A data-driven game theoretic strategy for developers in software crowdsourcing: a case study

Crowdsourcing has the advantages of being cost-effective and saving time, which is a typical embodiment of collective wisdom and community workers’ collaborative development. However, this development paradigm of software crowdsourcing has not been used widely. A very important reason is that requesters have limited knowledge about crowd workers’ professional skills and qualities. Another reason is that the crowd workers in the competition cannot get the appropriate reward, which affects their motivation. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a method of maximizing reward based on the crowdsourcing ability of workers, they can choose tasks according to their own abilities to obtain appropriate bonuses. Our method includes two steps: Firstly, it puts forward a method to evaluate the crowd workers’ ability, then it analyzes the intensity of competition for tasks at Topcoder.com—an open community crowdsourcing platform—on the basis of the workers’ crowdsourcing ability; secondly, it follows dynamic programming ideas and builds game models under complete information in different cases, offering a strategy of reward maximization for workers by solving a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium. This paper employs crowdsourcing data from Topcoder.com to carry out experiments. The experimental results show that the distribution of workers’ crowdsourcing ability is uneven, and to some extent it can show the activity degree of crowdsourcing tasks. Meanwhile, according to the strategy of reward maximization, a crowd worker can get the theoretically maximum reward

The power of the crowd: promise and potential of crowdsourcing for education

Crowdsourcing is the term often used for processes of data collation and creation where individuals or groups of users who are not necessarily located centrally generate content that is then shared. While the term originates within the world of business, it has since gained traction within a number of academic and professional disciplines. Drawing upon two examples that have originated within the Republic of Ireland, this paper reflects on the educational potential of crowdsourcing. Firstly, it reports a unique one-year open crowdsourcing initiative which compiled a comprehensive A-Z directory of edtech tools for teaching and learning through collaborative contributions. Secondly, it describes an initiative to develop a crowdsourced repository of study tips and suggestions for adult, part-time, online and flexible learners embarking on further study. These two case studies provide a valuable context for considering the wider potential of crowdsourcing applications for teaching and learning purposes