A7ButlerPorterStarbirdTaschdjian

A7ButlerPorterStarbirdTaschdjian

To Do

• please work as a group (3-5 members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
• Be prepared to give a 5-10 minute presentation about your project in class so the other students and the instructors are aware of your plans

Task

Please post in the Wiki:

• the project chosen and your description of it
• initial objectives
• why is the project of interest to you?
• how do you plan to approach the research?
• what do you expect to find out?
• what do you consider the major challenges?
• references identified
• questions you might have

Group response

1. Members of the Group

Stephen Butler - Amanda Porter - Kate Starbird - Zac Taschdjian

2. Project Description

Project: A Framework for "What Motivates People to Participate?"

Initial Objectives:

We will investigate the interest, willingness, and motivation to contribute (to environments populated by user-generated content). Environments of interest include open source software, online social networks, and connected educational systems.

Why are we interested?

(Kate) This question will be one of the major research questions for my dissertation project. I plan to design and deploy an educational, end-user programming system populated by user-generated content. Part of my research will investigate who adopts the software system, why they adopt, how they use the tools, and what the quantities and qualities of their contributions are to the content of the system.

(Zac) My interest in this question is its relation to open-source software (OSS) design. Specifically, how incentive structures in open-source communities effect the usability of the products being developed. A few of the questions I hope to answer are; What motivates people to contribute to OSS? Does OSS attract certain skill sets (e.g. programmers, but not usability experts), Why/when is material removed from an OSS project?

(Amanda) One of my areas of interest includes group dynamics and specifically, the concept of collaboration. I am interested in designing frameworks for guiding collaborative interaction that considers individuals, relationships, interaction, environment, and purpose. A major consideration in all of these factors is motivation and willingness on the part of participants.

(Stephen) This question is also one that will be central to my research. I will be researching how to create an immersive educational experience outside of the classroom through mobile and social technologies. The interest, willingness, and motivation to participate in immersive educational environments will be an essential element. How can mobile and social technologies increase motivation for learning? What will motivate individuals and groups to create content and experiences that can be shared through mobile and social technologies. Why are certain tools adopted and other rejected? What types of immersive tools will increase the adoption rate?

Conceptual Framework

As our research team comes from a variety of different academic backgrounds, for our investigation of motivation we plan to tap in to research from several domains, including communication theory, HCI, CSCW, and CSCL (Computer supported cooperative learning). Motivation can be explained as a cognitive, social, psychological, communicative, and interpersonal phenomenon. Given our diverse backgrounds and the nature of motivation itself, it might be interesting to "try on" different perspectives and consider a number of theories to approach this issue. From the communcation domain, some of those theories include social capital, communication networks, public goods theory, and information ecologies. Other relevant theoretical frameworks include the SER model, diffusion of innovation, critical mass in group interaction, and uses and gratifications theory.

Motivation can be divided into two categories: intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external or reward driven). We plan to investigate the interaction of both types of motivation in the process of end-user content contribution.

Research Methods (Proposed)

We will investigate at least 2 user-generated content communities. We plan to research usage patterns in these systems. We will evaluate individual user contributions of a (yet to be determined) sample and later follow up with interviews on a subset of the initial sample. Interviews will be face-to-face and online. We will determine interviewees before choosing the initial sample. Interviews will concentrate on the motivation and perceived gains of contributions.

Although we will investigate multiple environments, we plan to do in depth research on one social networking site and one open source software community. This wil give us the ability to contrast different communities and help us meet the academic needs of our research team.

What are we expecting to find out?

It is quite likely that we will find that certain types of reward structures become important, but these rewards may turn out to be quite nuanced and specific to the particular community of users that are involved in the environment. Given that, it may be difficult to generalize the specific factors of motivation, though we expect that social norms, visibility, and feedback will all be critical components. Research on critical mass in group interaction suggests that there may be a "tipping point" in which visible participation by certain members motivates others to contribute.

We plan to tease out intrinsic motivation patterns as well as extrinsic ones, and investigate how the different environments tap into both to drive content generation.

In the realm of OSS, plausible results include: that there is a stronger incentive to add content than to remove it, that motivation and participation are higher among technically adept participants, and that the usability of OSS products is poor because the projects fail to attract usability experts.

What do we consider the major challenges?

A major challenge to this type of research is remembering that this construct is simultaneously individualistic and social. So there are a multitude of factors that have to be considered and can make this a daunting topic. Empirically, this could be challenging, as quite often people cannot articulate exactly what motivates them, and so it can be hard to learn about this in interviews. Also, motivation changes over time, so tracking the changing nature of motivation is a challenge when empirically, we often can only get snapshots of the phenomenon.

This is a complex question that could and should be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective. One difficulty of this approach is limiting the scope of the project to a manageable size while still including the many variables required to sufficiently address it. Additionally, the sometimes nebulous nature of collaborative communities may make sufficiently rigorous research difficult to implement.

Intrinsic motivation is often sub-conscious on some level and thus extremely difficult to observe or discuss. Tapping into the psychology of individuals will be a difficult task.

References:

Bimber, B., Flanagin, A. J., & Stohl, C. (2005). Reconceptualizing collective action in the contemporary media environment. Communication Theory, 15, 365-388.

Blumler, J. G. (1979). The role of theory in uses and gratifications studies. Communication Research, 6.

Bolliger, D.U. & Martindale, T. (2004). Key factors for determining student satisfaction in online course. International Journal on E-Learning, January-March:61-67.

Bruckman, Amy. 2002. "The future of e-learning communities." Commun. ACM 45:60-63.

Bruckman, Amy, and Mitchel Resnick. 1995. "The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community." Convergence 1:94-109.

Flanagin, A. J., Stohl, C., & Bimber, B. (2006). Modeling the structure of collective action. Communication Monographs, 73, 29-54.

Keefe, T.J. (2003). Using technology to enhance a course: The importance of interaction. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 1,24-34.

Mirel, B. (2004). Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving. Morgan Kaufman Publishers. San Francisco, CA.

Nardi, B. & O'Day, V. (1999). Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart. MIT Press.

Nichols, D. & Twidale, M. (2003). The Usability of Open Source Software. First Monday, volume 8, number 1 (January 2003), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_1/nichols/index.html

Piaget, Jean. (1950). The Psychology of Intelligence. New York: Routledge.

Rogers, E.M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press of Glencoe, Macmillan Company.

Stahl, G. (2006). Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.

Questions:

Can we obtain HRC approval to interview individuals in such a short time? How does this work for online contributions? For interviews?

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NOTE: Stephen Butler, Amanda Porter, Kate Starbird, and Zac Taschdjian worked on this assignment together via face-to-face discussion, email, and a GoogleDocs document. Our posting is based on the completed work, even though it was posted by only one person.

3. Empty Field