Research Design Review:
Virginia is seeking feedback on a new research project conducted in partnership with the Division of Information Technology: studying and designing an online orientation for college students about online success strategies. The project is motivated by instructor reports that online students have lower rates of retention and reported satisfaction. This project is an exploratory mixed methods design with a series of planned design iterations. We hope to better understand the real vs. perceived strategies enacted by successful online college students. Then, we will design an orientation program to scaffold online learning so that our online students are more likely to enact the strategies shows to predict success. Please come give advice & feedback!
Characteristics of Collaboration in the Emerging Practice of Open Data Analysis:
The democratization of data science and open government data initiatives are inspiring groups from civic hackers to data journalists to use data to address social issues. The analysis of open government data is expected to encourage citizens to participate in government as well as to improve transparency and efficiency in government processes. Through interviews and survey responses we gathered information on forty projects that involved the analysis of open data. We found that collaborations were interdisciplinary, small in scale, with low turnover, and synchronous communication. Most of the projects asked exploratory questions and made use of descriptive statistics and visualizations. We discuss how these findings contribute to an understanding of the emerging practice of open data analysis and to a broader understanding of open collaboration.
Virginia Byrne is a Technology, Learning and Leadership PhD student in the College of Education's Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership department. She researches how the learning experience changes when learners interact with peers through technology. At the HCIL, Virginia is a member of the BodyVis research team.
Joohee Choi is a Ph.D. student in Information Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. She is advised by Prof. Yla Tausczik. Her research interest is in understanding collaborative problem solving phenomenon mediated by information technology. She studied how collaboration emerges around the practice of open government data analysis, as well as in multiple online platforms like Github and Stack Overflow. Her current research looks at online Q&A community, Stack Exchange, with a focus on moderators' roles in the community.