IADIS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WWW/INTERNET

13

Authors: Ashutosh Shivakumar, Saurabh Shukla, Miteshkumar Vasoya, Imen M. Kasrani and Yong Pei

In this research article, we propose a human-AI teaming based mobile language learning solution that provides: 1.) automatic and accurate intelligibility analysis for multiple languages at various levels: sentence, phrase, word and phoneme; 2.) immediate feedback and multimodal coaching on how to correct pronunciation; and, 3.) evidence-based dynamic training curriculum tailored to each individual’s learning patterns and needs, e.g., typical pronunciation errors and retention of corrected pronunciation. The use of visible and interactive AI-expert technology capable of intuitive emoji-based interactions will greatly increase student’s acceptance and retention of learning with a virtual coach. In school or at home, it will readily resemble an expert reading specialist to effectively guide and assist a student in practicing reading and speaking by him/herself independently, which is particularly important for dual language learners (DLL) whose first language (L1) is not English as many of their parents don’t speak English fluently and cannot offer the necessary support. Our human-AI teaming-based solution overcomes the shortfall of conventional computer-based language learning tools and serves as a supportive learning platform that is critical for optimizing the language-learning outcomes.

15

Authors: Paul Lam, Carmen K. M. Lau and Chi Him Chan

The flipped classroom approach is widely regarded to be able to enhance teaching and learning. Despite its many advantages, it is still in the early stage of implementation in Hong Kong. This may be due to the potential challenges such as learners’ limited participation and adaptation problems. The purpose of this article is to discuss the challenges based on Brame’s (2013) four key elements of the flipped classroom – exposure, incentive, assess, and activities. Particularly, we put emphasis on how teachers from Hong Kong higher education address the four aspects of challenges in their flipped classroom planning and design. Teachers of twenty-six courses in five universities in Hong Kong were invited to complete a teaching profile for their coming flipped courses which they were asked to elaborate their teaching goals and how they would execute the course. The teaching profiles revealed that the teachers devised a wealth of different strategies in implementing flipped classroom. We generalized their careful planning into eleven tips that can be seen as the collective wisdom of the teachers, as well as potential solutions to the flipped classroom challenges. This article summarizes the first phase of our study that eventually will examine the success factors of the flipped classroom approach in Hong Kong higher education.

16

Authors: Pelin Bayraktar and Sevgi Özkan Yıldırım

Social commerce is defined as a new wave of e-commerce in which traditional e-commerce is mediated by social media and social networking services in order to promote online transactions and shopping-related information exchanges. One of the main application of social commerce is ‘online brand communities’. Although utilization of social media in order to advance customer brand engagement has proliferated significantly in recent years, most of the companies have not met the expected level of engagement of their customers yet. Overall, the key factors that could explain customer engagement are not yet thoroughly identified. Therefore, the current study develops a conceptual customer engagement model that aims to explain customer engagement in online brand communities. Customer engagement in brand social media is related to interactions and communications with the brand and other customers. In this study, the antecedents and outcomes of customer engagement dimensions will be investigated. As different dimensions of engagement can be influenced by factors from different aspects, it is important to cover as many categories as possible. Therefore, the model includes various factor categories including social, brand related, self-oriented and contend related factors drawn from relevant literature. The research instrument was designed, and a pilot study was conducted with 75 participants to assure content validity and to test reliability. This paper contributes to understanding the factors influencing each dimension of customer engagement to brand communities.

21

Authors: Peter Ilic

This paper reflects on an attempt to introduce smartphones into a blended learning context and highlights several methodological considerations relevant to the collection of mobile data. While mixed methods research is now common, using this approach for investigating the challenges of mobile data collection is not as common. This study employed a mixed method longitudinal exploratory multiple case study design. The study collected qualitative and quantitative data on student interactions within a yearlong series of collaborative language learning activities. This paper describes the methodological issues that emerged during the planning and implementation of the study. The participants were undergraduate students studying English translation at a four-year private university in Tokyo, Japan. This paper adds to the knowledge of employing mixed methodology design for mobile data collection and analysis. In particular, the advantages of incorporating Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) analysis with qualitative data. The results suggest that separate forms of data collected at similar frequencies and times that are then triangulated provided an effective methodology for studying collaborative learners in a highly mobile context. This can be seen as evidence for the inclusion of various data collection cycles of both qualitative and quantitative type within a single mobile learning research study. The discussion section includes a summary of the findings, limitations, and possibilities for furthering the study topic.

