Biometrics in Virtual Communities and Digital Governments

Pervasive services of virtual communities and digital governments are achievable only if trust, privacy and security can be secured and strengthened. To meet these requirements, mechanisms, which provide secure management of information and facilities without compromising privacy and civil rights, have to be devised. The success of such mechanisms relies on effective identity authentication. While traditional security measures such as PINs and passwords may be forgotten, stolen or cracked, biometrics provides authentication mechanisms based on unique human physiological and behavioral characteristics that can be used to identify an individual or authenticate the claimed identity of an individual, but cannot be easily duplicated or forged. Typical characteristics include but are not limited to fingerprint, face, iris, hand geometry, palm, voice pattern, signature, keystroke dynamics and so forth. Moreover, in the light of homeland security, biometrics has become a powerful measure in the government’s fight against identity fraud, illegal immigration, illegal workers and terrorism. Biometrics is also useful in preventing abuses of public health services and other government entitlement.

Adaptive Virtual Reality Shopping Malls

Firms and organizations are increasingly exploiting electronic channels to reach their customers and create new business opportunities. To this end, electronic shops have been developed, either offering products from a single firm or encompassing multiple individual electronic stores, comprising thus electronic shopping malls. Besides development activities, electronic shopping has attracted the attention of researchers, who have studied various perspectives, including user attitude, critical success factors, security, technical aspects, and so forth (e.g., Fang & Salvendy, 2003; Wang, Makaroff, & Edwards, 2003). Two main concerns for e-commerce are personalization and enhancement of user experience. Personalization addresses the ability to offer content tailored to the preferences of each user (Anupam, Hull, & Kumar, 2001) or user group (Wang et al., 2003). Preferences may be explicitly declared by the user, or derived by the system through inspecting user interaction; if the system dynamically reacts to changes of visitor behavior, it is termed as adaptive. Personalization allows customers to focus on the items they are interested in, and enables electronic shops to make targeted suggestions and send promotions to customers (Lekakos & Giaglis, 2005). Enhancement of user experience is another major issue in e-commerce, given that 2D images and texts on the screen are not sufficient to provide information on product aspects such as physical dimensions, textures, and manipulation feedback (Park & Woohun, 2004). Major e-commerce categories that could benefit from giving a more accurate and/or complete view of the products include real estate brokers who could present detailed models of properties, furniture stores that could allow their customers to view how certain pieces would fit in the target place (Hughes, Brusilovsky, & Lewis, 2002), and clothing shops that could provide a virtual fitting room with customizable avatars (Compucloz Corporation, 2003). Multimedia presentations can also be used as a means for “information acceleration” for promoting “really new” products (Urban et al., 1997). Enhancement of user experience may finally compensate for the loss of the pleasure associated with a visit to a shopping mall (Laskaridis, Vassilakis, Lepouras, & Rouvas, 2001). Nowadays, the technological potential of Internet systems provides adequate means for building online multimedia applications that can help e-commerce sites attract e-shoppers. Applications can be built to adapt to the user’s profile and provide the user with a suitable set of information in the most efficient way. Virtual reality (VR) technologies are also now mature enough to be used for the wide public, offering vivid and highly interactive environments, allowing users to view synthetic worlds within which they can visualize and manipulate artifacts. This article aims to specify a system that exploits capabilities offered by adaptation and VR technologies to offer e-shoppers personalized and enhanced experiences, while addressing challenges related to the cost, complexity, and effort of building and maintaining such a system.

Team Effectiveness in Virtual Environments

This chapter attempts to address the need for more research on virtual team effectiveness and outlines an ecological theoretical framework that is applicable to virtual learning environments (VLE). Prior empirical studies on virtual team effectiveness used frameworks of traditional team effectiveness and mainly followed Hackman’s normative model (input-process-output). We propose an ecological approach for virtual team effectiveness that accounts for team boundaries management, technologyuse, and external environment in VLE, properties which were previously either nonexistent or contextual. The ecological framework suggests that three components — external environment, internal environment, and boundary management — reciprocally interact with effectiveness. The significance of the proposed framework is a holistic perspective that takes into account the complexity of the external and internal environment of the team. Furthermore, we address the needs for new pedagogical approaches in VLE.

The Role of Structured Conflict and Consensus Approaches inVirtual Team Strategic Decision Making

Do procedures that improve face-to-face decision meetings also improve virtual “meetings?” Might the effectiveness of such procedures improve with practice? This longitudinal experiment investigated the efficiency, effectiveness and group member perceptions of dialectical inquiry (DI) and constructive consensus (CC) approaches to strategic decision making in a virtual (distributed) computer-mediated- communications (CMC) environment. There were no differences between DI and CC groups in terms of decision effectiveness. However, this result has not been unusual in CMC research. DI groups had significantly higher perceived depth of evaluation than CC groups. CC groups reported greater decision acceptance and willingness to work together again than DI groups. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for group support systems research and design in the era of the World Wide Web.

When Technology Does Not Support Learning

Central to the design of successful virtual learning initiatives is the matching of technology to the needs of the training environment. The difficulty is that while the technology may be designed to complement and support the learning process, not all users of these systems find the technology supportive. Instead, some users’ conceptions of learning, or epistemological beliefs may be in conflict with their perceptions of what the technology supports. Using data from 307 individuals, this research study investigated the process and outcome losses that occur when friction exists between individuals’ epistemological beliefs and their perceptions of how the technology supports learning. Specifically, the results indicated that when there was friction between the technology support of learning and an individual’s epistemological beliefs, course communication, course satisfaction, and course performance were reduced. Implications for design of virtual learning environments and future research are discussed.

