Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

In this thesis, the Mobile-Learning-Game-research-project ""mExplorer"" will be analyzed firstly to demonstrate how the two concepts of ""Learning"" and ""Game"" interact with each other. It will examine how learning and playing games are related, and how they can be used for learning. The practical part of this thesis shows the different types of tasks that are expanded, and the improved assessment and scoring system: Additionally to the previous tasks that were implemented, the coordinator of the game can use the so-called chain-, creative- or group tasks which result that using the mExplorer is more appealing then it was before. With two user tests, the effectiveness of these new modules was tested. It was observed that especially creative tasks lead to more fun, which was a main objective of this work.

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The diffusion of innovation theory is deployed to investigate the global assimilation of collaborative information technologies (cIts). Based on the concepts of It acquisition and utilization, an assimilation framework is presented to highlight four states (limited, focused, lagging, and pervasive) that capture the assimilation of conferencing and groupware cIts. Data collected from 538 organizations in the united States, australia, hong kong, Norway, and Switzerland are aggregated and analyzed to explore assimilation patterns and the influence of decision-making pattern, functional integration, promotion of collaboration, organization size, and It function size on the assimilation of cIts. although most of these factors influence assimilation of cIts from nonadoption to a state of limited assimilation, and from limited assimilation to a state of pervasive assimilation, they may not be critical when assimilation of cIts deviates from the expected path. the implications of our findings are discussed for practice and research on assimilation of cIts.