19-33

Authors: Ashraf Khalil, Aishah Khan, Tasbeeh Fatima Raza and Salam Abdallah

Emergence of new features on social media platforms have become a daily occurrence. Stories, live videos, memories and various other emerging features are a crucial part of most of the popular social media platforms. Through this study, we conduct a qualitative assessment of user adaptation to these revolutionizing social media features. The aim of this study is to understand user preferences based on platforms, their adaptability and usage of these features. This study derives conclusions based on a semi-structured interview conducted on 18 users in their early twenties in the UAE. The study derives conclusions on changes in user behavior on Facebook, user strategies for managing different audiences and content across social media platforms, views on cross-linking and cross-sharing of social platforms and using social media as a common portal to keep track of daily happenings. The study finds that users treat social media platforms distinctly while tending to share different contents on each platform depending on the nature of the content and the audience of each platform.

50-65

Authors: Isa Inuwa-Dutse, Bello Shehu Bello and Ioannis Korkontzelos

The rise in the number of automated or bot accounts on Twitter engaging in manipulative behaviour is of great concern to studies using social media as a primary data source. Many strategies have been proposed and implemented, however, the sophistication and rate of deployment of bot accounts is increasing rapidly. This impedes and limits the capabilities of detecting bot strategies. Various features broadly related to account profiles, tweet content, network and temporal patterns have been utilised in detection systems. Tweet content has been proven instrumental in this process, but limited to the terms and entities occurring. Given a set of tweets with no obvious pattern, can we distinguish contents produced by social bots from those of humans? What constitutes engagement on Twitter and how can we measure the intensity of engagement? Can we distinguish between bot and human accounts based on engagement intensity? These are important questions whose answer will improve how detection systems operate to combat malicious activities by effectively distinguishing between human and social bot accounts on Twitter. This study attempts to answer these questions by analysing the engagement intensity and lexical richness of tweets produced by human and social bot accounts using large, diverse datasets. Our results show a clear margin between the two classes in terms of engagement intensity and lexical richness. We found that it is extremely rare for a social bot to engage meaningfully with other users and that lexical features significantly improve the performance of classifying both account types. These are important dimensions to explore toward improving the effectiveness of detection systems in combating the menace of social bot accounts on Twitter.

80-94

Authors: Angela Martin, Corentin Canu, Camille Jean and Gabrièle Breda

The main focus of this study is to provide a new framework for business model design by using complex system modelling. The tool offers both entrepreneurs and investors a comprehensive view of value streams by comparing different business models based on the economic shared value creation during the go to market process.

1-18

Authors: Syed Tauhid Zuhori and James Miller

Understanding user requirements based on their interactions with a website is becoming increasingly important. Hence, in this paper, a novel real-time navigation-support system is discussed. This system builds a personalized browsing assistant based on the current user request submitted to a web server. The process involves developing a behavior model using a Discrete Time Markov Chain (DTMCs) inference process. This is then used to monitor user activities, and thereafter suggest “where to go next”. Finally, it updates the model in real time using a Markovian Decision Process (MDP). To evaluate the system, we provide a user study, case studies and conduct experiments on two datasets to verify the effectiveness of our proposed system.

