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- Text DocumentValidation of an Inventory of Social Connectedness(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Gonzales, Amy L.Digital technologies are often designed to enhance a sense of social connection between users across physical space. Currently no quantitative scale has been validated to determine how effective a tool is in establishing social connection. This proposal outlines 3 studies designed to rigorously validate a scale of social connection in mediated spaces. To do this, a 24-item scale was developed and tested. In Study 1 the scale was given to 177 people to establish internal and convergent validity. Preliminary analyses suggests good overall internal reliability and convergent validity. Future studies intend to establish predictive validity across systems (Study 2) and within a single system (Study 3). The inventory should prove useful for tests of usability and theory. In the last section I describe its role in my dissertation.
- Text DocumentCOVE: A Visual Environment for Multidisciplinary Science Collaboration(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Grochow, KeithNew technologies and approaches are transforming how we carry out and communicate science. In oceanography, large multidisciplinary teams are developing deep-water ocean observatories of unprecedented scale. These observatories will allow hundreds of scientists from disparate fields to conduct experiments together, provide real-time sensor and data access through the Internet, and create a vast archive of data. My work explores some of the challenges of creating collaborative tools to support this new science. Working together with a team of scientists, I designed and deployed the Collaborative Ocean Visualization Environment (COVE) to bring together the data, processes and people on the team. I then carried out three field evaluations of COVE: a multi-month deployment with the scientists, engineers, and graphics staff of the observatory design team, and two different two-week deployments as the primary planning and collaboration platform for expeditionary cruises to map observatory node sites and geothermal sites. Based on these experiences and insight gained in these deployments, I explore the needs of interactive tools to support the work of large multidisciplinary ocean science teams.
- Text DocumentMotivated by Information: Information about Online Collective Action as an Incentive for Participation(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Antin, JuddThis paper describes research focused on understanding the relationships between operational knowledge about how online collective action systems work and participation in those systems. Specifically, I use qualitative interviews to examine knowledge about online systems that form public goods, questioning whether the notions of public goods and social dilemmas are relevant and meaningful for individuals making real-world participation decisions. This paper also describes concurrent experimental research focused on exploring the relationship between knowledge about one's own and others' competence to contribute to collective goals as a factor in participation decisions.
- Text DocumentCreativity Support in IT Research Organization(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Tripathi, PriyamvadaAll domains of human activity and society require creativity. This dissertation applies machine learning and data mining techniques to create a framework for applying emerging Human Centric Computing (HCC) systems for study and creation of creativity support tools. The proposed system collects and analyzes highresolution on-line and physically captured contextual and social data to substantially contribute to new and better understandings of workplace behavior, social and affective experience, and creative activities. Using this high granularity data, dynamic instruments that use real-time sensing and inference algorithms to provide guidance and support on events and processes related to affect and creativity will be developed and evaluated. In the long term, it is expected that this approach will lead to adaptive reflective technologies that stimulate collaborative activity, reduce time pressure and interruption, mitigate detrimental effects of negative affect, and increase individual and team creative activity and outcomes.
- Text DocumentContribution, Commercialization & Audience: Understanding Participation in an Online Creative Community(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Cook, Eric; Teasley, Stephanie D.; Ackerman, Mark S.This paper presents a qualitative study of attitudes towards participation and contribution in an online creative community. The setting of the work is an online community of practice focused on the use and development of a user-customizable music software package called Reaktor. Findings from the study highlight four emergent topics in the discourse related to user contributions to the community: contribution assessment, support for learning, perceptions of audience and tensions about commercialization. Our analysis of these topics frames discussion about the value and challenges of attending to amateur and professional users in online creative communities.
- Text DocumentWikipedians Are Born, Not Made: A Study of Power Editors on Wikipedia(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Panciera, Katherine; Halfaker, Aaron; Terveen, LorenOpen content web sites depend on users to produce information of value. Wikipedia is the largest and most well-known such site. Previous work has shown that a small fraction of editors --Wikipedians -- do most of the work and produce most of the value. Other work has offered conjectures about how Wikipedians differ from other editors and how Wikipedians change over time. We quantify and test these conjectures. Our key findings include: Wikipedians' edits last longer; Wikipedians invoke community norms more often to justify their edits; on many dimensions of activity, Wikipedians start intensely, tail off a little, then maintain a relatively high level of activity over the course of their career. Finally, we show that the amount of work done by Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians differs significantly from their very first day. Our results suggest a design opportunity: customizing the initial user experience to improve retention and channel new users' intense energy.
- Text DocumentEffects of Feedback and Peer Pressure on Contributions to Enterprise Social Media(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Brzozowski, Michael J.; Sandholm, Thomas; Hogg, TadIncreasingly, large organizations are experimenting with internal social media (e.g., blogs, forums) as a platform for widespread distributed collaboration. Contributions to their counterparts outside the organization's firewall are driven by attention from strangers, in addition to sharing among friends. However, employees in a workplace under time pressures may be reluctant to participate and the audience for their contributions is comparatively smaller. Participation rates also vary widely from group to group. So what influences people to contribute in this environment?In this paper, we present the results of a year-long empirical study of internal social media participation at a large technology company, and analyze the impact attention, feedback, and managers' and coworkers' participation have on employees' behavior. We find feedback in the form of posted comments is highly correlated with a user's subsequent participation. Recent manager and coworker activity relate to users initiating or resuming participation in social media. These findings extend, to an aggregate level, the results from prior interviews about blogging at the company and offer design and policy implications for organizations seeking to encourage social media adoption.
- Text DocumentSocial Performances: Understanding the Motivations for Online Participatory Behavior(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Yew, JudeOpen contribution systems" (OCS) are online applications that encourage users to contribute and share content in a "public" and open manner. While these systems lower the barriers to participating, what is less clear is why users are motivated to contribute time and effort in these online environments with relative strangers. My dissertation proposes that one way to explain high levels of participation on OCS is to use the lens of social performances. This lens suggests that individual participation on social software websites involves elements of both individual and collective performative behavior. The social performance framework suggests that the participatory behavior is part of a larger sensemaking exercise that rationalizes and aligns individual contributions to the collective effort. The view here is that OCS and its users are part of a socio-technical ecology and are mutually dependent on each other. Understanding participation as a form of social performance can enable us to better design systems that encourage participation, collaboration and sharing."
- Text DocumentCluestr: Mobile Social Networking for Enhanced Group Communication(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Grob, Reto; Kuhn, Michael; Wattenhofer, Roger; Wirz, MartinRecent technological advances foster the spreading of social software in the mobile domain. Hence, future usage patterns of mobile devices will involve more group interaction. While collaboration using mobile devices is an active area of research, only limited attention has been paid to the efficient initiation of group communication from mobile terminals. In this paper we present a community-aware mechanism that allows to efficiently select contacts in order to address them as a group. We have integrated the proposed method into a proof-of-concept application, and present preliminary experiments that demonstrate the accuracy of the approach and show significant time savings in the group initialization process.
- Text DocumentSupporting and Transforming Leadership in Online Creative Collaboration(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Luther, KurtBehind every successful online creative collaboration, from Wikipedia to Linux, is at least one effective project leader. Yet, we know little about what such leaders do and how technology supports or inhibits their work. My thesis investigates leadership in online creative collaboration, focusing on the novel context of animated movie-making. I first conducted an empirical study of existing leadership practices in this context. I am now designing a Web-based collaborative system, Sandbox, to understand the impact of technological support for centralized versus decentralized leadership in this context. My expected contributions include a comparative investigation of the effects of different types of leadership on online creative collaboration, and a set of empirically validated design principles for supporting leadership in online creative collaboration.