05-810 Computer Supported Cooperative Work:
Analyzing and Designing Online Communities

Instructor: Robert Kraut
Fri, 2:00-4:50
Wean Hall 4615A
robert.kraut@cmu.edu

Table of Contents

• Aug 29: Course overview
• Sept 5: Metaphors for online groups/communities/places
• Sep 12: Empirical introduction to research on online communities/Ethics
• Sep 19: Bringing newcomers on board
• Sept 26: Bringing newcomers on board (II)
• Oct 3:: Developing commitment
• Oct 10: Mid-terms project presentation & feedback
• Oct 17:  Developing social relationships
• Oct 24: Encouraging contribution
• Oct 31: Encouraging contribution (II)
• Nov 7: Regulating behavior
• Nov 14: Coordination
• Nov 21: Coordination (continued)
• Nov 28: Thanksgiving break
• Dec 5: Starting a community
• Exam period: Final presentations

Readings

Sep 5^th. Metaphors for Online Community

• Preece, J., & Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003). Online communities. In J. Jacko & A. A. Sears (Eds.), Handbook of human-computer interaction (pp. 596-620). Publishers. Mahwah: NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
• Butler, B. (1999). When is a group not a group: An empirical examination of metaphors for online social structure (chapter 1). The dynamics of cyberspace: Examining and modeling online social structure  (pp 1-46). Unpublished PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.
• Wellman, B. (2001). Computer networks as social networks. Science, 293(14 September), 2031-2034.
• Oldenberg, R. (1989). The great good place. Chapter 2, pages 20-42.
• Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice. Boston, MA: Haravard Business School Publishing. (Chapter 1)

Homework: Come to class with a guided tour of an online social group, organization or community (5 minutes).  This should be a group that you either know a lot about already or will be willing to become expert in over the course of the semester.  Using the readings for this week, characterize the nature of this social collective.  Do any of the metaphors fit well — group, network, community, place, community of practice? What are the criteria for success in this group? What do you see as the most important challenge this group currently faces to be successful or the most important challenge it overcame that accounts for its current success?

Sep 12. Introduction to research on online communities

Empirical introduction to types of online communities

• Lakhani., K. R., & Hippel, E. v. (2003). How open source software works "free" user-to-user assistance. Research Policy (Special Issue on Open Source Software Development), 32, 923.943.
• Ridings, C. M., & Gefen, D. (2004). Virtual community attraction: Why people hang out online. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(1), article 4.
• Nardi, B., & Harris, J. (2006). Strangers and friends: Collaborative play in world of warcraft. In CSCW 2006: Proceedings ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work. New York: ACM Press.
• Crandall, D., Cosley, D., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J., & Suri, S. (2008). Feedback effects between similarity and social influence in online communities. In Kdd'08: Proceedings of the ACM conference on knowledge discovery and data mining. New York: ACM Press.
• Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., & Watts, D. J. (2006). Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market. Science, 311(5762), 854-856.
• Ren, Y., & Kraut, R. E. (Under review). An agent-based model to understand tradeoffs in online community design..Unpublished manuscript, University of Minnesotata.

The goal for this session is to provide an introduction to different domains in which online communities are studied and different research methods used to study them. In particular, we'll examine the trade-offs in using different research methods.

Sep 19. Bringing newcomers on board & research ethics

The ethics of online research

• Kraut, R. E., Olson, J., Banaji, M., Bruckman, A., Cohen, J., & Couper, M. (2004). Psychological research online. American Psychologist, 59(2), 105-117.
• Hudson, J. M., & Bruckman, A. (2004). 'go away': Participant objections to being studied and the ethics of chatroom research. The Information Society, 20(2), 127-139.

Homework: If you haven't already done so, complete your IRB training. CMU uses the training module at http://phrp.nihtraining.com/users/login.php.  CMU students should send a copy of their training certificate to the IRB, with a copy to me.   In class, we'll discuss whether the ethics of online research differs from that of conventional human-subjects research. Come to class prepared to describe a study that illustrates some interesting issues relevant to the ethics of online research.

Newcomers

• Levine, J. M., & Moreland, R. L. (1994). Group socialization: Theory and research. In W. Strocher & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 5). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
• Krogh, G. v., Spaeth, S., Lakhani., K. R., & Hippel, E. v. (2003). Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: A case study. Research Policy: Special Issue On Open Source Software Development
• Bryant, S.L., Forte, A., & Bruckman, A. (2005). Becoming Wikipedian: Transformation of a Participation in a Collaborative Onlnie Encyclopedia., in Proceedings, GROUP05, November 6-9, 2005, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
• Ducheneaut, N. (2005). Socialization in an open source software community: A socio-technical analysis. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 14(4), 323 - 368.

One major goal of the two sessions on newcomers is provide you with a taste of the background social science literatures on entry into groups and organizations and how that class research can inform the analysis and design of the interaction between existing online groups and the newcomers they attempt to recruit, evaluate and socialize.

