Doctoral Theses / Doktorsavhandlingar Institutionen för tillämpad informationsteknologi

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1:1 i klassrummet – analyser av en pedagogisk praktik i förändring
(2015-02-06) Tallvid, Martin
I denna avhandling analyseras resultaten från två utvärderingsprojekt av 1:1-införande som genomförts på två högstadieskolor (2007-2011) och fyra gymnasieskolor (2012-2014) i Sverige. Data från enkäter, intervjuer och observationer har analyserats för att svara på frågeställningar om hur olika aspekter av den pågående digitaliseringen påverkar verksamheten i skolan. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten tas i ett sociokulturellt perspektiv på skola som verksamhet, på teknologi som medierande redskap och på utveckling och lärande som socialt grundade. För att beskriva komplexiteten i läraruppdraget används det teoretiska ramverket TPACK. Ramverket beskriver integrationen mellan de teknologiska, pedagogiska och innehållsliga kunskapsdomäner som tillsammans bildar kärnan i en lärares kompetens i en digitaliserad skola. Resultaten visar att det krävs kunskap om och förståelse för praktikens förutsättningar för att kunna avgöra huruvida digitalisering och 1:1-satsningar påverkar. Ur ett makroperspektiv förefaller klassrumsaktiviteterna vara i stort sett opåverkade av 1:1-införandet. Undervisningen tycks pågå som tidigare och förefaller i huvudsak traditionell och kontrollerad av en reglerande diskurs. Å andra sidan, när skolan studeras ur ett mesoperspektiv är det möjligt att urskilja ett antal väsentliga förändringar av verksamheten. Teknologin påverkar verksamheten, men det innebär inte automatiskt en förändring av den övergripande strukturen för hur utbildningen praktiseras. Ett 1:1-införande leder först till förändringar på praktiknivå med utmaningar av lärares och elevers verksamhet. Delstudierna i avhandlingen visar att digitaliseringen påverkar lärares lektionsplanering, och att elevers användning av de digitala redskapen förändras över tid. Dessutom diskuteras lärares argument för att inte integrera digitala verktyg i den pedagogiska praktiken.Avhandlingen har konsekvenser för praktikfältet genom att den identifierar och diskuterar några av följderna av digitaliseringen av skolan. De klassrumsnära studierna visar att IT-användningen är varierande och ojämn, och att införandet av 1:1 är en komplicerad process som utmanar verksamheten i skolan på flera nivåer.
Acquired brain injury in children and adolescents: Investigating assessments of communicative participation in daily life situations
(2017-02-03) Fyrberg, Åsa
Aims The overall aim of this thesis was to explore assessments of communicative participation in children and adolescents (hereafter: adolescents) with acquired brain injuries, mainly through evaluations in the Communicative Effectiveness Index (CETI) and in interviews with the participants. The aim was also to capture important changes in communication over time. Five sub-studies were carried out, presented in Papers I-V. Methods Paper I: Pragmatic evaluations were explored in eight participants with severe brain injuries. The data were obtained in clinical surroundings by a speech language pathologist and rehabilitation assistants, using clinically applied pragmatic taxonomy, the Pragmatic Protocol (PP). Paper II: Descriptive and comparative methods were used to assess the communication outcome in an adolescent with ABI. The investigations included linguistic and cognitive test data and adolescent/parent evaluations of communication skills in the CETI, post-injury and at follow-up. Video recordings to explore communication management were analysed through self-evaluation and interview procedures. Paper III: The contribution of CETI in the assessment of ABI was examined through parent evaluations of communication in 30 adolescents, which were compared with linguistic, cognitive and brain injury data. Paper IV: Assessments of daily communication skills delivered by the parents of eight adolescents were compared with self-evaluations by the adolescents themselves. Interview data were analysed in particular by applying activity-based communication analysis, ACA (Allwood, 2013), and the theory of distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995a). Paper V: Change scores in 30 adolescents between post-injury measurements and follow-up results were estimated. Results Paper I: Seven of eight participants with severe brain injuries were assessed as having a highly reduced capacity to communicate within all the assessed pragmatic parameters that involved speech and language skills. Paper II: Self-evaluation of the video recordings and analyses of communication management in Paper II confirmed impaired communication, related to language comprehension