Unstructured Communication Research Articles

Designing for the materialization of networked learning spaces

The potential of a Networked Learning (NL) space comes into being when participants establish communication, build connections among each other, and create a dialogic space. Moving from this premise, this article poses a complex question: How to design for the materialization of a NL space? It bases its theoretical framework on Bakhtin’s idea of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the concepts of network core and periphery, as well as the idea of the strength of weak ties. Through these lenses, the article presents a cross-case analysis of two projects aiming at technology education in Denmark. Forces, connections, and movements are exposed and analyzed, showing the importance of unstructured communication processes that nurture a networked community. These results lead to new speculations for future educational design of NL spaces.

Assessing core capacities for addressing public health emergencies of international concern at designated points of entry in cameroon during the COVID-19 Pandemic

BackgroundPoints of Entry (POEs) are at the frontline for prevention, detection and response to international spread of diseases. The objective of this assessment was to ascertain the current level of existing International Health Regulations (IHR) core capacities of designated airports, ports and ground crossings in Cameroon and identify critical gaps for capacity building for prevention, early warning and response to public health threats including COVID-19.MethodsData were collected from April to May 2020 in 5 designated POEs: Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport (YIA), Douala international Airport (DIA), Douala Autonomous Port (DAP), Garoua-Boulai ground crossing, Kye-Ossi ground crossing which were all selected for their high volume of passenger and goods traffic. The World Health Organization (WHO) assessment tool for core capacity requirements at designated airports, ports and ground crossings was used to collect data on three technical capacities: (i) communication and coordination, (ii) Capacities at all times and (iii) capacities to respond to Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC).ResultsAll the investigated POEs scored below 50% of capacities in place. YIA recorded the highest percentage for all groups of capacities, coordination and communication and for core capacity at all times with a percentage of 42%, 58% and 32% respectively. For core capacity to respond to PHEIC, all the POEs recorded below 50%. The DAP and all ground crossings lacked trained personnel for inspection of conveyances. Only DIA had a public health emergency plan. There is no isolation/quarantine and transport capacity at the POEs.ConclusionAll POEs assessed did not meet IHR standards and need significant improvement to fulfill the IHR requirements. Unstructured communication channels between stakeholders make the implementation of IHR challenging. A coordination mechanism, with clear functions and structure, is necessary for well-coordinated response efforts to health emergencies at POEs. This assessment will serve as a baseline to inform planning and IHR implementation at designated POEs in Cameroon.

Analytical Comparison of Clustering Techniques for the Recognition of Communication Patterns

The systematic processing of unstructured communication data as well as the milestone of pattern recognition in order to determine communication groups in negotiations bears many challenges in Machine Learning. In particular, the so-called curse of dimensionality makes the pattern recognition process demanding and requires further research in the negotiation environment. In this paper, various selected renowned clustering approaches are evaluated with regard to their pattern recognition potential based on high-dimensional negotiation communication data. A research approach is presented to evaluate the application potential of selected methods via a holistic framework including three main evaluation milestones: the determination of optimal number of clusters, the main clustering application, and the performance evaluation. Hence, quantified Term Document Matrices are initially pre-processed and afterwards used as underlying databases to investigate the pattern recognition potential of clustering techniques by considering the information regarding the optimal number of clusters and by measuring the respective internal as well as external performances. The overall research results show that certain cluster separations are recommended by internal and external performance measures by means of a holistic evaluation approach, whereas three of the clustering separations are eliminated based on the evaluation results.

Requirements identification for distributed agile team communication using high level carotene

Communication plays an important role to deliver the correct information. However, the communication became challenging especially for agile software teams, which are in geographical distributed. The problem arise when there are exchanging information using unstructured communication platform, misunderstanding on the information communicated and lack of documentation. The aim of this study is to propose a text classification technique for requirements identification in text messages. In this study, we adopted the cascade and cluster classification concept of Carotene that relies on the hash tag function. It classifies the text messages into requirements types instead of job title. This technique called as high-level carotene (HLC) technique that embedded into the tool to identify the functional requirement and non-functional requirements. The result shows that most of criterias evaluated have achieved more than 85% of effectiveness in identifying both of requirement in text messaging by using this technique.

