2.27.2011

Session 4 Social capital and trust mechanisms


The experience of joining two online communities
Twitter and LibraryThing are the two online communities I join this week. I’m thinking of planning a trip either in Hawaii during the spring break or to Europe some day, so I need some “experts’ advice”. The reason to join the two online communities is that I learned that Twitter enables users to follow someone or some institutions based on their own interests, so I thought I might easily get the information, and that LibraryThing is an online database that people share the books they have read and want to read, so I thought I might get some references for my travel plan.

However, I had difficulty in finding out the information I need and interacting with the old online community members. Take LibraryThing for example, after I keyed in travel, Hawaii, only 4 out of 43 results had book reviews. The following is one of the examples. 



However, when I clicked the Reviews, there was nothing under it. See the screenshot below.


Another problem is that I did not know what the scale that Average rating and Beautiful use and how the rating is produced. I think the situation I faced is similar to what Paolo (2006) said that a user should be informed how recommendations are generated, so that the user can check whether the system introduces undesired biases.

Since I did not get much information I wanted when searching travel, Hawaii, I turned to keyed in another term travel, Europe. This time I got plenty references books (213 results). I clicked travel guideàItaly (Eyewitness Travel Guides)àReviewsà janepriceestrada (one of the members reviewed the book). After reading other members’ comments on her reviews, I decided to leave my comment by asking the author my question. See the screenshot below.


However, the author has not replied to me yet. So, that’s why I said I had difficulty in finding out the information I need and interacting with the old online community members. The problem also occurred when I was on Twitter. After Keying in travel, I followed TravelChannel and Tour of Europe. I found that the two websites use Twitter to propagate their latest news and activities more than communicate with their followers.






When browsing the websites of TravelChannel and Tour of Europe by hopping from their Twitter, I found that TravelChannel has no channel to interact with its users, and Tour of Europe has Contact us that enables its users to interact with the holder of the website, but not with other users.

How to improve social capital/trust mechanisms?
As for LibraryThing, just like what I mentioned, the users need to know how the rating is produced (i.e. who has the right to rate? Based on what criteria?), the meaning of the different scores that one book has, and the credibility of the rating. When I clicked the Average rating of the book Hawaii, only eight out of 107 members rated the book. In the sense, the 3.81 in the average rating was produced by 7% of the members. The credibility is questionable. To increase the credibility, I think the website can first confirm the members’ identity. As Paolo (2006) mentioned, an eBay user can enter credit card details and in this way, eBay can tie the pseudonym with that credit card so that it can be possible to find the person in the real world. Identity confirmation can reduce the possibility that some people use different pseudonyms to repeatedly rate the same book. In addition to identity confirmation, the website should clearly list the criteria of rating and the proportion of raters and non-raters. The listing of criteria of rating can facilitate members wanting to rate to know how to act properly, and members depending on others’ rating to better interpret the outcomes.

As for Twitter, since it has the function of following others, I think one of the ways to enhance social capital is to follow as many like-minded people’s twitters as possible. As Allen (2009) said forming relations with a friend of a friend requires the disclosure of his/her neighbors. It is easy to achieve because when we follow someone who has the same interest of us, we can also follow people who are followed by the person.

I only followed two website’s twitters, which turns out to be not very interactive. I think one of the solutions is to follow real persons. According to Ellison (2007), there are two types of social capital: bridging and bonding. Bridging means loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support. Boding means the relationship between individuals is tightly-knit, emotionally close. As for my experience with following Travelchannel and Tour of Europe, I can get some useful information from them, but no emotional support. If I followed real persons’ twitters, the chances of interaction would be likely increased. No matter in which online community, I think as a new member a shortcut to get to know old members and interact with them is to be the Question Person (Gleave, 2009). Question people are important in an online community because they offer a chance for Answer people to show their expertise as well as get to know them. This is a starting point for a new member to increase his/her social capital.
References
Gleave, Eric, Howard T. Welser, Thomas M. Lento and Marc A. Smith (2009). A
Conceptual and Operational Definition of ÔSocial RoleÕ in Online Community. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Massa, Paolo (2006). A Survey of Trust Use and Modeling in Current Real Systems.
Trust in E-services: Technologies, Practices and Challenges. Idea Group.
Allen, Stuart M., Gualtiero Colombo, Roger M. Whitaker (2009). Forming Social
Networks of Trust to Incentivize Cooperation. Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikoloa, HI, 5-8 January 2009.
Ellison, N.B., C. Steinfield and C. Lampe (2007).  The Benefits of Facebook
"Friends:" Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4).

