Session 7--Management and conflict

While Session 6 focused on how social sites work from the perspective of users, in our final session we'll look at how social sites work at an administrative and policy level. Designers of social sites may have general rules and scenarios in mind for scripted common interactions, but when the site goes live, unexpected conflicts, issues and other breakdowns continuously challenge the integrity of a site and its community.

The role of editors, moderators and admins may not be immediately obvious, but they create, enforce and (ideally) continuously re-evaluate the rules governing people's interactions. As you'll see in this session's readings, it often takes a conflict, disagreement, troll attack or other instance of disturbing the online peace to both reveal and refine the official rules of a given site. However, perhaps even more important are the unofficial rules, formed from a combination of aggregate practice and open debate by the participants themselves. Both individually and in groups, users of social sites have a voice in identifying, reporting and responding to inappropriate behavior. It is the nature of social computing for users to create one another's online experience, sometimes in concert and sometimes in conflict with the designers and administrators of the site.

Session 7, Week 1--complete by Sunday, April 19, 11:59pm

1. After completing the readings, find the official rules governing the site you're studying for your final project--keep in mind that there may be more than one official document. Post a link (or links) with some brief explanatory text.
   
2. Find three examples on the site where one or more rules have been broken, specifically in the form of interpersonal conflict (i.e. not just spam posts). Give a brief synopsis of each, along with any admin or user reactions if available, and provide a link or screenshot.
3. For each of the three situations, discuss what you believe is the most appropriate response by site admins, and by other users. This may not be straightforward; for example, removing inappropriate content on sight also removes the opportunity for users to confront and debate the infraction, which might increase their investment and engagement with the site.
4. Relate your examples and discussion substantively to at least three of the Session 7 readings.

Session 7, Week 2--complete by Sunday, April 26, 11:59pm

You know what to do by now. While I'm sure you will continue your fine tradition of exchanging ideas in your blog comments out of pure intellectual interest and altruism ;), also keep in mind that this will be your last chance to contribute to the participation component of your grade.


And finally...

Though we'll be exchanging emails individually in the weeks leading up to your final projects, since this is my last post, I'd like to thank you for taking a chance on this new course, taught in a new online format, by a nearly-new faculty member. If you're like me, you probably didn't know quite what to expect going in, but if the course provided you enough structure, flexibility and ideas for you to explore the aspects of social computing that interest you, I'd call that success.

The course evaluations will be conducted through the eCAFE system (http://www.hawaii.edu/ecafe), and while some of the questions aren't directly applicable to the online environment, I encourage you to give me suggestions on how to improve the course, either in the free response section of the evaluation form, or directly via email anytime.

Thanks and aloha,
Rich

Session 6--Online identity and interaction

Welcome back. I hope everyone had a fine spring break, and that you had at least some opportunity to get away from the computer ;).

These last two sessions will be dedicated to supporting your final projects. Those of you with some systems analysis or interaction design experience well understand the dangers of undertaking design and/or analysis without accounting for the actual people who design, maintain and use the system. In Session 6, you'll look at this from the perspective of two users of one of the social computing sites you're analyzing for your final project. In Session 7, the focus will shift to the people whose job it is to design and manage online interactions in these sites. The work you do in these last two sessions should plug directly into your final projects, both in terms of applying concepts from the readings and in supporting your observations.

Session 6, Week 1--complete by Sunday, April 5, 11:59pm

This session's readings provide a small sample of different online communities, different interaction modes, and different ways researchers have studied them. Common to most is a sense that the engine driving social computing is online identity. I think we can agree that online identity is something more than the sum of a person's username, avatar and the strings of text they post. But how do we know online identity when we see it? Addressing this question in a given online community is necessarily data-driven. Therefore, your task is to:

1. Propose a working definition of online identity for a site you are studying, and compare it to one or more of those found in the readings
   
2. Write two informal use scenarios based on your observations of existing users. Use scenarios are outlines of common interactions: how an individual with a predictable need enters your system, navigates through common decision points and options step by step, then (ideally) exits with what he or she came for. Include functional interactions (just user decision points relevant to the user's goal, you need not exhaustively list all options) and interpersonal interactions. Again, don't worry about formal scenario structure, just communicate the information. Here's a helpful overview: http://www.infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/scenarios
   
3. Using the scenarios, address this question: how are online identities shaped and expressed through online interactions in this community? Your answer should be based on specific examples you observe (include at least one illustrative screenshot per scenario), and be as distinctive as possible. For example, on Answerbag, ratings are a component of one's online identity. But since everybody rates and is rated, you need more specific information to distinguish one person's identity from another's. One person might rate content positively 100% of the time, and another only 30%--that's the level of data detail necessary to ground claims about the online identity of the users depicted in your scenarios.
   

