Information Rich Systems and User's Goals and Information Needs

2006 ◽  
pp. 338-343
Author(s):  
Michael J. Albers
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Complete Sequence ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Complex Problems ◽  
Linear Sequence ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
High Level

Currently, most of the Web is designed from the viewpoint of helping people who know what they want but need help accomplishing it. User goals may range from buying a new computer to making vacation plans. Yet, these are simple tasks that can be accomplished with a linear sequence of events. With information-rich sites, the linear sequence breaks down, and a straightforward process to provide users with information in a useful format does not exist. Users come to information-rich sites with complex problems they want to solve. Reaching a solution requires meeting goals and subgoals by finding the proper information. Complex problems are often ill-structured; realistically, the complete sequence can’t even be defined because of users’ tendencies to jump around within the data and to abandon the sequence at varying points (Klein, 1999). To reach the answer, people need the information properly positioned within the situation context (Albers, 2003; Mirel, 2003a). System support for such problems requires users to be given properly integrated information that will assist in problem solving and decision making. Complex problems normally involve high-level reasoning and open-ended problem solving. Consequently, designer expectations of stable requirements and the ability to perform an exhaustive task analysis fall short of reality (Rouse & Valusek, 1993). While conventional task analysis works for well-defined domains, it fails for the ill-structured domains of information-rich sites (Albers, 2004). Instead of exhaustive task analysis, the designer must shift to an analysis focused on providing a clear understanding of the situation from the user’s point of view and the user’s goals and information needs.

Problem solving methods and knowledge systems: A personal journey to perceptual images as knowledge

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-338
Author(s):  
B. Chandrasekaran
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
High Level ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

AbstractI was among those who proposed problem solving methods (PSMs) in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a knowledge-level description of strategies useful in building knowledge-based systems. This paper summarizes the evolution of my ideas in the last two decades. I start with a review of the original ideas. From an artificial intelligence (AI) point of view, it is not PSMs as such, which are essentially high-level design strategies for computation, that are interesting, but PSMs associated with tasks that have a relation to AI and cognition. They are also interesting with respect to cognitive architecture proposals such as Soar and ACT-R: PSMs are observed regularities in the use of knowledge that an exclusive focus on the architecture level might miss, the latter providing no vocabulary to talk about these regularities. PSMs in the original conception are closely connected to a specific view of knowledge: symbolic expressions represented in a repository and retrieved as needed. I join critics of this view, and maintain with them that most often knowledge is not retrieved from a base as much as constructed as needed. This criticism, however, raises the question of what is in memory that is not knowledge as traditionally conceived in AI, but can support theconstructionof knowledge in predicate–symbolic form. My recent proposal about cognition and multimodality offers a possible answer. In this view, much of memory consists of perceptual and kinesthetic images, which can be recalled during deliberation and from which internal perception can generate linguistic–symbolic knowledge. For example, from a mental image of a configuration of objects, numerous sentences can be constructed describing spatial relations between the objects. My work on diagrammatic reasoning is an implemented example of how this might work. These internal perceptions on imagistic representations are a new kind of PSM.

Aligning Strategy and Information Technology

2016 ◽  
pp. 1682-1711
Author(s):  
Eamonn Caffrey ◽  
Joe McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Strategic Alignment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
It Management ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Management Domain ◽  
Actual Meaning ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
High Level

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with high-level insights into the complexities of aligning strategy and Information Technology (IT) by reviewing core areas of the extant strategic alignment literature. Strategic alignment has proven to be a perennial issue for organizations and management teams alike for more than three decades now. In some quarters, the actual meaning of the concept is ambiguous, and the chapter aims to provide a clear understanding of what strategic alignment fully means and involves. The chapter addresses the origins of the construct and elicits many of the known reasons that describe the inherent challenges from a practical management point-of-view. Insights into various perspectives are shared based on past empirical studies. Given that strategic alignment is embedded with the very essence of strategy, insights into context, content, and process as they relate to this important IT management domain are presented.

scholarly journals Development of Perceived Complex Problem-Solving Instrument in Domain of Complex Systems