Strict isolation requires a different approach to the family of hospitalised patients with COVID-19: A rapid qualitative study

BackgroundThe outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced family-centred care dramatically due to restricting visiting policies. In this new situation, nurses were challenged to develop new approaches to involve family members in patient care. A better understanding of these changes and the experiences of nurses is essential to make an adaptation of procedures, and to secure a family-centred approach in care as much as possible. ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to investigate how family involvement had taken place, and to explore the experiences of nurses with family involvement during the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, we aimed to formulate recommendations for the involvement of family. MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study using patient record review and focus-group interviews between April and July 2020. We reviewed records of patients with confirmed COVID-19, who were admitted to the COVID-19 wards at two affiliated university hospitals in the Netherlands. All records were searched for notations referring to family involvement. In two focus-groups, nurses who worked at the COVID-19 wards were invited to share their experiences. The Rigorous and Accelerated Data Reduction (RADaR) method was used to collect, reduce and analyse the data. ResultsIn total, 189 patient records were reviewed and nine nurses participated in the focus-group meetings. Patient records revealed infrequent and often unstructured communication with focus on physical condition. Nurses confirmed that communication with family was far less than before and that the physical condition of the patient was predominant. The involvement of family in care was limited to practicalities, although more involvement was described in end-of-life situations. Nurses experienced moral distress due to the visiting restrictions, though some acknowledged that they had experienced the direct patient care so intense and burdensome, that family contact simply felt too much. ConclusionThe communication with and involvement of family in hospital care changed enormously during the COVID-19 outbreak. Based on the identified themes, we formulated recommendations that may be helpful for family-centered care in hospitals during periods of restricted visiting policy.

KESENJANGAN PERSEPSI PADA BPK RI DAN KPK TERHADAP KEAHLIAN AUDITOR FORENSIK

This study is aimed to examine the expectation gap between BPK RI and KPK about expertise of forensic auditors. The expertise of forensic auditors can to mind from deductive analysis, critical thinking, unstructured problem solving, investigative flexibility, analytical proficiency, oral communication, written communication, specific legal knowledge and composure. This study was held in government Republic Indonesia firms Jakarta. In this study data applied with survey of BPK RI and KPK in Jakarta. Respondents in this study are 33 BPK and 11 KPK. Data analysis method applied in this Independent sample T for hypothesis H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, H7, H8 dan H9. 
 Before testing the hypothesis, all questioners were testing by validity and reliability anlysis. The result of the validity and reliability show that all data is valid and reliable. The result of the study shows that there is expectation gap between BPK RI and KPK, in critical thinking (H2) and specific legal knowledge (H8). So, from this study the researcher concludes that there is perception difference between BPK RI and KPK about expertise of forensic auditors at deductive analysis (H1), unstructured problem solving (H3), investigative flexibility (H4), analytical proficiency (H5), oral communication (H6), written communication (H7), and composure (H9). The expectation gap between BPK RI and KPK about expertise of forensic auditors.
 Keywords: forensic auditors, expectation gap, BPK RI and KPK

Proposed Production Process Standardization at Function ART Indonesia to Reduce Waste of Production

The growth of the property business goes hand in hand with the furnishing industry in Indonesia. The construction of apartments, minimalist houses which adjust to the limitations of land in Indonesia creates changes in furnishing designs which are minimalist, simple, and multifunctional that support, such as space saving models. In Indonesia, many space saving products are introduced by foreign companies such as IKEA and Informa. Function.id is one of the small businesses that has a goal to fulfill the needs of space saving product in Indonesia. With some limitations, Function.id does the production process using the makloon / outsource method. However, because the concepts applied are not standardized and well-structured, instead it creates a problem in the production process. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the problem and to standardize the makloon production process of Function.id to be implemented in Function ART Indonesia.
 The approach of this research is qualitative with expert interview, then continued to define the production process and communication process of Function.id and its vendor to ease the analysis of this research. After that do a root cause analysis to map the problems of Function.id with ishikawa diagram as a framework. The main causes of problems faced by Function.id are no designer specialist, limited source of vendor, lack of supplier source, having no a precise and measurable product design for vendor, having no clear letter of agreement, unstructured communication process, unstable ordering pattern, and having no standardization guidelines.
 Solutions and improvements that can be applied to develop Function.id into Function ART Indonesia in its production process are creation of a structured and create an SOP for production process with instruments of communication to vendor and supplier with implementation of heijunka. Also, some requirements that needs to be prepared before the production process could be implemented, such as do a collaboration with designer, design maximizing, letter of agreement and survey for supplier and vendor.

Communication and Bargaining Breakdown: An Empirical Analysis

Bargaining breakdown—whether as delay, conflict, or missing trade—plagues bargaining in environments with incomplete information. Can a bargaining environment that facilitates or restricts communication alleviate these costs? We exploit a unique opportunity to study this question using real market transactions: eBay Germany’s Best Offer platform. On May 23, 2016, the platform introduced unstructured communication allowing buyers and sellers on the desktop version of the site, but not the mobile app, to accompany price offers with a message. Using this natural experiment, our difference-in-differences approach documents a 14% decrease in the the rate of breakdown among compliers. Though adoption is immediate, the effect is not. We show, using text analysis, that the dynamics are consistent with repeat players learning how to use communication in bargaining, and that the messaging strategies of experienced sellers are correlated with successful bargaining.