Conclusion
As for my final project, I intend to investigate how to make Laulima more like an online learning community. I would like to address the following issues:
1.      The patterns of participation in Laulima, take an online reading course for example
(1)   The types of students in the online reading course (i.e. Lurkers or veterans)
(2)   The kinds of topics which are more popular than others
2.      The differences of the online reading course and the face-to-face reading class
3.      The difference between Laulima and online learning communities

So far, I only know an online learning community Tapped In, so I would be happy to learn more online learning communities from my classmates. In addition, I’d like to know your comments and suggestions on this topic :)

16 comments:

  1. I totally understand your condition of looking for reviews because I am always doing the same things online and often get frustrated when there are no text at all but just star ratings. Indeed, it is important that there is a standard or instruction of how these reviews are generated, as you mention. And more importantly, I think it is better to encourage users to leave some words, which might make the readers and other users feel more "human".

    And about the fact that few people are answering questions in the comment section, I wonder if the main problem is people are not able to know there is a question raising up al all? For example, if the system can send a message to the user everytime she is "being asked" or "quoted", maybe the situation will be much more better.

    Also, I like your idea of investifating Laulima, after all, WE are the ones who can benefit from it :)

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  2. Very interesting choices of OCs to compare this week! When considering LibraryThing, my guess is that your results may have yielded less than desirable results may be due to your search terms. I wonder how many people post about books they reviewed for travel purposes, as opposed to reviewing novels read for fun (e.g. Harry Potter). Perhaps, people share more of their travel stories on other social computing venues, such as blogs (just a guess). When looking at the two Twitter channels you followed, it looks like they were not promoting a conversation, but a quick way to get some feedback. For example, they asked what you would ask Nolan Ryan. Therefore, it provided a mechanism (as you mentioned) for followers to provide feedback to the site, but not necessarily promote socialization between members.

    I think you made a great point about the bridging aspect of social capital for your OCs. They really do not support bonding, but people can extract information with the right searches!

    Lastly, regarding your final project idea, I like the idea of making Laulima more like an OC. This will take into consideration a vast amount of literature on on-line learning, distance learning, distributed learning (a few keywords that may help your literature search). You may also want to review the in-class and on-line teaching literature about pedagogy. This may help to guide your thought process about creating a participatory culture. I am wondering if you want to look at Laulima specifically, or generalize it to on-line instruction. The specific topic may be difficult to gather data for, unless you have ideas about who will be allow you to collect data (or what types of data you would like to use). When considering your specific research questions, I have a few thoughts:

    The differences of the online reading course and the face-to-face reading class
    Inquiry: This may take into consideration the types of discussion used. Is it a synchronous discussion with tools such as the “Big Blue Button.” Or, does it utilize asynchronous modes of discussion (much like our blogs and comments)?

    The difference between Laulima and online learning communities
    Inquiry: This made be hard to discern, due to the term on-line learning communities. Do you mean formal or informal communities (i.e. class course site or Facebook group). In this sense, does Laulima itself support the activity.

    This project sounds extremely exciting and I am really looking forward to hearing more about it, as this can have strong practical results for pedagogy here!

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  3. Interesting post.

    I had a similar problem with LibraryThing. I believe that users do not respond to individual questions because they do not go to the site very often. Most of us long into our e-mail or facebook at least once a day. I do not think that LT is this high, or even close. I found the "group" function to be very useful so you should look there to see if there are any travel groups. You could post a question there and it would probably get answered.