Systems ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Morteza Nagahi ◽  
Alieh Maddah ◽  
Raed Jaradat ◽  
Mohammad Mohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Systems Thinking ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Complex Problem Solving ◽  
Final Model ◽  
Complex Problems ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship

The ability to solve modern complex systems becomes a necessity of the 21st century. The purpose of this study is the development of an instrument that measures an individual’s perception toward solving complex problems. Based on literature and definitions, an instrument with four stages named perceived complex problem-solving (PCPS) was designed through exploratory and confirmatory stages. The instrument is validated and scaled through different models, and the final model is discussed. After completing validation and scale development of the PCPS instrument, the final model of the PCPS instrument was introduced to resolve the gap in the literature. The final model of the PCPS instrument is able to find and quantify the degree of perception an individual holds in dealing with complex problems and can be utilized in different settings and environments. Further research about the relationship between Systems Thinking and CPS revealed individuals with a high level of systems thinking have a better understanding of the characteristics of complex problems and so better perception of CPS.

Key library service dimensions for serving the needs of higher education students in Namibia

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shameem Ali
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Student Perspective ◽  
Library Services ◽  
Facilities Management ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Content Type ◽  
High Level

Purpose – Students at higher education institutions in under-developed countries face many study and learning-related impediments and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the library usage behaviour and experiences of students as well as to explore reliance on campus-based private study options due largely to the disadvantaged living conditions of many students. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of students was conducted to identify how the institutional library is used, what perception students have of the library services and what the service gaps are. Perceptions were measured across 20 indicators adapted from previous studies. The survey sought information on the rate of library usage, the main reason for the most recent library visit and reasons that had ever prevented them from visiting the library. Post survey, three focus group sessions were conducted to discuss issues relating to home study environments and preliminary findings from the survey stage. Findings – Based on the item groupings five service dimensions were identified. These were student services/facilities, management, collection, study spaces and access. Despite indicating a high level of dissatisfaction with some aspects of the library services, students preferred the library because home environments are not conducive to study and learning. The service dimensions identified by the study relate to the areas of greatest need from the student perspective. Practical implications – The implementation of many of the virtual characteristics of university libraries should be based on a clear understanding of the local information needs, searching behaviours as well as being cognizant of how and why libraries are accessed. In this regard consideration must be given to the lack of study facilities at home. Originality/value – In the context of developed countries the notion of virtual libraries is a reality. However, in the African context such a notion seems “remote” from the perspectives of many students, especially those from the lower socio-economic backgrounds. Many of these students come from poor living conditions and have no study and learning opportunities outside of campus. This paper raises these issues for consideration in library planning and budget allocations for universities in poor communities.

Thinking through a Lesson: Successfully Implementing High-Level Tasks

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret S. Smith ◽  
Victoria Bill ◽  
Elizabeth K. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mathematical Tasks ◽  
Solution Path ◽  
Challenging Tasks ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Bag Of Marbles ◽  
High Level

Mathematical tasks that give students the opportunity to use reasoning skills while thinking are the most difficult for teachers to implement well. Research by Stein and colleagues (Henningsen and Stein 1997; Stein and Lane 1996; Stein, Grover, and Henningsen 1996) makes the case resoundingly that cognitively challenging tasks that promote thinking, reasoning, and problem solving often decline during implementation as a result of various classroom factors. When this occurs, students must apply previously learned rules and procedures with no connection to meaning or understanding, and the opportunities for thinking and reasoning are lost. Why are such tasks so difficult to implement in ways that maintain the rigor of the activity? Stein and Kim (2006, p. 11) contend that lessons based on high-level (i.e., cognitively challenging) tasks “are less intellectually ‘controllable’ from the teacher's point of view.” They argue that since procedures for solving high-level tasks are often not specified in advance, students must draw on their relevant knowledge and experiences to find a solution path. Take, for example, the Bag of Marbles task shown in figure 1.

