Category Archives: Research Contributions

A Framework for Open Assurance of Learning

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Educational Resources Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: A Framework for Open Assurance of Learning

Authors: Gokul Bhandari and Maureen Gowing (Odette School of Business, University of Windsor)

Abstract: Assurance of Learning (AOL) refers to the outcomes assessment process which involves the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development [8]. While emerging trends such as open education, open learning, learning analytics, academic analytics, and big data in education have recently become mainstream, studies regarding the design and development of open source analytics applications for AOL are non-existent. In this paper, we describe an application called AOL Analyzer that we developed for our business school last year to assist in the analysis of AOL results reported by faculty. To the best of our knowledge, this is a first paper to bridge the existing gap in
AOL analytics research.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

User Generated Services during Software Introductions

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Innovation Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: User Generated Services during Software Introductions

Authors: Martin Schymanietz and Nivedita Agarwal (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Abstract: In this paper, we describe the lack of user participation and involvement during software introductions. Especially big projects with a volume larger than 10 million US$ are very likely to neglect important benchmarks like e.g. the budget or even completely fail. To fight these costly failures and support software introductions, we propose a service system that integrates the user into the software rollout. This service system consists of three service modules that are supported by components for feedback, communication, user incentives and motivation as well as. The service modules shall empower the users to give support and deliver tutorials or training to other users and furthermore establish a project specific platform which encourages a continuous improvement of the current software solution.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Exploring the roles of external facilitators in IT-driven open strategizing

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Innovation Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Exploring the roles of external facilitators in IT-driven open strategizing

Authors: Josh Morton, Alex Wilson and Louise Cooke (Loughborough University; School of Business and Economics)

Abstract: This paper examines the different roles external facilitators have in information technology driven open strategizing. Using a strategy-as-practice lens and drawing on two empirical cases of open strategy in organizations, our paper highlights four emerging roles of external facilitators which we call; structuring, promoting, moderating and analyzing. In concluding the paper we call for further research relating to external facilitators and open strategy.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Comparing OSM Area-Boundary Data to DBpedia

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Data Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Comparing OSM Area-Boundary Data to DBpedia

Authors: Doris Silbernagl, Nikolaus Krismer and Günther Specht (Department of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck, Austria)

Abstract: OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a well known and widely used data source for geographic data. This kind of data can also be found in Wikipedia in the form of geographic locations, such as cities or countries. Next to the geographic coordinates, also statistical data about the area of these elements can be present. Since it is possible to extract these data from OpenStreetMap as well, it is sensible to examine the quality of the OSM information about those specific boundary elements and compare them to an also crowd-sourced source like Wikipedia. Hence, in this paper OSM data of different countries are used to calculate the area of valid boundary (multi) polygons and are then compared to the respective DBpedia (a large scale knowledge base extract from Wikipedia) entries.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Predicting the quality of user contributions via LSTMs

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikis and Open Collaboration Track

Title: Predicting the quality of user contributions via LSTMs

Authors: Rakshit Agrawal and Luca de Alfaro (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Abstract: In many collaborative systems it is useful to automatically estimate the quality of new contributions; the estimates can be used for instance to flag contributions for review. To predict the quality of a contribution by a user, it is useful to take into account both the characteristics of the revision itself, and the past history of contributions by that user. In several approaches, the user’s history is first summarized into a number of features, such as number of contributions, user reputation, time from previous revision, and so forth. These features are then passed along with features of the current revision to a machine-learning classifier, which outputs a prediction for the user contribution. The summarization step is used because the usual machine learning models, such as neural nets, SVMs, etc. rely on a fixed number of input features.We show in this paper that this manual selection of summarization features can be avoided by adopting machine-learning approaches that are able to cope with temporal sequences of input.

In particular, we show that Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural nets are able to process directly the variable length history of a user’s activity in the system, and produce an output that is highly predictive of the quality of the next contribution by the user. Our approach does not eliminatethe process of feature selection, which is present in all machine learning. Rather, it eliminates the need for deciding which features from a user’s past are most useful for predicting the future: we can simply pass to the machine-learning apparatus all the past, and let it come up with an estimate for the quality of the next contribution.

We present models combining LSTM and NN for predicting revision quality and show that the prediction accuracy attained is far superior to the one obtained using the NN alone. More interestingly, we also show that the prediction attained is superior to the one obtained using user reputation as a feature summarizing the quality of a user’s past work. This can be explained by noting that the primary function of user reputation is to provide an incentive towards performing useful contributions, rather than to be a feature optimized for prediction of future contribution quality.