In anticipation of questions:

• People working in pairs should still make individual blog posts, though they can certainly be coordinated.
• If you're having trouble finding evidence of online identity in a given user, there's no need to force it. Many social computing sites have strong factual components, where interactions are essentially anonymous. Observations like this should help you conceptualize what online identity is in your site, and how it's expressed. Make those users and interactions the focus of your scenarios.
  
• If, despite your best efforts, you can't see a link between your site and this assignment, feel free to email me as always.

Session 6, Week 2--complete by Sunday, April 12, 11:59pm

Respond to at least five of your fellow students' posts. As I follow your comment threads, I am especially pleased to see you supporting and discussing each other's final projects. I think this kind of mutual support is the essence of social computing, and a strong argument to offer more online courses of this sort in the future.

Session 5--Social knowledge production and services

The deadline for submitting your final project proposals is upon us! Since part of the Session 4 assignment involved getting feedback on your proposals from other students, if you sent me a proposal more than a few days ago, please email me again with your final version by the deadline, Monday March 9. I'll do what I did last session and send you individual feedback and suggestions on your proposals over the next few days, and include any comments on your Session 4 posts. Sometimes I think you guys have freer and better conversations on your blog posts when I don't jump in anyway ;).

If you look at the description of this course, you'll notice it ends with the following:

"...compare them with traditional professional equivalents, and evaluate how these diverse perspectives can inform one another."

For Session 5, you'll be doing exactly this; applying some of the things you've learned about social computing to more traditional forms of information seeking and services.


Session 5, Week 1--complete by Sunday, Mar 15, 11:59pm

Choose one of the following general areas of comparison from this session's readings:

• Peer production in online environments vs. in-person collaboration
• Social tagging online vs. professional cataloging and classification
• Online social recommendation systems vs. real world advice seeking
• Social Q&A vs. libraries or schools

Then, making explicit reference to the readings and using specific examples with screenshots, discuss ways in which the forms of social and traditional knowledge production you chose can inform each other. Address both sides: for example, if you propose that a strength of Social Q&A can help address a weakness in traditional education, then also discuss how a strength of traditional education can improve a weakness of Social Q&A. Why do you think the two perspectives can benefit one other, and what would some tradeoffs be? Again, use specific examples to ground your points.

Some cautions: strive to make your analysis both actionable and non-obvious. Also, if you find yourself thinking that the two environments you've chosen are too different to be usefully compared, then choose others. Your goal is to identify examples of how social and traditional knowledge production and services can plausibly inform one another.


Session 5, Week 2--complete by Sunday, Mar 22, 11:59pm

Comment on at least 5 other students' posts. Also consider that in all of your final projects, a comparative aspect similar to the one you'll be making in this session will very likely strengthen your arguments, or at least provide some perspective from outside the realm of social computing. I suggest you read other students' posts, contribute comments and structure your final projects with that in mind.

After that, enjoy a well-earned week of Spring Break! But always feel free to email me if you have any questions about the course.

The Session 6 blog will go up on or about Monday Mar 30.

Session 4--Social role, capital and trust

First, some housekeeping. Overall I was extremely pleased with your blog posts for the last session, but instead of posting comments on your blogs this time, I'm going to take this opportunity to give you some mid-semester feedback. Over the next week I'll send each of you an email containing my session 3 comments and an overall assessment of your blog/comment contributions thus far, so you know where you stand.

A few of you have sent me final project proposals, but since those are a component of this session's assignment, I'll hold off on those comments for now. As a reminder, your final project proposals are due to me via email Monday March 9, and to that end, this session's assignment will be geared as much as possible toward helping you conceptualize your final project.

Session 3's focus on content contributions led to many of you discovering that eliciting participation in an online community requires some knowledge and consideration of the norms, roles and expectations within that community. If you'll forgive an automotive analogy, the horsepower of good content contributions means little without the traction of understanding the community. Three core concepts that have been introduced by researchers in the pre-Web world have been adapted to online communities, and form the core of this session's readings: social role, social capital and trust.

Session 4, Week 1--complete by Sunday, March 1, 11:59pm

After completing the readings, find and compare two online communities that implement different social capital/trust mechanisms. Choose sites you have not visited or blogged about before. Compare the two mechanisms, and include one anecdote and screenshot of an illustrative personal experience you had with each. Suggest improvements to each site's role/capital/trust mechanism, based on the community, the session 4 readings (always important) and your own experience with other sites.