Social capital and the voluntary provision of public goods

Individual contributions to public good investments are subject to the problem of free riding. We investigate the possibility of overcoming the free-riding problem through creating social capital via communication. Using data from a public goods experiment, we empirically test the effectiveness of two commonly used types of communication interventions in various organizations—structured, goal-oriented communication and unstructured, free-form communication—in creating social capital. Although both types of communication are found to reduce free-riding, when players stay in the same groups before and after communication, unstructured communication brings voluntary contributions closer to the efficient level persistently; structured communication is less successful. In contrast, structured communication is more successful when players are allocated to different groups after communication; unstructured communication has a smaller impact on voluntary contributions in this case.

Online Model for Teaching and Learning the Specialized Translation

The relevance of the research problem is driven by the modern discourse in translation pedagogy. Our understanding of the network enables to find a new way in modelling translation process in the context of modern communications flow, professional groups, databases, interaction technologies for translation companies and clients, project managers and translators etc. The online model for teaching and learning translation is not limited to communication networks. Its main linking node is a social subject – the learner. Such social network’s feature as a cell-based structure makes it possible to present theoretical and practical material in the form of modules that include challenges, solution options, necessary internal and external resources, learning activities and ways to check the achievements. The practical value is that the online model for teaching and learning translation will help the students to learn certain modular blocks of the translation model by using structured and unstructured communication channels.

Trumping Norms: Lab Evidence on Aggressive Communication Before and After the 2016 US Presidential Election

This paper provides evidence from a negotiation experiment that the 2016 US presidential election of Donald Trump had a profound impact on individual behavior in the lab. Using a Battle of the Sexes game with unstructured communication, we find that post-election individuals are less cooperative in general, more likely to use adversarial negotiation strategies, and less likely to reach an agreement. Furthermore, this is particularly driven by men acting more aggressively toward women. Our results are robust to controlling for sample selection. These results suggest that Trump's election may have disrupted community norms around civility and chivalry.

Analyzing Unstructured Communication in a Computer-Mediated Environment for Adults With Type 2 Diabetes: A Research Protocol.

BackgroundIndividuals with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk for comorbidities such as heart disease, lower limb amputations, stroke, and renal failure. Multiple factors influence development of complications in a person living with type 2 diabetes; however, an individual’s self-management behaviors may delay the onset of, or lessen the severity of, these complications. Social support provides personal, informal advice and knowledge that helps individuals initiate and sustain self-management and adherence.ObjectiveOur aim was to gain an understanding of type 2 diabetes social interaction in a virtual environment, one type of computer-mediated environment (CME), and the social support characteristics that increase and sustain self-management in adults living with chronic illness.MethodsThis study is a secondary analysis of longitudinal data collected in a CME study, Second Life Impacts Diabetes Education & Self-Management (1R21-LM010727-01). This virtual environment replicated a real-life community where 6 months of naturalistic synchronous voice conversations, emails, and text chats were recorded among participants and providers. This analysis uses a mixed-methods approach to explore and compare qualitative and quantitative findings. This analysis is guided by two theories: Strong/Weak Ties Theory and Social Penetration Theory. Qualitative data will be analyzed using content analysis, and we will complete descriptive statistics on the quantified variables (eg, average number of ties). Institutional review board approval was obtained in June 2016.ResultsThis study is in progress.ConclusionsInterventions provided through virtual environments are a promising solution to increasing self-management practices. However, little is known of the depth, breadth, and quality of social support that is exchanged and how interaction supports self-management and relates to health outcomes. This study will provide knowledge that will help guide clinical practice and policy to enhance social support for chronic illness via the Internet.

Byzantine-resilient dual gossip membership management in clouds

In this paper, we present an effective and efficient Byzantine-resilient dual membership management technique in cloud environments, in which nodes are prone to churn and the network topology is not fully connected. Our method is based on unstructured message communication model, namely a gossip protocol that is able to handle the dynamic behavior of nodes properly in the system. We argue that due to the presence of malicious Byzantine nodes, existing membership management mechanisms are not suitable for preserving uniformity of random sampling. Therefore, we propose a new membership management mechanism using gossip with social membership information. The proposed membership management scheme maintains not only neighbor nodes in a social graph, but also Byzantine nodes in a local data structure. The results show that our dual membership management effectively deals with Byzantine nodes, requiring only n$$\ge $$ź 2f + 1, where n is the number of nodes and f is the number of Byzantine nodes in the system. The message complexity is reduced from O(n$$^{2}$$2) to O(n) with our proposed algorithm compared to broadcast-based algorithms.

