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Drawing on recordings of remote screen-based work meetings in Finland, this conversation analytic study investigates interactive properties of mouse cursor movements in technology-mediated shared tasks. The article illustrates how participants rely on features afforded by the input device in ways that divert from its pre-designed functions to accomplish virtual pointing gestures. These gestures serve as an organizational resource in the precursory phase of action, i.e. when a next on-screen action is observably made relevant. In this sequential environment, pointing by means of the tool is a collaborative resource: an embodied practice for sustaining co-orientation and advancing the sequential progression of the activity. Pointing that co-occurs with first actions such as questions works towards mobilizing a response by projecting relevant nexts and displays the chair's orientation to the respective rights and obligations of the participants. peerReviewed

Synchronous online learning platforms have been used actively during the COVID-19 period. They have opened possibilities for online learning and interaction, but have also posed new challenges for instructors. This article provides insights into one teacher’s interactions and examines how the instructor presence is expressed in the teachers’ activities in virtual classrooms in higher education. Instructor presence is investigated using the social and teaching presence indicators of the community of inquiry (CoI) framework. Twelve hours of interactions across six online classes were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using content analysis. The findings suggest that indicators of teaching presence dominate interactions in a virtual classroom, but it often involves co-occurrences of indicators of social presence. The typical features of instructor presence included addressing students by name, encouraging them, expressing gratitude for and acknowledging their contributions, describing actions on the dashboard, clarifying and summarising content, and responding to technical concerns. These findings may suggest holistic and pedagogical ways to understand and develop synchronous online interactions and teaching and learning practices. They also have implications for the skills instructors need in virtual classrooms.

The ONE meeting approach aims to equip EU project managers and HE leadership with skills and competencies needed for making EU projects more efficient, greener and more sustainable. Our target groups can pick out what is relevant for them: The ONE Business Case provides evidence and offers tools to check the potential benefits for the environment; the ONE Virtual Toolkit offers a systematised collection of tools for virtual collaboration; and the ONE Guide presents a proof of concept and a step-by-step approach for switching to a ONE meeting only format. In the long run, we hope to impact project work on a regional, national and international level to become more sustainable and effective, while still focusing on the social and personal factors as well as mutual cultural understanding. We see project managers and leaders who use our resources for their own work as possible change agents. Following this, we hope to see our outcomes further developed, enriched and undergirded by our target groups through their own experiences, their innovative practices as well as their successes and failures. We are aware that what we have achieved is only a first step towards a sustainable, green and smart approach in transnational collaboration. Many more steps have to follow – supported by the experiences of projects using the ONE approach and by EU policies advocating a greener and more sustainable Europe. nonPeerReviewed

Purpose of Review The internet and virtual environments have enabled the formation of online communities around a variety of interests. Online communities focused on gambling are increasingly popular and attract users to interact and share ideas and experiences with likeminded others. This study reviews evidence from the latest research examining the role of online communities in gambling behaviors and gambling problems. Recent Findings A systematic literature search resulted in 17 studies. Research shows that online communities are used for diverse reasons like discussing gambling experiences and problems, sharing tips, and celebrating winnings with others. These reasons of online community use can have both adaptive and maladaptive implications. Online gambling communities often grow through social means by inviting friends or social media contacts to join. Active users of online gambling communities are more likely at-risk or problem gamblers. Summary Online communities have an increasingly central role in learning about gambling, continuing, and spreading of gambling behaviors. Participation in communities that support harmful gambling habits involves risks for problem gambling.

Virtual Exchange is a collective term for a set of collaborative online learning practices that cut across institutional, cultural, and international borders. Moving outside their learning environments, the participants engage in project work with foreign peers. The teams have to work across time zones, use foreign languages, manage cultural differences and apply digital tools for communication and collaboration. The virtual projects enhance the development of transversal work/life skills, which are an asset in today’s global labour market. The aim of the present study is to explore the emotional trajectory of Virtual Exchange based on the students’ e-portfolios. By analysing the self-evaluations, we can get a better understanding of the emotional experience of participating in Virtual Exchange and use the findings to develop the pedagogical facilitation of such projects. The research questions address the emotions that the students described when they were reporting on their learning experiences and the individual emotional trajectories that emerge in the students’ reports. Data was collected in the form of e-portfolios that the student participants submitted at the end of a Finnish-Polish Virtual Exchange project in 2019. The “Combining Expertise from Linguistics and Tourism: A Tale of Two Cities Told in Videos” collaboration had promotional discourse in tourism as its main theme. The participants (N=25) were university students majoring in tourism (Poland) and in foreign language studies (Finland). The e-portfolios were analysed with the help of dialogical approach combined with discourse analytical insights (Sullivan, 2012).