Conclude your post with one or more ideas for a final project, which need not be connected to this session's topics. Phrase it as a question you're interested in exploring, both analytically and empirically. Make some reference to relevant readings, and include some specific ideas on how and where you plan to address the question.


Session 4, Week 2--complete by Sunday, March 8, 11:59pm

Comment on at least five other students' blog posts, and include a reaction to their final project idea(s). You can contribute questions you think they should consider, outside resources you think may be of help, problems/pitfalls you think might arise, or any other contribution that helps them focus and finalize their project proposal.

Session 3--Motivating content contributions (plus final project guidelines)

So far, some of you have dipped your toes into the social computing waters, while others have cannonballed off the high dive. We've read and discussed in general terms what attracts people to social sites, but this week we're going to get more specific about what people do when they get there.

In the previous sentence, it probably seemed natural to you that I would use metaphors of geography to describe navigation between sites, but they apply less and less. Most of you are probably reading this post via a feed reader, as opposed to pointing your browser to the course blog's URL. Even though the differences are more in perception than embedded in code, when the information seems to come to you, rather than you having to go to it, expectations change.

This session's readings provide a wide array of frameworks in which past researchers have attempted to describe or explain online communities, and participation within them. Read these closely, always with an eye toward specific questions you'd like to explore. Remember, readings not linked from the online syllabus are available through Laulima, under the Resources tab. And a word to the wise, for this and all future sessions: a good way to demonstrate your enthusiasm, participation and preparation in an online course is to discuss the Laulima/pdf readings, not just the (usually much shorter) Web-accessible ones.

Also, please note that this session will have a slightly different schedule than the rest.


Session 3, Week 1--complete by Tuesday Feb 17, 11:59pm

After you complete the readings, instead of turning you loose to find any social site, for this session we'll all use the same one: Answerbag (http://www.answerbag.com), a Social Q&A site that I moderate and use as a research testbed. Your instructions:

1. Lurk. Before posting anything, browse the site. Get a feel for how this community interacts, and how contributions are motivated and rewarded. Read the assignment guidelines carefully, and think strategically about how other site users have accomplished the objectives of this assignment. Then craft your own strategy.
   
2. Create a new Answerbag account. Don't use your real name.
3. Post. You may post as many or as few questions and answers as you like, but you must accomplish at least two of the following by Sunday February 15, 11:59pm:

• Your top-rated question must accumulate 40 or more rating points
• Your top-rated answer must accumulate 40 or more rating points
• One of your questions must draw 8 or more answers
• One of your answers must draw 8 or more comments

Don't dawdle--the sooner you complete the readings, assess the site, craft a strategy and post your content, the more time you'll have to accumulate points and responses. Don't game the system by answering your own questions, creating multiple accounts or other chicanery (remember, I'm an admin ;)). Also understand that openly asking for points is against the rules of the site. You may respond to comments beneath your own answers, though these will not count toward your total. Apart from that, your goal is to understand the community and use the affordances of the site to motivate content contributions.

Discuss your experience on your blog, and (important) relate it directly to this session's readings, as well as your experiences on other sites which rely on active user contributions. What was your strategy to motivate other Answerbag users to respond to and uprate your content, and why do you think it succeeded or failed? Include a link to your user profile in your post, but if you prefer to have it remain private, email it to me directly. Remember to post your blog by Tuesday Feb 17, 11:59pm.


Session 3, Week 2--complete by Sunday, Feb 22, 11:59pm

Read and comment on at least five other students' Session 3 posts, again seeking out those you haven't commented on before--but that certainly doesn't mean you have to completely ignore people you've already engaged with.


Final Project guidelines

I've had a few questions about the final project, and I'm very happy to see some of you already proposing (or more accurately, thinking out loud about) aspects of social computing that you'd like to explore in more depth. The standard framework for the final will mirror that of each session:

• Identify a question rising out of the readings that you'd like to explore in more depth. You may work alone or in pairs. Send me an email with your proposed question, and how you plan to address it, no later than Monday, March 9.
  
• Address your question both analytically (include literature both within and beyond the course readings) and empirically (data gathered via your experience on one or more relevant social sites). Use data gathering models from the readings or elsewhere to structure your investigation, and conclude with a reflective discussion section where you evaluate your results in light of your original question. Planning, flexibility and persistence will also be key components of your grade.
• Length should be roughly 15 pages for a solo project, not counting screenshots (required) and bibliography.
• Final projects will be due Sunday, May 10
  

However, you are free to propose a different final project or format. If this option interests you, contact me as far in advance of the proposal deadline as possible.