Implementing a knowledge management system within an NHS hospital: a case study exploring the roll-out of an electronic patient record (EPR)

This research aims to contribute to understanding the implementation of knowledge management systems (KMS) in the field of health through a case study, leading to theory building and theory extension. We use the concept of the business process approach to knowledge management as a theoretical lens to analyse and explore how a large teaching hospital developed, executed and practically implemented a KMS. A qualitative study was conducted over a 2.5 year period with data collected from semi-structured interviews with eight members of the strategic management team, 12 clinical users and 20 patients in addition to non-participant observation of meetings and documents. The theoretical propositions strategy was used as the overarching approach for data analysis. Our case study provides evidence that true patient centred approaches to supporting care delivery with a KMS benefit from process thinking at both the planning and implementation stages, and an emphasis on the knowledge demands resulting from: the activities along the care pathways; where cross-overs in care occur; and knowledge sharing for the integration of care. The findings also suggest that despite the theoretical awareness of KMS implementation methodologies, the actual execution of such systems requires practice and learning. Flexible, fluid approaches through rehearsal are important and communications strategies should focus heavily on transparency incorporating both structured and unstructured communication methods.

Problem‐formulation and problem‐solving in self‐organized communities: How modes of communication shape project behaviors in the free open‐source software community

Research summary:Building on the problem‐solving perspective, we study behaviors related to projects and the communication‐based antecedents of such behaviors in the free open‐source software (FOSS) community. We examine two kinds of problem/project‐behaviors: Individuals can set up projects around the formulation of new problems or join existing projects and define and/or work on subproblems within an existing problem. The choice between these two behaviors is influenced by the mode of communication. A communication mode with little a priori structure is the best mode for communicating about new problems (i.e., formulating a problem); empirically, it is associated with project launching behaviors. In contrast, more structured communication fits subproblems better and is related to project joining behaviors. Our hypotheses derive support from data from theFOSScommunity.Managerial summary:We study how the way in which individuals communicate influence the project‐behaviors they engage in. We find that relatively unstructured communication is associated with the setting up new projects, while communication that is structured around an artifact is associated with joining projects. Our findings hold implications for understanding how management may influence project behaviors and problem‐solving: Firms that need to concentrate on more incremental problem‐solving efforts (e.g., because a sufficient number of attractive problems have already been defined) should create environments in which interaction is undertaken mainly via artifacts. On the other hand, if firms seek to generate new problems (e.g., new strategic opportunities), they should create environments in which open‐ended, verbal conversation is relatively more important than artifact‐based communication.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Learning from Unscripted Deictic Gesture and Language for Human-Robot Interactions

As robots become more ubiquitous, it is increasingly important for untrained users to be able to interact with them intuitively. In this work, we investigate how people refer to objects in the world during relatively unstructured communication with robots. We collect a corpus of deictic interactions from users describing objects, which we use to train language and gesture models that allow our robot to determine what objects are being indicated. We introduce a temporal extension to state-of-the-art hierarchical matching pursuit features to support gesture understanding, and demonstrate that combining multiple communication modalities more effectively captures user intent than relying on a single type of input. Finally, we present initial interactions with a robot that uses the learned models to follow commands while continuing to learn from user input.

A parallel log-barrier method for mesh quality improvement and untangling

The development of parallel algorithms for mesh generation, untangling, and quality improvement is of high importance due to the need for large meshes with millions to billions of elements and the availability of supercomputers with hundreds to thousands of cores. There have been prior efforts in the development of parallel algorithms for mesh generation and local mesh quality improvement in which only one vertex is moved at a time. But for global mesh untangling and for global mesh quality improvement, where all vertices are simultaneously moved, parallel algorithms have not yet been developed. In our earlier work, we developed a serial global mesh optimization algorithm and used it to perform mesh untangling and mesh quality improvement. Our algorithm moved the vertices simultaneously to optimize a log-barrier objective function that was designed to untangle meshes as well as to improve the quality of the worst quality mesh elements. In this paper, we extend our work and develop a parallel log-barrier mesh untangling and mesh quality improvement algorithm for distributed-memory machines. We have used the algorithm with an edge coloring-based algorithm for synchronizing unstructured communication among the processes executing the log-barrier mesh optimization algorithm. The main contribution of this paper is a generic scheme for global mesh optimization, whereby the gradient of the objective function with respect to the position of some of the vertices is communicated among all processes in every iteration. The algorithm was implemented using the OpenMPI 2.0 parallel programming constructs and shows greater strong scaling efficiency compared to an existing parallel mesh quality improvement technique.