We also show that the LSTM output changes in a natural way in response to user behavior, increasing when the user performs a sequence of good quality contributions,and decreasing when the user performs a sequence of low-quality work. The LSTM output for a user could thus be usefully shown to other users, alongside the user’s reputation and other information.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List

Authors: Daniel Schneider, Scott Spurlock and Megan Squire (Elon University)

Abstract: Much communication between developers of free, libre, and open source software (FLOSS) projects happens on email mailing lists. Geographically and temporally dispersed development teams use email as an asynchronous, centralized, persistently stored institutional memory for sharing code samples, discussing bugs, and making decisions. Email is especially important to large, mature projects, such as the Linux kernel, which has thousands of developers and a multilayered leadership structure. In this paper, we collect and analyze data to understand the communication patterns in such a community. How do the leaders of the Linux Kernel project write in email? What are the salient features of their writing, and can we discern one leader from another? We find that there are clear written markers for two leaders who have been particularly important to recent discussions of leadership style on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): Linux Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman. Furthermore, we show that it is straightforward to use a machine learning strategy to automatically differentiate these two leaders based on their writing. Our findings will help researchers understand how this community works, and why there is occasional controversy regarding differences in communication styles on the LKML.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Motivation of Newcomers to FLOSS Projects

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks

Title: Motivation of Newcomers to FLOSS Projects

Authors: Christoph Hannebauer and Volker Gruhn (paluno – The Ruhr Institute for Software Technology University of Duisburg-Essen)

Abstract: While the motivations of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers have been the subject of extensive research, the motivations for their initial contribution to a FLOSS project has received only little attention. This survey of 94 newcomers to the FLOSS projects Mozilla and GNOME identifies the motivations for the modification of the FLOSS components and for the submission of these modifications back to the FLOSS project. With the responses, we test a hypothesis based on the previous qualitative research on newcomer motivations: Most newcomers modify a component because they need the modification for themselves. Surprisingly, this is not the case for our respondents, who have a variety of primary modification motivations. Newcomer occupation is discussed as a reason for this difference to previous results.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Observing Custom Software Modifications: A Quantitative Approach of Tracking the Evolution of Patch Stacks

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Observing Custom Software Modifications: A Quantitative Approach of Tracking the Evolution of Patch Stacks

Authors: Ralf Ramsauer (Technical University of Applied Sciences Regensburg); Daniel Lohmann (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg); Wolfgang Mauerer (Technical University of Applied Sciences Regensburg Siemens AG, Munich)

Abstract: Modifications to open-source software (OSS) are often provided in the form of “patch stacks”– sets of changes (patches) that modify a given body of source code. Maintaining patch stacks over extended periods of time is problematic when the underlying base project changes frequently. This necessitates a continuous and engineering-intensive adaptation of the stack. Nonetheless, long-term maintenance is an important problem for changes that are not integrated into projects, for instance when they are controversial or only of value to a limited group of users. We present and implement a methodology to systematically examine the temporal evolution of patch stacks, track non-functional properties like integrability and maintainability, and estimate the eventual economic and engineering effort required to successfully develop and maintain patch stacks. Our results provide a basis for quantitative research on patch stacks, including statistical analyses and other methods that lead to actionable advice on the construction and long-term maintenance of custom extensions to OSS.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Initial Results from the Study of the Open Source Sector in Belgium

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Initial Results from the Study of the Open Source Sector in Belgium

Authors: Robert Viseur (University of Mons)

Abstract: The economy of FLOSS (Free and open source software) has been the subject of numerous studies and publications, particularly on the issue of business models. However, there are fewer studies on the local networks of FLOSS providers. This research focuses on the ecosystem of Belgian FLOSS providers and, more specifically, their geographical distribution, the activities, technologies and software they support, their business models, their economic performance and the relationships between companies. The research is based on a directory containing nearly 150 companies. This directory led to the creation of a specialized search engine that helped to improve annotation. The research also uses financial data provided by the Belgian Central Balance Sheet Office. The initial results of this study show a concentration in major economic areas. The businesses are more active in the services and are heavily involved activities such as infrastructure software and Web development, activities which were common in the early years of free software development. Services for the support of business software is also common. A first analysis of the graph of relationships between providers’ websites highlights the role that is played by the multinational IT companies, by FLOSS editors, by commercial FLOSS associations and especially by the Walloon centers of competence that offer vast training catalogs that are dedicated to FLOSS. This research opens up many perspectives for improving the automation of the company directory updates, the analysis of the relationship between enterprises, and the automation of the financial analysis of companies.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.

Structured Wikis – Application Oriented Use Cases

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2014, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikis and Open Collaboration Track

Title: Structured Wikis – Application Oriented Use Cases

Authors: Stefan Voigt, Frank Fuchs-Kittowski, Andreas Gohr

Abstract: Structured wikis combine the flexibility advantage of traditional wikis with the possibility of presenting structures and relationships in a partly automated fashion. Such wikis can, for example, map process structures and thus support complex processes. Taking the ICKEwiki as an example, this paper examines the differences between traditional and structured wikis by presenting four different real-life sample cases.

This contribution to OpenSym 2014 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2014 proceedings on or after August 27, 2014.