Papers by Duska Rosenberg
The Sociological Review, Nov 1, 1975
In England at least Alvin Gouldner has been treated with great respect. 'Radical' crimino... more In England at least Alvin Gouldner has been treated with great respect. 'Radical' criminologists have allowed him to introduce their call for a return to the classical tradition. Industrial sociologists rarely fail to pay tribute to him as one of their foundii^ fathers. Weberian scholars tease themselves with problems posed by the Max Weber Professor of Sociology in Washington University. Yet John Rex in a recent review of Gouldner's work can pose the question of why there is no school of Goioldnerism with some degree of piHzlement. Perhaps part of the answer is that Gouldner must be seen not merely as a moral man in the world of professional sociolc^y but as a moralist of a clasical liberal type. Unlike Mills's, then, Gouldner's 'radicalism' is a variant of American individualism, not a break from it. To many Gouldner is a puzzle. A man who is in love with his dream of sociology and the man who can make a distinction between those who live 'for sociology' and those who 'live oS it' is also a philistine who is probably representative erf the period when so many of our modem foimding fathers were formed. Consider his statements oa Alarx and the Marxists, over a period erf twenty years when scholarship on Marx outside of sociology was advanced and made available in English. Gouldner writes that "Parsons is one of the few truly profound critics of Marxism writing today' and then can state that Parsons converges with Marx at a particular level of methododology.i As recently as 1973 Gouldner could blandly claim that R. K. Merton was an underground Marxist. The peculiar flavour of this passage conveys the weakness of Gouldner very clearly. He now believes that:
Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, 2021
An approach to the design of learning environments where a social robot plays a role of a teacher... more An approach to the design of learning environments where a social robot plays a role of a teacher is discussed in this study. Built-in robot functionalities provide a degree of situational embodiment, self-explainability, and context-driven interaction. The concept of embodiment enables immersion of the teacher into distant 3D environments. In that way the level of mutual understanding between participants is increased compared to a 2D world. Moreover, the tools that accompany the interaction empower augmentation by revealing the additional information present in gestures, facial expressions, or gaze direction. We use three distinct sources fused in a multimodal approach (face emotion recognition, level of loudness, and body movement intensity). The change in one modality can change the overall system reasoning. The teacher can benefit from this information by adapting a presentation style and achieve a better rapport with students. The theoretical basis is provided by studies of human communication in psycholinguistics and social psychology. Usability evaluation is based on the Wizard of Oz approach, allowing a teacher to interact with students through an interface. The conducted experiments show encouraging responses. Future studies will show in what way and to what extent a cognitive robot can be truly effective in technology-enhanced learning.
Health Services Management Research, Nov 1, 2008
The purpose of this descriptive, co-relational and cross-sectional study was to gain a better und... more The purpose of this descriptive, co-relational and cross-sectional study was to gain a better understanding of the relationships between job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees, and their impact on turnover intention at Isfahan Hospitals, Isfahan, Iran, in 2005. Data were collected by the distribution of two questionnaires among 629 employees of these hospitals through a stratified random sampling method. The results of the paper indicate that hospital employees are moderately satisfied with their jobs and committed to their organization. Employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment were closely inter-related and correlated with turnover intention ( P < 0.001). The positive correlation between the two was expected, but there was also unexpected correlation with turnover intention. This may be due to external factors, such as job market conditions, which may influence perceived opportunities for career advancement elsewhere. The impact of such ...
CSCW: Cooperation or Conflict?, 1993
The aim of this paper is to outline a method of analysis that can be incorporated into the proced... more The aim of this paper is to outline a method of analysis that can be incorporated into the procedures and practices of systems design in the framework of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) in complex, information-rich environments. Any theoretical background to CSCW must be fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing input from social psychology, organization theory, anthropology and linguistics, as well as from more computer-orientated disciplines, such as systems theory and design, knowledge engineering and so on. Consequently, it is clearly important to establish the boundaries for CSCW both as a coherent field of study and also as empirically observable human activity amenable to formal characterization. The present study is intended to illustrate what a CSCW-type analysis might look like under the constraint that it is more focused on the social nature of the human activity than, say, systems design; while at the same time being more strongly orientated towards the provision of a computationally-relevant framework than a social science description.
Somehow inside and outside the body humans can experience different mental states, such as presen... more Somehow inside and outside the body humans can experience different mental states, such as presence of other people or objects, taste of wine, happiness or sadness, etc. As a hard cognitive problem, perception is often comprehended as something deterministic and certain. However, recent insights into biological perception systems, such as the perceptual pathways in the human brain, are beginning to question this view (Ferreira and Dias 2011). The approach presented here builds on the notion that human reasoning involves the ability to handle uncertain information. Authors do not, however, attempt to explain how the brain interprets perceived phenomena. This work is more focused on human representations, meanings and manipulation of uncertain information in order to examine the effect of uncertainty on the design of artificial systems. The proposed model reflects the perception of humans as they pick up information from the environment, of a robot’s capability to successfully complet...
Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML, 2007
Computing in Civil and Building Engineering (2000), 2000
This paper addresses the question Can we build online information environments that afford colla... more This paper addresses the question Can we build online information environments that afford collaboration while allowing the user to participate fully in the real world? The main aim of such an enterprise is to make it possible for people to remain in their usual (physical) ...
This paper focuses on the informational structures and knowledge experts use to perform different... more This paper focuses on the informational structures and knowledge experts use to perform different kinds of task. We explore ways of formalizing some critical aspects of these tasks and the possible benefits of such formalization for our understanding of both human and computer reasoning strategies. We present an inter-disciplinary analysis of expert reasoning with information in both stylized documents and multimedia, and discuss the differences between the kind of strategies we think people use and the kind that can be formalized and designed into an intelligent system.
European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, Sep 30, 2009
This paper focuses on the informational structures and knowledge experts use to perform different... more This paper focuses on the informational structures and knowledge experts use to perform different kinds of task. We explore ways of formalizing some critical aspects of these tasks and the possible benefits of such formalization for our understanding of both human and computer reasoning strategies. We present an inter-disciplinary analysis of expert reasoning with information in both stylized documents and multimedia, and discuss the differences between the kind of strategies we think people use and the kind that can be formalized and designed into an intelligent system.
In this paper recent research involving inter-disciplinary ethnography is presented as an explora... more In this paper recent research involving inter-disciplinary ethnography is presented as an exploration of its contribution to studies of people and technology in the workplace. Three main patterns of interaction between ethnography and “the others” are examined. First, the influence of ethnography in promoting people-oriented perspectives of technology is discussed with reference to workplace studies in manufacturing. Second, ethnography contribution to the development of hybrid methods for the design and implementation of technology for use in the workplace is illustrated by several examples of such frameworks. Third, the influence of ethnographic research to providing a theoretical basis for computer-mediated communication is explored and documented by analyses of design teams working together as part of construction projects. From a practical point of view, this exploration has resulted in a brief discussion of the broad range of “users” in the real-life workplace who benefit from...
Education for Information, 1997
2016 13th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC), 2016
In this paper we investigate privacy issues relating to Human Computer Interfaces for mobile eHea... more In this paper we investigate privacy issues relating to Human Computer Interfaces for mobile eHealth technologies. We present the Inform-Alert-Mitigate (I-AM) cycle, a novel approach to address privacy concerns that are associated with the use of these technologies. The I-AM approach supports the responsible innovation of new technologies. We demonstrate the effectiveness of I-AM by applying it to examples taken from mobile applications relating to personal health. We discuss three classes of applications: a) fitness trackers b) personal wellbeing applications and c) medical applications, and evaluate the privacy exposure of their users using representative applications from these classes. The paper evaluates the current privacy enhancing features of these applications against the identified risks and demonstrates how the I-AM approach can be applied to yield additional and more effective privacy protection for these technologies.
IEEE Africon '11, 2011
Abstract In this paper we present work-in-progress-a technology platform for Social Collaboration... more Abstract In this paper we present work-in-progress-a technology platform for Social Collaboration in the context of Personalized Information Extraction. In particular, we consider elements of user-centered software engineering as it converges on the development of folksonomies. Results from our work-in-progress demonstrate to what extent non-IT users can apply natural language when managing their IT-based processes addressing information integration. We concentrate on the language model that supports the ...
Encyclopedia of Communities of Practice in Information and Knowledge Management
The purpose of this article is to identify a link between organisational culture and communities ... more The purpose of this article is to identify a link between organisational culture and communities of practice. We propose that the informal nature of communities of practice places great limitations in terms of management and control and that for their purpose—which is primarily to share tacit organisational knowledge and enhance organisational learning—it is fatalistic to try to impose and enforce control. Rather, these communities ought to be left alone to formulate their knowledge sharing activities, and management comes in to provide the support, both cognitive and practical in terms of resources, to ensure that time spent at work is productive, and the knowledge is well spread and used throughout. So, not only do we intend to identify a link between culture and communities of practice, but we will demonstrate that the former has great implications in the survival and success of the latter. A review of the most prolific literature is provided, followed by a debate about the relat...
In this paper recent research involving inter-disciplinary ethnography is presented as an explora... more In this paper recent research involving inter-disciplinary ethnography is presented as an exploration of its contribution to studies of people and technology in the workplace. Three main patterns of interaction between ethnography and "the others" are examined. First, the influence of ethnography in promoting people-oriented perspectives of technology is discussed with reference to workplace studies in manufacturing. Second, ethnography contribution to the development of hybrid methods for the design and implementation of technology for use in the workplace is illustrated by several examples of such frameworks. Third, the influence of ethnographic research to providing a theoretical basis for computer-mediated communication is explored and documented by analyses of design teams working together as part of construction projects. From a practical point of view, this exploration has resulted in a brief discussion of the broad range of "users" in the real-life workpl...
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Papers by Duska Rosenberg