The diffusion of innovation theory is deployed to investigate the global assimilation of collaborative information technologies (CITs). Based on the concepts of IT acquisition and utilization, an assimilation framework is presented to highlight four states (limited, focused, lagging, and pervasive) that capture the assimilation of conferencing and groupware CITs. Data collected from 538 organizations in the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Norway, and Switzerland are aggregated and analyzed to explore assimilation patterns and the influence of decision-making pattern, functional integration, promotion of collaboration, organization size, and IT function size on the assimilation of CITs. Although most of these factors influence assimilation of CITs from nonadoption to a state of limited assimilation, and from limited assimilation to a state of pervasive assimilation, they may not be critical when assimilation of CITs deviates from the expected path. The implications of our findings are discussed for practice and research on assimilation of CITs.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Vergleich zweier Kommunikationsformen, die zunehmend als Medien für die Gruppenunterhaltung Verwendung finden: Audio und Chat. Die immer weiter verbreiteten Breitband-Internetverbindungen erlauben kostengünstigen Datenverkehr. Neue Soft- und Hardwareprodukte ermöglichen die einfache, schnelle Generierung von Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten für Gruppen. Aus der bisherigen Forschung ist bekannt, dass die Wahl des Kommunikationsmediums die Gruppenarbeit stark beeinflussen kann. Insofern stellt sich auch bei diesen neuen Medien die Frage, welche Auswirkungen bestimmte Nutzungsformen haben könnten. Dahingehend werden in diesem Werk drei wesentliche Forschungsfragen behandelt: 1. Beeinflusst die Medienwahl zwischen Audio und Chat die kooperative, verteilte Gruppenarbeit? 2. Hat die Gruppengröße in Verbindung mit einem bestimmten Medium Auswirkungen auf die kooperative, verteilte Gruppenarbeit? 3. Hat der Aufgabentyp einen Einfluss auf die Auswirkung der Medienwahl und die Verbindung von Medienwahl und Gruppengröße? Zur Beantwortung dieser Forschungsfragen werden die gängigsten Medienwahltheorien vorgestellt. Dabei wird besonders auf den Vergleich von Chat- und Audiomedien eingegangen. Auf Basis der Theorien der Medienwahl und dem bisherigen Stand der Forschung in diesem Bereich ergeben sich die Lücken im Forschungsstand, die in dieser Arbeit bearbeitet werden. Auf Basis dieser zu schließenden Lücken erfolgte die Wahl einer sinnvollen Forschungsmethode. Um Antworten auf die oben genannten Forschungsfragen zu erhalten wurden 2 Experimente in den Jahren 2004 und 2005 durchgeführt. Dabei wurde die Auswirkung der Medienwahl zwischen Audio und Chat für Gruppen mit 4 und 7 Mitgliedern untersucht. Dabei fand eine Aufgabe mit hoher Unsicherheit Verwendung, bei der es um den Austausch von Informationen in der Gruppe ging. Als zweiter Aufgabentyp untersuchte der Autor die kooperative Arbeit an einer Aufgabe mit hoher Mehrdeutigkeit, bei der es um die gemeinsame Konzeption eines automatischen Postamts ging. 440 Experimentalteilnehmer nahmen an den Untersuchungen teil und gaben so eine umfassende Einsicht in die Auswirkungen der Medienwahl zwischen Audio und Chat. Für die unsichere Aufgabe konnte klar gezeigt werden, dass die Auswahl eines Mediums die Qualität, Bearbeitungsdauer und damit Produktivität der Gruppen nicht beeinflusst. Ebenso wenig verändert die Gruppengröße diese Faktoren wesentlich. Jedoch zeigten die verschiedenen Gruppen sehr unterschiedliche Werte in ihrer Zufriedenheit. Audiogruppen mit 4 Teilnehmern bewerteten ihr Kommunikationsmedium wesentlich besser als Chatgruppen. Bei Gruppen mit 7 Mitgliedern hingegen zeigten die Chatnutzer eine wesentlich höhere Zufriedenheit als die Audiogruppen. Bei der mehrdeutigen Aufgabe hingegen zeigten sich gänzlich andere Ergebnisse. Hier konnten die Audiogruppen bei einer Gruppengröße von 4 eine signifikant höhere Produktivität erreichen als die Chatgruppen. Dies lag daran, dass die mündlich kommunizierenden Gruppen eine höhere Qualität ihres Designs erzielte und zudem signifikant schneller waren. Zudem waren auch hier die Audionutzer wesentlich zufriedener mit ihrem Medium als die Gruppenmitglieder der Chatgruppen. Bei den Gruppen mit 7 Mitgliedern veränderte sich jedoch das Bild gegenüber den Vierergruppen stark. Audiogruppen verloren aufgrund der Steigerung der Gruppengröße signifikant an Produktivität, während Chatgruppen ihre steigern konnten. Dies führte dazu, dass beide Gruppen eine sehr ähnliche Qualität und Bearbeitungsdauer erreichten, was zu vergleichbarer Produktivität führte. Chatgruppen waren bei den Siebenergruppen -wie bei der unsicheren Aufgabe auch- wesentlich zufriedener mit ihrem Medium als Audiogruppen. Die in dieser Arbeit ebenfalls erfolgten zusätzlichen Analysen der vorliegenden Daten zeigten, dass Audiogruppen durchwegs wesentlich schneller kommunizierten als Chatgruppen, jedoch sehr große Mühe hatten, diese schnelle Kommunikation auch in Produktivität umzusetzen. Ferner neigten Audiogruppen dazu, in großen Gruppen ihre Gedanken stark zu verschriftlichen. Diese Arbeit wird abgerundet durch eine Untersuchung der polychronen, gleichzeitigen Mediennutzung. Bei der polychronen Mediennutzung finden sowohl Audio- als