In the Software Crowdsourcingcompetitive model, crowd members seek for tasks in a platform and submit their solutions seeking rewards. In this model, the task description is important to support the choice and the execution of a task. Despite its importance, little is known about the role of task description as support for these processes. To fill this gap, this paper presents a study that explores the role of documentation on TopCoder platform, focusing on the task selection and execution. We conducted a two-phased study with professionals that had no prior contact with TopCoder. Based on data collected with questionnaires, diaries, and a retrospective session, we could understand how people choose and perform the tasks, and the role of documentation in the platform. We could find that poorly specified or incomplete tasks lead developers to look for supplementary material or invest more time and effort than initially estimated. To better support the crowd members, we proposed a model on how to structure the documentation that composes the task description in competitive software crowdsourcing. We evaluated the model with another set of professionals, again relying on questionnaires, reports, and a retrospective session. Results showed that although the documentation available covered the elements of the proposed model, the participants had issues to find the necessary information, suggesting the need for a reorganization. Participants agreed that the proposed model would help them understand the task description. Therefore, our study provides a better understanding of the importance of task documentation in software crowdsourcing and points out what information is important to the crowd.
The increasing use of low-cost access to a universal communication network as a basis for teaching in universities, poses new challenges to analyze, understand and propose new educational solutions. This requires from education providers sophisticated instructional models, pedagogically advanced, aligned with new demands of educational, social and technological contexts. In such conditions, transition from traditional teacher-centered models, focusing on curricula description and content plans, to student-centered models, in which learning activities are supported in e-learning platforms, is a necessary but difficult task to resolve. An issue that becomes especially important when the knowledge is emergent, i.e. when the activities that this knowledge enables are intensively supported by information and communication technologies, subjected to rapid obsolescence. This paper presents a method for mapping a course content plan into technological mediating tools that form a portfolio in an elearning platform. The characteristics of the portfolio facilitate the mapping of the content plan to a student-centered learning dynamics. Details on the instructional model are provided; the reasons for implementing a green field e-learning platform are justified; an outline of the results obtained in a post-graduate course discipline of 293 students is reported, with significant results, particularly with regard to team-building skills, student satisfaction and training model.
Professionals in electronic marketing make intensive use of information and communication technologies. An intensity that makes the teaching of electronic marketing somewhat challenging and specific when compared with other disciplines. Teaching electronic marketing will only be effective if the learning environment reaches similar levels of technological intensity as the discipline itself. This suggests that electronic marketing might be particularly appropriate to the use of e-learning as a teaching instructional model. However, this carries risks and further challenges, resulting from difficulties in obtaining positive results whenever learning is supported by e-learning platforms. If one wants to achieve lower failure risks and effective and motivated learning, the e-learning model should be provided with features that strengthen it pedagogically. This paper proposes a practice field for teaching electronic marketing, embedded and tested in an e-learning platform provided with learning activities that implement a practice field.
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