Intelligent support for knowledge sharing in virtual communities

Virtual communities where people with common interests and goals communicate, share resources, and construct knowledge, are currently one of the fastest growing web environments. A common misconception is to believe that a virtual community will be effective when people and technology are present. Appropriate support for the effective functioning of online communities is paramount. In this line, personalisation and adaptation can play a crucial role, as illustrated by recent user modelling approaches that support social web-groups. However, personalisation research has mainly focused on adapting to the needs of individual members, as opposed to supporting communities to function as a whole. In this research, we argue that effective support tailored to virtual communities requires considering the wholeness of the community and facilitating the processes that influence the success of knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are focusing on closely knit communities that operate in the boundaries of organisations or in the educational sector. Following research in organisational psychology, we have identified several processes important for effective team functioning which can be applied to virtual communities and can be examined or facilitated by analysing community log data. Based on the above processes we defined a computational framework that consists of two major parts. The first deals with the extraction of a community model that represents the whole community and the second deals with the application of the model in order to identify what adaptive support is needed and when. The validation of this framework has been done using real virtual community data and the advantages of the adaptive support have been examined based on the changes happened after the interventions in the community combined with user feedback. With this thesis we contribute to the user modelling and adaptive systems research communities with: (a) a novel framework for holistic adaptive support in virtual communities, (b) a mechanism for extracting and maintaining a semantic community model based on the processes identified, and (c) deployment of the community model to identify problems and provide holistic support to a virtual community. We also contribute to the CSCW community with a novel approach in providing semantically enriched community awareness and to the area of social networks with a semantically enriched approach for modeling change patterns in a closely-knit VC.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A Design Theory for Digital Platforms Supporting Online Communities: A Multiple Case Study

This research proposes and validates a design theory for digital platforms that support online communities (DPsOC). It addresses ways in which digital platforms can effectively support social interactions in online communities. Drawing upon prior literature on IS design theory, online communities, and platforms, we derive an initial set of propositions for designing effective DPsOC. Our overarching proposition is that three components of digital platform architecture (core, interface, and complements) should collectively support the mix of the three distinct types of social interaction structures of online community (information sharing, collaboration, and collective action). We validate the initial propositions and generate additional insights by conducting an in-depth analysis of an European digital platform for elderly care assistance. We further validate the propositions by analyzing three widely used digital platforms, including Twitter, Wikipedia, and Liquidfeedback, and we derive additional propositions and insights that can guide DPsOC design. We discuss the implications of this research for research and practice

Studies of Content-Mediated Interaction: Insights into Activities, Motivations and User Experience Design

The amount of user-generated digital content in social media has exploded during recent years. Currently, it is easy to capture and produce versatile personal content, for example, activity data that is recorded with devices, such as heart rate monitors or the preference data of the music you listen to. A plethora of services exists for content sharing. Sharing digital content, such as images, audio, and video allows people to express themselves, create new contacts, strengthen ties with existing contacts, and to collaborate with other people. Social activities through content can create a sense of belonging and being part of a community. Digital content mediates social interaction through online services. For example, a shared video tells someone the story of an event that they could not be physically present at, and then shared exercise data might inform others of an interesting cycle route for a specific type of exercise. The sharing of traditional, personal digital content such as photos and videos has been widely studied, but recently it has become increasingly common to produce different types of content collaboratively and various services enable social interaction around such content – not just the sharing of it. The guidance for designers on how to build services to enable users to engage in these interactions naturally is still limited. To design better services, we need a better understanding of user activities together with the shared content and the collaborative practices that they form. Thus, this work focuses on novel types of user-generated digital content as well as the related activities, motivations, and user experiences.This compound thesis contributes to the research field of human-computer interaction; more specifically, the user experience. The thesis contains findings from six user case studies, involving a total of 328 participants. Through the case studies, we identified the elements that contribute to the user experience of content-mediated interaction with various content types. The theoretical contribution of this work is the introduction of the concept of contentmediated interaction. This work identifies the different elements that affect content-mediated interaction, and builds a content-mediated interaction model. The work extends the knowledge of user activities and the related user experience with novel types of shared content and of the user’s motivation to participate in content-mediated interaction. As a practical outcome, the thesis presents design implications. The thesis first proposes that understanding content-mediated interaction helps to design better applications and services that support online social interaction. Second, this helps to evaluate and refine the existing services as well as understand the emerging new content types in the future. Understanding the underlying activities and motivations supports the creation of new interaction features, service concepts, and finally, identifying business prospects

Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter: A sociomaterial analysis

“BEST. PD. EVER!” Some teachers make bold claims for the way that Twitter supports their professional development, yet research into this area is rather limited. This study sought to gain a better understanding of the practices involved and the part that Twitter plays. It uses a sociomaterial sensibility informed by actor-network theory (ANT) to unravel the complex webs of relations which form, break apart and reform when knowledge practices are enacted in the mediated arena of Twitter. To explore this rich but messy environment, I evoke the spirit of the Parisian flâneur to develop an ethnographic approach I refer to as ‘flânography.’ Characterised by purposeful wandering, the approach coupled participant observation and interviews, with emerging methods involving a bot and a 'walkie-talkie' app. Adopting the sensibility of the flâneur consistently through data collection, analysis and presentation resulted in traversals which render pathways of experience. This led to me presenting the findings in three ‘Gatherings’ (Law, 2004a), each taking a tweet or other data snippet as a point of departure. Through the Gatherings I present the activities of both human and nonhuman participants, establish how they came together (or didn’t) and gain a better appreciation of the outcomes of those interrelationships. In reading across the Gatherings, two interlocking dimensions emerged through which teachers' learning practices on Twitter might be conceptualised. ‘Compound learning’ describes how practices can be understood through three meanings of compound: framed chemically (through formation of bonds and associations), financially (like interest which grows cumulatively) and as a mixture (an assortment of actors engaged in activities). The second dimension describes how compound learning can be enacted across three ‘scales:’ acts, activities and practices. By extending previous research, this thesis contributes a richer and deeper understanding of what ‘Twitter Professional Development’ involves, thereby helping to legitimise it within broader professional development discourse. Adding to the current literature on teachers’ professional learning, this thesis reveals how significant personal-isation is in two senses: that teachers can exercise choice in what, when and how they learn; and secondly, the importance of being able to forge socio-professional connections with fellow educators in different ways. The flânographic approach and the new methods which arose within it offer wider contributions for studies exploring activities which range across online and offline spaces, and through time