difficulties, high speech rate and the number of speakers involved. Paper III: The CETI data showed that adolescents with more communication difficulties, according to their parents, also obtained significantly lower scores in tests of grammar comprehension and verbal IQ. The trend was similar for word comprehension, naming and perceptual IQ, although this was not supported by significant results. However, complex communicative interactions, such as fast conversations with several speakers involved, were affected in all participants, including those with higher results in linguistic and cognitive tests. As a result, complex communicative situations appeared to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of the brain injuries, regardless of injury severity. The aetiologies of the injuries did not affect the outcome in individual results. However, the majority of adolescents with more communication difficulties according to parent evaluations had left-hemisphere brain lesions. Paper IV: Overall high agreement between the adolescent and parental assessments was found. However, complex communicative situations more frequently received lower scores in the parental ratings. Analyses using the ACA and distributed cognition models and interview data pointed to the usability of a systematic comparison of the shared views on communication after ABI in adolescence, to increase knowledge of the participation perspective in real-life communication. Paper V: The nature and extent of communication abilities after communication strategies applied by the parents at home showed a significant increase in ability in 30 participants (p < .01), but some tasks did not improve as much, even showing a reduction in capacity after the one-year application of communication strategies, according to parental estimations. Conclusions One general conclusion in this thesis is that evaluations of communication abilities in adolescents with ABI benefit from analyses of interaction in everyday situations. The data obtained in the clinical surroundings, in particular, the results from cognitive, linguistic and cerebral lesion site data, appear to have a certain predictive value in terms of the communication outcomes rated in the CETI, thereby strengthening the content validity of the CETI in adolescent participants with ABI. The findings further point to the important role parents play in exploring the adolescents’ communicative participation in real life by sharing their opinions in interviews, based on the CETI results. The participation perspective can be addressed in the self-assessments by the adolescents themselves, as was shown in analyses of video recordings and in the interviews exploring the activitybased communication analysis and distributed cognition perspectives. The mixed-method design applied in this thesis could provide information which could contribute to shaping fruitful individualised rehabilitation programmes in adolescents with ABI.
Användning av mobiltelefoner i den digitaliserade skolan: Elevers och lärares perspektiv
(2022-11-10) Grigic Magnusson, Anita
På ett övergripande plan problematiserar avhandlingen skolans digitalisering och dess konsekvenser för både elevers och lärares skolvardag. Mer specifikt syftar avhandlingen till att fördjupa kunskapen om användningen av högstadie- och gymnasieelevers privata mobiltelefoner i klassrummet och implementering av mobiltelefonförbud i klassrummet. Med utgångspunkt i fokusgruppintervjuer av högstadie- och gymnasieelever om deras användning av sina mobiltelefoner i klassrummet, både för pedagogiska och icke-undervisningsrelaterade syften och ljudinspelningar av lärares diskussioner i ett lärarlag om implementeringen av ett mobiltelefonförbud i sina klassrum ställdes avhandlingens forskningsfrågor och utforskas i 4 fallstudier. På ett generellt plan är arbetet grundat i sociokulturell teori om lärande och utveckling, där de teoretiska begreppen infrastruktur för lärande och gränsobjekt/gränsöverskridande har använts i avhandlingens studier och kappa. Avhandlingen visar att de utmaningar och möjligheter som följer med att eleverna tar med sig och använder sina mobiler i klassrummet till stor del handlar om hur denna komplexitet ska hanteras i klassrummet. I den digitaliserade skolan har digital teknologi kommit att bli en nödvändig och integrerad komponent både för lärares undervisning och för elevers lärande. Avhandlingens studier visar på vikten av att nyansera frågan om användningen av elevernas privata mobiltelefoner i klassrummet. Avhandlingens empiriska studier bidrar till kunskapsfältet och förtydligar att det inte finns en enkel lösning på den komplexa fråga om hur elevernas användning av sina privata mobiler ska hanteras i klassrummet i den digitaliserade skolan.
