Supporting social innovation through visualisations of community interactions

Online communities that form through the introduction of sociotechnical platforms require significant effort to cultivate and sustain. Providing open, transparent information on community behaviour can motivate participation from community members themselves, while also providing platform administrators with detailed interaction dynamics. However, challenges arise in both understanding what information is conducive to engagement and sustainability, and then how best to represent this information to platform stakeholders. Towards a better understanding of these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of simple visualisations integrated into a Collective Awareness Platform for Social Innovation platform titled commonfare.net. We discuss the promise and challenge of bringing social innovation into the digital age, in terms of supporting sustained platform use and collective action, and how the introduction of community visualisations has been directed towards achieving this goal

Supportive technologies for group discussion in MOOCs

A key hurdle that prevents MOOCs from reaching their transformative potential in terms of making valuable learning experiences available to the masses is providing support for students to make use of the resources they can provide for each other. This paper lays the foundation for meeting this challenge by beginning with a case study and computational modeling of social interaction data. The analysis yields new knowledge that informs design and development of novel, real-time support for building healthy learning communities that foster a high level of engagement and learning. We conclude by suggesting specific areas for potential impact of new technology

Budget-Constrained Item Cold-Start Handling in Collaborative Filtering Recommenders via Optimal Design

It is well known that collaborative filtering (CF) based recommender systems provide better modeling of users and items associated with considerable rating history. The lack of historical ratings results in the user and the item cold-start problems. The latter is the main focus of this work. Most of the current literature addresses this problem by integrating content-based recommendation techniques to model the new item. However, in many cases such content is not available, and the question arises is whether this problem can be mitigated using CF techniques only. We formalize this problem as an optimization problem: given a new item, a pool of available users, and a budget constraint, select which users to assign with the task of rating the new item in order to minimize the prediction error of our model. We show that the objective function is monotone-supermodular, and propose efficient optimal design based algorithms that attain an approximation to its optimum. Our findings are verified by an empirical study using the Netflix dataset, where the proposed algorithms outperform several baselines for the problem at hand.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Ratings Use in an Online Discussion System: The Slashdot Case

Large-scale, online communication systems allow many-to-many interactions among users, which can result in a variety of positive outcomes. However, the prevalence of information overload and problems caused by the loss of shared communication channels in text-based environments may create barriers to realizing the benefits of online interactions. Attempts to manage online communication systems in the past depended on techniques that cannot be applied to, or do not allow, large-scale interactions. Slashdot is a large-scale, long-lasting Web discussion community that uses a form of recommendation system to provide feedback about the quality of comments users post to the site. This dissertation examines this novel approach to organizing an online communication system in terms of how users employ the ratings provided by the system, whether comment ratings have an effect on how new users of the site participate, and how users making recommendations about content actually provide ratings. I find that users do employ ratings to change how they view content, but that there is some resistance that prevents them from doing so readily. To overcome this friction, I recommend dynamic changes based on the choices of other users who seem more willing to make interface changes based on comment ratings. I also find that new user participation on Slashdot is affected by feedback on the initial comment made by the new member, but that user observation is just as important in determining how the new member will participate in the future. Finally, I find that ratings are being sufficiently applied to comments, but that some comments are not receiving fair attention because of when or where they are posted within the online discussion. The overall conclusions of this work are that pre-rating content helps to relieve the pressure of attaining sufficient ratings on comments, that rating labels provide valuable feedback for customizing how users with different motivations may read comments, and that comments ratings positively affect user experiences in a large, online discussion system. The Slashdot case shows how the use of recommendations in an online discussion system creates organization that ameliorates the problems of information overload and loss of communication channels, while still allowing for large-scale, heterogeneous interactions.Ph.D.InformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39369/2/lampe_diss_revised.pd

Agenda Cueing in Aggregated Newsfeeds

This dissertation brings together the findings from three experimental studies that seek to understand how exposure to information in an online news aggregating portal can influence users’ perceptions of the relative importance of problems facing society. Theoretically, this investigation relies on two foundational ideas. One is that in today’s high-choice, multi-source media environment communication flows are curated by a variety of gatekeeping actors, such as algorithms and fellow users. Individuals can have varying attitudes toward and perceptions of these gatekeepers, which can influence the effects of exposure to online information, including agenda-setting outcomes. Another is that users of digital news, facing a nearly infinite supply of information, rely heavily on presentation cues embedded in news platforms’ interfaces to navigate the news landscape and make sense of the messages they encounter. These powerful features can communicate the identity of gatekeepers who curate the newsfeed, as well as particular mechanisms of curation. Using the data from a longitudinal experiment where participants were exposed to a dynamic, constantly updated news portal populated with real news, the first study tests the comparative effects of two user-sourced cues representing different logics of content selection. The analysis does not support the expectation of differential agenda-setting effects, yet this finding could be the result of study design that did not allow for sufficient control of all the aspects of the treatment. The second experiment is a pilot test of an alternative experimental design that allows for a cleaner test of interface agenda cues’ differential effects. Its success in influencing users’ issue priorities paves the way for the main experiment that utilizes the same treatment mechanism. This study reveals that different types of interface agenda cues can influence users’ perceptions of issue importance differently in the news portal context. Consistent with the agenda cueing hypothesis, users high in gatekeeping trust are revealed to be especially susceptible to media agenda cues. In conclusion, I argue that interfaces of digital platforms should become the subject of public scrutiny, while news literacy interventions should focus on raising people’s awareness of how digital platforms aggregate and present the news

