Using Tools and Resources in Computer Supported Collaborative Writing

Aim/Purpose: In this study, the authors examine how an online word processing tool can be used to encourage participation among students of different language back-grounds, including English Language Learners. To be exact, the paper discusses whether student participation in anonymous collaborative writing via Google Docs can lead to more successful products in a linguistically diverse eighth-grade English Language Arts classroom. Background: English Language Learners (ELLs) make up a considerable portion of elementary and secondary public school students, as language and ethnic diversity has become the norm in the United States. The research literature finds that ELLs are statistically behind their monolingual peers on such key language and academic development indicators as writing. Educators and researchers then turn to collaborative writing with the assistance of online technology. Although it is shown in literature to be a worthwhile endeavor for students of all ages and ability levels, no studies have investigated the differences it makes, namely, in comparison to traditional face-to-face collaboration in the classroom, and to anonymous online collaboration in the virtual space. Methodology: Through face-to-face, online, and anonymous writing activities, a rubric, and a survey, this quantitative study asks if anonymous collaborative writing, com-pared to other modalities, equalizes participation among students of varying language fluencies, and if anonymous collaborative writing, compared to other modalities, affect student comfort levels. Contribution: This builds on research of online collaborative writing tools and suggests that using such tools (Google Docs in particular) is beneficial, especially for students who are building their language abilities. The study further reveals varied degree of success and student comfort level in participating writing tasks in three modalities. Findings: We ascertain that students of varying language fluencies participated more equally when they were able to remain anonymous. Face-to-face writing exhibited the highest overall scores, and students enjoyed working on Google Docs. Recommendations for Practitioners: Future and current teachers are encouraged to be open to new technologies and be creative in the use of technology to facilitate student learning. They should have the opportunity to participate in the discussion on how, not if, integrating technology impacts the cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions of teaching. Recommendation for Researchers: After this initial quantitative study on students’ reactions to various modalities of technology-supported writing formats, the next questions to ask may be how students were engaging in dialogues during face-to-face sessions or chat features of Google Docs trials, and what types of edits students are making. Researchers should turn their focus on secondary school classrooms where there is an increasing impact of technology-assisted collaborative writing on student learning and teaching pedagogy. Impact on Society: As online technology has become an integral part of daily life, it is beneficial to educators, policy makers, and classroom teachers to understand how technology can be integrated in writing programs and to what extent the integration can help boost student motivation and participation. Future Research: More longitudinal research on online assisted collaborative writing and addi-tional quantitative data are needed to further understand the complexities of the writing process in-group online writing and the nature of collaboration.

This paper offers a Burkean framework for study of collaborative business writing. It begins with a review of the research and scholarship on collaborative writing by com position and by business and technical communication specialists. Then it explains a Burkean framework that identifies key areas for future investigation and provides categories for conducting research. Finally, it argues for a research agenda that em phasizes qualitative studies first, to be followed by quantitative research.

This research constructs a conceptual model describing correlation between human behavior in software development and resulting product (software) quality. This model supplements collaboration model that exists before which approaches collaboration from the method (process) and technology viewpoint. The model in this research is constructed by mapping human behavior property (human behavior model) into software development collaboration process. The human behavior model were adopted from HBR model. The collaboration process in this research are classified into 4 collaboration layers, which is spatial distribution, temporal distribution, direction, and intensity. In the resulting model there are correlation between human behavior property and collaboration process, correlation between collaboration process and product quality, and correlation between human behavior and product quality. Some of properties of this model have been tested using open source and observation data. The result of these test wasnumber of commit (in construction phase of software development process) has negative relation with source code quality.

Wikis have been used as a platform to support collaborative writing but its effectiveness and the level of students’ participation remain unknown. In this study, regulation theories were used to design interventions. The purpose of this study was to examine the functions of wikis in improving students’ collaborative writing process. From the results of this study, we could conclude that the level of confidence among students has been significantly motivated and the anxiety about writing has been reduced because of the activities in interventions. An analysis on log files have shown that 83% of the students proactively participated in collaborative writing process. Wikis were used as a platform to encourage students to give their voice in writing. Recommendations are suggested for educational developers and instructors to effectively design collaborative writing on wikis.

Driven by the affordances and benefits of mobile technology, collaborative writing (CW) supported by mobile technologies has been increasingly implemented in the second language (L2) acquisition context. To shed light on the research foci and provide guidance for future research in this promising area, the present study conducted an in‐depth and systematic review of 25 empirical articles on CW supported by mobile technologies in the L2 context published from 2014 to 2022, including quantitative, qualitative, and mix‐methods research. A holistic analysis of these articles was conducted, covering various aspects such as research themes, research contexts and technology, theoretical/pedagogical frameworks, writing tasks, and instruments. Based on the analysis of the previous research, this study provided pedagogical suggestions concerning writing tasks, group division, participant training, and writing assessment and also explores future research directions.