The aim of this study is to further understanding of children’s conceptions of mental well-being and their ideas for its digital promotion. The study is based on the need to provide children an opportunity to actively participate and share their understanding of mental well-being promotion with others in light of their understanding of what online environments and their design can afford for this promotion. The study was implemented as three subsequent workshops in primary school classrooms comprising four teachers and 79 children aged 9-11 years old. In the first two workshops, children reflected on mental well-being, digital environments they utilise and their possible connections to mental well-being. In the final workshop, children designed interaction designs and concepts for digital well-being promotion. Children broadly structured mental well-being through five main categories: individual factors, social interaction, healthy living, hobbies and creativity, and the absence of mental health problems. Children considered the effects of digital environments as factors that either promote or reduce mental well-being. The use of digital environments and various individual factors were experienced as contributing most to mental well-being. Whereas, children attributed the content of digital environments mainly as diminishing mental well-being. The children’s designs for digital environments raised similar issues to their reflections on the effects of the digital environments. These could be contrasted with design dimensions proposed by earlier research. In addition, the design sessions led children to highlight new factors, reinforcing the importance of children’s participatory interaction design. Children wanted to design environments that were safe in content and function and that did not include cyber-bullying. This study presents a combination of hands-on design research techniques through co-design and conceptual probing with children. It contributes an understanding of how children conceptualise and unite understandings of mental well-being to interaction design. peerReviewed

Achieving sustainable development as an inclusive societal process in rural landscapes, and sustainability in terms of functional green infrastructures for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, are wicked challenges. Competing claims from various sectors call for evidence-based adaptive collaborative governance. Leveraging such approaches requires maintenance of several forms of social interactions and capitals. Focusing on Pan-European regions with different environmental histories and cultures, we estimate the state and trends of two groups of factors underpinning rural landscape stewardship, namely, (1) traditional rural landscape and novel face-to-face as well as virtual fora for social interaction, and (2) bonding, bridging, and linking forms of social capital. We applied horizon scanning to 16 local landscapes located in 18 countries, representing Pan-European social-ecological and cultural gradients. The resulting narratives, and rapid appraisal knowledge, were used to estimate portfolios of different fora for social interactions and forms of social capital supporting landscape stewardship. The portfolios of fora for social interactions were linked to societal cultures across the European continent: "self-expression and secular-rational values" in the northwest, "Catholic" in the south, and "survival and traditional authority values" in the East. This was explained by the role of traditional secular and religious local meeting places. Virtual internet-based fora were most widespread. Bonding social capitals were the strongest across the case study landscapes, and linking social capitals were the weakest. This applied to all three groups of fora. Pan-European social-ecological contexts can be divided into distinct clusters with respect to the portfolios of different fora supporting landscape stewardship, which draw mostly on bonding and bridging forms of social capital. This emphasizes the need for regionally and culturally adapted approaches to landscape stewardship, which are underpinned by evidence-based knowledge about how to sustain green infrastructures based on both forest naturalness and cultural landscape values. Sharing knowledge from comparative studies can strengthen linking social capital. Funding Agencies|FORMASSwedish Research Council Formas [2017:1342]; VEGAVedecka grantova agentura MSVVaS SR a SAV (VEGA)European Commission [2/0078/18]; LIAISON-H2020 [773418]

This paper introduces a computer-based online scenario game that was developed to enhance the learning of human resource management (HRM) in an undergraduate course at a business school in Finland. What makes this game unique is that students played an important and active role in developing the game in collaboration with lecturers. Our findings show that the game enhances learning, interaction, and collaboration among students. We discuss how computer-based games and their development in collaboration with students can be used as a means for learning and improving working-life skills in higher education.

The global teams literature has increasingly documented challenges due to demographic faultlines. While this literature tends to assume that faultlines are fixed and produce negative outcomes for teams, organizational communication scholars have long regarded team processes as dynamic and fluid. Drawing on a CCO perspective, we offer a re-conceptualization of subgroups as dynamic and discursively constructed. This study draws on an in-depth, longitudinal analysis of two global virtual teams to examine the discursive construction of subgroups and the role they play in team dynamics. Through a multi-method analysis of a corpus of 839 emails and 16 interviews with members of two global project teams over their lifecycle, we find that the discursive construction of subgroups evolves over time and plays an important role in explaining how they are experienced by team members. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications for overcoming subgroup challenges in global teams. peerReviewed