auch Chatkommunikation gleichzeitig oder sequentiell bei der Arbeit an einer Aufgabe Anwendung. Mit Hilfe eines Experiments im Jahr 2006 und 110 weiteren Experimentalteilnehmern kann gezeigt werden, dass die polychrone Mediennutzung im Normalfall nicht zu einer höheren Produktivität der kooperativen Gruppenarbeit führt. Zudem sind die Nutzer meistens unzufrieden mit ihrem Medium und durch die hohe Kommunikationskomplexität verunsichert. Am Fall von 2 Experimentalgruppen zeigt die Arbeit jedoch auf, dass durch die geschickte Ausnutzung der komplementären Medieneigenschaften von Audio und Chat eine außergewöhnliche hohe Produktivität erreicht werden kann. Die Arbeit schließt mit der Beantwortung der drei Forschungsfragen und einer Einordnung der Ergebnisse in den Kontext der vorhandenen Forschungsergebnisse. Dabei werden weitere Untersuchungsmöglichkeiten aufgezeigt, die auf der Basis der vorhandenen Daten und Experimentaldesigns stattfinden könnten. Abschließend werden in einem Fazit die wesentlichsten Erkenntnisse nochmals kurz für die Praxis zusammengefasst. This doctoral thesis compares two media, which are increasingly used for group communication: audio and chat. The increasingly widespread availability of broadband internet allows inexpensive data traffic. New software and hardware products permit easy and fast communication in groups without arduous configuration. Previous research has shown that the choice of a medium can influence the group work. Thus it is important to understand, how these two new media affect the cooperative, distributed teamwork. This thesis strives to answer three research questions: 1. Does the media choice between audio and chat influence the cooperative, distributed group work? 2. Does the group size in conjunction with a specific medium influence the cooperative, distributed group work? 3. Does the task type influence the effects of the media choice and the combination of media choice and group size? In order to answer these research questions this work presents prevalent media choice theories. A special focus lies on the theories comparing chat versus audio. Missing insight is identified based on these theories and the current state-of-the-art of the media choice research. An appropriate research method is selected to provide answers for these questions. Two experiments were conducted in 2004 and 2005 in order to compare the effects of the media choice between audio and chat for groups with four and seven participants. One task used was a task of uncertainty. This task required the exchange of information between the group members to alleviate the uneven distribution of knowledge. The second task was characterized by a high degree of ambiguity. The participants were asked to design an automated post office of the future. 440 students took part in the experiment and thus allowed a deep insight into the effects of the media choice between audio and chat. For the task of uncertainty, the results showed no difference in quality, duration or productivity between either media or the two group sizes. But there was a significant difference in the satisfaction of the users. For groups of four, the audio users rated their medium much higher than the chat users. But for groups of seven, the results were reversed. The chat users showed a higher satisfaction than the audio users. For the task of ambiguity the results were completely different. The audio groups with four members outperformed the chat groups significantly. The quality of the designs was higher and the audio groups were much faster than the chat groups. Furthermore the audio users were much more satisfied with their medium than the chat users. But for groups of seven, the results were different than for groups of four. Audio groups lost large parts of their productivity, while chat groups improved theirs. Quality, duration and productivity of groups with audio and chat were nearly the same. But the chat groups were significantly more satisfied with their medium than the audio users. This work also presents the results of additional analysis of the communication data. Audio groups were consistently faster than chat groups. But they failed to utilize this advantage and were unable to convert this communication speed into productivity. Audio groups furthermore tend to create text as a shared group material about their work, especially in groups of seven. In order to further the understanding of the audio and chat another experiment was conducted in 2006. This research was focused on groups using both audio and chat at the same time or sequentially. The additional experiment has shown that this polychronic media usage leads to the same productivity as the usage of audio or chat alone. But most users are deeply dissatisfied with this media mixture and complain about the complexity of communication. But two groups have shown that with an adept combination of the benefits of both media there is a chance to achieve exceptional productivity. This work closes with an answer to the three research questions. It furthermore relates the findings to the context of the previous research findings. This thesis work presents further research possibilities, which can be investigated, based on the available data and tested experimental setup. This work finishes with a conclusion and a recapitulation of the most important findings.