Being Multisituated : Characterizing laptoping in networked situations
(2015-03-27) Lindroth, Tomas
During the last 30 years mobile IT has gone from being an exotic ingredient to an everyday artifact. This thesis presents an ethnographic study of laptop use in a university setting. The thesis concludes that it is no longer enough to describe the use of portable IT as an activity in its own right, i.e. using a laptop computer as an activity similar to reading a book or writing an essay. Additionally, describing a person as merely a user of digital technology fails to capture the intervowenness between the technology, situation, person and other actors. In order to find more nuanced answers about laptop use the thesis discuss what characterize the use of laptops in everyday life. With support from Actor-Network Theory, the Interaction Order and Experiential computing the thesis explores the hybrid combination of a person-laptop. The contribution is a framework of the driving forces behind the laptoper’s everyday activities. Additionally a model of the networked situation is presented, that uncovers the effects of the laptoper over time, that is, the laptoping process. The contribution is a framework with key characteristics and typified interactions where the multisituated and network dimensions are understood as fundamental elements of hybrid interaction.
Business Intelligence Utilisation through Bootstrapping and Adaptation
(2015-06-26) Presthus, Wanda
Business Intelligence (BI) has traditionally been viewed as a technology-driven, rational process, which would lead to better decision-making in organisations. Fact-based decisions are expected to reduce costs and increase income for a company, but also, for example, prevent crime and illness on a more global scale. A shortage of data is not the problem and data warehousing and end-user tools can provide people with consistent data, which have been tailored to their needs. A common problem is that BI solutions are rarely utilised to their full potential. For example, while a BI solution offers advanced reporting, queries, dashboards and data mining techniques, the most widespread product remains to be simple two-dimensional reports. Throwing more and upgraded technology at the users is common but does not increase utilisation. Although BI research is plentiful, we lack knowledge about (i) how the users interact with the technology, and (ii) what makes a BI solution useful over time. A BI solution can be purchased, implemented, and provide everything the vendor promises, but it is a waste of time and money if the people do not use the solution. The aim of this PhD thesis is to increase our knowledge about how the utilisation of BI can be developed. The thesis applies the concepts of bootstrapping and adaptation from Hanseth and Lyytinen’s theory of Information Infrastructure. Bootstrapping means that an information system must be initiated through a self-sustaining, internal process, and adaptation means self-organizing growth. Through the study of five cases of development of the utilisation of BI, this thesis exploits BI beyond the use of reporting tools, which again results in several benefits for the companies. The research question reads: How can BI utilisation be developed through bootstrapping and adaptation? From a thorough analysis using techniques from Miles and Huberman, several aspects appeared. The BI process should be addressed in two phases with different focus: if users are exposed to lightweight BI tools first (in the bootstrapping phase), they are more likely to want to explore the more advanced tools later (in the adaptation phase). From this PhD study emerges one theoretical and one practical contribution. On the theoretical side this thesis offers a conceptual reframing of BI; as a self-reinforcing installed base that endures bootstrapping and adaptation. In the bootstrapping phase, focus should be placed on agile tools, technology demonstration and arousing curiosity for the user. The bootstrapping phase may eventually turn into adaptation, which requires a different focus. A close interplay between the users and the developers is crucial for the adaptation phase; however, the users can tolerate some delays in usefulness. From this conceptual reframing four patterns are identified, which are operationalised into management guidelines for practitioners in the industry who either want to start using (bootstrapping) or improve their current use (adaptation) of the BI solution. Hopefully, this study can lead to BI being utilised to a greater potential in any organisation, and thus benefit from the many advantages that BI can provide.
Catering for Student Digital Competence - Teachers navigating the complexities of digital-infused education
(2025-03-04) Löfving, Christina
There have been massive investments in school digitalization worldwide, which have led to high policy expectations for potential outcomes, one being that students will be able to use digital technologies and understand their consequences. Thus, the thesis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how teachers make sense of student digital competence and how it is catered for in digital-infused teaching practices today. For this purpose, teachers’ accounts and enactment, as well as what conditions teachers face, are investigated in three multi-sited ethnographic studies where teachers and other personnel working in 14 primary, lower-secondary, and upper-secondary schools in Sweden participated. Individual and focus group interviews, observations, fieldnotes, informal conversations, texts and walkthroughs generated the data which were qualitatively analyzed using the practice theory of sensemaking. The results indicate that, apart from considering student digital competence as a subject-specific curricular concept, it can additionally be understood as a vague, narrow, technical-instrumental and cross-curricular one. Teachers individually and differently cater for cross-curricular aspects, that is, technical aspects, source criticism and how students can avoid dangers in relation to digital technologies. In almost every lesson, teachers dedicate time to instructing their students in how to navigate digital platforms for schoolwork, which is why a new, tacit, and cross-curricular school subject of platform bureaucratization was identified. The expectations expressed in policies in relation to participation in a digital-infused society, for example, digital rights, participation, engagement, and critical resistance, legislative and ethical aspects, as well as data- and AI-literacies, are not as visible, and few teachers consider it their task to attend to these aspects. The identified constraining conditions relate to policies and prevailing discourses, school development strategies, digital technologies, and how students’ digital-infused out-of-school activities are made sense of. The practical and pedagogical implications let bottom-up and top-down perspectives meet, since the implications involve teachers, school leaders and facilitators such as school librarians and ICT advisors, and transnational and national stakeholders.