This case study presents the results of an interdisciplinary Virtual Exchange (VE) that was arranged between Finnish and Polish students in 2019. During their six-week collaboration, the students of language studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, worked in teams together with their Polish peers specialising in information and communications technology and management in tourism at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. The international teams combined their linguistic and tourism-promotion expertise, and, using collaborative digital tools, grappled with the tasks of analysing the official municipal city websites and promoting the lesser-known aspects of their sister cities (Jyväskylä and Poznań) in jointly created videos. peerReviewed

Virtual exchange comprises online collaborative activities in facilitated, educational contexts across borders. This paper offers a multimodal approach to the study of social presence in students’ asynchronous online discourse in the context of virtual exchange. It draws on the Community of Inquiry model of online learning (Garrison 2017) and interprets social presence as the dynamic discursive process of social interaction and self-presentation. The data consists of screenshots collected in a closed Facebook group during the first assignment of a Czech-Finnish virtual exchange project in 2017. The study aims to explore how the method of multimodal discourse analysis can be used to describe the three dimensions of social presence. The students’ self-introductory posts, reactions and comments were examined in three modes of meaning-making: the linguistic, the visual and the action mode. The study offers a model for the qualitative multimodal discourse analysis of social presence construction in asynchronous social media interaction. peerReviewed

Ruostekoski, Anni. 2017. Intensiivisen intervalliharjoituksen ja harjoitusympäristön vaikutus aivoperäiseen hermokasvutekijään ja fysiologisiin vasteisiin nuorilla mieshiihtäjillä. Liikuntabiologia, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Liikuntafysiologian Pro Gradu- tutkielma, 64s. Johdanto. Tutkimukset ovat osoittaneet, että liikunnalla ja aivojen hyvinvoinnilla on selkeä yhteys. Liikunnan aivoille suotuisten vaikutusten välittäjäaineena näyttää toimivan aivoperäinen hermokasvutekijä (BDNF). Liikunnan on osoitettu akuutisti nostavan veren BDNF- pitoisuutta ja BDNF- pitoisuuden nousu näyttää olevan riippuvainen liikunnan intensiteetistä, sekä taito- vaatimuksista. Myös kortisoli ja IGF-1 saattavat liittyä liikunnan aikaisen BDNF- tuotannon säätelyyn. BDNF- tuotannon näkökulmasta maastohiihto on mielenkiintoinen liikuntamuoto sen fysiologisten ja teknisten vaatimusten vuoksi. Talvisin lajin harrastaminen on pitkälti riippuvainen lumitilanteesta, ja vähälumisten talvien aikana vaihtoehto lumella hiihtämiselle on rullahiihto juoksumatolla. Tämän päivän kehittyneen tekniikan avulla matolla hiihtoon voidaan yhdistää virtuaalinen, oikeaa hiihtoympäristöä matkiva ympäristö. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää intensiivisen harjoituksen vaikutuksia BDNF:ään, IGF-1:seen, kortisoliin ja laktaattiin sekä harjoitusympäristön vaikutusta BDNF:ään. Tarkoituksena oli myös verrata lumella hiihdon ja juoksumatolla virtuaaliympäristössä sekä ilman virtuaaliympäristöä tapahtuvan rullahiihdon fysiologisia vasteita. Menetelmät. Tutkimuksessa koehenkilöinä toimi yhdeksän kansallisen kärkitason nuorta mieshiihtäjää (KA ± KH: Ikä 18,8 ±1,5 vuotta, paino 72,4 ±4,9 kg, pituus 178,6 ±5,4 cm). Kaikki koehenkilöt suorittivat yhteensä kolme intensiivistä intervalliharjoitusta: Yhden harjoituksen lumella (L) ja kaksi rullahiihtoharjoitusta matolla, yhden virtuaaliympäristössä (V) ja yhden normaalissa ympäristössä (N). Kaikki harjoitukset koostuivat kolmesta intervallista, joiden välissä oli 3 minuutin palautus. Intervallien intensiteetit olivat 70% maksimisykkeestä (LOW), 85-90% maksimisykkeestä (HIGH) ja maksimi (100%, MAX). Nopeudet mattohiihtoihin määritettiin kaikille koehenkilöille yksilöllisesti lumella hiihdettyjen aikojen ja nopeuksien perusteella. Sykettä ja tekniikanvaihtoja mitattiin läpi koko harjoituksen ja laskimoverinäyte otettiin ennen harjoitusta (PRE) sekä jokaisen intervallin jälkeen. Verinäytteestä analysoitiin BDNF, IGF-1, kortisoli sekä laktaatti. Tulokset. BDNF oli PRE- näytteessä lumiympäristössä merkittävästi korkeampi (23.2 ± 4,8 ng/ml) kuin normaalilla (N) matolla (18.7 ± 5,0 ng/ml). N- matolla BDNF nousi merkitsevästi välillä PRE– HIGH (19. 8 ± 5.7 ng/ml vs. 23.3 5.8 ng/ml, p < 0.05). Kortisoli oli korkeampi lumella PRE- näytteessä verrattuna molempiin mattomittauksiin (N ja V). Lumen ja normaalin maton välillä ero säilyi myös kaikissa intervalleissa (LOW, HIGH, MAX). IGF- nousi lumella merkitsevästi PRE (50.6 ± 12.5 nmol/l) - HIGH (56.4 ± 13.4 nmol/l) välillä ja normaalissa mattoympäristössä PRE (45.8 ± 10.4 nmol/l) – MAX (49.0 ± 10.8 nmol/l) välillä (p < 0.05). IGF-1 arvoissa oli merkitsevä ero lumiympäristön ja molempien mattomittausten välillä kaikissa intervalleissa (LOW, HIGH, MAX). Laktaatti oli MAX-intervallissa merkittävästi korkeampi lumella (13.4 ± 1.7 mmol/l) kuin Virtuaali (8.8 ± 3.7 mmol/l) ja normaalissa mattoympäristössä (7.0 ± 2.7 mmol/l, p < 0.05). Myös syke oli lumella korkeampi MAX- intervallissa (181 ± 8 bpm) kuin virtuaali (172 ± 10 bpm) ja normaaliympäristössä (175 ± 7 bpm, p < 0.05). BDNF:n and IGF-1:n välillä löytyi positiivinen korrelaatio PRE mittauksessa sekä lumella (r=0.81, p