Aligning Strategy and Information Technology

2015 ◽  
pp. 233-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eamonn Caffrey ◽  
Joe McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Strategic Alignment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
It Management ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Management Domain ◽  
Actual Meaning ◽  
Core Areas ◽  
High Level

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with high-level insights into the complexities of aligning strategy and Information Technology (IT) by reviewing core areas of the extant strategic alignment literature. Strategic alignment has proven to be a perennial issue for organizations and management teams alike for more than three decades now. In some quarters, the actual meaning of the concept is ambiguous, and the chapter aims to provide a clear understanding of what strategic alignment fully means and involves. The chapter addresses the origins of the construct and elicits many of the known reasons that describe the inherent challenges from a practical management point-of-view. Insights into various perspectives are shared based on past empirical studies. Given that strategic alignment is embedded with the very essence of strategy, insights into context, content, and process as they relate to this important IT management domain are presented.

Segments: An alternative rainfall problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER ACHTEN
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Solution Strategies ◽  
List Processing ◽  
Problem Solving Strategies ◽  
High Level ◽  
Higher Order Functions

Abstract Elliot Soloway’s Rainfall problem is a well-known and well-studied problem to investigate the problem-solving strategies of programmers. Kathi Fisler investigated this programming challenge from the point of view of functional programmers. She showed that this particular challenge gives rise to five different high-level solution strategies, of which three are predominant and cover over 80% of all chosen solutions. In this study, we put forward the Segments problem as an alternative challenge to investigate the problem-solving skills of functional programmers. Analysis of the student solutions, their high-level solution strategies, and corresponding archetype solutions shows that the Segments problem gives rise to seven different high-level solution strategies that can be further divided into 17 subclasses. The Segments problem is particularly suited to investigate problem-solving skills that involve list processing and higher-order functions.

Territorial Distribution of Alcohol and Drug Addictions Mortality Concerning Regional Disparities in the Slovak Republic from Year 1996 to Year 2015

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Slovak Republic ◽  
Regional Disparities ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Extreme Position ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Male Sex ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Level

BACKGROUND: This paper deals with territorial distribution of the alcohol and drug addictions mortality at a level of the districts of the Slovak Republic. AIM: The aim of the paper is to explore the relations within the administrative territorial division of the Slovak Republic, that is, between the individual districts and hence, to reveal possibly hidden relation in alcohol and drug mortality. METHODS: The analysis is divided and executed into the two fragments – one belongs to the female sex, the other one belongs to the male sex. The standardised mortality rate is computed according to a sequence of the mathematical relations. The Euclidean distance is employed to compute the similarity within each pair of a whole data set. The cluster analysis examines is performed. The clusters are created by means of the mutual distances of the districts. The data is collected from the database of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic for all the districts of the Slovak Republic. The covered time span begins in the year 1996 and ends in the year 2015. RESULTS: The most substantial point is that the Slovak Republic possesses the regional disparities in a field of mortality expressed by the standardised mortality rate computed particularly for the diagnoses assigned to the alcohol and drug addictions at a considerably high level. However, the female sex and the male sex have the different outcome. The Bratislava III District keeps absolutely the most extreme position. It forms an own cluster for the both sexes too. The Topoľčany District bears a similar extreme position from a point of view of the male sex. All the Bratislava districts keep their mutual notable dissimilarity. Contrariwise, evaluation of a development of the regional disparities among the districts looks like notably heterogeneously. CONCLUSIONS: There are considerable regional discrepancies throughout the districts of the Slovak Republic. Hence, it is necessary to create a common platform how to proceed with the solution of this issue.

scholarly journals FRI0632-HPR PSYCHOLOGICAL PARTICULIARITIES OF PATIENTS SUFFERING FROM MONOGENIC AUTO-INFLAMMATORY DISEASES.