Improving writing in middle school through computer assisted genre-based pedagogy

The use of computer software to help students’ written work in the EFL classroom has emerged as a significant way to address the language learning within the last decade. This paper discusses the application of a computer assisted genre-based pedagogy in a middle school, the contribution to students’ written work and the characteristics of the students’ written argumentative texts, pedagogy perception of both teacher and student, benefits and difficulties of combining CALL and genre-based pedagogy for the development of writing skills and the characteristics of the methodology implemented. This research project was carried out at La Enseñanza School which is a private and catholic institution located in the northern part of Barranquilla, the chosen group was tenth grade. The research was based on needs analysis which was carried out in the first stage of the study to identify students’ difficulties in the language. In the second stage, a qualitative method was selected which was action research and the techniques to collect the data were through the implementation of class observations, students’ interviews, students’ and teacher’s journal, and students’ artifacts. Students considered that the applied methodology was dynamic and it helped them in term of participation, concentration, motivation and collaborative work. Also, they wrote better argumentative texts compared to the students in the first stage. The analysis of the application demonstrated that students use the CALL resources to approach their language learning and support their argumentative text recognition and work. Our research highlights the relationship between genres and technologies

Exploratory Browsing

In recent years the digital media has influenced many areas of our life. The transition from analogue to digital has substantially changed our ways of dealing with media collections. Today‟s interfaces for managing digital media mainly offer fixed linear models corresponding to the underlying technical concepts (folders, events, albums, etc.), or the metaphors borrowed from the analogue counterparts (e.g., stacks, film rolls). However, people‟s mental interpretations of their media collections often go beyond the scope of linear scan. Besides explicit search with specific goals, current interfaces can not sufficiently support the explorative and often non-linear behavior. This dissertation presents an exploration of interface design to enhance the browsing experience with media collections. The main outcome of this thesis is a new model of Exploratory Browsing to guide the design of interfaces to support the full range of browsing activities, especially the Exploratory Browsing. We define Exploratory Browsing as the behavior when the user is uncertain about her or his targets and needs to discover areas of interest (exploratory), in which she or he can explore in detail and possibly find some acceptable items (browsing). According to the browsing objectives, we group browsing activities into three categories: Search Browsing, General Purpose Browsing and Serendipitous Browsing. In the context of this thesis, Exploratory Browsing refers to the latter two browsing activities, which goes beyond explicit search with specific objectives. We systematically explore the design space of interfaces to support the Exploratory Browsing experience. Applying the methodology of User-Centered Design, we develop eight prototypes, covering two main usage contexts of browsing with personal collections and in online communities. The main studied media types are photographs and music. The main contribution of this thesis lies in deepening the understanding of how people‟s exploratory behavior has an impact on the interface design. This thesis contributes to the field of interface design for media collections in several aspects. With the goal to inform the interface design to support the Exploratory Browsing experience with media collections, we present a model of Exploratory Browsing, covering the full range of exploratory activities around media collections. We investigate this model in different usage contexts and develop eight prototypes. The substantial implications gathered during the development and evaluation of these prototypes inform the further refinement of our model: We uncover the underlying transitional relations between browsing activities and discover several stimulators to encourage a fluid and effective activity transition. Based on this model, we propose a catalogue of general interface characteristics, and employ this catalogue as criteria to analyze the effectiveness of our prototypes. We also present several general suggestions for designing interfaces for media collections

ESP For Ecotourism: Discourse Skills,Technology,And Collaboration For Job Contexts

This capstone’s primary aim was to design a companion instructional guide for teachers of English for Specific Purposes for ecotourism professionals in Mexico. It identified gaps left by traditional EFL courses that tend to lack strong connections between language instruction and real-world job requirements for English usage. It looked at curricular reform efforts in other world regions with the intention to innovate ESP instruction in Mexico. Findings include recommendations for student-centered curricula that incorporate multimodal learning activities and authentic contexts for tourism jobs. Multiliteracies pedagogy drove the creation of the instructional guide’s components, which provide support in conducting small-group projects to develop interactive discourse, online research, and digital design skills within communities of practice. The guide includes resources, materials, and instructions to conduct needs analysis, foster mutual support, build collaboration among stakeholders, facilitate situated practice with applied technology, and increase knowledge for cross-cultural communication