Virtual spaces as sites of social interactions and therefore identity work have become common over the past few decades. Alongside, research focus on such spaces has increased. This MA thesis constitutes a small contribution to the study of interactional identity building through computer mediated communication. The study was conducted on data gathered from a subsection of popular-culture blog tomandlorenzo. The aim was to identify how interactants in this space interactively work their identities. The qualitative discourse analysis focused on three mechanics of identity building, those of indexicality, performativity and stance taking. The investigation also took the influence of the medium on interactional identity work into account.Findings were that participants used indexicality mostly to position themselves in a broader social context independent of the local community. Contrarily, performances of identity in the Goffmanian sense were used to authenticate contributors in this specific virtual space. Displays of sympathy and emphases on similarities simultaneously served to convey individual’s identities and build local group belonging. Interactants’ stances and stance uptakes further assisted in positioning individuals inside the group and augmented a sense of community. The emphasis on community building was also apparent from the lack of dissent and conflicts in the data. The study reinforced previous research findings that identity is an accumulation of overlapping and complementary facets that are influenced by the medium of interaction.

Virtuaalitodellisuuden ja virtuaaliympäristöjen käyttö yleistyy monilla aloilla ja monissa tehtävissä. Paljon on keskitytty näiden ympäristöjen tekniseen toteutukseen ja ihmisen ja teknologian yhteistyöhön. Virtuaaliympäristöissä käyttäjien näkökulma ja se, miten he kokevat ihmisten välisen yhteistyön, on kuitenkin tärkeää, sillä teknologia tuo yhteistyöhön ja ihmisten väliseen vuorovaikutukseen haastavan lisäelementin. Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena on saada selville, millaista yhteistyö pienryhmissä on ulkopuolisen tarkkailijan näkökulmasta silloin, kun pienryhmän toiminta on sen jäsenten itsensä mielestä onnistunutta tai epäonnistunutta. Tutkielma tarkastelee pienryhmien yhteistyötä CAVE-virtuaalitilassa. CAVE on yksi immersiivisimmistä virtuaalitodellisuusjärjestelmistä, jota myös useampi käyttäjä voi käyttää samaan aikaan ja jossa käyttäjät voivat olla vuorovaikutuksessa keskenään. Tutkimusmenetelmänä käytetään videoanalyysiä, joka toteutettiin manuaalisesti videomateriaalia katsomalla ja kuuntelemalla, havaintoja ylös kirjaamalla ja analysoimalla. Tutkimuksessa löydettiin kaksi piirrettä, jotka erottivat onnistuneita ja epäonnistuneita pienryhmiä. Onnistuneissa pienryhmissä ryhmäläisten aktiivisuus jakautui tasaisemmin kuin epäonnistuneissa pienryhmissä. Epäonnistuneissa pienryhmissä taas esiintyi ryhmätasolla tiheämmin hiljaisuutta kuin onnistuneissa pienryhmissä. Havaitut tutkimustulokset auttavat ohjaajia havaitsemaan VE-tiloissa toteutettavien yhteistyöprosessien aikana ryhmien ulkopuolelta hetkiä ja piirteitä, jotka viestivät yhteistyön ongelmista. Tarvittaessa ohjaaja voi puuttua yhteistyöhön ja parantaa sen tuloksia ja osallistujien kokemuksia heti jo saman yhteistyöprosessin aikana. Yhteistyön optimoimiseksi ohjaajan tulee varmistaa kaikkien ryhmäläisten osallistuminen yhteistyöhön kannustamalla heitä verbaaliseen ja fyysiseen aktiivisuuteen.

