Designing Learning with Citizen Science and Games

This emerging trends article introduces concepts such as citizen science (the inclusion of non-professionals in scientific knowledge production) and knowledge games (games that enable players to solve real-world problems through crowdsourcing and collective intelligence activities within a game). The article shares the strengths and limitations of using citizen science and knowledge games in the classroom, as well as initial tips and guidelines for bringing these types of experiences to the classroom

Microtasking models and managerial challenges

Proceedings of the CSCW 2016 - Workshop: Toward a Typology of Participation in CrowdworkThis paper offers a brief overview of basic microtasking models and connects its developments with emerging management challenges that will need to be addressed in order to fully harness the capacities and skills of the crowd in different domain areas

A Virtual Crowdsourcing Community for Open Collaboration in Science Processes

Although science has become an increasingly collaborative endeavor over the last hundred years, only little attention has been devoted to supporting scientific on-line communities. Our work focuses on scientific collaborations that revolve around complex science questions that require significant coordination to synthesize multi-disciplinary findings, enticing contributors to remain engaged for extended periods of time, and continuous growth to accommodate new contributors as needed as the work evolves over time. This paper presents a virtual crowdsourcing community for open collaboration in science processes to address these challenges. Our solution is based on the Semantic MediaWiki and extends it with new features for scientific collaboration. We present preliminary results from the usage of the interface in a pilot research project

Reward Shaping in the Ant Colony System: Lessons for the Design of Collective Intelligence Systems

The problem-oriented design of collective intelligence systems (CIS) is in itself an open problem. Previous research draws upon findings from bio-logical swarm intelligence to derive guiding design principles but also high-lights the importance of evaluating the system\u27s state with respect to the given problem. We investigate this evaluation task on the individual and the global level within the framework inspired by reinforcement learning. We map differ-ent modes of evaluation to different schemes of rewarding agents, thereby illus-trating that designer of CIS face the task of reward shaping. We simulate sever-al reward schemes as variations of the well-known ant colony system (ACS). We show that rewards in the ACS, although they consist only of a single value, the metaphorical pheromone concentration, have complex semantics, and coor-dinate the distribution of information and allocation of work within the system. This makes the ACS a valuable source of inspiration for CIS with human agents

Information Systems for “Wicked Problems” – Proposing Research at the Intersection of Social Media and Collective Intelligence

The objective of this commentary is to propose some fruitful research direction built upon the reciprocal interplay of social media and collective intelligence. We focus on “wicked problems” — a class of what Introne et al. 2013 call “problems for which no single computational formulation of the problem is sufficient, for which different stakeholders do not even agree on what the problem really is, and for which there are no right or wrong answers, only answers that are better or worse from different points of view”. We argue that information systems research in particular can aid in designing appropriate systems due to benefits derived from the combined perspectives of both social media and collective intelligence. We document the relevance and timeliness of social media and collective intelligence for business and information systems engineering, pinpoint needed functionality of information systems for wicked problems, describe related research challenges, highlight prospective suitable methods to tackle those challenges, and review examples of initial results

Managing the Inner Workings of Collective Intelligence Approaches for Wicked Problems – An Assessment Model and Evaluation

Ill-defined and complex problems that affect multiple stakeholders with potentially conflicting perspectives are often referred to as wicked problems. The utilization of collective intelligence (CI) via web-based platforms is a promising approach for addressing such wicked problems. The management of these information systems would benefit from evidence-based decision support regarding facilitation and improvement efforts. However, to date, there is no suitable model to guide such efforts. Existing approaches address specific applications or cover certain assessment areas but do not provide a holistic perspective. Meanwhile, research offers substantial insights into best practices for addressing wicked problems and running CI applications. This paper develops an assessment model comprising five central success dimensions for information systems that address wicked problems. Their subdimensions and associated measurement metrics allow for evidence-driven facilitation and improvement of CI applications for wicked problems. Apart from the model’s capability to improve future runs and processes, it also offers the potential to provide immediate insights for facilitation efforts during runtime. The model was validated with a platform dealing with the assessment of risks presented by global climate change. This evaluation generated strong evidence for the model’s applicability and usefulness