26-41

Authors: Francisco Javier Delgado-Cepeda

Quantum information is an emerging area of research which is growing rapidly and which is expecting to have a deep impact in the speed of information processing, storage and security. With only few decades of development, that trend has been highlighted as a remarkable economic focus for the development. Despite, this research area is barely identified in the general society as a source of opportunities for the personal development. The academic development for the most universities reacts slowly to these changes. Their educative programs are normally static with only some late adaptations to the newest technology or knowledge advancement, incorporating them in a limited strength. This research area, normally thought by the common people as proper for physicists, it is really open for lots of disciplines in nowadays. Any area with complex problems unable to be attained by classical computing could technically to be involved in this research trend. Thus, alternative new professional areas are emerging without be sufficiently visible for the universities in order to move the most traditional areas of education. Thus, in the next years, some emergent areas could be eclipsed in terms of human resources. In this arena, blended learning could contribute to provide novel educative contents as an alternative or complementary education to the main professional area selected. While, the blended learning approach is being developed to reach the most sectors of population with professional and university education. Strategies of blended learning are considered remarkable either for formal education as well specialized education to disseminate new trends not included in the traditional syllabus but important for the professional development of students. Because that is the case for Quantum information and Quantum computation areas having an explosive development just in the last decade, this work describes the outcomes around a blended learning initiative in the form of an educative suite for those areas with a multidisciplinary approach containing courses oriented to arrive into the formal research. Still, they are departing from the scientific divulgation until research collaboration going on through the formal learning. Suite was conceptualized with a multilevel approach to attract and to involve students from high school until graduate level.

42-55

Authors: Heritiana Ranaivoson and Simon Delaere

This paper analyses how innovation and business models are related in the case of immersive audiovisual services, with a focus on three distribution platforms: HTC’s Viveport, Facebook’s Oculus Home and Google’s YouTube VR. To do so, it first briefly discusses the issues at stake in terms of media innovation, in particular the fact that content innovation is often neglected or misunderstood. After briefly summarizing relevant previous work, it then applies the Business Model Matrix (Ballon, 2009) to these three cases. In particular, the cases are compared in terms of vertical integration, customer ownership, interoperability, revenue model, positioning, user involvement, and the role of content innovation. The paper concludes with a comparison of the cases. It expands the rapidly growing literature on media innovation by using a business model methodology, providing the first instance of an in-depth, structured comparison of immersive audiovisual services from a business point of view. It aims to fill a knowledge gap by dealing with a sector almost ignored by business or economic academic literature.

56-69

Authors: Jukka Vuorinen, Aki Koivula and Ilkka Koiranen

Internet related personal communication has increased significantly in the course of recent years. Simultaneously, the possibility of sharing sensitive personal information has become a part of everyday life. Thus, the possibility of privacy violations and leaking of personal data has arisen. This paper analyzes the extent to which Internet users trust that the privacy of their private messages is protected and upheld in web-based messaging services such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The paper examines how users’ trust in other people (social trust) and trust in institutional actors (such as the parliamentary system and police) predict a high probability to trust that their private and confidential messages are not disclosed. The analysis is conducted based on data (n=1648) that was gathered through a nationwide survey in Finland. Results show that both high social trust and institutional trust are associated with high trust in the confidentiality and privacy of messages that are sent through messaging services on the web. Demographic factors did not have a remarkable effect on how trusting users are. Finally, a decomposition analysis shows that social trust is the strongest predictor even when institutional trust and demographic factors are controlled for.

70-84

Authors: Kungela Mzuku and Jean-Paul Van Belle

This article presents a qualitative research study which explores the emergent phenomenon of Data Philanthropy in South African corporate organisations. The main research objective is to investigate the corporate attitudes towards Data Philanthropy in the South African banking, retail and telecommunications industries. In particular, the study examines of the willingness, preparedness and concerns of corporations in respect of using their data and supporting data analytical technologies for social good, their chosen level of engagement in corporate social responsibility. Also investigated was and their willingness to change their current engagement to one that requires more efforts and tools to implement. The study includes a review which exposes gaps in literature that the research analysis and discussion will aim to uncover. The study used an inductive approach using thematic analysis. Four main organising themes are used to analyse the data which was collected through interviews namely Corporate Social Responsibility, Willingness, Preparedness and Concerns. A remarkable diversity in detailed sub-themes was uncovered for each of the main themes.

17-31

Authors: Noppon Choosri, Chompoonut Pookao, Napatsayod Swangtrakul and Anthony Atkins

The intervention for cognitive language development is required to be conducted at a young age. As children usually gain the skill through their play, this study proposed a physical interactive game to help children improve their language skill in both Thai and English language for pre-schoolers. The motivation of this research is to create a game that has characteristics of a toy where children require bodily engagement with the objects to enhance their cognitive processes to effectively develop language skills. The research proposed and developed a novel game system underpinned by the interactive technologies. The game is evaluated by three methods: paired t-test is used to determine the overall performance of the proposed game; the 90/90 standard evaluation is also applied to see whether if the game is used for formal education the majority of the group (>90%) will achieve the objective of learning. Also, the feedbacks from expert validation are collected. All three evaluation methods indicate the primary success of the game is to assist Thai pre-schoolers in improving their skill at a young age.

