Gilad Ravid

Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

De-lurking in virtual communities: a social communication network approach to measuring the effects of social and cultural capital

The asymmetry of activity in virtual communities is of great interest. While participation in the activities of virtual communities is crucial for a communitys survival and development, many people prefer lurking, that is passive attention over active participation. Often, lurkers are the vast majority. There could be many reasons for lurking. Lurking can be measured and perhaps affected by both dispositional and situational variables. This project investigates social and cultural capital, situational antecedents of lurking and de-lurking. We propose a novel way of measuring such capital, lurking, and de-lurking. We try to figure out what are the triggers to active participation. We try to answer this by mathematically defining a social communication network of activities in authenticated discussion forums. Authenticated discussion forums provide exact log information about every participants activities and allow us to identify lurkers that become first time posters. The proposed social communication network approach (SCN) is an extension of the traditional social network methodology to include, beyond human actors, discussion topics (e.g. Usenet newsgroups threads) and subjects of discussions (e.g. Usenet groups) as well. In addition, the social communication network approach distinguishes between READ and POST link types. These indicate active participation on the part of the human actor. We attempt to validate this model by examining the SCN using data collected in a sample of 82 online forums. By analyzing a graph structure of the network at moments of initial postings we verify several hypotheses about causes of de-lurking and provide some directions towards measuring active participation in virtual communities.

Wikibooks in higher education

In this case study, wiki technology was applied to the development of an introductory academic textbook on information systems. While the development, production and distribution of traditional textbooks are influenced by commercial interests, the wikitextbook was developed collaboratively by faculty and by students, and was made available online free of charge. After about two years of activity, the wikitextbook accumulated 564 sub-chapters, co-authored by undergraduate and graduate students in more than 20 classes offered by seven academic departments across three Israeli universities. We discuss the potential of wikitextbooks as vehicles of empowerment to students, teachers, and the discipline. This type of collaborative online technology intimates an influence on the status-quo in academic education in favor of less empowered stakeholders. However, caution is advised in drawing premature conclusions from results reported here. The implementation of wikitextbook should be augmented by a careful study of cultural, societal, behavioral and pedagogic variables.

Information sharing as enabler for the virtual team: an experimental approach to assessing the role of electronic mail in disintermediation

Abstract. This paper is an attempt to document empirically the relation between information sharing accomplished via electronic mail and the performance of teams. We report on an experimental study of the role of electronic mail in the operation of supply chains. A variation of the well known ‘Beer Game’ role‐playing simulation game was computerized and implemented in an internet‐based environment to study the information‐sharing behaviour of teams. A total of 76 teams of four players each competed to achieve best net team profit. Results of the simulation game permit a detailed examination of email use in an organizational context. Findings indicate the expected significant correlation between email use to share information up the supply chain and net team profit. In other words, sharing information in the team has a positive impact on performance. The recorded behaviour of managers in the online simulation indicates that team members use electronic mail successfully to attempt disintermediation of the supply chain. When information is shared online, teams perform significantly better.

Testing social theories in computer-mediated communication through gaming and simulation

Information is a critical component of commercial transactions. Our games, the LEMONADE STAND and HULIA, and simulation, AUCTION SIMULATION, represent a variety of computerized commercial situations where information may be actively shared or traded or passively available as part of the transaction. These games and simulation served as research tools for testing a variety of social theories aiming to offer some explanations for information behavior in online spaces and its subsequent effect on the commercial transactions taking place. We demonstrate, using the analytical sciences approach, how computerized games and simulations are used to study and validate theoretical constructs in networked environments. Validating a variety of theories using three different artifacts, while acknowledging their strengths and limitations, shows promise for the continued development of games and simulations as important instruments for the analytical sciences approach.

Cohesion and roles: network analysis of CSCL communities

We provide empirical support for the assertions that high level of knowledge construction is associated with structured design and that knowledge construction is associated with cohesion and equivalence network structures. We built and analyzed two CSCL communities - one structured the other nonstructured. The levels of learning processes were measured by content analysis. The social capital structure of the communities was analyzed by social network analysis. The analysis revealed that the structured community developed social capital, encoded by a mesh of interlinked cliques, and that participants undertook bridging and triggering roles, and exhibited high levels of constructing knowledge. The tutor (guide) remained on the side. The nonstructured community did not construct knowledge, cohesion was dull, and participants did not undertake any essential roles.

