Patterns of Participation and Motivation in Folding@home: The Contribution of Hardware Enthusiasts and Overclockers

Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which participants run protein folding simulations on their computers. Participants complete work units and are awarded points for their contribution. An investigation into motivations to participate and patterns of participation revealed the significant contribution of a sub-community composed of individuals who custom-build computers to maximise their processing power. These individuals, known as “overclockers” or “hardware enthusiasts,” use distributed computing projects such as Folding@home to benchmark their modified computers and to compete with one another to see who can process the greatest number of project work units. Many are initially drawn to the project to learn about computer hardware from other overclockers and to compete for points. However, once they learn more about the scientific outputs of Folding@home, some participants become more motivated by the desire to contribute to scientific research. Overclockers form numerous online communities where members collaborate and help each other maximise their computing output. They invest heavily in their computers and process the majority of Folding@home’s simulations, thus providing an invaluable (and free) resource

Characterising Volunteers' Task Execution Patterns Across Projects on Multi-Project Citizen Science Platforms

Citizen science projects engage people in activities that are part of a scientific research effort. On multi-project citizen science platforms, scientists can create projects consisting of tasks. Volunteers, in turn, participate in executing the project's tasks. Such type of platforms seeks to connect volunteers and scientists' projects, adding value to both. However, little is known about volunteer's cross-project engagement patterns and the benefits of such patterns for scientists and volunteers. This work proposes a Goal, Question, and Metric (GQM) approach to analyse volunteers' cross-project task execution patterns and employs the Semiotic Inspection Method (SIM) to analyse the communicability of the platform's cross-project features. In doing so, it investigates what are the features of platforms to foster volunteers' cross-project engagement, to what extent multi-project platforms facilitate the attraction of volunteers to perform tasks in new projects, and to what extent multi-project participation increases engagement on the platforms. Results from analyses on real platforms show that volunteers tend to explore multiple projects, but they perform tasks regularly in just a few of them; few projects attract much attention from volunteers; volunteers recruited from other projects on the platform tend to get more engaged than those recruited outside the platform. System inspection shows that platforms still lack personalised and explainable recommendations of projects and tasks. The findings are translated into useful claims about how to design and manage multi-project platforms.Comment: XVIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (IHC'19), October 21-25, 2019, Vit\'oria, ES, Brazi

Motivation to Participate in an Online Citizen Science Game: A Study of Foldit

Online citizen science projects have the potential to engage thousands of participants with scientific research. A small number of projects such as Foldit use an online computer game format. Motivation to participate in Foldit was investigated in a group of 37 players using an online survey, semistructured interviews, and participant observation. Results suggest that contributing to scientific research and an interest in science were among the most important motivations for participation. Interaction with others within the community of participants and the intellectual challenge of the game were also key for the continuing involvement of this group of regular contributors

A sociotechnical system approach to virtual citizen science: an application of BS ISO 27500:2016

We discuss the potential application to virtual citizen science of a recent standard (BS ISO 27500:2016 "The human-centred organisation") which encourages the adoption of a sociotechnical systems perspective across a wide range of businesses, organizations and ventures. Key tenets of the standard concern taking a total systems approach, capitalizing on individual differences as a strength, making usability and accessibility strategic objectives, valuing personnel and paying attention to ethical and values-led elements of the project in terms of being open and trustworthy, social responsibility and health and wellbeing. Drawing upon our experience of projects in our laboratory and the wider literature, we outline the principles identified in the standard and offer citizen science themed interpretations and examples of possible responses

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

Bacia de aprendizado com aplicação do monitoramento de qualidade da água por meio do enfoque ciência cidadã : estudo de caso da Bacia Hidrográfica do Córrego Chapadinha/DF

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental, 2018.A contribuição social para o conhecimento ecológico, especialmente o monitoramento de qualidade da água, vai além das propriedades qualitativas de um corpo d’água, representando uma colaboração da sociedade para a gestão compartilhada dos recursos hídricos. Neste sentido, o trabalho teve como objetivo monitorar a qualidade da água a partir do enfoque da ciência cidadã como forma de capacitar os cidadãos nas questões ligadas à gestão dos recursos hídricos na bacia hidrográfica do córrego Chapadinha, incentivando a participação de mais membros da comunidade na decisão do correto uso e da qualidade desejada do rio. A metodologia de pesquisa envolveu a definição do local, a caracterização ambiental da bacia hidrográfica, a aplicação um VANT no mapeamento do parque veredinha na geração de modelos tridimensionais, a integração dos voluntários, o depoimento dos voluntários, o estabelecimento de protocolos de coleta e análise dos parâmetros de qualidade da água, o monitoramento quali-quantitativo da água e a disponibilização dos dados gerados por meio de aplicativo e site. Como resultados foram obtidos a caracterização ambiental da área com os respectivos cálculos morfométricos, o georreferenciamento e processamento das imagens capturadas pelo VANT, que aperfeiçoou a nitidez das imagens da área do Parque Ecológico Veredinha e gerou modelos em três dimensões da área em questão, o monitoramento da quantidade e qualidade do Córrego Chapadinha, comparando os resultados dos parâmetros obtidos à legislação vigente, o depoimento dos cientistas cidadãos a cerca da internalização do conhecimento adquirido, o desenvolvimento de um aplicativo em formato Android e um site de código-fonte aberto democratizando a divulgação de informações hídricas da região. Conclui-se que o monitoramento da qualidade da água com enfoque da ciência cidadã se mostrou eficiente para capacitar os cientistas cidadãos a respeito das questões ligadas à gestão dos recursos hídricos na Sub-Bacia do Córrego Chapadinha