Child–Robot Interaction in Education
(2017-08-25) Serholt, Sofia
Advances in the field of robotics in recent years have enabled the deployment of robots in a multitude of settings, and it is predicted that this will continue to increase, leading to a profound impact on society in the future. This thesis takes its starting point in educational robots; specifically the kind of robots that are designed to interact socially with children. Such robots are often modeled on humans, and made to express and/or perceive emotions, for the purpose of creating some social or emotional attachment in children. This thesis presents a research effort in which an empathic robotic tutor was developed and studied in a school setting, focusing on children’s interactions with the robot over time and across different educational scenarios. With support from the Responsible Research and Innovation Framework, this thesis furthermore sheds light on ethical dilemmas and the social desirability of implementing robots in future classrooms, seen from the eyes of teachers and students. The thesis concludes that children willingly follow instructions from a robotic tutor, and they may also develop a sense of connection with robots, treating them as social actors. However, children’s interactions with robots often break down in unconstrained classroom settings when expectations go unmet, making the potential gain of robots in education questionable. From an ethical perspective, there are many open questions regarding stakeholders’ concerns on matters of privacy, roles and responsibility, as well as unintended consequences. These issues need to be dealt with when attempting to implement autonomous robots in education on a larger scale.
Constraints of Digital Transformation
(2022-01-07) Khisro, Jwan
Digital transformation is viewed as instrumental in coping with organizational and societal challenges. In the public sector, these challenges include diverse issues, such as demographic changes, constrained financial resources, increasing complexity, and digital legacy. While there are opportunities for the public sector to benefit from digital transformation, there are also important constraints to consider. The aim of this thesis is to offer insights into these constraints and conceptualize how they impact digital transformation in public sector organizations. To address this aim, I apply a clinical inquiry approach focusing on two specific cases from the Swedish public sector during the period 2019–2021. Both organizations (County Administrative Boards and Sundsvall Municipality) have ongoing digital transformation initiatives with the research endeavor directed at actively supporting these initiatives. The thesis brings together five publications stemming from the clinical inquiries and presents a synthesis of the findings. This thesis contributes to research and practice by identifying and describing three mechanisms related to IT Governance, the funding model, and digital infrastructure that constrain digital transformation in public sector organizations by imposing a biased approach to digital transformation in which short-term goals take precedence over organizations’ long-term sustainability.
Creating and Assessing Multimodal Texts. Negations at the Boundary
(2014-04-09) Godhe, Anna-Lena
Digital technologies are becoming increasingly common in educational settings. The availability of such tools facilitates the creation of multimodal texts in which several kinds of expression are combined. In this thesis, the activities of creating and assessing multimodal texts in the subject of Swedish at upper secondary school level are analysed in order to illuminate how these activities relate to established practices of creating and assessing texts in educational settings. When the tools that the students work with, as well as the outcome of their activities are altered, the meaning of these altered activities in the educational setting needs to be negotiated. Encounters between new ways of working and educational environments require modification and appropriation of both the technologiesand the educational settings. Literacy and assessment are central concepts in this thesis. Spoken and written words have been central in conventional perceptions of the concept of literacy. However, as the communicational landscape has changed, there is a need to broaden this concept. Likewise, the necessity to broaden the concept of assessment has been discussed. When literacy and assessment are regarded as situated, the settings in which they occur have to be considered, because the concepts both affect and are affected by the environment. The aim of this thesis is to illuminate the relationship between technology, literacy and the educational setting by exploring the activities of creating and assessing multimodal texts. The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises four articles, in which the empirical material has been analysed to answer questions of how the multimodal texts are created and assessed. The empirical material has been collected in an iterative research process in which classroom interactions and interviews with students have been video and audio recorded. The theoretical framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) has been utilized in the analysis, focusing on how the components of activity systems affect and constitute each other. Tensions and contradictions in and between the different components, as well as between different activity systems, may lead to transformations. By studying these tensions and contradictions, insights can be gained into what enables and constrains transformations. The analyses show that it is mainly the spoken word that is negotiated and assessed in the multimodal texts. This mirrors conventional conceptions of the kinds of expressions that are regarded as valuable in language education. In the subject of Swedish, there is a hierarchy in the subject culture where the spoken and written words are regarded as primary in meaning making. Other kinds of expressions are largely overlooked when the multimodal texts are assessed. Thereby, the multimodal texts may reinforce the primacy of the written and spoken language in educational settings, instead of contributing to the evaluation and incorporation of different ways of expressing meaning in language classrooms.