    As for Twitter you are exactly right about following people. I found that Rachel Maddow has five different twitter accounts and each for a different purpose. You should look to see if any authors of the books you found on LT have Twitter accounts. I did a quick search and found that you could follow @RickSteves I am sure this would be more helpful then @travelchannel. Then again Rick Steves is almost a brand name as well so you would need to evaluate it as well.

    As for your final project: I took an online independent study once at a different school. There were around 20 of us taking the same class but it was 100% independent so there was no communication between any of us and very little with the professor. This class would have been improved a million (yes one million) times over if there was some sort of collaborative aspect tied into our online portal. Even if it was just posting questions that all the other students could have seen would have been nice. I think this project has a lot of potential.

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  4. Hi Nan,
    Yes, you’re right. Rating itself is not as informative as words. If the rating system allows raters to leave comments on the items, I think it will help other users better evaluate the usefulness of the items to themselves.

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  5. Before the Internet turn into web 2.0 and the technology increase into the level of ubiquitous, when I want to travel, I count on travel magazine, close friends/relative experiences, or information from travel agent.

    Reading your blog about trip/travel remind me with my experience travel without booking a hotel. At that time I was so sure that I could get the hotel just by drop in, because best on my friends experiences, in this location, there are so many hotel to choose. My unlucky day, when I arrive, I drop in more than 5 hotel nearby and all sold out.

    Thanks to Twitter. I just to tired take a rest in lobby of one hotel and then tweet about my unlucky day. Tra Da..a friend nearby this location which I never met and just get to know from Twitter tweet back, I would pick up and help you find a hotel, wait there. That's what I feel about the very handy help from OCs and SNS.

    For your final project, as I know Laulima is a Course Management System (CMS). As a CMS, it has SNS and OCs features, such as blogs, chat, discussion forum, etc. However, the challenge on using Laulima is features on it was not have "modern appearance" like many more OCs and SNSs which are emerging right now. Besides that, the slow loading on Laulima can be a hindrance and sometimes make instructors and students become stressfully when using it.

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  6. Hi Bug!

    I like your idea about improving Laulima to be more of an online community. Have you ever used Ning? We used this for an ETEC class that I took and it MUCH more collaborative than Laulima - plus had way more abilities (such as posting video, pics, forums, etc.) I think it requires a fee though, so perhaps this was funded by UH for the class I took? As far as I know Laulima is free, open source software. You points #2 & #3 get at the ideas of synchronous, asynchronous, and face-to-face lrng - there is A LOT out there on this (I basically took an entire course on this last semester) so you may want to narrow in. Perhaps you could do a proposal for how to improve Laulima modeled on other online communities for intruction (such as Ning). Maybe some of these changes could also be put into action.... I think most of us agree Laulima is pretty terrible and could use some up-dating.

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  7. Thank you for your substantial suggestions. I appreciate it. Your response helps me narrow down my research scope. I think I can first look into the literature about distributed learning, situated learning, etc. to see how technology can facilitate learning by breaking time-and-space limitation and providing multimodalities, which give us the control of meaning making from the learning environment. In addition, I’m currently carrying out a study, investigating participants’ online activities in their daily life and their perceptions of using synchronous CMC and videos for academic learning. I hope the data collected can bring me some ideas to compare Laulima and well-established SNSs, such as Facebook and see what functions in the SNSs can have pedagogical implications in Laulima’s online courses (I would like to take an online reading course that I’m observing now for example). I tend not to categorize Laulima to a formal class site. Instead, I would like to explore any possibility that Laulima can be as approachable as any popular SNS.

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  8. Hi Philip,
    Thank you for your information. I checked RickSteves’s website and found that there was a lot of information there, so I follow him and what he follows. As for your experience of that online course, I think it’s a good example showing that dialogue between learners is important because it can always spark bright ideas just like what we are doing in this class. Although online courses are non-face-to-face, physically absent, it doesn’t mean that the dialogue can also be absent. Instead, I think by writing down what we want to say is a good way for me to organize my thought process and help me think questions more critically.

