasing need for exchanging knowledge, modern design projects are more structured to work with distributed virtual teams that collaborate over computer networks to achieve overall optimization in design. Nevertheless, in a collaborative design process, the integration of multidisciplinary virtual teams - involving exchange and sharing of knowledge and expertise - frequently and inevitably generates conflicting situations. Different experts' viewpoints and perspectives, in addition to several ways of communicating and collaborating at the knowledge level, make all this process very hard to manage. In order to achieve an optimal scenario, some problems must first be solved, such as requirement specification and formalization, ontology integration, and conflict detection and resolution. Specifying and formalizing the knowledge demands a great effort towards obtaining representation patterns that aggregate several disjoint knowledge areas. Each expert should express himself so that the others can understand his information correctly. It is necessary, therefore, to use a flexible and sufficiently extensive data representation model to accomplish such a task. Some current models fall short of providing an effective solution to effective knowledge sharing and collaboration on design projects, because they fail to combine the geographical, temporal, and functional design aspects with a flexible and generic knowledge representation model. This work proposes an information model-driven collaborative design architecture that supports synchronous, generic, service-oriented, agent-based, and ontology-based teamwork. Particular representation models are transformed into ontology instances and merged together in order to accomplish the final product design. It is a synchronous approach because the concurrent processes are undertaken at the same time that the interactions among designers take place. It is generic because it provides the users with two approaches for ontology integration: the use of a predefined generic ontology and the harmonization process. Our proposal focuses on collaborative design conflict resolution by using Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Web Services, the former as a tool for knowledge representation and the latter as a technological support for communication.

This thesis presents a new approach to obtaining optimal and complete solutions to Multi Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problems called Collaborative Iterative Search (CIS). CIS employs a conflict based scheme inspired by the Conflict Based Search (CBS) algorithm and extends this to include a linear order lower level search. The structure of Planar Graphs is leveraged, permitting further optimization of the algorithm. This takes the form of reasoning-based culling of the search space, while maintaining optimality and completeness. Benchmarks provided demonstrate significant performance gains over the existing state of the art, particularly in the case of sparsely populated maps. The thesis draws to a conclusion with a summary of proposed future work.

L'elicitation des exigences est une partie fondamentale du processus de développement de logiciel, et est considérée souvent comme une des activités les plus difficiles à réaliser. Beaucoup des techniques, d'approches, et des outils courants sont inconnus ou trop complexes pour les novices, créant ainsi un écart significatif entre la théorie et la pratique de l'elicitation des exigences. Il y aussi l'écart important entre les novices et les experts analystes, qui peuvent être attribués à la compétence étendue réglée et à la gamme des expériences qui est souvent exigée pour conduire avec succès cette activité essentielle. En conséquence, dans cette recherche nous avons examiné l'état de l'art et l'état de pratique afin de développer et évaluer une approche et un outil pour soutenir les novices pendant l'elicitation des exigences. La première étape de la recherche était une étude critique de la littérature, qui a impliqué une révision vaste et une analyse critique de théorie existante sur et autour du secteur de l'elicitation des exigences. Ceci a été suivi par un aperçu de la pratique, qui s'est composé des entrevues détaillées avec les experts, et d'un questionnaire en ligne pour les novices, utilisés pour obtenir des directives d'approche et des caractéristiques d'outil. L'approche OUTSET a été alors conçue, et l'outil MUSTER a été construit. L'étape finale de la recherche a impliqué l'évaluation de l'approche et de l'outil par une étude de cas, une expérience d'étude de cas, et une expérience formelle. Les évaluations empiriques accomplies ont montré que l'utilisation de l'outil MUSTER a amélioré l'efficacité générale les processus de l'elicitation des exigences, pendant que l'approche fondamentale OUTSET a amélioré l'efficacité générale. Il a été aussi montré que la combinaison de l'approche et de l'outil a fourni un système coopératif qui était utile et utilisable. Dans l'expérience accomplie, l'outil MUSTER a reçu plus de trois fois le score de l'outil manuel pour l'efficacité et plus que double pour l'utilité. .
Requirements elicitation is a fundamental part of the software development process, and widely regarded as one of its more challenging activities. Many of the current techniques, approaches, and tools are either unknown or too complex for novices, resulting in a significant gap between requirements elicitation theory and practice. Just as important, is the current gap between expert and novice analysts, which can be attributed to the extensive skill set and range of experiences that is often required to successfully conduct this difficult yet vital activity. Consequently, in this research we investigated both the state of the art and the state of practice, in order to develop and evaluate an approach and a tool to support novice analysts elicit requirements for software systems in a workshop environment. The first stage of the research was a literature review, which involved a thorough review and critical analysis of existing theory on and around the area of requirements elicitation. This was followed by a survey of practice, which consisted of in-depth interviews with experts and an online questionnaire for novices, used to elicit approach guidelines and tool features. The OUTSET approach was then designed, and the supporting tool MUSTER constructed. The final stage of the research involved the evaluation of the approach and tool through a case study, case study experiment, and formal experiment. The empirical evaluations conducted showed that using the MUSTER tool improved the overall effectiveness of the requirements elicitation process, while the underlying OUTSET approach improved the overall efficiency. .