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 920.1-921
Author(s):  
N. Stepanenko ◽  
E. Fedorov ◽  
S. Salugina ◽  
S. Feoktistova
Keyword(s):  
Inflammatory Diseases ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Information Storage ◽  
Social Adaptation ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Communicative Disorders ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
High Level

Background:Monogenic auto-inflammatory diseases (mAID) are a group of severe chronic multisystemic diseases with recurring episodes of fever and other manifestations that significantly affect the patients’ life quality. Moreover, the hyper expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL1β, etc.) observed in these patients may have a negative effect on the central nervous system.Objectives:to study the state of the cognitive and emotional spheres in children suffering from monogenic auto-inflammatory diseases.Methods:there were examined 22 children at the age of 7 to 17 years old diagnosed with CAPS-9, TRAPS-8, FMF-5. Among them there were 12 boys and 10 girls. The diagnosis in all the patients was confirmed through detection of pathogenic mutations in the NLRP3, TNFRSF1A and MEFV genes. The following methods were used: a clinical conversation; memory diagnostics (learning by heart of 10 words, a pictogram using cues taking into account the patients’ age); attention diagnostics (Schulte tables); thinking diagnostics (establishing a sequence of events, “four is a crwod”, simple analogies, interpretation of proverbs); emotional and communicative fields (the Eight-Color Luscher Test; CMAS (adaptation by A. Prikhozhan); STAI test, a drawing called “an animal that does not exist” and “a house-a tree-a man”).Results:The memory study revealed in all patients with TRAPS and FMF high and medium values of short-term and long-term memory, in patients with CAPS - a low level of short-term auditory-speech memory, information storage and indirect memorization in 1/3 of patients. In 100% of the examined patients with TRAPS, a significant decrease in all processes of attention and distribution of attention. In 1/3 of patients with CAPS, an increased exhaustion of attention was registered and in 11% - a decrease in its stability. In patients with FMF, attention disorders were not detected. In 44% of patients with CAPS, a decrease in the level of generalization and difficulties in establishing causal relationships were registered. In 25% of patients with TRAPS a decrease in the level of generalization, in 12.5%- difficulties in establishing cause-effect relationships, inertia of thinking in 37.5%. In 60% of patients with FMF: a decrease in the level of generalization, in 80%: difficulties in establishing cause-effect relationships, inertia of thinking in 20%. In the emotional sphere, patients with CAPS, TRAPS, and FMF demonstrated signs of aggression (11.1%, 20% and 20% of patients, respectively), communicative disorders (77.8% -80% - 80%), and reduced social adaptation (55.5% - 80% - 80%), a tendency to form neurotic fears (22% - 40% - 40%). A high level of personal anxiety was noted in 1/3 of patients with CAPS and 40% of patients with FMF.Conclusion:various psychological disorders in the cognitive and emotional fields were noted in the majority of the examined patients with monogenic auto-inflammatory diseases. In patients with TRAPS, attention processes are most significantly affected; in patients with CAPS, memory is more often affected. In patients with FMF, disorders in thinking processes are revealed more often. In the emotional sphere, most patients with all the three forms of AID note communicative disorders and social adaptation.Disclosure of Interests:None declared

Arising of Informal Women's Learn-to-code Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Louise Ann Lyon ◽  
Chelsea Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Customer Relationship ◽  
Activity System ◽  
Learning Group ◽  
Management Platform ◽  
High Level ◽  
Verbal Encouragement ◽  
Activity Systems Analysis

Female-focused, grassroots communities purporting to help women learn to code are popping up in a variety of settings, indicating the motivation on the part of the participants to evade male-dominated settings while learning. However, little is known about how these groups function as an activity system. With current technology enabling the forming of virtual communities and the meteoric rise in use of the Salesforce CRM (customer relationship management) platform, a group of women have formed a coaching and learning community designed to help women move from Salesforce administrators to software developers through learning to code. We used activity systems analysis (ASA) to investigate this real-world instance of the larger phenomenon using an ethnographic approach. We used ASA to organize and make sense of the data by first creating a table listing the points on the activity system triangle (subject, rules, object, etc.) and filling in the points of the triangle based on the design of the coaching and learning group as described by participants; this gave us a high-level view of the activity system. To understand the subjects’ point of view of the system, we then created a new column in the table to fill in themes that emerged from our qualitative data analysis organized by dimension of the activity system. This process enabled us to capture the activity and the voices of participants as well as tensions that had emerged in the system. Findings show a range of outcomes, from participants crediting the group as a kickstart to the journey to successfully landing a job as a developer to members stalling in their progress after involvement. Results also show that purposeful tensions of welcoming novice questions and offering unsolicited verbal encouragement built into the activity system create a welcoming, safe environment for women learning to code.

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