Schools face increasing pressure to ensure teachers are using data to support and inform their instruction, and the practice of data-based decision making has many positive effects on teacher satisfaction, instruction, and student achievement. Teachers face difficulties in gathering, organizing, and effectively utilizing student data to drive…

In any modern society, individuals interact to form opinions on various topics, including economic, political, and social aspects. Opinions evolve as the result of the continuous exchange of information among individuals and of the assimilation of information distributed by media. The impact of individuals' opinions on each other forms a network,…

This dissertation analyzes the geography of information in the 21st century where BigData, social networks, user generated production of content and geography combine to create new and complex patterns of space, context and sociability. Both online and offline, social networks are creating a space that simultaneously unifies individuals and…

Location-based services have been identified as a promising communication paradigm in highly mobile and dynamic vehicular networks. However, existing mobile ad hoc networking cannot be directly applied to vehicular networking due to differences in traffic conditions, mobility models and network topologies. On the other hand, hybrid architectures…

This work aims to understand real-world factors shaping behaviors and attitudes towards location-sharing social networks (LSSN), especially as to why people avoid or abandon this technology, or limit their usage. Based on interview-based qualitative research and survey-based exploratory quantitative research, I hypothesize conceptual models…

This study examines how emergent communities might show different patterns of uses and perceptions for communication and profile features when geolocation features are used. It explores the ways that location awareness moderates the social and cognitive processes that motivate people's participation in the sharing of personal information…

Information sharing is a fundamental goal of information systems (IS). Yet information sharing, although critical and much acclaimed, is complex in terms of its concepts and implementation. How to leverage this phenomenon while implementing an IS is discussed at length in the literature. Both academics and practitioners in IS are striving to…

Although e-medicine, just as with all information technology (IT), was developed and piloted in developed countries, it has not been successfully applied to address pressing medical problems in SSA (Mbarika & Okoli, 2003; Maher, et al., 2010). There is a lot of research that has been conducted in the last decade on telemedicine in sub-Saharan…

Interdisciplinary design presents challenges in design collaboration due to the difficulty in communicating and coordinating among disciplines. Many tools have been developed and used to support information sharing in design, and the use of Web technology is becoming increasingly important for the sharing of information within design teams. Wikis…

This dissertation aims to investigate how advanced information technologies cope with the various demands of disaster response. It consists of three essays on the exploration of micro-blogging and FOSS environments. The first essay looks at the usage of micro-blogging in the aftermath of the massive 2008 China earthquake and explores the…