48-61

Authors: Luis Carlos Silva and Pedro Isaias

The deployment of social technology within the corporate sector is evolving and increasingly demonstrating its value for connecting people. At a time when social media’s pervasiveness has shaped the business sector, it is important to explore new ways of optimizing its use and harness its benefits to their fullest extent, to engage the employees and the customers as well as to increase revenue. In the context of enterprises, the use of social media can profit from the organisation that activity streams offer. By grouping the actions of users in social media, an activity stream can offer a customized and organized visualization of events that can assist companies to make sense and manage their social media activities. This paper draws extensively from existing research on the application of information systems within enterprises to create a set of critical success factors for the implementation of activity streams. The critical success factors that this paper proposes were assessed through an online survey that was completed by 360 social networks’ users. The survey analysis showed a complete acceptance of the factors by the majority of the respondents, with a particular focus on factors deriving from three categories: effective communication, processes and activities, and strategy and purpose.

15-30

Authors: Gustavo Oliveira de Siqueira, Guilherme Tavares de Assis, Anderson Almeida Ferreira, Amanda Sávio Nascimento e Silva, Vítor Mangaravite and Flávio Luis Cardeal Pádua

The great popularity and, specially, the fast Web growth have led to the proposal and analysis of new techniques for helping users to locate effectively the needed information in a satisfactory time, without much difficulty. Traditional crawlers are not capable to identify relevant sub-spaces on Web related to a specific theme; however, focused crawlers are capable to solve, effectively and efficiently, the mentioned problem. Usually, a focused crawler process requires a specific value, called similarity threshold value, for determining whether a crawled Web page is relevant or not according to a topic of interest; such value is distinct for each specific topic. In order to determine automatically such a value for focused crawlers related to a genre-aware approach, we propose three strategies in this work. Our experimental evaluation achieved, as the best result, 100% of precision and 98% of F1, considering a specific crawling process for which i

46-61

Authors: Juan J. Ramírez-Jiménez, Mario De-la-O. and Roberto Cortés-Morales

The potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support public solutions should be managed considering different perspectives. This paper discusses the situation that Costa Rica have been facing for many years around fiscal issues and high evasion rates. Using actors and multidimensional analysis, it proposes the electronic invoice as an e-Government strategic solution that will close the gap around tax controls and generate an increase in the government incomes. Furthermore, it takes a look at the international success achieved by Brazil in this area and provides alternatives to increase Costa Rica’s public policy implementation feasibility.

80-95

Authors: Maksym Ketsmur, Mário Rodrigues and António Teixeira

The creation of generic natural language query and answering (QA) systems is an active goal of the Semantic Web since it would allow people to conduct any query using their native language. Current solutions already handle factual questions mostly in English. The aim of this work was to develop a QA system to query knowledge bases (KB) such as DBpedia, in a first version, using factual questions in Portuguese, and in a second version, factual questions in English, French and German. This involves representing queries in terms of the KB ontology using SPARQL. The process of constructing a SPARQL query representing the natural language input involves determining: (1) the type of answer that is being sought - a person, a place, etc. - which is done by looking at the wh-words of wh-questions; (2) the main topic of the question - which person, place, etc. - obtained by morphosyntactic analysis to discover the potential subjects of the question; and (3) the properties that can be mapped to the KB ontology for creating a SPARQL query as precise as possible. The first version of the system, working for Portuguese, was tested by with 22 questions without guarantee that the answer was in the KB, and the multilingual version was tested with 30 random questions from QALD 7 (Question Answering over Linked Data) training set. The correctness of the answers was verified as well if the answer exists in the KB when the system did not produced results. A correct answer was produced for 67% of the questions for the Portuguese version and up to 55% (for English) of times for multi-language version considering that the answer existed in the KB. Results show that this approach is promising and further investigation should be done to improve it. The robustness observed, and capability to handle several languages, fosters future work to expand the system to answer questions of other types.