Session 2--Social aspects of social computing

Very good start with session 1--it's difficult to draw a conceptual line around social computing, but many of your blogs and discussions extended my thumbnail definition in interesting and productive ways, and you raised questions that we'll be discussing throughout the course. Since we have so many students, and we're using blog comments as our primary form of interaction, I think it will be easier if you make one blog post each session instead of several, to keep thoughts and conversations together. If you have any other suggestions for conventions you think we should follow as a class, please post them here.

When you push normal human longing for interaction and self-expression through the wild infrastructure of social computing, what you get is...this session's readings. I think you'll enjoy them. The Galston piece will give you a very brief historical overview, and the others will raise social, personal and methodological issues, many of which are unique to the social computing environment. Ideally, this session will be where you begin to ask and investigate questions that are of interest to you, and when you start thinking about the direction you'd like to take for a final project.

Because this session's readings are so critical, I'd like you to read them all, preferably in the order listed, before you post. You may find it helps to take notes on each as you go.

By Sunday Feb 1, 11:59pm, post on your blog:

1) A free-response section with your overall reactions to the readings. Not just "I thought this or that was interesting" (which I of course hope you do), but point out specific connections or mismatches between concepts in the readings, examples and/or counterexamples from your research or experience, and a question raised by the readings that for you remains unanswered.
Example: Albrechtslund mentions "empowering exhibitionism" as one rationale for online information sharing. What are some specific examples of empowerment, and is there a corresponding (or overriding) loss of power when putting personal information online?

2) Join an online community (loosely defined) under a pseudonym, and attempt to investigate your unanswered question. Choose a topic and community that is of genuine interest to you, not something made up. Discuss your experience, and specifically address how the nature of the social computing environment you chose shaped your interaction. Make your comments as data-driven as possible (linked to specific actions and interactions), and relate your experience back to the readings.
Example: You join livestrong.com, post a profile and take the "dare to get more sleep." When (if ever) did you feel empowered? What interactions did you initiate or participate in, and what kinds of feedback did you get? What did this experience allow you to do that you couldn't have done offline?

3) Screenshot or link to your interaction (or relevant portions), and post it on your blog along with your discussion.

By Sunday Feb 8, 11:59pm:

Comment substantively on at least five other students' Session 2 posts. Choose students you didn't engage with during Session 1, and enjoy the discussion.

Session 1--Intro and overview

Welcome to ICS 691: Social Computing, for the Spring 2009 semester. This is an online, asynchronous course, and this space will be our main hub of information exchange. The course will be conducted in a series of two-week sessions--details can be found in the course syllabus, but understand that it is subject to change. Read the syllabus now, then return to this page.

Still interested? Good ;). This course was initially designed for 6-10 students, but we may have as many as 30, so there will be lots of opportunity for productive exchange of ideas.

Session 1, Week 1 (Mon Jan 12-Sun Jan 18)

1) Read the syllabus
2) Create a blog specific to this course, and post a link to it as a comment to this post. You may blog under a handle or pseudonym, but you must use it consistently throughout the course, and email me so I know the name of the student behind it.
3) Choose an RSS feed aggregator to track updates to this blog, and those of the other students.
4) Complete the Session 1 readings
5) By 11:59 pm Sunday Jan 18, post your response to this first assignment on *your* blog, following the guidelines found in the syllabus:

The first sentence of the syllabus contains my thumbnail definition of social computing:

Social computing is an umbrella term for technologies and virtual spaces that allow users to create, describe and share content, and for the communities that arise around them.

Challenge this definition by making reference to the Session 1 readings. How does the term relate to others, such as social software, social networks, online community and Web 2.0? Conclude by crafting your own definition of social computing, and how it relates to topics you hope to explore in this course.

Your blog is also the place for open discussion about the readings--you are not just encouraged, but expected to comment freely on whatever you find interesting.

Session 1, Week 2 (Mon Jan 19-Sun Jan 25)

1) Subscribe to the other students' blogs.
2) Read as many of them as you like, but comment substantively on at least five.
3) Respond to comments on your blog, and those of other students, as appropriate.
4) Toward the end of the session, skim the other students' blogs and see if you can identify any common characteristics of the most engaging and informative blog posts. Use these characteristics as a set of guidelines for your future posts.

That's it for Session 1. Please post any questions about the course as a comment to this blog so all students can view them, but questions about individual situations send to me at (gazan@hawaii.edu).