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The emerging ambient persuasive technology looks very promising for many areas of personal and ubiquitous computing. Persuasive applications aim at changing human attitudes or behavior through the power of software designs. This theory-creating article suggests the concept of a behavior change support system (BCSS), whether web-based, mobile, ubiquitous, or more traditional information system to be treated as the core of research into persuasion, influence, nudge, and coercion. This article provides a foundation for studying BCSSs, in which the key constructs are the O/C matrix and the PSD model. It will (1) introduce the archetypes of behavior change via BCSSs, (2) describe the design process for building persuasive BCSSs, and (3) exemplify research into BCSSs through the domain of health interventions. Recognizing the themes put forward in this article will help leverage the full potential of computing for producing behavioral changes.

Background Computer Aided Diagnostics (CAD) can support medical practitioners to make critical decisions about their patients’ disease conditions. Practitioners require access to the chain of reasoning behind CAD to build trust in the CAD advice and to supplement their own expertise. Yet, CAD systems might be based on black box machine learning models and high dimensional data sources such as electronic health records, magnetic resonance imaging scans, cardiotocograms, etc. These foundations make interpretation and explanation of the CAD advice very challenging. This challenge is recognised throughout the machine learning research community. eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is emerging as one of the most important research areas of recent years because it addresses the interpretability and trust concerns of critical decision makers, including those in clinical and medical practice. Methods In this work, we focus on AdaBoost, a black box model that has been widely adopted in the CAD literature. We address the challenge – to explain AdaBoost classification – with a novel algorithm that extracts simple, logical rules from AdaBoost models. Our algorithm, Adaptive-Weighted High Importance Path Snippets (Ada-WHIPS), makes use of AdaBoost’s adaptive classifier weights. Using a novel formulation, Ada-WHIPS uniquely redistributes the weights among individual decision nodes of the internal decision trees of the AdaBoost model. Then, a simple heuristic search of the weighted nodes finds a single rule that dominated the model’s decision. We compare the explanations generated by our novel approach with the state of the art in an experimental study. We evaluate the derived explanations with simple statistical tests of well-known quality measures, precision and coverage, and a novel measure stability that is better suited to the XAI setting. Results Experiments on 9 CAD-related data sets showed that Ada-WHIPS explanations consistently generalise better (mean coverage 15%-68%) than the state of the art while remaining competitive for specificity (mean precision 80%-99%). A very small trade-off in specificity is shown to guard against over-fitting which is a known problem in the state of the art methods. Conclusions The experimental results demonstrate the benefits of using our novel algorithm for explaining CAD AdaBoost classifiers widely found in the literature. Our tightly coupled, AdaBoost-specific approach outperforms model-agnostic explanation methods and should be considered by practitioners looking for an XAI solution for this class of models.

With the development of science and technology, the demand for programmers has increased. However, learning computer programs is not an easy task. It might cause a significant impact on programming if misconceptions exist at the beginning of the study. Hence, it is important to discover and correct them immediately. Chatbots are effective teaching aids, they can assist students in eliminating misconceptions. They also assist teachers to instruct students according to their aptitude, which teachers found it hard to accomplish without technical supports when teaching in large classes. Therefore, this experiment uses chatbots to assist learners in the correction phase. We consider that learners who failed unit quizzes might have misunderstandings in programming concepts. We believe chatbots can teach according to individual misunderstandings and give correct responses to their unclear concepts. It is more effective than traditional teaching methods. In addition, to prevent human-computer interaction barriers, such as picking wrong keywords and giving plausible replies, or learners not being able to express their problems clearly, this experiment also adds concept maps to the chatbots’ dialogue, to work as the dialogue structure for each chatbot. The maps help the chatbots to explain concepts in each unit systematically and logically. The chatbots give questions according to the concepts on the concept maps and ask learners to reply with their answers. An ANCOVA test investigated students’ scores. Result showed the p-value is below 0.001, indicating that the group using concept map chatbots has better correction effects than the other group using only concept maps.

This contribution investigates higher education students’ perceptions about mobile learning (m-learning) applications, as well as the effects of social influences and of appropriate facilitating conditions, on their intentions to continue using them. A structured survey questionnaire integrated valid measures from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to better explain their acceptance and use of m-learning software. The findings reported that facilitating conditions including the provision of resources, ongoing training opportunities and technical support, were affecting the respondents’ engagement with m-learning programs. The respondents indicated that they were not influenced by others to use mobile technologies for educational purposes. The results also suggest that they were well acquainted (and habituated) with the use of mobile devices and their applications. Evidently, they helped them improve their learning journeys.

