Challenges of Interaction in Multicultural Class of Future Mining Engineers within Computer Supported Collaborative Learning

The inclusion of computer mediation and distance education has influenced the training of future mining engineers in Kuzbass universities. This study investigates the issues of students’ interaction in multicultural groups within Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. CSCL served as a conceptual framework to guide the presented study. Forty-eight Russian and Indian students participated in the experiment. To assess the peer interaction in multicultural groups four questionnaires were designed. The authors used comparative analysis to analyze the interviews of the participants. To process the data, the Pearson’s correlation analysis was performed. In the result of comparative analysis of the participants’ interviews some conclusions on students’ interaction in multicultural class were done. Foreign students demonstrate positive attitude towards collaborative learning activities while one in two Russian students displays reluctance and frustration in relation to cross-cultural collaborative learning environment. The results suggest that the main challenges for implementation of CSCL in higher education institutions of Kuzbass are insufficient cross-cultural skills of students and even teachers and the lowquality digital infrastructure of universities.

Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization

This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization, ’ and continuous experiments. ’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: Big Other. ’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.

Visualizing Domain Coherence: Social Informatics as a Case Study

Using bibliometric methods of inquiry, one of the eleven approaches of domain-analytic research offered by HjØrland (2002), we were able to visualize the emerging field of social informatics (SI). Past research has demonstrated the breadth and depth of biblometric tools by investigating a variety of research communities (White and Griffith 1981; Tsay 1989; McCain 1991; Borgman and Rice 1992; White and McCain 1998; Smiraglia 2006, 2009, Moore 2007; Jank 2010). Using the published literature produced in SI from 1997 through 2009, allowed visualization of domain-coherence in SI. Concepts that were utilized by which to measure domain coherence include the number of ideas espoused (Collins 1998, 42), scholarly productivity (Crane 1972), and the number of scholars participating (Price 1986; Collins 1998). In this lightning paper based on a recent dissertation (Hoeffner 2012) we will present a visualization based on the analysis of social informatics’ literature, showing growth in publication productivity, evidence of intellectually and socially connected scholars, reliance on scholars from within the fields of information science, and computer science, and two or three topical areas of interest that pertained to communication and aspects of computer mediation, as well as policy and access. Discourse among scholars was evident, and although the Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology overwhelming published the largest number of SI work, there was representation in a few key journals. Author co-citation patterns revealed a core group of scholars commonly cited together, and an investigation of self-citation practices revealed slightly less evidence among SI’s most prolific authors than in science overall. Recently, Smiraglia (2012) defined a domain as “a domain is a group with an ontological base that reveals an underlying teleology, a set of common hypotheses, epistemological consensus on methodological approaches, and social semantics.” Our visualization demonstrates continued coherence of SI as a domain.

Getting the point: The role of gesture in managing intersubjectivity in a design activity

This paper illustrates the complexity of pointing as it is employed in a design workshop. Using the method of interaction analysis, we argue that pointing is not merely employed to index, locate, or fix reference to an object. It also constitutes a practice for reestablishing intersubjectivity and solving interactional trouble such as misunderstandings or disagreements by virtue of enlisting something as part of the participants’ shared experience. We use this analysis to discuss implications for how such practices might be supported with computer mediation, arguing for a “bricolage” approach to systems development that emphasizes the provision of resources for users to collaboratively negotiate the accomplishment of intersubjectivity rather than systems that try to support pointing as a specific gestural action.

Using Computer-Mediated Groups to Improve University Processes

We describe in this chapter an action research study of a computer-mediated business process redesign (BPR) group in a New Zealand university. The BPR group used an integrated BPR framework, which comprises a group process methodology, called MetaProi, and an asynchronous groupware tool. BPR group members were from two different departments and successfully redesigned two course-related processes. The study reveals some possible effects of computer mediation on groups that are particularly relevant for managers of distributed BPR projects, namely, lower demand for leadership skills, much lower overall running cost, and much lower degree of interaction. No impact on group effectiveness was observed. The study also indicates that computer mediation lowers barriers to and, in turn, fosters interdepartmental communication, which creates a suitable context for the occurrence of other BPR groups involving different departments. On the other hand, the study indicates that those groups lead to more threats to management, an effect that may lead to lack of support from managers for future BPR groups. Finally, the study suggests that strategic BPR groups, as opposed to those dealing with local operational issues, can better benefit from computer mediation when this is combined with face-to-face and other types of vocal interaction.