Recommender systems help shape the way the internet is used by leading users directly to the content which will interest them most. Traditionally, collaborative recommender systems based purely on user ratings have been proven to be effective. This report focuses specifically on film recommender systems. It investigates how the film content parameters Actor, Director and Genre can be used to further enhance the accuracy of predictions made by a purely collaborative approach, specifically with regards to the set of films chosen when performing the prediction calculations. The initial results showed that relying solely on content in this selection led to poorer predictions due to a lack of ratings. However, the investigation finds that using a hybrid approach between the two selection techniques with a bias for content solved this problem as well as increasing the overall prediction accuracy by over 11%.

De nos jours, les projets de conception complexes de produits exigent que les équipes de concepteurs se réunissent pour faciliter le partage de leurs compétences et expertises respectives afin de produire un ensemble de solutions de conception efficace. Dû au besoin croissant d’échanger les connaissances, les projets de conception modernes sont encore plus structurés pour travailler avec des équipes distribuées qui collaborent sur un réseau informatique pour accomplir une conception optimale de produit. Néanmoins, dans ce processus de conception collaborative, l'intégration d'équipes multidisciplinaires – qui implique l'échange et le partage des connaissances et compétences – génère fréquemment des situations conflictuelles. Les différents points de vue et perspectives des experts, les différentes façons de communiquer et collaborer au niveau de connaissances, rendent le processus difficilement maitrisable. Pour accomplir un scénario optimal, certains problèmes doivent d’abords être résolus comme la spécification et formalisation des besoins, l’intégration d'ontologies, la détection et la résolution des conflits. Spécifier et formaliser les connaissances demandent un grand effort afin d’obtenir un modèle de représentation pour agréger plusieurs domaines différents des connaissances. Chaque expert pourrait s'exprimer afin que les autres comprennent leurs informations correctement. Il est donc nécessaire d’utiliser un modèle de représentation de données suffisamment clair et flexible pour accomplir cette tâche. Certains modèles actuels ne parviennent pas à fournir une solution efficace pour le partage des connaissances et pour la collaboration des projets de conception, car ces modèles n’intègrent pas les aspects géographiques, temporels, fonctionnels de la conception avec un modèle de représentation des connaissances flexible et générique. Ce travail propose une architecture, pour la conception collaborative, qui ambitionne d'être synchrone, générique, orientée aux services, basée sur les agents, et basée sur les ontologies. Des modèles particuliers de représentation sont transformés en instances d'ontologie et sont fusionnés pour accomplir le model final de conception d’un produit. C'est une approche synchrone parce que le processus de fusion est entrepris en même temps que l'interaction entre concepteurs. C'est générique parce qu'elle permet aux utilisateurs de travailler avec deux approches pour l’intégration d'ontologies : celle qui utilise une ontologie générique et celle qui utilise un processus d'harmonisation. Notre proposition se concentre sur les conflits de la conception collaborative et fait usage de Web Ontology Language (OWL) et des Services Web, le premier comme langage pour représenter les connaissances et le dernier comme un support technologique pour la communication
Today’s complex design projects require teams of designers to work collaboratively by sharing their respective expertise in order to produce effective design solutions. Due to the increasing need for exchanging knowledge, modern design projects are more structured to work with distributed virtual teams that collaborate over computer networks to achieve overall optimization in design. Nevertheless, in a collaborative design process, the integration of multidisciplinary virtual teams – involving exchange and sharing of knowledge and expertise – frequently and inevitably generates conflicting situations. Different experts’ viewpoints and perspectives, in addition to several ways of communicating and collaborating at the knowledge level, make all this process very hard to manage. In order to achieve an optimal scenario, some problems must first be solved, such as requirement specification and formalization, ontology integration, and conflict detection and resolution. Specifying and formalizing the knowledge demands a great effort towards obtaining representation patterns that aggregate several disjoint knowledge areas. Each expert should express himself so that the others can understand his information correctly. It is necessary, therefore, to use a flexible and sufficiently extensive data representation model to accomplish such a task. Some current models fall short of providing an effective solution to effective knowledge sharing and collaboration on design projects, because they fail to combine the geographical, temporal, and functional design aspects with a flexible and generic knowledge representation model. This work proposes an information model-driven collaborative design architecture that supports synchronous, generic, service-oriented, agent-based, and ontology-based teamwork. Particular representation models are transformed into ontology instances and merged together in order to accomplish the final product design. It is a synchronous approach because the concurrent processes are undertaken at the same time that the interactions among designers take place. It is generic because it provides the users with two approaches for ontology integration: the use of a predefined generic ontology and the harmonization process. Our proposal focuses on collaborative design conflict resolution by using Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Web Services, the former as a tool for knowledge representation and the latter as a technological support for communication