Sep 26. Bringing newcomers on board (continued)

• Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. Research in Organizational Behavior, 1, 209–264.
• Kraut, Burke, Riedl & van Mosh.(2007) Dealing with newcomers. Working paper 12/7/07.
• Bauer, T. N., Todd Bodner, Tucker, J. S., Erdogan, B., & Truxillo, D. M. (2007). Newcomer adjustment during organizational socialization: A meta-analytic review of antecedents, outcomes, and methods. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(3), 2007, Vol. 2092, No. 2003, 2707–2721.
• Wang, X., Kraut, R., Butler, B., Burke, M., & Joyce, E. (Under review). Beyond information: Developing the relationship between the individual and the group in online communities. Information Systems Research.
• Choi, B., Kraut, R. E., & Fichman, M. (Under review). Matching people and groups: An exploratory study of recruitment and selection in online games. In ACM conference on human factors in computing systems. New York: ACM Press.

Homework: Your online discussion this week should include a critique of the Kraut, Burke, Riedl & van Mosh.(2007)  draft.  Does it do a decent job of translating a social science research literature into design recommendations? What parts are convincing or unconvincing? What relevant literatures are missing?  On what important design questions does it fail to provide useful guidance?

Oct 3. Developing commitment to online communities

• Hogg, M. A. (2001). Social categorization, depersonalization, and group behavior. In M. Hogg. & T. S. Tinsdale. Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes (pp 57-85). Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Concentrate on pg xx-xx).
• Ren, Y., Kraut, R., & Kiesler, S. (2007). Applying common identity and bond theory to design of online communities. Organization Studies, 28(3), 377-409.
• Sassenberg, K. (2002). Common bond and common identity groups on the internet: Attachment and normative behavior in on-topic and off-topic chats. Group Dynamics., 6(1), 27-37.
• Postmes, T., Spears, R., Lee, A. T., & Novak, R. J. (2005). Individuality and social influence in groups: Inductive and deductive routes to group identity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(5), 747-763.
• Ren, Y., Harper, F. M., Drenner, S., Terveen, L., Kiesler, S., Riedl, J., et al. (under review). Increasing attachment to online communities: Designing from theory. MIS Quarterly.

We'll examine two potentially separate ways to develop people’s commitment to online groups and the design principles they imply. This week we’ll focus on identification with the group and Oct 17^th we’ll focus on forming relationships with other group members.  The overarching question this week is whether these are really separable routes to commitment.  

Oct 10. Mid-term project presentations

No new reading this week. This is a chance to present the early work you've done on your semester project and get feedback from the class.

Oct 17. Developing social relationships

• Berscheid, E., & Reis, H. T. (1998). Attraction and close relationships. In D. T. Gilbert & S. T. Fiske & et al. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, Vol 2 (4th ed., pp. 193-281). New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill. Pages 192-210, 222-226, 230-248.
• Walther, J. B., & Parks, M. R. (2002). Cues filtered out, cues filtered in: Computer-mediated communication and relationships. In I. M. L. Knapp & J. A. Daly (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (3rd ed., pp. 529-563). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Parks, M., & Roberts, L. (1998). Making moosic: The development of personal relationships on line and a comparison to their off-line counterparts. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15(4), 517-537.
• McKenna, K. Y. A., Green, A. S., & Gleason, M. E. J. (2002). Relationship formation on the Internet: What's the big attraction? Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 9-31.
• Ren, C., Harper, M., Drenner, S. Kiesler, S., Terveen, L., Riedl, J., & Kraut, R. (Under Review). Building attachment to online communities: Design principles for identity and bond.
• Backstrom, L., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J., & Lan, X. (2006). Group formation in large social networks: Membership, growth, and evolution. Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, 44-54.

If one wants to build a site to encourage interpersonal bonds, either to increase overall commitment or for its own right (e.g., dating sites), social have a rich knowledge base to provide guidance. This week will review some of the literature and consider how to apply it online. We’ll also consider whether online ties are as strong as those formed off-line..

Oct 24. Encouraging contribution

• Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. (In preparation). Encouraging online contributions. In R. E. Kraut, P. Resnick, S. Kiesler, J. Riedl, Y. Chen & J. Konstan (Eds.), Designing from theory: Using the social sciences as the basis for building online communities.
• Wasko, M. M., & Faraj, S. (2005). Why should I share? Examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice. MIS Quarterly, 29(1), 3557
• Ma, M., & Agarwal, R. (2007). Through a glass darkly: Information technology design, identity verification, and knowledge contribution in online communities. Information Systems Research, 18(1), 42.
• Gneezy, U., & Rustichini, A. (2000). Pay enough or don't pay at all. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), 791-810.
• Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007). Suggestbot: Using intelligent task routing to help people find work in wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 12th acm international conference on intelligent user interfaces. New York: ACM Press.
• Roberts, J., Hann, I.-H., & Slaughter, S. (2006). Understanding the motivations, participation and performance of open source software developers: A longitudinal study of the apache projects. Management Science, 52(7), 984 - 999.