Designing Digital Resourcing
(2019-11-29) Göbel, Hannes
Digital innovation has become imperative for organizational survival and is increasingly contributing to the growth of national wealth. A central element of digital innovation, brought into light in this dissertation, is digital resourc-ing. Digital resourcing refers to actions managing digital resources in the dis-covery stage of the digital innovation process. The increased awareness of ef-ficient resource management has spurred organizations to search for opera-tional digital resourcing systems that can support their innovation effort. How-ever, there is a lack of existing purposeful digital resourcing systems corre-sponding to the contemporary ideals serving the requirements of practitioners. This is problematic because it hampers human actors in service ecosystems from mobilizing, decoupling, and pairing digital resources that can leverage sustainable competitive advantages. The problem addressed has provided the momentum to concentrate the research effort into one single research question: How should digital resourcing systems be designed to spur the discovery of digital innovations? Consequently, the purpose of this study has been to iden-tify design knowledge supporting the development of digital resourcing sys-tems, and, to provide an operational digital resourcing system supporting or-ganizations in the discovery stage of the digital innovation process. The main theoretical contribution corresponds to three abstraction levels of design knowledge: 1) an operational web-based digital resourcing system, 2) design principles, and finally, 3) an IS design theory for digital resourcing. The results show that the design knowledge works, provides utility for its purpose, helps to solve the problem, and is correct.
Designing for technology-mediated collaboration
(2018-11-30) Nilsson, Stefan
This thesis concerns the design of a synchronous shared workspace supporting technology-mediated collaboration. In order to collaborate, participants need to be able to coordinate the activity. And to coordinate an activity, they need be aware of others involved in the collaboration. However, what do we need to be aware of concerning the others? And how do we visualize that? Further, how well does contemporary technology support what we need to visualize? And finally, how do we evaluate this type of system, and how do we communicate the results? Two systems were developed having different support for coordination of activities. The first system was used to gain insight into the impact of minimalist awareness information on a web page, while the second system, a web-based collaboration software was developed based on design guidelines emerging from the first system. Two observation studies and focus group sessions, as well as a literature study, supplemented the set of design guidelines into a first set of design requirements for the collaborative system. Inspired by a design science research approach, the system was developed in a cyclical fashion, alternating between development steps and various forms of evaluation. The thesis contributes by supplying a set of design patterns made to support coordination in a shared workspace based on a theoretical construct I call “self-awareness”, where users are not only seeing the activity of others, but also their own activity as seen by the others.
Designing Human-Centered Hybrid Decision Support Systems
(2023-04-19) Cao, Lu
Innovative decision support systems (DSSs) are revolutionizing key processes in organizations. These systems are used in managerial decision-making to solve increasingly complicated decision tasks, for example, using artificial intelligence. This research starts with the observation from practitioners’ workshops that they have significant concerns about existing DSSs. Earlier research also shows that DSSs have often been designed with an over-emphasis on machine capabilities. This one-sided design approach is problematic since it ignores human capabilities in decision-making. Consequently, organizations need more advanced DSSs that take account of two aspects: 1) they are designed with a human-centered intent; and 2) these DSSs should better utilize the complementary capabilities of humans and machines. In this study, such DSSs are called human-centered hybrid decision support systems (HC-HDSSs). The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute design knowledge supporting the development of HC-HDSSs. To achieve results, the action design research method has been used to build, intervene in, and evaluate the designed HC-HDSSs in three iterations. Two main results are presented: 1) a prototype of HC-HDSSs, which serves as an example of HC-HDSSs; and 2) five design principles concerning how HC-HDSSs should be developed.