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  9. Bug, I am sorry to see that your explorations were so unfruitful. I am surprised more novels and nonfiction with Hawaiian themes did not show up. This might indicate that Library Thing has not really caught on in the islands yet. I agree with you that the OCs should explain how ratings are produced and maybe there should be stats on how many books in Library Thing have recommendations. I am not sure how this relates to trust, though. Still it would be an interesting way to let users know how they stand amongst other members, for example, a user might be considered a novice recommender/reviewer or an expert recommend/reviewer, which would establish some roles with statistical data to back it up and might also motivate some to produce more recommendations/reviews.

    Also, I like your idea of looking into Laulima. I have wondered how often LILO is used, too. Let me know if you come across any stats on this online tool that helps students with project management and research skills.
    Good luck!

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  10. Everyone's suggestions are so good that I can't really think of anything else. Great analysis of the two OCs!

    I think your final project sounds fantastic! Your research could have a potential impact on a resource so many of us currently utilize. Exciting!

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  11. Hello Palabra,
    I like your idea that we can set a mechanism to let users know how much contribution they have made to the online community. In this way, we can also encourage users to keep contributing in order to raise their status, say from novice reviewers to expert reviewers. As for LILO, I just looked into it and found that the total number of users of LILO is decreasing from 2009 till now. I don't know the reason since I'm not a member yet (I have no access to some functions on the website, but it's a warning to the website.

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  12. Hi Chris,
    I’m interested in what you said that Ning is very collaborative. Can you explain in which ways that you think Ning is more collaborative than Laulima? Thank you.

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  13. Hi HansomeAvatar,
    I like the way you describe Laulima—no modern appearance. As you mentioned, Laulima is a CMS, so it is supposed to have the functions of SNSs and OCs. However, one of my friends, who is an UH instructor of an online course, said that she won’t consider Laulima as a SNS. I think it also corresponds to what Dr. Gazan said that he thinks Laulima is a close-end system, people outside the class cannot have a conversation with the students at anytime they want.

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  14. If there's one thing I think you'll get universal agreement on, it's the idea that Laulima can be improved! One of the core goals of this course is figuring out how we might apply some of the successful aspects of social computing to more traditional and professional tools, and your project proposal is an ideal example of that. You have the chance to propose design parameters with examples from the literature and your own investigation about how best to motivate participation and interaction.

    I would encourage you not to limit yourself to education-related sites; that is, if there is an aspect of a shopping site, fan site or anything else that you believe could work in an educational environment, make that connection. Follow the excellent suggestions made by others in their comments and you'll have the potential for an extremely good project--perhaps one you could share with (or sell to?) the developers of Laulima!

    P.S. Chris mentioned Ning, I have some experience with that, but they do now charge to establish and maintain sites.

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  15. Hi Dr. Gazan,
    Thank you for your suggestions. I am also thinking to look for a variety of SNSs to see how the websites encourage users’ motivation. I think by jumping out of the current frame of thinking I may find something interesting and useful to improve the online courses in Laulima. By reading other students’ blogs, I learned how a variety of websites sustain themselves. Their comments can be good sources for me to investigate my project.

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  16. This week’s discussion with other students gives me many thoughts about my final project. I think I will focus on comparing the use of Laulima and a social/entertainment site and an opinions/activity site. The reason to compare with an opinions/activity site is that I think Laulima has the function of class discussion, so it can be helpful if I observe how popular opinions/activity sites facilitate and encourage users to share their opinions. The reason to compare with a social/entertainment site is that I think although Laulima is an educational site, it doesn’t mean that the use of it should be always academic. Sometimes, the infusion of relax elements can ease the tension when the students are using it. As for the theoretical framework, I will look into the theory of motivation in learning and distributed language to support the use of online courses for learning.

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