Elements of methodology for designing Participative Document Spaces

International audienceThis paper presents the first elements of a methodology for designing Participative Document Spaces (PDS), as well as the initial results produced by this methodology within an industrial project aiming at designing a radioactive waste disposal. We define PDS as networked digital settings (such as blogs, forums, wikis) which enable their users to build documents and converse at the same time. Designing a PDS in a given situation thus implies modeling the links between existing settings for building documents and conversing, as well as the costs generated by replacing all or parts of these settings with a PDS. The analysis of our model project shows (a) that numerous settings, both for building documents and conversing, are being used to discuss document content, (b) that improving tracking those discussions could improve the “memory” of the project evolution. In this context, a wiki seems an appropriate tool in the extent that it would allow to directly attach to the documents most of the conversations related to them, thus fostering readability of those conversations and the “memory” of the project. Further studies remain to be conducted to determine the proper functions of the wiki, the rules applying to its use and the diverse costs generated by its deployment within this particular project

Knowledge Management Challenges for Nongovernment Organizations: The Health and Disability Sector in New Zealand

This paper reports on an exploratory study looking at the knowledge management (KM) challenges faced by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Specifically, this paper looks at NGOs in the health and disability sector in New Zealand. Within this sector, the introduction of competitive tendering and contracting and a lack of transparent funding processes has seen a move towards greater contestability of services in the NGO sector. To ameliorate this situation requires effective management of knowledge assets and a sound understanding of KM practices. Using qualitative research methods, we studied the KM practices of nine NGOs in the health and disability sector in New Zealand. Our findings suggest that there are many barriers to the successful implementation of KM in NGOs, some of the most important ones being related to organizational structure and culture

Formes de régulations et de gouvernance formelles des communautés en ligne. Ce que dit la littérature et ce qu'il faudrait savoir

Ce rapport de recherche est une synthèse de la littérature en sciences sociales abordant la question de la régulation formelle des communautés en ligne, en particulier celles des sites de réseaux sociaux, de partage de vidéos, de "fanfictions", les communautés open-source, open-media, les communautés de blogueurs, etc.Formal regulation, online communities, management science, open-source, open-media, online videos, fanfics, multiplayer games, social networks.

An investigation of the use of a Wiki to support knowledge exchange in public health

This paper describes the use of a wiki to foster joint learning among a group of non-profit, community-based organizations involved with improving public health in London. The goal of the wiki was to encourage the growth of a community of practice-clear patterns of mutual engagement, joint enterprise and an emergent and shared repertoire of action-among these organizations. Participants reported that they failed to contribute to the wiki largely for economic reasons, issues of identity, and a lack of group norms. A critical factor in its failure, however, was the lack of its integration into existing work practices and project governance

Causal effects of wiki site design on anxiety and usability

Within society Information Technology (IT) is becoming pervasive. This is no more pronounced than in Higher Education where IT is almost ubiquitously used. Current developments have also seen Web 2.0 tools such as wikis being used in pedagogical contexts. Research in computer anxiety has identified that quality of initial experience may be important in the onset of anxiety towards IT. However the concept of computer anxiety is too vague to reflect likely reactions to specific IT scenarios especially in interactions with social technology such as wikis. Although wikis are growing in popularity little is known about users‟ emotional reaction towards contributing to them, how their experiences shape these emotions as well as the users‟ view of usability above that mentioned in qualitative research. Due to the interface, social and flexible nature of wikis users may be anxious towards editing. This research aims to offer causal insight into the influence of wiki site design characteristics on anxiety towards wiki editing and users usability evaluation of wiki editing experiences. Three experiment-based studies are presented addressing the effects of site characteristics such as in-built training spaces (i.e. tutorials and sandboxes commonly used on wikis), user editing identity as well as aspects inherent to wiki sites such as content flexibility, on anxiety felt by users in editing scenarios and users usability rating of their editing experiences. The research also aimed to identify whether initial experiences affected anxiety about further editing, as suggested by computer anxiety research, or whether emotions are only affected during editing experience. The findings of the initial study on in-built training spaces suggest that the concept of wiki anxiety measured in this research more accurately reflects anxiety experienced during interaction than computer anxiety. Additionally the in-built training spaces using tutorials were seen to lead to better first experiences for novice users in using the wiki markup interface than those without (such as when experiencing sandbox training spaces and no training). Similarly the presence of a tutorial reduced wiki anxiety during interaction but did not affect anxiety towards future editing. From these findings the work advanced to study the effect of identity salience on wiki anxiety during editing and wiki usability focusing on contributing content using a user group with experience editing wikis. This was so as to explore the effect of wiki characteristics on user experience variables above that from first exposure anxiety likely in novice users. The research found that participants were less anxious when editing the wiki anonymously than when editing using a pseudonym and full name identity. There was however no effect of identity salience on usability rating. Additionally the type of edit conducted by participants, in terms of addition or deletion and replacement of content, did not have a significant effect on either anxiety during editing or usability evaluation. Further research exploring the effect of flexibility and other user behaviour on user anxiety and usability evaluation when contributing subsequently found that there was no significant effect of flexibility on the wiki user experience variables. The work demonstrates successful empirical evaluation of the wiki user editing experience can be achieved and can lead to important causal insight into the effects of wiki site design on the users‟ experience. It also identifies aspects of the site that can lead to the reduction of anxiety towards editing during interaction and influence usability rating towards the system