Designing Platform Emulation
(2021-05-25) Rudmark, Daniel
Many contemporary firms and public agencies seek to engage external third-party developers to supply complementary applications. However, this type of development sometimes occurs without organizational consent, which creates problems for subjected organizations at both the technical and organizational levels. In this thesis, I have developed a theoretical perspective called open platform emulation. This perspective builds on emulation logics, where designers use an external model as a basis for developing compatible platform capabilities superior to the original model. In this thesis, this model has been external unsanctioned development. In open platform emulation, such capabilities include governance decisions enabling coherence with previously proven solutions, the flexibility to accommodate new development trajectories, and strategies for applying openness to a digital resource. The means to achieve these capabilities involves design rules’ architecture, interfaces, and integration protocols, which convey the capabilities to third-party developers. This way, a platform owner can draw on governance and architectural configurations to emulate self-resourcing behavior through the platform core. I generated the contributions from this thesis by materializing open platform emulation in a clinical setting. More specifically, I used action design research (ADR) together with the Swedish Transport Administration (STA). Starting in early 2012, I led a platform initiative that, in collaboration with the STA, sought to emulate self-resourcing to design an open platform. Here, I conducted two full ADR cycles that resulted in a currently active production platform used by both the STA and external third-party developers. Before this engagement, I also conducted studies of related phenomena within the Swedish public transport industry, and I have continued to follow the STA’s platform trajectory since its release in 2014. The theoretical contributions from this thesis include design principles that seek to guide the designers of open platforms in situations where digital resources are subject to self-resourcing. These design principles cover both product and process aspects throughout the open platform’s developmental trajectory. Also, I offer additional theoretical implications based on this work. These include extensions to current theories on open platforms, different types of platform emulation, an enunciated influence response to outlaw innovation, and methodological implications for guided emergence in ADR.
Developing child protection strategies: A Critical Study of Offenders’ Use of Information Technology for the Sexual Exploitation of Children
(2010-11-30) Eneman, Marie
Digital Distance Education – A Longitudinal Exploration of Video Technology
(2020-01-09) Dafgård, Lena
The context of this thesis is digital distance education. Distance education has developed from correspondence courses, based on letters sent by mail between student and teacher, to digital distance education with interactive video classes from anywhere, as long as a computer/tablet/smartphone and an Internet connection are available. The development of technology, particularly with the introduction of the Internet, has completely changed the possibilities for teaching, learning, interaction, and communication at a distance. Many technologies can be used in distance education, but this thesis aims to: Better understand the possibilities and limitations of video in digital distance higher education. The research has three elements of analysis: 1) video technology, 2) distance courses, and 3) distance teachers. Each allows a focus on how distance courses with video are designed and on teachers’ perspectives on the use of video in distance education. The first focus on course design is examined through two research questions. RQ1 asks, How is digital video used in distance higher education? When teachers design distance courses with digital video; a) which categories of video are used or not used? b) how much are these categories used? c) why are they used or not used? And d) how are they used? Complementing RQ1, RQ2 asks, How do course designers respond to the possibilities and limitations of video for distance higher education? Addressing the second focus of the thesis on teacher perspectives, RQ3 asks, What are the teacher’s attitudes and perceptions about the use of digital video in distance higher education? With a comprehensive literature review as a foundation, the results of this thesis include a classification system with two main categories; recorded and live video that is developed and used to orient an empirical investigation. The data for this investigation was collected through a national web-based questionnaire. Then, based on the survey, a specific higher education institution was selected for an interview study with teachers using video conferencing in distance courses in Teacher education. Interaction and communication are central concepts in this thesis, and the analytical lens combines the socio-cultural perspective and the theory of affordances. The results indicate that across types, video is mostly used as a supplement to other resources. Further, a correspondence is found concerning, on the one hand, teachers’ experience of distance education and participation in in-service training, and on the other hand, their use of video in teaching. In general, the most reported reasons why teachers do not use video are that it does not bring anything and takes too much time. Many of the constraints that teachers perceive are related to time; e.g. competition between an ambition to teach according to a student-centred approach but also a strong feeling of responsibility of delivering content to students. The technology of video has the affordances of mediating a teaching and learning environment similar to the one in the classroom, but conditions such as large groups or many students and the difficulty of perceiving non-verbal signals through video, affect the communication situation negatively and reduce possibilities of interaction. As a systematic study investigating the mainstream use of technology and media, this thesis contrasts with many other studies, which are often relatively small and local in nature, conducted by enthusiastic teachers investigating the use of one specific technology. The results show how the mainstream use of technologies such as video change conditions for distance teaching and influence how we think and interact with others and our environment.