<p>Unidata has developed and deployed data infrastructure and data-proximate scientific workflows and software tools using cloud computing technologies for accessing, analyzing, and visualizing geoscience data. These resources are provided to educators and researchers through the Unidata Science Gateway (https://science-gateway.unidata.ucar.edu) and deployed on the U. S. National Science Foundation funded Jetstream (https://jetstream-cloud.org) cloud facility. During the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic, the Unidata Science Gateway has been used by many universities to teach data-centric atmospheric science courses and conduct several software training workshops to advance skills in data science.<br><br>The COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of university campuses with little advance notice. Educators at institutions of higher learning had to urgently transition from in-person teaching to online classrooms. While such a sudden change was disruptive for education, it also presented an opportunity to experiment with instructional technologies that have been emerging for the last few years. Web-based computational notebooks, with their mixture of explanatory text, equations, diagrams and interactive code are an effective tool for online learning. Their use is prevalent in many disciplines including the geosciences. Multi-user computational notebook servers (e.g., Jupyter Notebooks) enable specialists to deploy pre-configured scientific computing environments for the benefit of students. The use such tools and environments removes barriers for students who otherwise have to download and install complex software tools that can be time consuming to configure, simplifying workflows and reducing time to analysis and interpretation. It also provides a consistent computing environment for all students and democratizes access to resources. These servers can be provisioned with computational resources not found in a desktop computing setting and leverage cloud computing environments and high speed networks. They can be accessed from any web browser-enabled device like laptops and tablets.<br><br>Since spring 2020 when the Covid pandemic led to the closure of universities across the U. S., Unidata has assisted several earth science departments with computational notebook environments for their classes. We worked with educators to tailor these resources for their teaching objectives. We ensured the technology was correctly provisioned with appropriate computational resources and collaborated to have teaching material immediately available for students. There were many successful examples of online learning experiences.<br><br>In this paper, we describe the details of the Unidata Science Gateway resources and discuss how those resources enabled Unidata to support universities during the COVID-19 lockdown.</p>

How do tutors deliver instruction in the desktop videoconferencing environment? Tutoring practice analysis: Trainee tutors and experienced teachers

Collaborative governance has emerged as a promising approach for addressing complex water sustainability issues, with purported benefits from enhanced democracy to improved environmental outcomes. Collaborative processes are often assumed to be inherently more equitable than traditional governance approaches due to their goal of engaging diverse actors in the development of policy and management solutions. However, when collaborative water governance processes ignore issues of politics and power in their design, they risk creating or even exacerbating existing inequities. How, then, can collaborative water governance processes be designed to enhance, rather than undermine, equity? To answer this question, we first conduct an extensive review of the collaborative governance literature to identify common design features of collaborative processes, which each present potential benefits and challenges for actualizing equitable collaborative water governance. After critically discussing these design features, we explore how they are executed through two case studies of collaborative water governance in western North America: groundwater governance reform in California and transnational Colorado River Delta governance. In reflecting on these cases, we chart an agenda for future collaborative water governance research and practice that moves beyond engaging diverse actors to promoting equity among them.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change Engineering Water > Planning Water

Few contest that Computer Supported Cooperative Work has contributed to a significant improvement in productivity and effectiveness of collaboration. During recent years, pervasive computing has imposed another imperative requirement on collaboration systems. That is, remote participants with heterogeneous computing environments should be able to join seamlessly in the collaboration process and the collaboration process itself should be able to satisfy the needs of different computing environments as well be able to adapt to the changes among different environments. In order to satisfy this new requirement and embed collaboration workflow rules into automated process, we have presented a generic framework, EkSarva, which incorporates context-awareness and workflow-centric into the collaborative sessions. In essence, we believe CSCW should be a design-oriented research.KeywordsComputing EnvironmentUbiquitous ComputingHeterogeneous ComputingComputer Support Cooperative WorkCollaboration ProcessThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Recently, GA that uses large-scale computer systems comprised of massive processors has become feasible because of the emergence of super PC clusters and grid computation environments. Mechanisms to use massive computation resources laconically and to search effectively are necessary if large-scale computer systems are available. In this study, a new GA-specific database with the local search mechanism to assure the scalability of search performances against the number of computing resources is proposed. Our database possesses information of searched space, and in addition, the local search for nonsearched spaces is applied using individuals stored in the database. To embed our database in a GA enables us to comprehend the quantitative rate of a searched region during searches. Applying this local search, the searched space can be expanded linearly in accordance with the increase in computing resources and the exhaustive search is guaranteed under infinite computations. The features of the introduced GA are discussed with reference to several types of experiments. This method was applied to primitive functions and test functions of continuous optimization problems. Through such experiments, it was shown that our method ensures an effective exhaustive search and has almost the same performance as a conventional GA.

