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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 DocumentCross-Organizational Information Reuse: A Third Vision of Collaborative Memory in the Enterprise(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) White, Kevin F.Small organizations are facing a knowledge predicament as they operate with increasingly sparse pools of employees that must support a broad range of organizational needs. With reduced human resources comes limited time to devote to ancillary work tasks such as documentation. When no local memory system is available, organizations resort to Internet-based repositories. Though these sources contain nearly limitless information they do so at the cost of rich local context.To bridge the gap between internal and Internet-based memory systems this research explores a third vision; one which establishes virtual partnerships between small organizations. Using ethnographic methods this field study examines the: socio-technical ramifications of cross-organizational information reuse, relevance of information developed by partner organizations, and system tools that support efficient cross-organizational knowledge flow.
- Text DocumentExploring the Use of Wikis for Information Sharing in Interdisciplinary Design(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Phuwanartnurak, Ammy JiranidaInterdisciplinary design is challenging, in large measure, because of the difficulty in communicating and coordinating across disciplines. Many tools have been developed and used to support information sharing in design, and the use of WWW technology is becoming increasingly important for the sharing of information. Wikis, in particular, have been claimed to support collaboration and information sharing. The backing for this claim, however, has not been rigorously assessed and to date few empirical studies have appeared in the literature. For my dissertation, I am conducting a field study of interdisciplinary design projects, seeking to discover how wikis enable information sharing in software development projects. The research findings will expand our understanding of information sharing behavior of design professionals. It will also provide empirical evidence on the use of wikis in design work, which will be used to develop guidelines on the effective use of wikis to support design collaboration.
- Text DocumentOpen Innovation and the Solver Community(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Cardoso, Margarida; Ramos, IsabelThis paper introduces a doctoral research on open innovation solver's behavior and group factors inducing it. The research is now finishing its first year and exploratory strategies are developed close to open innovation online communities, to prepare a systematic methodological approach.Research seeks to understand how solver's patterns of communication and group behavior influence their participation in an open innovation community, through collaborative IT platforms - and how it weights on their innovation production. A second question is about critical factors that influence solvers' participation, due to the present global economical crisis. By designing a model of the solver's group of belonging characteristics and reflecting that on a collaborative platform's functionalities, the project intends to present some propositions to ease participation in crowdsourcing innovation processes - through an online platform being designed and developed at University of Minho.
- Text DocumentTranslating Social Support Practices into Online Services for Family Caregivers(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Tixier, Matthieu; Gaglio, Gérald; Lewkowicz, MyriamThe aim of our ongoing research project is to design a platform for family caregivers to help them cope with the burden of daily caregiving. With a view to designing relevant information and communication services, we analyzed the social support practices observed among the members of a group of caregivers, whose spouses were suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Based on interviews and a field survey, we characterized this collective and identified the caregivers' latent and expressed needs. Our approach consists in linking these needs to naturally occurring situations in order to translate them into meaningful functionalities.
- Text DocumentExpressing Territoriality in Collaborative Activity(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Thom-Santelli, JenniferTerritoriality, the expression of ownership towards an object, can emerge when social actors occupy a shared social space. In my research, I extend the study of territoriality beyond previous work in physical space in two key ways: 1) the object in question is virtual and 2) the social context is an online community engaged in collaborative activity. To do this, I observe the emergence of characteristic territorial behaviors (e.g. marking, control, defense) within collaborative authoring and social tagging. My dissertation then uses these observations to construct a theoretical framework for online territoriality to provide researchers and designers of groupware with guidelines with which to encourage ownership expression when appropriate.
- 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.
- Text DocumentTemporal Patterns of Communication: Media Combos(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Su, Norman MakotoToday's employees are expected to be adept at the usage of multiple communication mediums. With secretaries now regarded as a frivolous luxury, people have essentially become professional secretaries" of their own interactions. A large body of research in the HCI and CSCW literature has examined how information workers have appropriated certain communication mediums in order to accomplish work. However, how people must combine and integrate a multitude of media adroitly throughout a limited workday (approximately 8 hours) has been relatively ignored. Namely, I propose to examine through a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques the temporal and sequential interdependence of different kinds of media. I will examine how/why such media combos arise and their psychological affects in the workplace."
- Text DocumentTowards a Better Understanding of Group Forking Dynamics in Virtual Contexts(Proceedings of the 2009 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2009) Li, QingGroup Fork" is defined as more than two group members leave their parent organization and start a new group. While group fork is a common social phenomenon in any type of group, it is still understudied in virtual contexts. Drawing upon the literature from three fields, religious research, social psychology and organization studies, this study attempts to bridge this gap by answering two questions, "what causes group fork?" and how is individual dissatisfaction transformed into group-level dissatisfaction in virtual contexts, thus leading to the eventual fork? Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects will be used as examples of self-organizing virtual work, as they provide a good context to observe the whole process of how group interactions are intertwined toward to the eventual fork. A multi-stage research strategy is conducted in this study and preliminary findings will be reported."
- 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.