Digital Innovation in the Value Networks of Newspapers
(2009-09-04T10:56:23Z) Åkesson, Maria
After decades of digital developments, we are now entering a truly digital era. Digital information and communication technology has become a naturally embedded part of the designed environment we live in. Most parts of life are today pervaded by digital products and services. Evidence of such immersion can be noted in, for instance, media consumption. This development is gradually shaping and cultivating a media environment that is ubiquitous. Such ubiquity is manifested in media’s constant presence and the changes in media consumption in the purview of digital innovation. Indeed, digital innovation is not only a shift in technology. It alters existing value networks and calls for rethinking existing value perceptions. While this disruptive change driven by digitization can be found in many industries, this thesis focuses on its impact on value networks in the newspaper industry. The digitization of newspapers started with the introduction of the internet in the 90´s and soon emerged into new media innovations. While these new media innovations have not replaced existing media, they have been disruptive to newspaper value networks. Recently, the emergence of yet another digital innovation is specifically interesting when studying changes to value networks of the newspaper industry: the e-paper. This innovation (a screen technology very close to print on paper) exhibits inherent values that make future replacement of print on paper a possibility. It is therefore regarded as a very promising technology in the newspaper industry. This thesis can be positioned at the intersection of the friction between forces to embark on a new media trajectory and forces to hang on to the established structures and control. The research question addressed in this thesis is: How are value networks of newspapers influenced by digital innovation? Addressing the research question, a multi method approach was adopted to gain a broad understanding of how digital innovation influences value networks of newspapers. Drawing on digital innovation literature, the thesis presents a theoretical perspective with which to understand how digital innovation
Digital Innovation: Orchestrating Network Activities
(2015-09-04) Jesper, Lund
Digitization of analogue everyday artifacts, i.e. when physical products are equipped with digital capabilities, has a profound impact on today’s society. Some examples of these digital innovations aimed at consumer markets are the “connected” car, the digitized television set, and in the near future, digitized IKEA furniture. Digital innovation provides endless opportunities for providing value adding products and services. However, in digital innovation there is a need to find new ways of organizing network activities, i.e. activities such as e.g. production and translation of knowledge and enrollment of actors. These activities need to embrace and build on the networked aspects and the complexity inherent to digital innovation. This requires network activities that can overcome challenges with the ambiguous and messy characteristics of digital innovation. In this thesis, I propose that the theoretical perspective of network orchestration can enlighten fruitful ways to address challenges that are encountered when organizing network activities in digital innovation. Inspired by practical challenges with digital innovation, as well as contemporary calls for research within IS, this thesis investigates: How can network activities be orchestrated in digital innovation? Two cases of digital innovation aimed at consumer markets are studied. The first case concerns the digitization of the newspaper. The second case regards the digitization of door locks. Literature about digital innovation is used to understand the context of the studied phenomenon. Furthermore, theories about network orchestration as well as activities in innovation are used as a theoretical framework to help answer the research question. The thesis is based on an interpretative perspective where a multi-method approach has been applied to address the research question. The contribution is divided into two different parts. The first part presents four categories of empirically derived network activities that address socio-technical challenges with organizing digital innovation. The second part is a proposed model detailing orchestration of network activities in digital innovation. The model is based around the four suggested categories of network activities: (1) Supporting flexible innovation networks, (2) Production and translation of layered architectural knowledge, (3) Addressing heterogeneous user communities, and (4) Harnessing generativity to leverage value. The categories of network activities can be viewed as building blocks for the orchestration process. By emphasizing both a proactive and a reactive way of orchestrating digital innovation, the model proposes a means for organizations to address the ambiguity and complexity of digital innovation.
