Nathan Bos

Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development

When virtual teams need to establish trust at a distance, it is advantageous for them to use rich media to communicate. We studied the emergence of trust in a social dilemma game in four different communication situations: face-to-face, video, audio, and text chat. All three of the richer conditions were significant improvements over text chat. Video and audio conferencing groups were nearly as good as face-to-face, but both did show some evidence of what we term delayed trust (slower progress toward full cooperation) and fragile trust (vulnerability to opportunistic behavior)

From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories

Promoting affiliation between scientists is relatively easy, but creating larger organizational structures is much more difficult, due to traditions of scientific independence, difficulties of sharing implicit knowledge, and formal organizational barriers. The Science of Collaboratories (SOC) project conducted a broad five-year review to take stock of the diverse ecosystem of projects that fit our definition of a collaboratory and to distill lessons learned in the process. This article describes one of the main products of that review, a seven-category taxonomy of collaboratory types. The types are: Distributed Research Centers, Shared Instruments, Community Data Systems, Open Community Contribution Systems, Virtual Communities of Practice, Virtual Learning Communities, and Community Infrastructure Projects. Each of the types is defined and illustrated with one example, and key technical and organizational issues are identified.

Trust without touch: jumpstarting long-distance trust with initial social activities

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is thought to be inadequate when one needs to establish trust. If, however, people meet before using CMC, they trust each other, trust being established through touch. Here we show that if participants do not meet beforehand but rather engage in various getting-acquainted activities over a network, trust is much higher than if they do nothing beforehand, nearly as good as a prior meeting. Using text-chat to get acquainted is nearly as good as meeting, and even just seeing a picture is better than nothing

Being there versus seeing there: trust via video

We studied the emergence of trust in a social dilemma game in four different communication situations: face-to-face, video, audio, and text chat. Three-person groups did 30 rounds of a social dilemma game and we measured trust by the extent to which they cooperated vs. competed. The face-to-face groups quickly achieved cooperative behavior, while the text chat groups continued to compete throughout. The video groups achieved the same levels of trust as the face-to-face groups, although perhaps a bit more slowly. The audio group was intermediate. These results show that trust can emerge through mediated communication.

ARTEMIS: learner-centered design of an information seeking environment for K-12 education

Learners use software for different reasons and with differentskills and motivations than other users. Using concepts of learner-centered design (LCD), we developed a user interface for supporting learners as they use digital information resources in inquiry-based science classrooms. Learner needs are categorized in five areas: content knowledge, technology knowledge, strategic and metacognitive lmowledge, and motivation Results of research on problems encountered by students as they engage in information seeking are used as the basis for applying LCD, by identifying some specific problem areas learners encounter engaging in a process, generating search terms, staying on task, and evahmting information. Solutions offered through the Artemis interface are described.

A globalization simulation to teach corporate social responsibility: design features and analysis of student reasoning

There is an increasing need for business students to be taught the ability to think through ethical dilemmas faced by corporations conducting business on a global scale. This article describes a multiplayer online simulation game, ISLAND TELECOM, that exposes students to ethical dilemmas in international business. Through role playing and perspective taking, the authors wanted students to actively work through problems related to both ethics and corporate social responsibility. Qualitative analysis of simulation data demonstrated that students were successful in perspective taking, they considered trade-offs between profitability and social responsibility, and they were able to come up with creative solutions to difficult trade-offs.

Ocelot: user-centered design of a decision support visualization for network quarantine

Most cyber security research is focused on detecting network intrusions or anomalies through the use of automated methods, exploratory visual analytics systems, or real-time monitoring using dynamic visual representations. However, there has been minimal investigation of effective decision support systems for cyber analysts. This paper describes the user-centered design and development of a decision support visualization for active network defense. Ocelot helps the cyber analyst assess threats to a network and quarantine affected computers from the healthy parts of a network. The described web-based, functional visualization prototype integrates and visualizes multiple data sources through the use of a hybrid space partitioning tree and node link diagram. We describe our design process for requirements gathering and design feedback which included expert interviews, iterative design, and a user study.

Twitter, Public Opinion, and the 2011 Nigerian Presidential Election

This paper analyzes a corpus of Nigerian Tweets collected during the run-up to the 2011 Nigerian Presidential election and compares it with official election returns and polling data. We found that counts of the mentions on Twitter of the two major candidates correlated strongly with polling and election results when compared across the countrys geopolitical regions, though the same data over represented two other candidates who did not fare as well in the polls or at the ballot box. Sentiment extracted from Twitter was less accurate in capturing mean levels of support for the two major candidates and, in particular, showed a strong negativity bias against the incumbent president. Twitter sentiment did mirror regional trends in the polling and election results though not as strongly as seen for mention counts. We demonstrate methodologically how to sample these data, extract sentiment, and compare this sentiment with ground-truth polling data and election results. Although social media clearly capture opinion about contentious issues, our results suggest that the opinion represented there may not always accurately reflect true public opinion.

Research ethics in the facebook era: privacy, anonymity, and oversight

Ethical standards for human subjects research have not kept up with new research paradigms. Several research areas are particularly problematic for the CHI community. Online social research is testing the boundaries of public observation, third-party disclosure, and anonymization methods. Furthermore, there are differences in norms about what is and is not ethical among various research disciplines studying the Web. This SIG brings together members of the CHI community who are interested in research ethics for studying the Web. We invite seasoned veterans from industry and academia, educators, and newcomers to the field to share their experiences and advice, ask questions, and to form an interest group that can help shape university and corporate best practices for online research.

High School Students' Critical Evaluation of Scientific Resources on the World Wide Web

This research explores a new web-based curriculum idea, that of having students write and publish critical web “reviews” of scientific resources as a means of both practicing critical evaluation of web resources, and of making an authentic value-added contribution to the web. This paper presents content analyses of selected sections of 63 web reviews published by eleventh grade students in a project-based science class. Two aspects of critical evaluation are focused upon: summarization of content and evaluation of credibility. Content analyses show that student summaries were usually accurate, but had room for improvement especially in areas of comprehensiveness and level of detail. An ideal model of a content review is developed from analysis of a second set of reviews. When asked to evaluate credibility, students struggled to identify scientific evidence of claims in web resources, but analysis of web documents shows that this is often because such evidence is missing. Students could accurately determine the publishing source of web documents, but challenges arose in identifying potential biases. Recommendations for future iterations of this curriculum idea are presented throughout. A companion paper that will appear in this journal will examine how student reviews serve the function of social filtering on the web.