Coding by Choice: A Transitional Analysis of Social Participation Patterns and Programming Contributions in the Online Scratch Community

While massive online communities have drawn the attention of researchers and educators on their potential to support active collaborative work, knowledge sharing, and user-generated content, few studies examine participation in these communities at scale. The little research that does exist attends almost solely to adults rather than communities to support youths’ learning and identity development. In this chapter, we tackle two challenges related to understanding social practices that support learning in massive social networking forums where users engage in design. We examined a youth programmer community, called Scratch.mit.edu, that garners the voluntary participation of millions of young people worldwide. We report on site-wide distributions and patterns of participation that illuminate the relevance of different online social practices to ongoing involvement in the online community. Drawing on a random sample of more than 5000 active users of Scratch.mit.edu over a 3-month time period in early 2012, we examine log files that captured the frequency of three types of social practices that contribute to enduring participation: DIY participatory activities, socially supportive actions, and socially engaging interactions. Using latent transition analysis, we found (1) distinct patterns of participation (classes) across three time points (e.g., high networkers who are generally active, commenters who focus mainly on social participation, downloaders engaging in DIY participatory activities), (2) unique migration changes in class membership across time, (3) relatively equal gender representation across these classes, and (4) importance of membership length (or age) in terms of class memberships. In the discussion, we review our approach to analysis and outline implications for the design and study of online communities and tools for youth

Value-Based Healthcare Paradigm for Healthcare Sustainability

Healthcare represents a paramount issue in the current debate around sustainability. Developing sustainable practices within health systems is fundamen- tal not only to guarantee the right of care, but also to enhance the growth of a country. The widespread dissemination of innovation, on the one hand, could represent a way for providing a better service, in terms of quality and access. On the other hand, it is severely undermining the sustainability of health organisations due to high costs and magnitude on existing organisational arrangements. Among the various research strands aimed to identify theoretical framework to face the various challenges, Value-Based Healthcare is largely considered as the blueprint for promoting sustainable management approaches in healthcare. This paradigm stresses the importance to deliver care towards enhanced value for the patient, which could be measured through the ratio between outcomes and costs. This chapter has a twofold aim. First of all, it is aimed at exploring the concept of Value-Based Healthcare to realise the state-of-art and to identify main issues and open questions around the drivers of value in health. Besides, it attempts to under- stand whether this approach could effectively contribute to the attainment of sus- tainable development goals. To do that, an in-depth explanation of the concepts of outcome and cost in healthcare has been carried out. At the end of the analysis, principles of Value-Based Healthcare seem to be usefulness to cope with the need of improved practices. The focus on the value of patient, instead, allows to foster behaviours that could support the achievement of sustainable goals aimed to provide better and more accessible infrastructures. Within this complex mosaic, accounting could represent the common language to orient health management towards a higher sustainable value for the patient