Virtuelle Gemeinschaften gehören zu den ältesten und populärsten Formen computervermittelter Kommunikation und Kooperation im Internet. Nicht nur in der Debatte um das Web 2.0 werden die dabei erzeugten Inhalte als mit kommerziellen Produkten vergleichbar oder gar überlegen dargestellt, ohne dass fundierte empirische Belege angeführt werden. Die Informationsqualität virtueller Gemeinschaften wird in der Literatur ungenügend behandelt. Informationsqualität wird überwiegend aus einer technischen Perspektive betrachtet. Einer Vielzahl an Definitionen steht dabei ein Mangel an konkreten Messverfahren gegenüber. Diese Arbeit widmet sich der Frage der Informationsqualität in virtuellen Gemeinschaften und etabliert eine neue Sichtweise auf virtuelle Gemeinschaften: ihre Nutzung als leistungsfähiges Informationssystem ohne monetäre Anreize und ohne zentrale Koordination. Es werden Argumente für ein hohes Leistungspotenzial dieser Gemeinschaften beleuchtet, u. a. die niedrigen Kooperations- und Transaktionskosten und die Nutzung natürlicher Sprache. Anhand der Kriterien Vollständigkeit und Korrektheit wird empirisch gezeigt, dass virtuelle Gemeinschaften Information auf vergleichbarem Niveau mit professionellen Informationsproduzenten erstellen können. In mehreren Untersuchungen wird festgestellt, dass die Qualität der beiden Medien sich nicht signifikant unterscheidet. Wird die Aktivität der virtuellen Gemeinschaften berücksichtigt, so zeigt sich eine klare Überlegenheit einer hochaktiven virtuellen Gemeinschaft gegenüber den anderen Informationsquellen. Als Domäne der Untersuchungen wurde der Individualtourismus gewählt, da solche Reisen durch einen großen und komplexenkomplexen Informationsbedarf geprägt sind. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass virtuelle Gemeinschaften als Instrument der Wissenserzeugung und –verbreitung geeignet sind. Zahlreiche traditionelle Verfahren kommerzieller Informationsproduktion werden damit in Frage gestellt. Die lässt sich bereits an der zunehmenden Vermischung kommerzieller und nutzergenerierter Inhalte beobachten. Virtual communities are one of the oldest and most popular phenomena of computer mediated communication and cooperation on the Internet. It is often argued, especially in debates on the Web 2.0, that the information shared by these communities is of equal or even better quality than that of professional information products. No proof of this claim is offered, and literature on information quality of user‐generated content is scarce. In general, information quality is treated from a technical perspective. While there is an abundance of definitions of information quality, little is available on concrete, measurable criteria. This research is about information quality of virtual communities and establishes a new perspective on virtual communities: their use as information systems without monetary incentives or centralized coordination. Several reasons for a high potential of virtual communities for achieving high information quality are discussed, e.g. the low cost of cooperation and the use of natural language. The thesis presents several empirical studies on the criteria of completeness and accuracy of information. Results indicate that virtual communities are on a par with professional information products, as no significant difference in quality is found. If the activity of the virtual communities analysed is considered, it turns out that the most active community is significantly better than the other sources. The domain of all studies is non‐institutionalized tourism, as independent travellers have large and complex information needs. This thesis argues that virtual communities are suitable for creation and distribution of information. Virtual communities constitute a substitute for many traditional ways of commercial information production, as already manifested by the increasing intermixing of commercial and user‐generated content on the Internet.

