The utilization of mobile and web applications has surpassed all other platforms in terms of disseminating researchers’ knowledge among diverse communities throughout the world. The current method of disseminating re...The utilization of mobile and web applications has surpassed all other platforms in terms of disseminating researchers’ knowledge among diverse communities throughout the world. The current method of disseminating researchers’ knowledge to the communities in the Arusha region in Tanzania is through meetings, workshops, and focus group discussions held by researchers, agricultural extension officers and community members after every three months or during field study. Yet the strategy is inefficient and ineffective in practice. The purpose of this study was to determine the most efficient and successful method of disseminating knowledge in communities. The study began with a qualitative phase, utilizing an interpretive technique and a qualitative multiple case study research design. The Arusha region in Tanzania was selected as a case study where different social activities were undertaken, including farming, livestock keeping, tourism activities and fishing. Individual participants were interviewed by using a semi-structured questionnaire. In addition, focus group discussions were conducted to gather more information regarding the needs of the mobile application. Through the implementation of the application, the second phase of the study led to the development of a mobile application that includes community members, agricultural extension officers, and researchers that will enable anyone to install the application on their mobile phones to access knowledge regarding activities undertaken in Arusha. According to the findings of the first phase of the research, a substantial percentage of community members own mobile phones, and hence a mobile application would be sufficient. The research also found that most researcher-community interactions occur at the data collection and intervention assessment (field trials) stages. Hence, the mobile application will benefit community members, district agricultural, irrigation, and cooperative officers (DAICO), and researchers.展开更多
The online world is becoming more and more edutainment, where learning, getting informed and entertained seem to be part of one and the same activity. As a result of this current fascination, people are drawn increasi...The online world is becoming more and more edutainment, where learning, getting informed and entertained seem to be part of one and the same activity. As a result of this current fascination, people are drawn increasingly towards a new genre, i.e. free online 20-minute long lectures that borrow from film and storytelling techniques, that are offering an engaging series of speeches and even courses in many different scientific subjects. Though English as a lingua franca is still the dominant language of the internet, as a result of a growing new trend, namely crowdsourcing translation, knowledge dissemination is further enhanced and is now reaching further into many different cultures, allowing even the so-called minor languages to regain dignity and circulate, by engaging native speakers from different cultural backgrounds. This paper offers an overview on the phenomenon of online edutainment considering the role played by collaborative users who not only enjoy but also create and translate content. In addition, a case study focused on TED Talks allows a more in depth analysis of the new genre and the increasing need for subtitling scripts.展开更多
Currently, the collaboration in scientific communities has been studied in order to explain, among other things, the knowledge diffusion. The quality of Graduate Programmes is often associated with the scientific coll...Currently, the collaboration in scientific communities has been studied in order to explain, among other things, the knowledge diffusion. The quality of Graduate Programmes is often associated with the scientific collaboration. This paper discusses how scientific collaboration processes can be identified and characterized through social and complex networks. For this purpose, collaboration networks of bibliographic production, research projects, and committees of PhD theses and Masters’ dissertations by researchers from a graduate program in computational modeling were studied. The data were obtained from CAPES’ reports of the period from 2001 to 2009. Among the studied indices, centrality indices indicate the presence of prominent researchers who influence others and promptly interact with other researchers in the network. The indices of complex networks reveal the presence of the small-world (i.e. these networks are favorable to increase coordination between researchers) phenomenon and indicate a behavior of scale-free degree distribution (i.e. some researchers promote clustering more than others) for one of the studied networks.展开更多
文摘The utilization of mobile and web applications has surpassed all other platforms in terms of disseminating researchers’ knowledge among diverse communities throughout the world. The current method of disseminating researchers’ knowledge to the communities in the Arusha region in Tanzania is through meetings, workshops, and focus group discussions held by researchers, agricultural extension officers and community members after every three months or during field study. Yet the strategy is inefficient and ineffective in practice. The purpose of this study was to determine the most efficient and successful method of disseminating knowledge in communities. The study began with a qualitative phase, utilizing an interpretive technique and a qualitative multiple case study research design. The Arusha region in Tanzania was selected as a case study where different social activities were undertaken, including farming, livestock keeping, tourism activities and fishing. Individual participants were interviewed by using a semi-structured questionnaire. In addition, focus group discussions were conducted to gather more information regarding the needs of the mobile application. Through the implementation of the application, the second phase of the study led to the development of a mobile application that includes community members, agricultural extension officers, and researchers that will enable anyone to install the application on their mobile phones to access knowledge regarding activities undertaken in Arusha. According to the findings of the first phase of the research, a substantial percentage of community members own mobile phones, and hence a mobile application would be sufficient. The research also found that most researcher-community interactions occur at the data collection and intervention assessment (field trials) stages. Hence, the mobile application will benefit community members, district agricultural, irrigation, and cooperative officers (DAICO), and researchers.
文摘The online world is becoming more and more edutainment, where learning, getting informed and entertained seem to be part of one and the same activity. As a result of this current fascination, people are drawn increasingly towards a new genre, i.e. free online 20-minute long lectures that borrow from film and storytelling techniques, that are offering an engaging series of speeches and even courses in many different scientific subjects. Though English as a lingua franca is still the dominant language of the internet, as a result of a growing new trend, namely crowdsourcing translation, knowledge dissemination is further enhanced and is now reaching further into many different cultures, allowing even the so-called minor languages to regain dignity and circulate, by engaging native speakers from different cultural backgrounds. This paper offers an overview on the phenomenon of online edutainment considering the role played by collaborative users who not only enjoy but also create and translate content. In addition, a case study focused on TED Talks allows a more in depth analysis of the new genre and the increasing need for subtitling scripts.
基金financial support from CNPq(the Brazilian federal grant agency).
文摘Currently, the collaboration in scientific communities has been studied in order to explain, among other things, the knowledge diffusion. The quality of Graduate Programmes is often associated with the scientific collaboration. This paper discusses how scientific collaboration processes can be identified and characterized through social and complex networks. For this purpose, collaboration networks of bibliographic production, research projects, and committees of PhD theses and Masters’ dissertations by researchers from a graduate program in computational modeling were studied. The data were obtained from CAPES’ reports of the period from 2001 to 2009. Among the studied indices, centrality indices indicate the presence of prominent researchers who influence others and promptly interact with other researchers in the network. The indices of complex networks reveal the presence of the small-world (i.e. these networks are favorable to increase coordination between researchers) phenomenon and indicate a behavior of scale-free degree distribution (i.e. some researchers promote clustering more than others) for one of the studied networks.
