No abstract

Increasing globalization has created tremendous opportunities and challenges for organizations and societies. Consequently, a broad range of information technologies to better support the collaboration of diverse, and increasingly distributed, sets of participants is ever more utilized. Arguably, the success of such technology-mediated collaboration is dependent upon the quality of each individual's contributions; however, although individuals' motivations to do their best could be significantly influenced by the design of a system's human-computer interface, this area has received little attention within the context of group collaboration environments. We fill this gap by integrating research from human-computer interaction, motivation, and technology-supported group work to theoretically derive mechanisms for increasing each individual's motivation within a collective setting. Specifically, we manipulate the interface of a computer-mediated idea generation system (a widely used collaboration tool) to enhance the system's motivational affordance, i.e., the system's properties that fulfill users' motivational needs. Results from two studies demonstrate that by embedding the theoretically derived mechanisms "providing feedback" and "designing for optimal challenge" into the collaboration environment, significant performance gains were realized. The results suggest that even slight manipulations of the human-computer interface can contribute significantly to the successful design of a wide variety of group collaboration environments.human-computer interaction, motivational affordance, collaboration, computer-mediated idea generation, goal setting, performance feedback

No abstract

Social software is increasingly being used in higher and further education to support teaching and learning processes. These applications provide students with social and cognitive stimulation and also add to the interaction between students and educators. However, in addition to the benefits the introduction of social software into a course environment can also have adverse implications on students, educators and the education institution as a whole, a phenomenon which has received much less attention in the literature. In this study we explore the various implications of introducing social software into a course environment in order to identify the associated benefits, but also the potential drawbacks. We draw on data from 20 social software initiatives in UK-based higher and further education institutions to identify the diverse experiences and concerns of students and educators. The findings are presented in form of a SWOT analysis, which allows us to better understand the otherwise ambiguous implications of social software in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. From the analysis we have derived concrete recommendations for the use of social software as a teaching and learning tool.

We report the observation of the three-dimensional angular dependence of the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) in a bilayer of the epitaxial antiferromagnetic insulator NiO(001) and the heavy metal Pt, without any ferromagnetic element. The detected angular-dependent longitudinal and transverse magnetoresistances are measured by rotating the sample in magnetic fields up to 11 T, along three orthogonal planes (xy-, yz-and xz-rotation planes, where the z-axis is orthogonal to the sample plane). The total magnetoresistance has contributions arising from both the SMR and ordinary magnetoresistance. The onset of the SMR signal occurs between 1 and 3 T and no saturation is visible up to 11 T. The three-dimensional angular dependence of the SMR can be explained by a model considering the reversible field-induced redistribution of magnetostrictive antiferromagnetic S-and T-domains in the NiO(001), stemming from the competition between the Zeeman energy and the elastic clamping effect of the non-magnetic MgO substrate. From the observed SMR ratio, we estimate the spin mixing conductance at the NiO/Pt interface to be greater than 2x10 14 Ω -1 m -2 . Our results demonstrate