Travelling has changed rapidly over the last few years. Ordinary guidebooks are challenged by the arising competition from the Internet, where people with similar interests exchange information through communities. This knowledge is getting ubiquitous since the number of mobile devices with internet capability is rising. This work presents a design concept for a mobile digital guidebook, the MoCoGuide, which receives information from the knowledge of a mobile community. Key factors are identi ed and described. The choice of media is important for this guide since mobile devices are multimediabased. A eld study analyzes the choice of media and tests the prototype regarding usability. Finally, the drawn conclusions are inspected critically and an outlook for further research project is given.

The increasing interest in personalizable applications for heterogeneous user populations has heightened the need for a more efficient acquisition of start-up information about the user. We argue that the user’s cultural background is suitable for predicting various adaptation preferences at once. With these as a basis, we can accelerate the initial acquisition process. The paper presents an approach to factoring culture into user models. We introduce the cultural user model ontology CUMO, describing how and to which extend it can accurately represent the user’s cultural background. Furthermore, we outline its use as a re-usable and shared knowledge base in a personalization process, before presenting a plan of our future work towards cultural personalization.

Ad hoc tasks emerge from unforeseen events. Such an event could be a fire disaster or simpler a boss who urgently needs a presentation for his customers. Ad hoc tasks arrive unexpected for the affected persons. They have a high enough priority for not being postponed and the workload of the tasks is so big that it can't be carried out by a single person. The work needs a great deal of process designing and facilitation. Ad hoc tasks must be supported technologically. A perfect tool supports group communications, awareness and scheduling. It furthermore offers a shared workspace and a facility to design a work process. A specific groupware tool is called ""Groupy"" and it is described and evolved in this diploma thesis. There lies a high learning potential in these ad hoc tasks. A person participating in a learning arrangement consisting of several tasks, which have an increasing complexity, is able to learn a lot about group work, facilitation and process designing. This kind of learning arrangement was developed, tested and improved in this diploma thesis.

An overview of the current Swiss IT-outsourcing market as perceived by the outsourcing companies will be presented in this thesis. Furthermore principles of a knowledge transfer method in IT outsourcing projects, developed at the University of Zurich, will be verified empirically. For this purpose a survey of Swiss companies with ITO projects in the past several years was conducted, using a questionnaire developed in collaboration with an outsourcing consulting company. 104 CIOs, IT- and Outsourcing managers were invited to participate, with participation being possible in written form as well as by online platform. The evaluation of 45 returned questionnaires provided several interesting insights, for example that companies are coping better and better with the outsourcing of IT, that different sourcing strategies are more promising depending on the contract volume and that innovations are not as actively pursued as they should be. Statistically significant conclusions with regard to the principles of the knowledge transfer method were not possible due to the low number of samples. Nevertheless, the answers indicate that the knowledge transfer requires different approaches with regard to each outsourcing project to be successful.

A growing amount of digital multimedia content is being created by users and being traded through web platforms. As a consequence, mass products are being more and more displaced by niche-products. This is the foundation for the formation of the so called Long Tail. In this thesis existing “Long Tail interfaces” are being analyzed to get requirements for a new user centered method of resolution. The focus lies with the support of explorative retrieval strategies in combination with adequate mechanisms of social, collaborative informationstructuring. Part of this is an interactive tag browser, which allows the user to search and view videos simultaneously, a blog and e-mail function and a dynamic group function based on a buddy list. Especially the possibility to search and watch simultaneously was very appreciated by the users. It makes it possible to do a dynamic search by consolidating information through the integrated tag browser. It allows a catenation of keywords to be added or removed which enlarges respectively reduces the amount of results.

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In large classes teachers and students often encounter problems like lack of learning activities, lack of motivation, lack of profound feedback or lack of learning transfer. In this paper we present an approach to meet these typical difficulties by using a wiki-based collaborative e-learning scenario moving from a teacher-centred focus to a more learner-centred one. The evaluation and the final examination results indicate that the approach was successful in terms of learners’ activation and learning outcome. Nevertheless, the evaluation also shows that students participating in this project did not appreciate the collaboration experience in general and valued it as time-consuming and less effective regarding the preparation of the final examination. The paper closes with the discussion of the project’s findings and lessons learned.

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Target of this Bachelor's thesis was to do a reengineering of the userinterface of the mExplorer, a client-server application, written in Java. The mExplorer is a mobile learning game prototype developed by Christoph Go?th. Playing that game, the users can discover a new, unknown environment (for example a complex of buildings). Therefore the mExplorer offers orientation and navigation functions. Within the scope of the reengineering of the userinterface, a toolbar with intuitive symbols should be developed, giving access to most of the important program functions. Additionally a task list, giving an overview over the open tasks and a configuration menu, allowing the user to configure his interface, should be provided.