The aim of this study was an experimental research in vocational schools intended to the development of the system of educational process informatization taking into account the structure of the ICT competence of skilled workers and the trends of the information society. Representative sample of over 800 students of 10 vocational schools from different regions of Ukraine, 80 teachers, 17 specialists of VET centers allowed to study and analyze the state of informatization of VET schools, as well as to determine the degree of influence of education informatization on the quality of workers’ training. The system of educational process informatization at a technical vocational school, i.e. the creation of the ICT-saturated educational environment was implemented. This is a set of interrelated activities that comprise learning management systems; information and analytical databases; computer simulation of professional actions; programs of control of knowledge; application of ICT for writing diploma papers; computer methods of competence diagnostics; simulation training complexes; expert and decision support systems. The experiment showed that the use of the developed methods of skilled workers’ informational training, of applying pedagogical software tools at technical vocational school and of training vocational school teachers how to use ICT contributes to the improvement of graduates’ professional competence.

Software comes from India, hardware comes from China. Why is that? Why did China and India take such different paths to global dominance in new high-tech industries? Will their paths continue to diverge or converge? How can other countries learn from their successes – and failures – in reaching global scale in new industries? To answer these questions, this book presents the first rigorous comparison of the growth of the IT industries in China and India, based on interviews with over 300 companies. It explains the different growth paths of the software and hardware sectors in each country, providing insights into the factors behind the emergence of China and India as global economic powers. It provides a compelling case study of how differences in economic policies and the investment climate affect industrial growth. This book sheds new light on common debates on 'China versus India', on why India is the software capital of the world while China is a manufacturing powerhouse. It refutes common myths about the growth of these industries – for example, the role of Non-Resident Indians or the Y2K problem in the growth of the Indian software industry, the role of government intervention in industrial growth, and the relative size of China and India's software industries.

Live-streaming e-commerce is the future development direction of the retail industry. When retailers choose a live-streaming e-commerce platform, they face the test of various risks of the platform, such as insecure control of capital flow, insufficient support of public domain traffic, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the risks of the platform to help retailers identify the platform with the lowest risk. Considering the complexity of the risks of live-streaming e-commerce platforms and the ambiguity of the decision-makers thinking, the current method for multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) method in a fuzzy environment rarely discusses the decision-makers weight for the criterion. This paper proposes interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy multi-criteria group decision-making based on the decision-makers’ professionalism to evaluate the platform’s risks. This method determines the decision-maker’s weight for the criterion based on the professionalism of the decision-maker and uses the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) method to rank the alternative platforms. Finally, a risk assessment of the agricultural product live-streaming e-commerce platforms is used as a case study to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. This research will not only provide practical guidance for retailers to choose the live-streaming e-commerce platform with the lowest comprehensive risk but also provide ideas for the research of live-streaming e-commerce from the perspective of risk assessment.

Students having participated in a one-to-one laptop initiative, indicate they have higher motivation, greater interest at school (Bebell and Kay 2010 ) and feel more organised (McKeeman 2008 ). This research focuses on the views and attitudes of the students who participated in the first such initiative in Greece. The differences in the views of boys and girls are also examined. The students completed a questionnaire with 15 Likert style statements and two open questions twice: at the beginning and at the end of the school year 2010–2011. From the students’ responses, it can be concluded that students like having the laptop at school: they go there with greater pleasure, they consider the classes more enjoyable but they are bothered with the technical problems. For gender differences, boys are more adaptable, whereas girls appreciate more the learning possibilities of the laptop.

ICT is an effective tool which can support young children’s reading skills in English as a foreign language (EFL), while teachers’ perceptions influence their classroom practices; however, there is limited empirical evidence on students’ perceptions on the use of ICT to enhance early reading skills in EFL. This study investigated early childhood student teachers’ perceptions regarding children’s reading skills in EFL via ICT, in Greece. A questionnaire was administered to 110 students. Students expressed positive perceptions indicating their willingness-intention to use ICT in teaching reading in EFL to young children. The skills and strategies most reported were that they will use computers (high percentage of agreement, over 70%) in their classrooms for the extension of children’s vocabulary and the motivation of children to read and to like reading. Students perceived as major barriers the technical support and the availability of resources. The greater the year of study, the more positive were their perceptions. Implications for early childhood pre-service teacher training and educational policy are discussed.