Collaborative gaming and competition for CS-STEM education using SPHERES Zero Robotics

There is widespread investment of resources in the fields of Computer Science, Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (CS-STEM) education to improve STEM interests and skills. This paper addresses the goal of revolutionizing student education using collaborative gaming and competition, both in virtual simulation environments and on real hardware in space. The concept is demonstrated using the SPHERES Zero Robotics (ZR) Program which is a robotics programming competition. The robots are miniature satellites called SPHERES—an experimental test bed developed by the MIT SSL on the International Space Station (ISS) to test navigation, formation flight and control algorithms in microgravity. The participants compete to win a technically challenging game by programming their strategies into the SPHERES satellites, completely from a web browser. The programs are demonstrated in simulation, on ground hardware and then in a final competition when an astronaut runs the student software aboard the ISS. ZR had a pilot event in 2009 with 10 High School (HS) students, a nationwide pilot tournament in 2010 with over 200 HS students from 19 US states, a summer tournament in 2010 with ∼150 middle school students and an open-registration tournament in 2011 with over 1000 HS students from USA and Europe. The influence of collaboration was investigated by (1) building new web infrastructure and an Integrated Development Environment where intensive inter-participant collaboration is possible, (2) designing and programming a game to solve a relevant formation flight problem, collaborative in nature—and (3) structuring a tournament such that inter-team collaboration is mandated. This paper introduces the ZR web tools, assesses the educational value delivered by the program using space and games and evaluates the utility of collaborative gaming within this framework. There were three types of collaborations as variables—within matches (to achieve game objectives), inter-team alliances and unstructured communication on online forums. Simulation competition scores, website usage statistics and post-competition surveys are used to evaluate educational impact and the effect of collaboration.

On Disaster Response and Emergent Systems: A New Taxonomy for Operations Management

Disaster response is not readily categorized by the influential taxonomies of operations management (OM). Through the inductive research process of iterative triangulation, we identify patterns of evidence in case studies and other literature to develop a new taxonomy for OM, one which explicitly positions disaster-related operations relative to other industries. This new taxonomy divides the OM domain into the four categories of prescriptive, compliant, swarm and emergent systems. Closer examination of those systems grouped into the emergent sector reveals intriguing similarities between operations such as disaster response and endeavors such as rapid software development and artistic ensembles. These similarities include the simultaneous use of hierarchical and collaborative organizational structures, dual reliance on well-developed rules and provisions to break them, the concept of trajectory as a performance metric, the use of short, iterative planning cycles and a reliance on unstructured communication through some open forum. Each of these patterns suggests research opportunities to further OM’s understanding of how best to operate in a highly uncertain environment, findings of potential value to both disaster response and any ‘normal’ business that might suffer disruption.

University of Alberta Undergraduate Student and Alumni Pharmacist Mentorship Pilot Project

Background: The value of mentoring is recognized in many fields, including pharmacy, as a means for one person (mentor) to help another person (protegé) enhance his or her growth, knowledge and skills. The University of Alberta Faculty of Pharmacy and the Pharmacy Alumni Association conducted an 8-month mentorship pilot project involving pharmacy undergraduate students and alumni pharmacists. The focus was to assist students transitioning into the pharmacy workforce by providing guidance and advice from pharmacist mentors. Methods: A prototype mentorship model was developed. The model consisted of recruitment and matching processes and multiple structured and unstructured communication sessions (education and relationship-building). Seven student protegés and 7 licensed Alberta pharmacists participated in the pilot throughout the 2007–08 academic year. The formal evaluation was based on document reviews and participant interviews. Results: The key findings included: participants were very positive about the pilot program activities; both protegés and mentors would recommend participation to colleagues; the ideal year for participation was the third year in the pharmacy undergraduate program; the most beneficial pieces of advice were about change associated with early career development; 5 of 7 mentor/protegé pairs planned to continue or were actually continuing communications; e-mail was the most efficient communication; finding the time to communicate was the major barrier. Discussion: The results from the pilot provided preliminary evidence that pharmacy students have similar mentorship needs as students in other disciplines and that a formal mentorship model can address these needs. The students had career-related and personal questions and interests that were addressed by the alumni pharmacist mentors. The mentorship model had sufficient processes and structure to build and maintain relationships and to satisfy mentorship needs. Conclusion: The pilot demonstrated that a pharmacy mentorship model can be successfully established and be of benefit to participants and potentially to pharmacy practice. Based on the findings, an expanded version of the program was implemented in the fall 2009 academic term.