Software product quality is an important concern in the computer environment and whose immediate results are appreciated in all the activities where computers are used. The ISO/IEC 9126 standard series settle a software product quality model, for example, in the annex, shows the identification of the quality requirements like a necessary step for product quality. However, the standard does not included the way to get quality requirements, neither how to establish metrics levels. Establishing quality requirements and metric levels seems to be simple activities but they could be annoying and prone to errors if there is not a systematic approach for the process. This article presents a proposal for establishing product quality requirements according to the ISO/IEC 9126 standard.

The aim of this paper is to reveal the current situation regarding the use of mobile phones as a mean of information sharing by Cypriot farmers. In particular, a project at the Agricultural Research Institute is underway, to survey methods currently used for agricultural information and knowledge sharing, to determine the level of satisfaction of the farmers of the available sources of information, and to suggest how ICT tools can be applied to help in transferring agricultural knowledge to farmers who live and work in rural and remote areas. The results showed that nearly 98% of the farmers in Cyprus use the mobile phone as a source of agriculture information. Furthermore it was found that there are no differences between educational groups and between crop farmers and their livestock counterparts concerning mobile phone usage. Future research is needed to examine the factors that affect mobile phone usage, its usefulness and the possible benefits for the Cypriot farmers.

This study has been started as a part of a research, related to exploring impact of novel interfaces during collaborative architectural design process on designers’ way of thinking. However, in this paper it is intended to focus on how the input devices reflect on designers’ modeling behavior in computer environment. Therefore it is intended to compare designer’s modeling approaches in computer environment via a case study. Four master students in architectural design computing graduate program have attended to the case study. The findings of the case study is presented and evaluated in the discussion section.

In most places on the planet vegetation thrives: it is known as “greening Earth”. However in certain regions, especially in the Arctic, there are areas exhibiting a browning trend. This phenomenon is well known but not fully understood yet, and grasping its impact on local ecosystems requires involvement of scientists from different disciplines, including social sciences and humanities, as well as local populations. Here we focus on the Troms and Finnmark counties in northern Norway to assess the extent of the problem and any link with local environmental conditions as well as potential impacts. We have chosen to adopt an open and collaborative process and take advantage of the services offered by RELIANCE on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). RELIANCE delivers a suite of innovative and interconnected services that extend the capabilities of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to support the management of the research lifecycle within Earth Science Communities and Copernicus Users. The RELIANCE project has delivered 3 complementary  technologies: Research Objects (ROs), Data Cubes and AI-based Text Mining. RoHub is a Research Object management platform that implements these 3 technologies and enables researchers to collaboratively manage, share and preserve their research work. We will show how we are using these technologies along with EGI notebooks to work open and share an executable Jupyter Notebook that is fully reproducible and reusable. We use a number of Python libraries from the Pangeo software stack such as Xarray, Dask and Zarr. Our Jupyter Notebook is bundled with its computational environment, datacubes and related bibliographic resources in an executable Research Object. We believe that this approach can significantly speed up the research process and can drive it to more exploitable results. Up to now, we have used indices derived from satellite data (in particular Sentinel-2) to assess how the vegetation cover in Troms and Finnmark counties has changed. To go a bit further we are investigating how to relate such information to relevant local parameters obtained from meteorological reanalysis data (ERA5 and ERA5-land from ECMWF). That should give a good basis for training an Artificial Intelligence algorithm and testing it, with the objective of getting an idea about the possibility of “predicting” what is likely to happen in the near future with certain types of vegetation like mosses and lichens which are essential for local populations and animals.

SummaryThe wide range of RNA-seq applications and their high-computational needs require the development of pipelines orchestrating the entire workflow and optimizing usage of available computational resources. We present aRNApipe, a project-oriented pipeline for processing of RNA-seq data in high-performance cluster environments. aRNApipe is highly modular and can be easily migrated to any high-performance computing (HPC) environment. The current applications included in aRNApipe combine the essential RNA-seq primary analyses, including quality control metrics, transcript alignment, count generation, transcript fusion identification, alternative splicing and sequence variant calling. aRNApipe is project-oriented and dynamic so users can easily update analyses to include or exclude samples or enable additional processing modules. Workflow parameters are easily set using a single configuration file that provides centralized tracking of all analytical processes. Finally, aRNApipe incorporates interactive web reports for sample tracking and a tool for managing the genome assemblies available to perform an analysis.Availability and documentationhttps://github.com/HudsonAlpha/aRNAPipe; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.202950Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.