Pour la première fois dans l’histoire de l’écriture, plusieurs personnes peuvent modifier au même moment et à distance le même document. Cette nouvelle pratique d’écriture rendue possible par la technologie numérique est l’écriture numérique collaborative synchrone. La question que pose cette recherche est celle de savoir comment des textes cohérents et lisibles peuvent émerger de tels dispositifs. De plus, les textes qui résultent de ces pratiques semblent difficilement pouvoir être réduits à des intentions de communication qui préexisteraient « dans la tête » des participants. Le texte émerge au sein même des situations et cela soulève la question méthodologique de savoir comment rendre compte de ces émergences. Cette thèse propose par conséquent d’explorer une manière de l’aborder : une enquête de type pragmatiste, et plus spécifiquement, une approche transactionnelle. Elle se caractérise par l’exigence de penser la relation dans sa dimension constitutive en ne présupposant rien des entités avant leur mise en situation. Elle implique en outre de toujours tenir pour provisoires et révisables toutes les descriptions que l’on peut donner d’une situation. Il s’agit d’une approche philosophique dont une opérationnalisation en Sciences de l’Information et de la Communication est ici proposée. Elle est mise en œuvre pour deux catégories de terrains : des situations de production d’argumentation en contexte pédagogique et des situations de production de comptes-rendus collaboratifs présentiels. Cette mise à l’épreuve permet de conclure à l’intérêt de poursuivre cette enquête selon une approche transactionnelle et d’esquisser un modèle d’analyse destiné à faciliter sa poursuite
For the first time in the history of writing, several people can edit the same document at the same time and from a distance. This new writing practice, made possible by digital technology, is called synchronous collaborative digital writing. The question posed by this research is how a consistent and readable text can emerge from such systems. In addition, the texts that result from these practices can hardly be reduced to communication intentions that pre-exist "in the head" of the participants. The text emerges within the situations. This raises the methodological question of how to account for this emergence. This thesis therefore offers to explore a way to tackle it: a pragmatist type of investigation, and more specifically, a transactional approach. It is characterized by the need to think the relationship in its constitutive dimension without presupposing any of the entities prior to their entry in situation. It also implies that all of the descriptions of a given situation always have to be considered as provisional and subject to revision. Here, an operationalization of this philosophical approach is proposed in the field of Information and Communication Sciences. It is implemented for two categories of case studies: situations of production of argumentation in an educational context and situations of collaborative production of meeting reports. This experimentation makes it possible to conclude that it would be interesting to continue this investigation in a transactional approach and it outlines an analysis model to facilitate this pursuit

With the personalization of computers and the advances of communications technology, it becomes possible for people to work together productively in new ways. One such outcome is the electronic collaborative workspace--an organization-wide system that integrates information processing and communication activities. The recent advances of the multimedia technology along with the availability of the high-speed, high-bandwidth network, such as ATM network, make it possible to develop and deploy the distributed collaborative workspace systems which use the multimedia informations. We call the system as a Multimedia Collaborative Workspace System (MCWS). Its features include the multimedia teleconferencing and other useful functions from e-mail, whiteboards, group decision support system and Web browsers. In this research, MCWS is designed using the object-oriented approach and design, and implemented using C++ language. Among the many benefits of the object-oriented programming, the inheritance is explored to design and implement the multimedia devices and communications devices. The flexibility of the system was achieved by the use of the dynamic binding at the run time, and the abstract data type and inheritance made it to be more reliable and reusable. The overall maintenance and modification of the collaborative system became easier with the object-oriented programming approach. The multimedia synchronization mechanism has been also developed for the synchronization of the multimedia streams in the collaborative workspace system, which suffered a different transmission delay over the network. By using time-stamping, Network Time Protocol, and shared memory with semaphore, three different algorithms were developed for three different system environments. The synchronized memory, inherited from the shared memory and semaphore, was also implemented by the object-oriented programming method. The synchronization mechanism was tested by the human subjective test and also by the network simulation using the real Internet data. The object-oriented programming in many aspects of the MCWS makes it flexible and reusable, and extensible. Also it will facilitate the prototyping and an iterative approach to software development of the next version of the system.

The main goal of this thesis is to describe what happens in the collaborative approach to therapy from a conversation and discursive analytical perspective. The data we worked with are part of collaborative therapy sessions in Mexican Spanish Dialect. Chapter 1 is an introduction to two of the main social constructionist approaches to therapy, the `reflecting team approach' and the `collaborative approach' to therapy. This sets out the theoretical environment in which the therapy was done. Chapter 2 is a review of the state of the art in conversation and discourse studies on therapy talk and related fields, illustrating the type of analysis done up to now. Chapter 3 describes aspects of Mexican population that were part of the context in which the data originated; some notes on translation issues are included here. Chapter 4 is the first analytic chapter and it describes the dynamics in conversation of the English particle `okay' as found in Spanish therapeutic interaction. It shows both the work okay is doing when found in the therapists' discourse and what it is doing when found in the clients' discourse. Chapter 5 presents the analysis of instances of informality that were found in the data, arguing that aspects of an `egalitarian therapeutic stance' can be displayed in the participants' talk. Chapter 6 is a study on questions and therapy, more specifically it shows the questions that can be asked by the clients in therapy talk and the conversational job this is doing. Chapter 7 is an example of research done when taking as a starting point a category that is relevant for therapy and counselling: active listening. In reading through this thesis, the reader will find aspects of the therapeutic approach as displayed in talk. Examples of this are the displays in talk of the philosophical stance, such as being egalitarian in an institutional setting. Besides describing how theoretical assumptions can be displayed in talk, this work describes in detail several aspects of therapy talk.