Digital Safe Spaces
(2024-12-13) Ruiz Bravo, Nadia
In today’s interconnected world, digital spaces have become essential arenas for social interaction, self-expression, and community building. Among these, the concept of digital safe spaces has gained prominence, providing marginalized communities with spaces where they can seek refuge from discrimination, harassment, and oppression. These spaces are crucial for fostering inclusivity, support, and community building. This research departs from these spaces and aims to explore their nature by contributing to the growing literature on digital safe spaces, expanding the knowledge of this area, especially in the Information Systems (IS) field. Positioned in the empirical context of the video game industry, specifically, women in game development and political actions in the gaming sphere, this thesis builds on four interrelated studies and one book chapter, each contributing to a comprehensive understanding of digital safe spaces. These studies provide a conceptualization of digital safe spaces based on characteristics and types and discuss the importance of the cultivation of digital safe spaces to create a sense of safeness. In addition, digital safe spaces are examined as desired territories for participants who can potentially experience transformation through their participation in these spaces. By providing this multi-faceted analysis, this thesis contributes to the discourse on safety, safeness, inclusivity, and social change, offering insights for scholars interested in issues of marginalization, resistance, and digital technologies.
Disruptive technology : effects of technology regulation on democracy
(2006) Klang, Mathias
This work develops the thesis that there is a strong relationship between the regulation of disruptive technology and the Internet-based participatory democracy. In other words, attempts to regulate disruptive technology have an impact upon the citizen’s participation in democracy. This work will show what this relationship is and its effects on democratic participation. Taking its starting point from the recent theoretical developments in regulation, disruptive technology and role of ICT in participatory democracy, this work is the application of theoretical discussions on the field of the Internet-based participatory democracy. These theoretical discussions are used in the empirical exploration of six areas: virus writing and dissemination, civil disobedience in online environments, privacy and the role of spyware, the re-interpretation of property in online environments, software as infrastructure and finally state censorship of online information. The purpose of these studies is to explore the effects of these social and technical innovations upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy. The overall research question for this thesis is therefore: How do attempts to regulate disruptive technology affect Internetbased participatory democracy? The specific contribution of this thesis is the development of extended understanding of the way in which we regulate disruptive technology. This understanding helps us to better regulate that which is new and threatens that which is established. Additionally, the extended understanding in this field can then be applied to all domains where regulation of technology may occur. This thesis contributes towards a richer understanding in the research areas of e-democracy, technology regulation and disruptive technology.
Enacting ambidextrous IT governance in healthcare
(2020-05-20) Kizito, Michael
With digitalization, Information Technology (IT) has become an integral part of digital business strategies and future solutions and this calls for organizations to prioritize the governance of IT if they are to succeed or remain relevant. IS research has focused on the transformation of the IT function, where IT governance is considered one component of the IT function profile. At the same time, previous research in IT Governance has been criticized for an over-emphasis on design (mechanisms) rather than enactment and an over emphasis of efficiency through diagnostic control at the expense of innovation capabilities. Future research should focus on the enactment of governance as well. In line with this bias, the empirical studies in this thesis focusing on how IT governance is enacted in healthcare organizations are guided by the theory of organizational ambidexterity which suggests that successful organizations need to exploit existing opportunities to achieve efficiency, while at the same time exploring new opportunities to achieve innovation. In the health sector, the use of IT in hospitals over the years has been that IT is slowly adopted in comparison to other sectors but things have changed and healthcare has embraced the use of IT in digitalization. The adoption of IT is attributed to the intense pressure placed on hospitals to provide better quality of care, lower costs, and more and easier access to medical information for patients. Moreover, the use of IT in hospitals has followed a predictable pattern that has occurred in other sectors with more advanced IT resources. More hospitals have implemented integrated IT applications and span several functions. Some of the implementations include enterprise resource planning systems, electronic medical records and electronic medical administration records. This has contributed to the increase in complexity and sophistication of the IT capability in hospitals/healthcare and in turn increased the importance of IT governance in healthcare organizations. This empirical research adds to theoretical insights in the field of IT governance through the resource orchestration and ambidexterity perspective. This research employs qualitative data collection and analysis strategies following on the research question which is open ended and exploratory in nature. The research was carried out in two different settings i.e. Sweden and Uganda. This thesis contributes to research through offering a path ahead for future studies of IT governance. This was done by offering a unique account of how ambidextrous IT governance is enacted and operationalized through the resource orchestration lens. Second, the thesis contributes to the role of policy in the dynamic process of ambidextrous balancing, as well as on the role of policy in the digitalization of healthcare. As such, this thesis suggests that digital policy design should utilize the findings and method of the cross-country ambidextrous policy study herein to inform future design decisions.

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