The development and evolution of transactive memory system over time in MUVEs

CSCW in education is a topic that drew a lot of attention over the years, and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are one of the tools utilized by many educators to support their teaching objectives. MUVEs enable students to connect, immerse and interact with their peers and the environment, and synchronously engage and collaborate in learning activities. Effective communication and collaboration contributes to student learning, and the topic of Transactive Memory System (TMS) within working groups has been found to be very beneficial. TMS relates to the representation of the knowledge possessed by the members of a team that allows identifying who knows what, providing efficiency in collaboration. While the use of educational MUVEs has been thoroughly investigated in the literature, little is known about the use of such environments to support TMS and their relationship with working group dynamics. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the development and evolution of a TMS between groups within a MUVE, in order to better understand the dynamics that need to be considered when using MUVEs to support teaching and learning

Collaboration in a multi-user game: impacts of an awareness tool on mutual modeling

This paper presents an experimental research that focuses on collaboration in a multi-player game. The aim of the project is to study the cognitive impacts of awareness tools, i.e., artifacts that allow users of a collaborative system to be aware of what is going on in the joint virtual environment. The focus is on finding an effect on performance as well as on the representation an individual builds of what his partner knows, plans and intends to do (i.e., mutual modeling). We find that using awareness tools has a significant effect by improving task performance. However, the players who were provided with this tool did not show any improvement of their mutual modeling. Further analysis on contrasted groups revealed that there was an effect of the awareness tool on mutual modeling for players who spent a large amount of time using the too

Exploring the ethical dilemmas of afro-centric social media use through agent-based modeling: A review

Social media (SM) has become indispensable for individuals and workplaces/organizations in Africa and beyond. Therein, ethical concerns are posed due to the inability to create virtual boundaries (VM), the intractability of guidelines for managers and other unintended risks/con­sequences. Operations research was used for modeling ethical concerns but have been defeated due to reasons of several ethical values and various assessment criteria for stakeholders. Conse­quently, this review paper initially x-rays the import of ethical dilemmas in older studies so as to conceive a strategy characterized by engaging stakeholders that utilize SM via Agent-Based Modeling (ABM), in such a manner that ethics can be evaluated. Additionally, it presented the rudiments of social media ABM explorations and the peculiarities of Africa. Finally, the review provided a suitable methodology and sheds light on the possible challenges of ABM implementation. Besides the benefit of increased patronage, the agent technology may also constitute a pedagogical tool for learning ethical behavior. Moreover, it is our hope that with the involvement of experts of related disciplines in Africa, attendant theories are formalized and used for building agent models that allows ethical decision making, weighing of pros and cons, analyzing differences and dimensions inherent in VM creation

Characterizing Novelty as a Motivator in Online Citizen Science

Citizen science projects rely on the voluntary contribution of nonscientists to take part in scientific research projects. Projects taking place exclusively over the Internet face significant challenges, chief among them is the attracting and keeping the critical mass of volunteers needed to conduct the work outlined by the science team. The extent to which platforms can design experiences that positively influence volunteers’ motivation can help address the contribution challenges. Consequently, project organizers need to develop strategies to attract new participants and keep existing ones. One strategy to encourage participation is implementing features, which re-enforce motives known to change people’s attitudes towards contributing positively. The literature in psychology noted that novelty is an attribute of objects and environments that occasion curiosity in humans leading to exploratory behaviors, e.g., prolonged engagement with the object or environment. This dissertation described the design, implementation, and evaluation of an experiment conducted in three online citizen science projects. Volunteers received novelty cues when they classified data objects that no other volunteer had previously seen. The hypothesis was that exposure to novelty cues while classifying data positively influences motivational attitudes leading to increased engagement in the classification task and increased retention. The experiments resulted in mixed results. In some projects, novelty cues were universally salient, and in other projects, novelty cues had no significant impact on volunteers’ contribution behaviors. The results, while mixed, are promising since differences in the observed behaviors arise because of individual personality differences and the unique attributes found in each project setting. This research contributes to empirically grounded studies on motivation in citizen science with analyses that produce new insights and questions into the functioning of novelty and its impact on volunteers’ behaviors