Les éditions critiques numériques sont des ressources patrimoniales annotées, sous une forme numérique. De telles éditions prennent la forme d'une transcription des ressources originales, augmentées d'un apparat critique, c'est-à-dire, la forme de données structurées. Dans un contexte collaboratif, a structure de ces données est définie explicitement par un schéma, document interprétable qui contraint la manière dont les éditeurs vont pouvoir annoter les ressources primaires et va de ce fait garantir une certaine homogénéité dans le respect de la politique éditoriale. Les projets d'édition critique numérique font classiquement face à deux problèmes techniques. Le premier a à voir avec l'expressivité des langages d'annotation, qui empêchent l'expression de certaines informations utiles. La seconde tient au fait que, par expérience, les schémas qui sous-tendent une édition critique vont être amenés à évoluer au cours de la réalisation de cette édition ; cependant, modifier le schéma implique qu'il faille mettre à jour l'intégralité des données structurées validées par ce schéma, ce qui est habituellement effectué à la main par les éditeurs, au moyen de scripts ad-hoc – si les éditeurs, faute de moyens ou de temps, ne renoncent pas à faire évoluer la structure de données. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous définissons les fondements théoriques pour l'établissement d'un système éditorial dédié à l'édition critique numérique. Nous définissons les eAG, un modèle d'annotation déporté basé sur un formalisme de graphes cycliques, autorisant a plus grande expressivité. Nous définissons un mécanisme de schéma innovant, SeAG, permettant la validation à la volée des eAG au cours de leur manufacture. Nous définissons également une syntaxe de balisage présentant des similarités avec les langages d'annotation classiques comme XML, tout en préservant l'expressivité des eAG. Enfin, nous proposons une algèbre bidirectionnelle pour les eAG de telle sorte que, si un SeAG S est transformé en un SeAG S', alors tout eAG I validé par S est traduit de manière semi-automatique sous la forme d'un eAG I', validé par S', et tel que toute mise à jour de I (respectivement I') soit propagé, de manière semi-automatique, sur I' (resp. I)
Digital Scholarly Editions are critically annotated patrimonial literary resources, in a digital form. Such editions roughly take the shape of a transcription of the original resources, augmented with critical information, that is, of structured data. In a collaborative setting, the structure of the data is explicitly defined in a schema, an interpretable document that governs the way editors annotate the original resources and guarantees they follow a common editorial policy. Digital editorial projects classically face two technical problems. The first has to do with the expressiveness of the annotation languages, that prevents from expressing some kinds of information. The second relies in the fact that, historically, schemas of long-running digital edition projects have to evolve during the lifespan of the project. However, amending a schema implies to update the structured data that has been produced, which is done either by hand, by means of ad-hoc scripts, or abandoned by lack of technical skills or human resources. In this work, we define the theoretical ground for an annotation system dedicated to scholarly edition. We define eAG, a stand-off annotation model based on a cyclic graph model, enabling the widest range of annotation. We define a novel schema language, SeAG, that permits to validate eAG documents on-the-fly, while they are being manufactured. We also define an inline markup syntax for eAG, reminiscent of the classic annotation languages like XML, but retaining the expressivity of eAG. Eventually, we propose a bidirectional algebra for eAG documents so that, when a SeAG S is amended, giving S', an eAG I validated by S is semi-automatically translated into an eAG I' validated by S', and so that any modification applied to I (resp. I') is semi-automatically propagated to I' (resp. I) – hence working as an assistance tool for the evolution of SeAG schemas and eAG annotations

Un défi important dans l'industrie forestière consiste à réduire les coûts de transport globaux entre les fournisseurs et les clients. L'industrie forestière déplace de grandes quantités de bois des zones de récolte vers les terminaux et les usines. Lorsque de nombreuses organisations sont impliquées, une collaboration entre les fournisseurs et une utilisation efficiente des allocations permettent de trouver de meilleures solutions. Les allocations sont généralement basées sur des flux directs entre les noeuds d'approvisionnement et de demande. Cependant, de meilleures solutions peuvent être trouvées lorsque des itinéraires de retour en charge sont utilisés. Ceux-ci sont difficiles à trouver lorsque plusieurs parties prenantes sont impliquées, mais l'ajout d'informations provenant de la production de la récolte peut supporter une meilleure collaboration entre les fournisseurs ainsi que la détermination de plans plus efficients. Le but de ce projet est d’élaborer un modèle capable de résoudre le problème de la livraison des multi-dépôts aux multi-clients, sur plusieurs périodes de temps, en minimisant les coûts de transport de différents types de bois. Proposer une nouvelle méthode pour le cas quand les clients seulement réceptionnent produits de fournisseurs fixés à l’avance. En outre, il analyse différentes méthodes de paiement des itinéraires de transport, afin de terminer un mécanisme qui incite les fournisseurs de transport à avoir recours au transport collaboratif. Nous décrivons les résultats obtenus avec une entreprise de pâtes et papiers au Québec, Canada.
Un défi important dans l'industrie forestière consiste à réduire les coûts de transport globaux entre les fournisseurs et les clients. L'industrie forestière déplace de grandes quantités de bois des zones de récolte vers les terminaux et les usines. Lorsque de nombreuses organisations sont impliquées, une collaboration entre les fournisseurs et une utilisation efficiente des allocations permettent de trouver de meilleures solutions. Les allocations sont généralement basées sur des flux directs entre les noeuds d'approvisionnement et de demande. Cependant, de meilleures solutions peuvent être trouvées lorsque des itinéraires de retour en charge sont utilisés. Ceux-ci sont difficiles à trouver lorsque plusieurs parties prenantes sont impliquées, mais l'ajout d'informations provenant de la production de la récolte peut supporter une meilleure collaboration entre les fournisseurs ainsi que la détermination de plans plus efficients. Le but de ce projet est d’élaborer un modèle capable de résoudre le problème de la livraison des multi-dépôts aux multi-clients, sur plusieurs périodes de temps, en minimisant les coûts de transport de différents types de bois. Proposer une nouvelle méthode pour le cas quand les clients seulement réceptionnent produits de fournisseurs fixés à l’avance. En outre, il analyse différentes méthodes de paiement des itinéraires de transport, afin de terminer un mécanisme qui incite les fournisseurs de transport à avoir recours au transport collaboratif. Nous décrivons les résultats obtenus avec une entreprise de pâtes et papiers au Québec, Canada.
One important challenge in the forestry industry is to reduce the overall transportation cost between suppliers and clients. The forestry industry moves large quantities of wood from harvest areas to terminals and mills. When many organizations are involved, a collaboration between the suppliers as well as an efficient use of allocations, achieve better solutions. Allocations are typically based on direct flows between supply and demand nodes. However, better solutions can be found when return trip routes are used. These are difficult to find when there are several stakeholders involved, but adding information from harvest production can establish better collaboration between suppliers as well as more efficient plans. The purpose of this project is to define a model that can resolve the delivery from multidepots to multi-customers, in a multi-period of time, minimizing the cost of transport for different types of timber. To propose a novel method for scenarios where the clients only receive products from pre-determined suppliers. Also, it analyzes different methods of transport payment for backhaul routes, in order to establish a mechanism that encourages the transport suppliers to use collaborative transport. We describe results obtained with a pulp and paper company in Quebec, Canada.
One important challenge in the forestry industry is to reduce the overall transportation cost between suppliers and clients. The forestry industry moves large quantities of wood from harvest areas to terminals and mills. When many organizations are involved, a collaboration between the suppliers as well as an efficient use of allocations, achieve better solutions. Allocations are typically based on direct flows between supply and demand nodes. However, better solutions can be found when return trip routes are used. These are difficult to find when there are several stakeholders involved, but adding information from harvest production can establish better collaboration between suppliers as well as more efficient plans. The purpose of this project is to define a model that can resolve the delivery from multidepots to multi-customers, in a multi-period of time, minimizing the cost of transport for different types of timber. To propose a novel method for scenarios where the clients only receive products from pre-determined suppliers. Also, it analyzes different methods of transport payment for backhaul routes, in order to establish a mechanism that encourages the transport suppliers to use collaborative transport. We describe results obtained with a pulp and paper company in Quebec, Canada.