Incorporating novel approaches like visual components, semantic web ideas or Web 2.0 concepts into information retrieval systems poses new challenges for their systematic evaluation. Currently, the development of valid evaluation settings cannot keep up with the development of new search engines and innovative information retrieval concepts. Therefore, the Swiss Institute for Information Research (SII), is currently developing a testbed called CHEVAL (Chur Evaluation Laboratory) to tackle this problem. The vision of CHEVAL is to design an integrated, multi-level and multi-methodological web-based system and framework to support different kinds of evaluation types (e.g. usability tests, IR efficiency measurement, benchmarking studies etc.) of several types of information retrieval systems. In the context of CHEVAL, an evaluation can have multiple dimensions regarding the type of the evaluation (long-term or short-term test phase, comparative or non-comparative evaluation, field or laboratory test environment) and the methods used for the evaluation, which can either be from IR efficiency measurement or usability testing as well as a combination of both. The paper will give an overview of some well-known and widely accepted evaluation initiatives. This also includes background information about the history of these initiatives. Furthermore the strengths and weaknesses of the described evaluation initiatives will be presented and discussed. Based on the deficiencies of current approaches for evaluating information retrieval systems with visual or semantic components the vision and the goals of the Chur Evaluation Laboratory will be explained. Following, the architecture of the testbed will be introduced. An example will illustrate how the system is intended to be used and what advantages CHEVAL will give to evaluators of information retrieval systems. Finally, the paper will present the success factors and a short roadmap for the further development of the Chur Evaluation Laboratory.

Within the EU funded project „MobiLearn“, Christoph Göth has developed mExplorer, a prototype of a mobile learning game. This System offers users orientation in an unknown environment. For an example, this orientation game may helps students to get familiar with the university campus. The mExplorer is written in Java as a server-client application. The main goal of this bachelor thesis was to enhance the existing application in terms of motion-pattern awareness. Therefore collected positioning data is aggregated and visualized in a new manner. The distinction between known and undiscovered places is getting simplified.

Diese Arbeit untersucht die Applikabilität von Real Options Analysen (ROA) fu?r Service Oriented Computing (SOC) Projekte. Auswirkungen und besondere Probleme der ROA Analyse bei SOC Projekten werden nebst möglichen Kalkulationsmethoden diskutiert. Besonderes Augenmerk ist auf die Berechnung mittels Growth Options gerichtet. Diese ermöglicht die Valuation von Infrastrukturprojekten, welche in der Anfangsphase keine positiven Ru?ckflu?sse generieren. Mittles Growth Options werden nachfolgende SOC-basierte Applikationsprojekte in das Bewertungsverfahren miteinbezogen und ermöglichen somit eine realistischere Kalkulation des Projektwertes. Untersuchte Berechnungsmethoden beinhalten Black-Scholes basierte Modelle als auch das Binomialmodell von Cox-Rubinstein. Das Ziel diser Arbeit ist das Aufzeigen der Anwendbarkeit von ROA fu?r SOC Projekte als auch das Betrachten von potentiellen Implikationen beim Übertrag von SOC-spezifischen Entscheidungsflexibilitäten auf Real Optionen. Eine Beispielsberechnung im zweiten Teil der Arbeit unterstu?tzt das Argument der Applikabilität und fu?hrt durch einen möglichen Prozess einer SOC Projektkalkulation. Dieses Berechnungsexempel wurde mittels Binomialansatz durchgefu?hrt. This paper examines the application of Real Option Analyses (ROA) on Service Oriented Computing (SOC) projects. Implications and special problems are discussed alongside possible ways on how valuation could be performed. Special attention is paid on the calculation using growth options to assess the value of the negative yielding infrastructure investment preceding application implementations with positive returns. Discussed valuation methods include Black-Scholes based formulas on calculating Real Options as well as the Cox-Rubinstein binomial model. The aim of this paper is to show the applicability of ROA on SOC projects and to discuss some potential problems and implications arising from mapping SOC paradigm inherent flexibilities to Real Options. An actual example valuation is conducted in the second half of the paper to guide through the calculatory process and to support the claim of the applicability. The example is conducted using the binomial valuation method.