Conducting Ethical Research in Virtual Environments

The rapid growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a growth in the number and types of virtual environments supporting computer-mediated communication. This was soon followed by interest in using these virtual environments for research purposes: the recruitment of research participants, the conduct of research and the study of virtual environments. Early research using virtual environments raised a number of ethical issues and debates. As early as 1996, a forum in the The Information Society (vol. 12, no. 2) was devoted to ethical issues in conducting social science research online. The debate has continued with more recent collaborative attempts to develop guidelines for ethical research online (Ess & Association of Internet Researchers, 2002; Frankel & Siang, 1999).

Codes of Ethics in Virtual Communities

The development of the World Wide Web has created new opportunities for interpersonal interaction. The Internet allows one-to-one (e-mail), one-to-many (Web sites, e-mail lists) or many-to-many (online discussion forums) interaction, which represent a unique feature in comparison with traditional communication channels (Armstrong & Hagel, 1996). On the other hand, the Internet has specific characteristics, such as: • Interactivity: The Internet offers multiple possibilities of interactive communication, acting not only as an interface, but also as a communication agent (allowing a direct interaction between individuals and software applications) • Transparency: The information published online can be accessed and viewed by any Internet user, unless this information is specifically protected • Memory: The Web is a channel not only for transmitting information, but also for storing information¾in other words, the information published on the Web remains in the memory of the network until it is erased. These characteristics permit the development of online or virtual communities¾groups of people with similar interests who communicate on the Web in a regular manner (Armstrong & Hagel, 1996; Goldsborough, 1999a, 1999b; Gordon, 2000). Many studies deal with the ethics of research in Cyberspace and Virtual Communities (Bakardjieva, Feenberg, & Goldie, 2004), but very few publications relate with the Codes of Ethics used in Public Discussion Forums (Belilos, 1998; Johnson, 1997). Other specialists have analyzed specific categories or uses of online discussion forums, such as online learning (Blignaut & Trollip, 2003; DeSanctis, Fayard, Roach, & Jiang, 2003) or the creation of professional communities of practice (Bickart & Schindler, 2001; Kling, McKim & King, 2003; Millen, Fontaine, & Muller, 2002), and in this context, have also discussed briefly the importance of netiquette and forum monitoring (Fauske & Wade, 2003, 2004). The difference between these online communities and public discussion forums is the degree of control exercised on the functioning and purpose of the forum by a specific individual or organization. This article attempts to investigate, analyze and present the main patterns of the codes/rules of ethics used in the public discussion forums, otherwise known as Newsgroups, and their influence on the profile and functioning of the community.

Understanding Effective E-Collaboration Through Virtual Distance

Virtual distance is a multidimensional perceptual construct resulting from key elements that promote a sense of distance in e-collaborative work environments. Why will virtual distance help to uncover some of the potential downside risks of collaboration using virtual and outsourced resources? Research has shown that the perceived distance between two or more individuals has negative effects on communication and persuasion and promotes a tendency to deceive more than those who do not perceive themselves to be as distant (Bradner & Mark, 2002). Virtual team members and work groups are, by definition, distant from one another, not only in the physical sense but in other ways as well. Socio-emotional factors, for example, can play a role in perceived distance and these factors may contribute to decreased success (Barczak & McDonough, 2003).

Quality of Knowledge in Virtual Entities

The work done by some authors in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems foresees an approximation of these disciplines and those of the social sciences, namely, in the areas of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Much of this work has been done in terms of the humanization of the behavior of virtual entities by expressing human-like feelings and emotions. Some authors (e.g., Ortony, Clore & Collins, 1988; Picard, 1997) suggest lines of action considering ways to assign emotions to machines. Attitudes like cooperation, competition, socialization, and trust are explored in many different areas (Arthur, 1994; Challet & Zhang, 1998; Novais et al., 2004). Other authors (e.g., Bazzan et al., 2000; Castelfranchi, Rosis & Falcone, 1997) recognize the importance of modeling virtual entity mental states in an anthropopathic way. Indeed, an important motivation to the development of this project comes from the author’s work with artificial intelligence in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning, in terms of an extension to the language of logic programming, that is, the Extended Logic Programming (Alferes, Pereira & Przymusinski, 1998; Neves, 1984). On the other hand, the use of null values to deal with imperfect knowledge (Gelfond, 1994; Traylor & Gelfond, 1993) and the enforcement of exceptions to characterize the behavior of intelligent systems (Analide, 2004) is another justification for the adoption of these formalisms in this knowledge arena. Knowledge representation, as a way to describe the real world based on mechanical, logical, or other means, will always be a function of the systems ability to describe the existent knowledge and their associated reasoning mechanisms. Indeed, in the conception of a knowledge representation system, it must be taken into attention different instances of knowledge.

Trust in Virtual Multicultural Teams

This chapter analyses the phenomenon of trust with regard to its significance for virtual teams. Guided by the existing literature on trust, this chapter presents different kinds of trust and the development of trust over time. The challenges inherent to virtual multicultural teams, thus to working teams, which are geographically dispersed and communicate with the help of electronic media, raise the questions of their consequences on trust. As virtual teams are mostly used in companies operating in different countries all over the world, the different cultural backgrounds of the team members are taken into account as well. To give an example for the relevance of this issue in practice, an illustrative case study on experiences international business students have made during virtual team projects is presented.