Efforts towards developing and using virtual laboratories are increasing across the world. Virtual laboratories provide a platform for collaborative research without geographical or temporal boundaries. There is, however, a need for improving the coherence of structures providing virtual laboratories, especially concerning ecosystem services. This paper is a literature review on virtual laboratories with an emphasis on the ecosystem service sector. It provides recommendations and ideas to assist in closing the gap of coherencies of the complexities in this sector. The literaure report formed part of the work done in the Finnish Environement Institute (SYKE) to develop an assessment framework for ecosystem services (ESLab) and was linked to the LifeWatch project, funded by the Academy of Finland, and to the CLIMES project, funded by the Academy of Finland and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2003, Kennel and Jamieson described a method of remote machine authentication. By authentication, the authors meant that the remote machine is non-virtual, and the operating system on the remote machine is not malicious. The described method does not consider the variety of versions of each operating system. The description completely ignores the existence of modules that can be plugged into the operating system. The authors of this paper adapt the method described by Kennel and Jamieson to the real world so that itcan be applied without prior knowledge of theoperating system or the modules on the remote machine. peerReviewed

This case study considers a software development support portal adapted from open source developer communities into a company internal, so called inner-source development environment. With theoretical insights into knowledge management (KM) models, recent advancements in KM theory building, and observations of the inner source platform we make observations as regarding the KM approach and suggestions for its further development. Both technological and human components of KM are considered. The results of this study, can be generally applicable to the knowledge creation and innovation support in software development. We believe that many software companies are following the example and building virtual environments to support the knowledge processes and innovation in their activities. The case company, Nokia, is a pioneer in KM efforts for the software organization. peerReviewed

The Virtual Toolkit presents a selection of usable virtual tools for project staff within EU projects. The target group of this project being higher education professionals who work in cross-national projects in management, administration, research or technical support, defined the virtual tool selection and their division into categories. University of Jyväskylä (JYU) co-lead the development of the Virtual Toolkit working closely with Canice Consulting Limited (CCL) whose expertise was integrated using their earlier work on a Virtual Toolkit as a starting point. All partners in the ONE Meeting project had a significant role in the development of the Virtual toolkit. The creation of the Virtual Toolkit included several phases. In the first phase, the interview data that was gathered during the consultation of EU project professionals (N = 38) from 18 countries was used for the creation of a longlist of virtual tools. This list was then complemented by all partners through adding their favourite tools. In the second phase, JYU and CCL defined six categories for these tools based on needs of transnational projects in higher education: (1) Project management tools, (2) Collaboration and file sharing tools, (3) Research tools, (4) Meeting and webinar tools, (5) Polling, presentation and animation tools, and (6) Digital content creation tools. In the third phase, JYU designed a survey for partners to rate the usability, aspects of universal design and price of each tool. In the fourth phase, all partners carried out initial testing of the longlist of tools and, agreed on the final list of 23 tools based on the given criteria. In the fifth phase, partners wrote the descriptions for each selected tool based on a template created by CCL. In the sixth phase, JYU and CCL asked internal feedback from all partners and provided a revised version of the Virtual Toolkit. This procedure was repeated before the Virtual Toolkit was distributed for pilot testing. In the seventh phase Virtual Toolkit and a Feedback Survey were delivered for 48 pilot testers that presented the target groups and were located in different European countries. The final version of the Virtual Toolkit was edited based on this feedback. CCL was responsible of finalizing the graphic design of the Virtual Toolkit. Finally, the published Virtual Toolkit was localised by translating it to Spanish, Italian and German. nonPeerReviewed