Abstract. An activity theory model and a mediating artifacts hierarchy were employed to help identify the needs for tools for customer support engineers who documented solutions to customer problems, a knowledge authoring activity. This activity also involves customer support engineers who assist Hewlett-Packard software product users. The particular tools to be designed were knowledgeauthoring tools embedded in the customer support tracking application suite, SupportTracker. 1 The research analyzed the role of tensions between the elements of Engeström’s activity theory model. The research also explored the benefits of specific interpretations of Engeström’s refinement of Wartofsky’s mediating artifacts hierarchy. The hierarchy contributed to the identification of desired characteristics of mediating artifacts, particularly tools. The findings included an interpretation of the “where-to ” artifact concept as supporting an understanding of the entire activity system as an evolving entity. Specific interventions were used to achieve a positive impact on the evolution of the activity system. Key words: activity theory, communities of practice, customer support organization, field study, intervention, knowledge authoring and maintenance, mediating means, requirements engineering, software design 1.

What is the computational notion of "implementation"? It is not individuation, instantiation, reduction, or supervenience. It is, I suggest, semantic interpretation. This document is Technical Report 97-15 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science) and Technical Report 97-5 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science). 1 INTRODUCTION Consider the relationships among algorithms, computer programs, and the computers that execute them. An algorithm is (roughly) a procedure for computing a function (for more details, see Soare 1996; Rapaport, forthcoming). A program is a more specific and detailed textual expression of an algorithm, expressed in a programming language. Often, it is said that the program "implements" the algorithm. A computer process is an algorithm being executed (see Rapaport 1988, 1995; Smith 1997). It is a physical device (a computer) behaving in a certain way ; the way is described (or specified) by the program, and the physical device running the ...

This essay explores the implications of the thesis that implementation is semantic interpretation. Implementation is (at least) a ternary relation: I is an implementation of an ‘Abstraction ’ A in some medium M. Examples are presented from the arts, from language, from computer science and from cognitive science, where both brains and computers can be understood as implementing a ‘mind Abstraction’. Implementations have side effects due to the implementing medium; these can account for several puzzles surrounding qualia. Finally, an argument for benign panpsychism is developed.

This paper attempts a conceptualization of coordination in Global Software Development (GSD) by arguing that distribution is a significant conditioner of software development that engenders distance-related, socio-cultural and technological conditioners. It is proposed that the core organising dimensions on which coordination analysis in GSD should focus are people, processes, information, technology and the interactions between them. It is also argued that these dimensions are characterized by process interdependencies, interpersonal and interunit conflicts, information uncertainties and equivocalities, technology representations, and their interrelations. The final argument is that the management of the dimensions ’ characteristics – which defines coordination – will be conditioned by distribution, and that the awareness of this conditioning must be central in coordination analysis. The resultant is an analytical framework that will hopefully proffer a theoretical foundation for research on coordination in GSD.

This paper examines the notion of the model as it may be used in software engineering via the definition of a series of progressively more complex relationships between the modeller, the model and what is modelled. A gradual historical development is identified where the purpose of the model changes from its representation of a pre-existing subject to its action as a precedent and a definition for some subsequent artifact that is its object. The notion of a composite model type, or mould, combining both purposes is made explicit. Its implications for traceability in multi-model processes are being investigated. 1.

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Abstract. A learning environment for the training of communicative competence has to consider the complexity of human experience, since it requires a number of cues that are managed hic et nunc in the flow of communicative exchange. Therefore, communicative competence has been traditionally considered as a typical face-to-face learning topic. So far, few opportunities exist to learn by experience in an e-learning environment that can combine user’s practising and experiencing with an adequate scaffolding structure, giving the learner both the opportunity to fail and the opportunity to give sense to the perspectives selected. Recent work on computer-based interactive simulations and autonomous agents is offering new opportunities for the training of communicative competence in different contexts. Simulation creates a unique environment for developing and executing communication skills. Moreover, the communicative interaction can be developed and enhanced in a realistic, but non-threatening situation. The present chapter aims at analysing how communication skills should be learned through computer-based interactive simulations. First, a definition of communication skills

for Conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR'01), May 17--19, Pavia, Italy "Any kind of working model of a process is, in a sense, an analogy" (Craik 1943) ". . . analogy is like a modeling relation except that it relates two natural systems, rather than a natural system and a formal one" (Rosen 1991) "But it can be misleading to call analogies `models', because verbal models are not straightforward small scale versions of a larger object" (Johanssen 1993) There is a very strong tendency for scientific models---or explanations---of new phenomena to be analogical. For if we seek to explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, what is this but analogy? To quote Popper (1972, p. 358): From Descartes . . . to Maxwell, most physicists tried to explain all newly discovered relations by mechanical models; that is, they tried to reduce them to laws of push or pressure, with which we are acquainted from handling everyday physical things. This is only natural. Models are abstract simplif...

The field of Artificial Life (ALife) has focussed attention on bottomup explanations of adaptive behaviour, and how this can result from relatively simple systems interacting dynamically with their environments. Two differing approaches in developing these ideas are: to build models of simple sensorimotor systems in specific animals, assessed within complete behaviourenvironments loops; and to explore the behaviour of invented artificial animals (often called ‘animats’) under similar conditions. But how can we learn about real biology from simulation of a nonexistent animal? I will argue that most animat research, to the extent that it is relevant to biology, should also be considered as model building. Many claims are made for the animat approach: that it involves instantiation and is thus not simulation; that it uses idealised rather than realistic models; that the aim is theory exploration and existence proof rather than accounting for biological data; that the abstraction of the models makes the conclusions drawn from them more general. Few of these claims hold up under analysis, and it is suggested that we will learn more by choosing real, and not madeup, targets for our models.

The focus of the study is on cognitive processes and learning strategies in multicultural groups of a Bachelor of Engineering programme in information technology in a polytechnic. This work combines anthropological theory of mental schemas and new findings in neuroscience with sociocultural theories of learning in order to formulate a theoretical framework for engineering education. The study brings to light the often ignored embodied, emotional, motivational, and social aspects of cognition in learning. The research consists of surveys, field observations, and analysis of materials produced by students as part of course work.