Stefania Matei

Digital Badges: Signposts and Claims of Achievement

We discuss digital badges in education, focusing on two functions of badge architectures: mapping a learning system and offering a vocabulary to present one’s achievements. We have designed, implemented and evaluated two badge architectures; our research findings support the conclusion that students see these medals less as extrinsic motivations than as signposts that point out relevant learning targets. Also, because trainers and students define badges mainly as fun, locally relevant prizes, there is little concern for how they can be used to communicate merits outside the learning community. Badge architectures can be designed to support local or public reputations; if public visibility is desired, the system should assist holders’ work of claiming merit.

Big Data, Old Users, Personal Worlds: A Survey of Challenges and Resistance to Big Data Analytics in the EU

Organizations make extensive use of Big Data to classify and profile users, in order to effectively personalize their online messages. Big Data is also increasingly relied on as a photograph of society, creating expectations of an increasingly more accurate predictive science. Yet, there are systemic challenges in using Big Data as a comprehensive source of information, and there is also public resistance. We analyze Eurobarometer survey data from April 2016 to identify actual socio-demographical limitations of online traces, charting public awareness and attitudes towards the use of online information for content personalization across the European Union.

Computer-supported collaborative accounts of major depression: Digital rhetoric on Quora and Wikipedia

We analyze digital rhetoric in two computer-supported collaborative settings of writing and learning, focusing on major depression: Wikipedia and Quora. We examine the procedural rhetoric of access to and interaction with information, and the textual rhetoric of individual and aggregated entries. Through their different organization of authorship, publication and reading, the two settings create divergent accounts of depression. Key points of difference include: focus on symptoms and causes vs. experiences and advice, use of lists vs. metaphors and narratives, a/temporal structure, and personal and relational knowledge.

źSmoking Does Not Make You Happyź

We analyze in-depth five smoking cessation apps on Android OS, examining how they teach users to quit smoking and what they learn from users. Apps advise would-be ex-smokers how to perceive the world, how to deal with their emotions, and how to act on their bodies and environment. Still, they learn little from their users, and even less from the scientific literature on smoking cessation. We discuss the potential for improved customization of advice to users’ profiles and we propose a simple inventory of online scientific resources as a starting point for developers looking to create better apps.