[EN] Manufacturing enterprises are more and more aware of establishing collaborative relationships with the network partners, due to the advantages associated. Especially, the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in collaborative networks (CN) leads to enhance their competitiveness, by increasing their agility, responsiveness and adaptability to deal with the rapid market evolutions, and the business globalization. Nevertheless, the participation in CN has associated challenges, especially for SMEs, which are derived from the lack of resources and capabilities, and the limitations associated to cultural barriers. CN consist of autonomous partners, each one defining its own objectives and formulating its own strategies. The strategies diversity may result in conflict situations, among the enterprises of the same CN, since contradictions between the strategies formulated might emerge. These contradictions appear when the strategies activated in one enterprise negatively influence the objectives defined by other enterprises of the network. The lack of coherence and concordance among the formulated strategies leads to its misalignment. The connotations derived from the strategies misalignments affect the achievement of enterprises objectives, reducing their performance levels, and influencing on the wellbeing of the collaborative relationships established. If the conflicts that arise, derived from the lack of strategies alignment, remain on time and are not tackled, the strategies misalignment could lead, in the long term, to the breakdown of the CN. The success of obtaining higher levels performance in the CN is directly related with the activation of a proper combination of strategies in each enterprise belonging to the network. Despite the fact that the concept of alignment has been studied in different research areas, there is a need to address this topic from the strategies selection perspective, in enterprises belonging to a CN. Thus, there is a gap in the literature to formally represent and solve the strategies alignment process from a holistic view, considering the CN context. In the light of this, this thesis proposes a complete approach, consisting of a model, a method, a guideline and a set of tools, used (i) to identify the degree of alignment of the strategies, from a holistic perspective, and (ii) to propose the activation of the aligned strategies. The proposed contribution allows considering all the strategies formulated by all the partners, and model the influence that these strategies exert on the wide diversity of objectives defined, regardless of their nature and type, taking into account the CN context. The main aim of this thesis is to provide the enterprises appropriate mechanisms to remove the strategies misalignment problem, in order to establish long-term collaborative relationships. The proposed solution is based on a mathematical model, which allows to formally modelling the strategies alignment process, solving it through systems dynamic (SD) method. SD allows representing causal relationships between the strategies and the objectives achievement, within the complex system formed by the enterprises of a CN. A performance measurement scheme is provided to quantitatively measure the influences between the strategies and the objectives. Moreover, a simulation tool is used to automatically solve, in a computer program, the proposed model, assessing and supporting the strategies alignment process.
[ES] Las empresas de fabricación son cada vez más conscientes de establecer relaciones colaborativas con los socios de la red, debido a las ventajas asociadas a dicha colaboración. De forma especial, la participación de las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMEs) en redes colaborativas (RC) las conduce a mejorar su competitividad, mediante el aumento de su agilidad, capacidad de respuesta y capacidad de adaptación, para hacer frente a las rápidas evoluciones del mercado, y a la globalización de los negocios. Sin embargo, la participación en RC conlleva desafíos asociados, especialmente para las PYMEs, que se derivan de la falta de recursos y capacidades, y de las limitaciones ligadas a las barreras culturales. Las RC están formadas por socios independientes, cada uno definiendo sus propios objetivos y formulando sus propias estrategias. La diversidad de estrategias puede dar lugar a situaciones de conflicto, entre las empresas de una misma RC, debido a que pueden surgir contradicciones entre las estrategias formuladas. Estas contradicciones aparecen cuando las estrategias formuladas en una empresa influyen negativamente en los objetivos definidos por otras empresas de la red. La falta de coherencia y concordancia entre las estrategias formuladas conduce a su falta de alineación. Las consecuencias derivadas de la falta de alineación de estrategias afectan a la consecución de objetivos de las empresas, reduciendo sus niveles de rendimiento, e influyendo en el bienestar de las relaciones colaborativas establecidas. Si los conflictos que surgen, derivados de la falta de alineación de estrategias, se mantienen en el tiempo y no se abordan, la falta de alienación podría conducir, a largo plazo, a la disolución de la RC. El éxito de conseguir niveles de rendimientos más altos en la RC está directamente relacionado con la selección de una combinación adecuada de estrategias, en cada empresa perteneciente a la RC. A pesar de que el concepto de alineación se ha estudiado en diferentes áreas de investigación, existe la necesidad de abordar este tema desde la perspectiva de selección de estrategias, en empresas pertenecientes a un RC. De forma que, existe un vacío en la literatura sobre la representación formal y la resolución del proceso de alineación de estrategias desde una visión holística, teniendo en cuenta el contexto de RC. Considerando esto, la presente tesis propone un enfoque completo, que consiste en un modelo, un método, una guía y un conjunto de herramientas, que se utilizan para (i) identificar el grado de alineación de las estrategias, desde una perspectiva holística, y (ii) dar soporte a la selección de estrategias alineadas. La contribución propuesta permite considerar todas las estrategias formuladas por todos los socios de la red, y modelar la influencia que estas estrategias ejercen sobre la gran diversidad de objetivos definidos, independientemente de su naturaleza y tipo, y teniendo en cuenta el contexto RC. El objetivo principal de la presente tesis es proporcionar a las empresas los mecanismos adecuados para abordar el problema de falta de alineación entre las estrategias seleccionadas, con el fin de establecer relaciones colaborativas a largo plazo. La solución propuesta se basa en un modelo matemático, que permite modelar el proceso de alineación de estrategias, resuelto a través del método de dinámica de sistemas (DS). El método de DS permite representar las relaciones causales entre las estrategias y el logro de los objetivos, dentro un sistema complejo como es el formado por las empresas de una RC. Para medir cuantitativamente las influencias entre las estrategias y los objetivos se propone un enfoque de medición del rendimiento. Por otra parte, se utiliza una herramienta de simulación, que permite resolver de forma automática el modelo de alineación de estrategias propuesto.
[CAT] Les empreses de fabricació són cada vegada més conscients d'establir relacions col·laboratives amb els socis de la xarxa, degut als avantatges associats a aquesta col·laboració. De manera especial, la participació de les petites i mitjanes empreses (PIMEs) en xarxes col·laboratives (XC) les condueix a millorar la seva competitivitat, mitjançant l'augment de la seva agilitat, capacitat de resposta i capacitat d'adaptació, per fer front a les ràpides evolucions del mercat, i a la globalització dels negocis. No obstant això, la participació en XC comporta reptes associats, especialment per a les PIMEs, que es deriven de la manca de recursos i capacitats, i de les limitacions lligades a les barreres culturals. Les XC estan formades per socis independents, cadascun definint els seus propis objectius i formulant les seves pròpies estratègies. La diversitat d'estratègies pot donar lloc a situacions conflictives, entre les empreses d'una mateixa XC, ja que poden sorgir contradiccions entre les estratègies formulades. Aquestes contradiccions apareixen quan les estratègies formulades en una empresa influeixen negativament en els objectius definits per altres empreses de la xarxa. La manca de coherència i concordança entre les estratègies formulades condueix a la seva falta d'alineació. Les conseqüències derivades de la manca d'alineació d'estratègies afecten a la consecució dels objectius de les empreses, reduint els seus nivells de rendiment, i influint en el benestar de les relacions col·laboratives establertes. Si els conflictes que sorgeixen, derivats de la manca d'alineació d'estratègies, es mantenen en el temps i no s'aborden, la manca d'alienació d'estratègies podria conduir, a llarg termini, a la dissolució de la XC. L'èxit d'aconseguir nivells de rendiment més alts en la XC està directament relacionat amb la selecció d'una combinació adequada d'estratègies, en cada empresa pertanyent a la XC. Tot i que el concepte d'alineació s'ha estudiat en diferents àrees de investigació, existeix la necessitat d'abordar aquest tema des de la perspectiva de selecció d'estratègies, en empreses pertanyents a una XC. De manera que, hi ha un buit en la literatura sobre la representació formal i la resolució del procés d'alineació d'estratègies des d'una visió holística, tenint en compte el context de XC. Considerant això, la present tesi proposa un enfocament complet, que consisteix en un model, un mètode, una guia i un conjunt de ferramentes, que s'utilitzen per a (i) identificar el grau d'alineació de les estratègies, des d'una perspectiva holística, i (ii) donar suport a la selecció d'estratègies alineades. La contribució proposta permet considerar totes les estratègies formulades per tots els socis de la xarxa, i modelar la influència que aquestes estratègies exerceixen sobre la gran diversitat d'objectius definits, independentment de la seva naturalesa i tipus, i tenint en compte el context XC. L'objectiu principal de la present tesi és proporcionar a les empreses els mecanismes adequats per a abordar el problema de manca d'alineació entre les estratègies seleccionades, per tal d'establir relacions col·laboratives a llarg termini. La solució proposta es basa en un model matemàtic, que permet modelar el procés d'alineació d'estratègies, resolt a través del mètode de dinàmica de sistemes (DS). El mètode de DS permet representar les relacions causals entre les estratègies i la consecució d'objectius, dins d'un sistema complex com és el format per les empreses d'una XC. Per mesurar quantitativament les influències entre les estratègies i els objectius es proposa un enfocament de mesura del rendiment. Per altra banda, s'utilitza una ferramenta de simulació, que permet resoldre de forma automàtica el model d'alineació d'estratègies proposat.
Andrés Navarro, B. (2016). An Approach to support the Strategies Alignment Process in Collaborative Networks [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/64065
TESIS
Premiado