Filing, piling, and everything in between: The dynamics of E-mail inbox management

Managing the constant flow of incoming messages is a daily challenge faced by knowledge workers who use technologies such as e‐mail and other digital communication tools. This study focuses on the most ubiquitous of these technologies, e‐mail, and unobtrusively explores the ongoing inbox‐management activities of thousands of users worldwide over a period of 8 months. The study describes the dynamics of these inboxes throughout the day and the week as users strive to handle incoming messages, read them, classify them, respond to them in a timely manner, and archive them for future reference, all while carrying out the daily tasks of knowledge workers. It then tests several hypotheses about the influence of specific inbox‐management behaviors in mitigating the causes of e‐mail overload, and proposes a continuous index that quantifies one of these inbox‐management behaviors. This inbox clearing index (ICI) expands on the widely cited trichotomous classification of users into frequent filers, spring cleaners, and no filers, as suggested by Whittaker and Sidner (1996). We propose that the ICI allows shifting the focus, from classifying users to characterizing a diversity of user behaviors and measuring the relationships between these behaviors and desired outcomes.

Predicting Links in Social Networks Using Text Mining and SNA

Lately there is great progress in business organizations perception towards social aspects. Competitive organizations need to create innovation and segregate in the market. Business interactions help reaching those goals but finding the effective interactions is a challenge. We propose a prediction method, based on Social Networks Analysis (SNA) and text data mining (TDM), for predicting which nodes in a social network will be linked next. The network which is used to demonstrate the proposed prediction method is composed of academic co-authors who collaborated on writing articles. Without loss of generality, the academic co-authoring network demonstrates the proposed prediction procedure due to its similarity to other networks, such as business co-operation networks. The results show that the best prediction is achieved by incorporating TDM with SNA.

Academic Course Gamification: The Art of Perceived Playfulness

Gamification in education is being used as a way to increase student engagement and learning. While carrying a big promise, little is known about how students with different personalities, specifically extraverts and introverts, are influenced by game elements and mechanics: knowledge that is essential to ensure that implementing gamification will not disengage some students. In two quasi-experiments performed in an academic course, students (n=102; n=58) were faced with the immediate feedback game mechanics such as points, rewards, and badges, and comparative feedback mechanics such as leaderboards and progress bars. The perceived playfulness from the implementation was measured and a Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis was performed measuring the relations between these elements and the way they increase the perceived playfulness throughout the semester. A moderation analysis was performed examining how extraverts and introverts perceive each implementation. Our results show that in both cases there were significant moderating effects between game mechanics and perceived playfulness. More specifically, the effect of leaderboards on perceived playfulness was higher for introverts and was negative for extraverts, meaning that implementing leaderboards may disengage extraverts. These results are important for gamification researchers who are looking at how different personalities derive perceived playfulness, based on different game mechanics and to educators who plan to include game elements in their courses.

Detecting playfulness in educational gamification through behavior patterns

Games are not a new concept in learning. Game-based learning, simulations, and serious games are known pedagogical methods used to build on the inherent playfulness of learners. Technological advances and the popularity of learning management systems are making it easier to implement gamification, analyze the resulting engagement and playfulness, and modify the implementation if needed. However, knowledge is often missing about how different combinations of game mechanics and dynamics create playfulness. We discuss the concept of gamification behavior patterns, which are sequences of actions performed by a user that can be attributed to the application of a gamification design pattern. A preliminary experiment was conducted in an academic course where perceived playfulness was analyzed with respect to three different sets of independent variables: personality, perceived enjoyment from game mechanics, and gamification behavior patterns. Results show that it is practical to measure gamification behavior patterns and that they have a significant predictive power. We propose the development of an open-source, cloud-based gamification behaviors database that will collect specific gamification engagement events from systems worldwide, along with metadata about each implementation. With such a database, Big Data, machine-learning, and recommender-system algorithms can be applied to increase knowledge regarding steering user behaviors through gamification.