The purpose of this research project was to explore how knowledge can be enriched when a sport pedagogy and psychology consultant/facilitator collaborated with sport coaches to help them learn through their everyday coaching experiences. A collaborative inquiry approach was used. As the initiating researcher, I acted as a consultant/facilitator, working with coaches of two sports, athletics and alpine skiing. Data were mostly generated using interviews (semi-structured and on-going informal), participant observation, my journal, and, in Study Two, group meetings. In Study One, I made myself available as a consultant to six coaches from one athletics club, if they wanted to share any coaching issues with me. For six months I visited the coaches while they worked. The coaches mostly shared issues relating to sport psychology. Interactions among these coaches were mostly one-on-one, with little sharing of coaching issues between themselves. My work with them was of the same individual nature. The first two parts of Study Two involved two contexts in which I acted as a facilitator with groups of ski coaches (Part One, seven coaches and Part Two, six coaches). My role was to nourish knowledge creation within the coaches' community of practice (CoP). A series of round table meetings were the site for much of the negotiation of meaning that was the result of coaches sharing knowledge about coaching issues. The coaches found they learned a lot, that communication between them was improved, they enjoyed the process, and that their athletes benefited from all of this. In Part Three of this study, I stepped back and observed what happened to the CoPs without a facilitator. Two groups were involved in this study. One group was partially successful but found it difficult to keep up the learning in the CoP without a person responsible for coordinating the process. The other group had leadership problems and never met with the purpose of learning through negotiation of issues relating to their practice. Knowledge sharing in this group was mostly one-on-one. Recommendations are made concerning coach education, especially in relation to how this approach to learning through participation can compliment existing formal education.

An agile approach is most often used in software development but has been applied in other areas such as manufacturing and project management as well. Within literature, there are only a few studies that investigate the use of an agile approach for authoring educational content. This study explores how an agile approach could facilitate rapid and collaborative authoring of educational content. This qualitative study utilised a multiple case study strategy. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations. The insight gained from this study indicated that the agile approach that emerged was a valuable lens through which to explore rapid and collaborative authoring of educational content. The study also revealed that community building among those participating in the authoring process is fundamental to the success of an agile approach. Further insights include offering training and support to the participants of the authoring sprints regarding an agile process, the applications utilised and imminent change. An agile approach in education emerged from the study and could be an alternative to traditional content authoring approaches for educational content. Finally, the study revealed the need for a comprehensive software package that included file sharing, instant messaging, task management, screen sharing and conferencing capabilities alongside the authoring software.
Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
Science, Mathematics and Technology Education
MEd
Unrestricted

This dissertation presents the Participant-driven Group Support System (PD-GSS)framework. This framework presents an approach for Group Support System (GSS)designers to accommodate distributed or asynchronous groups through the use ofdifferent technologies and processes than traditional GSS.The goal of the PD-GSS framework is to further involve the collaborativeparticipants during the workflow in an effort to reduce the load on the meetingfacilitator. As the name implies, it is the participants that are increasingly responsiblefor conducting and executing the required actions during a collaborative processes. Thesystem empowers the participants in the meeting to conduct the meeting themselves,reducing the need for a dedicated facilitator to guide the process.One of the modules from the PD-GSS framework, Peer-reviewed Brainstorming,was developed into a prototype and tested experimentally. This module requires eachbrainstorming idea to be routed through a peer-review process whereby the originalbrainstorming idea is edited for clarity and completeness. The goal of this new moduleis to reduce the number of low quality, noisy comments while increasing the quantity ofhigh quality comments.Ten six-person groups participated in the first experiment. Five groups wereplaced in a traditional electronic brainstorming GSS while the other five groups wereplaced in the peer-review treatment. The results indicate that the peer-review processdid control the brainstorming process, yielding a higher percentage of validbrainstorming ideas.The second module examined was the categorization module, allowing groups towork autonomously to identify similar ideas that should be grouped together in the samecategory or bucket. This new approach to the categorization of brainstorming ideasenables groups to work independently, asynchronously, and anonymously to organizethe brainstorming input.An existing GSS, ThinkTank by GroupSystems, was utilized. Eighty-one groupswere used in the second experiment to test the ability of groups to work independently,without a facilitator, in an attempt to organize brainstorming ideas. The groups workingsynchronously outperformed the groups working in a mock asynchronous setting.Likewise, the groups that had to categorize the fewest number of brainstorming ideasreceived the highest performance measures.

Briefing, where a construction client conveys his / her needs and aspirations to the design team, is described as the first and most important step in the process of delivering a building or other physical infrastructure. Due to the significant commitment of resources, it is recommended that clients carefully define and examine their needs in terms of project requirements, before and during briefing. Nevertheless, briefing is subject to many practical limitations. Many clients may overlook important aspects of briefing and various problems such as delays and cost overruns may ensue. Although the literature shows a substantial amount of studies that have addressed some briefing problems, briefing is still reported to pose continuing problems in the construction industry. Given the importance of improving the conceptualisation and implementation of briefing, a 'collaborative briefing approach' was developed in this study to improve the briefing process and its outputs, with particular reference to large-scale infrastructure projects, which involve multiple interfaces with many stakeholders. The above approach is designed to empower the traditionally mobilised briefing team to work collaboratively with a large group of multi-disciplinary stakeholders as an integrated briefing team in the form of a virtual organisation through a shared digital workspace created on a computer network. The workspace enables all members to work together remotely and asynchronously so as to achieve greater stakeholder participation in briefing. Since stakeholders contribute in bringing professional knowledge, experience and creativity to briefing, the enhanced stakeholder participation will increase their inputs and result in more fruitful briefing outputs. In this study, a comprehensive survey was first conducted to investigate and compare the strengths and weaknesses of common briefing practices in the Hong Kong construction industry, so as to establish a theoretical foundation for the research. An ‘Integrated Collaborative Briefing Methodology’ (INTERCOM) was developed to translate the described approach into a set of actionable methods and job plans for practical use. The INTERCOM comprises of five components: (i) a value based briefing methodology, (ii) a collaborative briefing job plan, (iii) an integrated briefing team, (iv) a collaborative briefing platform, and (v) facilitation service. The first four components were developed and validated by a group of well experienced multi-disciplinary industry practitioners. The fifth component merits a separate research and development exercise. The validation results reveal that the concept of collaborative briefing approach and the design of the INTERCOM methodology were well supported by the practitioners. In addition, it was concluded that the methodology would contribute to improve the briefing process by facilitating team management, enhancing requirement definition and promoting consensus building. It also improved requirement comprehensiveness, decision transparency, decision reliability, and decision satisfaction, as well as the value and quantity of the requirements specified in the brief. The validation also highlights some practical limitations including potential political barriers, time constraints, specialist facilitator and resources limitations. Moreover, the net benefits of the developed ‘collaborative briefing approach’ are concluded to be very worthwhile, both in principle and for practical purposes. The additional significance of this study is that it researched and developed a "panoramic view" of briefing practices from a practical perspective, linked the knowledge of briefing to the domain of collaboration through a “collaborative briefing approach” and developed the framework for a new generation of ICT systems for supporting and substantially improving the briefing process.
published_or_final_version
Civil Engineering
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

Due to the shortage of geographical information suitable for the visually impaired, the current navigation systems fail to provide high quality performance. The results of an international survey on the user needs are discussed in this article. A collaborative accessibility approach (COACH) is proposed to not only extend accessible geo-information, but also offer an opportunity to share experiences among peers. Related topics are addressed, like map data, multimodal annotation, and privacy.

Computational design is the study of how programmable computers can be integrated into the process of design. It is not simply the use of pre-compiled computer aided design software that aims to replicate the drawing board, but rather the development of computer algorithms as an integral part of the design process. Programmable machines have begun to challenge traditional modes of thinking in architecture and engineering, placing further emphasis on process ahead of the final result. Just as Darwin and Wallace had to think beyond form and inquire into the development of biological organisms to understand evolution, so computational methods enable us to rethink how we approach the design process itself. The subject is broad and multidisciplinary, with influences from design, computer science, mathematics, biology and engineering. This thesis begins similarly wide in its scope, addressing both the technological aspects of computational design and its application on several case study projects in professional practice. By learning through participant observation in combination with secondary research, it is found that design teams can be most effective at the early stage of projects by engaging with the additional complexity this entails. At this concept stage, computational tools such as parametric models are found to have insufficient flexibility for wide design exploration. In response, an approach called Meta-Parametric Design is proposed, inspired by developments in genetic programming (GP). By moving to a higher level of abstraction as computational designers, a Meta-Parametric approach is able to adapt to changing constraints and requirements whilst maintaining an explicit record of process for collaborative working.

Due to the shortage of geographical information suitable for the visually impaired, the current navigation systems fail to provide high quality performance. The results of an international survey on the user needs are discussed in this article. A collaborative accessibility approach (COACH) is proposed to not only extend accessible geo-information, but also offer an opportunity to share experiences among peers. Related topics are addressed, like map data, multimodal annotation, and privacy.

Academic achievement and in-classroom behaviors are two significant child outcomes that affect student success in school. According to Systems Theory, in order to truly understand the factors that affect these outcomes for children, one must look to the major systems that encapsulate the child (including their school and home environments). This project is a meta-analytic review that examined the effectiveness of measures representing each system in predicting child achievement and behavior: School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS) for the school as a system, level of parent involvement (high versus low) for the home system, and student motivation (intrinsic versus extrinsic) for the child system. Archival research was used to examine children who attended K-12 schools in various Westernized countries. A total of 15 studies were examined to compute the effect sizes which were combined to examine the relative strength of each factor on the two outcome variables. For academic achievement, it was found that effect sizes were very large for SWPBS (0.768) and student motivation (0.807), and were large (0.589) for parent involvement. For behavior, SWPBS was associated with a very large effect size (-0.780). In other words, SWPBS is strongly associated with both increased academic achievement and decreased problem behavior, whereas parent involvement and student motivation are strongly associated with increased academic achievement. A suggested systems approach including the school counselor is proposed that meshes the effects of these three child systems into a more fluid, collaborative model that address child academic achievement and behavioral concerns.