Oct 31. Encouraging contribution (continued)

• Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706.
• Ling, K., Beenen, G., Ludford, P. J., Wang, X., Chang, K., Li, X., et al. (2005). Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(4), np.
• Markey, P. M. (2000). Bystander intervention in computer-mediated communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 16(2), 183-188.
• Moon, J. Y., & Sproull, L. (In press). The role of feedback in managing the internet-based volunteer workforce. Information Systems Research.
• Rashid, A., Ling, K., Kraut, R., & Riedl, J. (2006). Motivating participations by displaying the value of contribution. In CHI 2006: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human-factors in Computing systems (pp. 955 - 958). New York: ACM Press.

The emphasis this week is examining expectancy-value models of motivation and identifying ways to exploit them to encourage contributions to online communities.

Homework: Your online discussion this week should include a critique of  Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. (In preparation). Does it do a decent job of translating a social science research literature into design recommendations? What parts are convincing or unconvincing? What relevant literatures are missing?  On what important design questions does it fail to provide useful guidance?

Nov 7. Regulating behavior

• Cialdini, R. B., & Trost, M. (1998). Cialdini, R. B., & Trost, M. R. (1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske & et al. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, vol 2 (4th ed., pp. 151-192). New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill.
• Schwartz, M. (2008, August 3). The trolls among us. New York Times Magazine   Retrieved Aug 28, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
• Kiesler, S & Kittur, N. (2007 draft). Norms in online communities.
• Lessig, L. (1999). Code and other laws of cyberspace: Basic Books. Chapter 7.
• Joyce, E., Pike, J., & Butler, B. (2008). Don’t look now, but we’ve created a bureaucracy: The nature and roles of policies and rules in wikipedia. In CHI 2008: Proceedings of the ACM conference on human factors in Computing systems. New York: ACM Press.
• Beschastnikh, I., Kriplean, T., & McDonald, D. W. (2008). Wikipedian self-governance in action: Motivating the policy lens. Paper presented at the The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Chicago.
• Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Kiesler, S., Terveen, L., & Riedl., J. (2005). How oversight improves member-maintained communities. In Proceedings of CHI 2005: Conference on human factors in computer systems. New York: ACM Press.
• D"Arcy, J., Hovav, A., & Galletta, D. (2008, In press). User awareness of security countermeasures and its impact on information systems misuse: A deterrence approach. Information Systems Research.

Nov 14. Coordination and production

• Olson, G. M., & Olson, J. S. (2000). Distance matters. Human-Computer Interaction, 15(2-3), 139-178.
• Excerpts from March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations.. New York: Wiley. On coordination.
• Malhotra, Arvind, Majchrzak, Ann, Carman, Robert & Lott, Vern (2001). Radical innovation without collocation: A case study at Boeing-Rocketdyne. MIS Quarterly, 25(2).
• Mohammed, S., & Dumville, B. C. (2001). Team mental models in a team knowledge framework: Expanding theory and measurement across disciplinary boundaries. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 89-106.
• Cataldo, M., Wagstrom, P., Herbsleb, J. D., & Carley, K. (2006). Identification of coordination requirements: Implications for the design of collaboration and awareness tools. In CSCW’06, Proceedings of the ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work. New York: ACM Press.
• Gutwin, C., Penner, R., and Schneider, K. (2004) Group Awareness in Distributed Software Development, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. [or Endsley, M. R., & Jones, W. M. (2001). A model of inter- and intrateam situational awareness: Implications for design, training, and measurement. In M. McNeese, E. Salas & et al. (Eds.), New trends in cooperative activities: Understanding system dynamics in complex environments (pp. 46-67). Santa Monica, CA, US: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
• Espinosa, A., Slaughter, S., Kraut, R. E., & Herbsleb, J. (2007). Familiarity and team performance in geographically distributed software development1. Organization Science, 18(4), 613-630.

This week we focus on coordination through communication and mutual adjustment and shared mental models.

Nov 21: Coordination and production (continued)

• Malone, T., & Crowston, K. (1994). The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Computing Surveys, 26(1), 87-119.
• Viegas, F., Wattenberg, M., Kriss, J., & Ham, v. F. (2007). Talk before you type: Coordination in wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 40th annual hawaii international conference on system sciences(cd-rom) (10 pages). NY: Computer Society Press.
• Argyres, N. S. (1999). The impact of information technology on coordination: Evidence from the b-2 “stealth” bomber. Organization Science, 10(2), 162-180.
• Kittur, A., & Kraut, R. E. (2008). Harnessing the wisdom of crowds in wikipedia: Quality through coordination. In CSCW'08: Proceedings of the ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work. New York: ACM Press.
• Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2007). Suggestbot: Using intelligent task routing to help people find work in wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 12th acm international conference on intelligent user interfaces. New York: ACM Press.
• Zhang, J., Ackerman, M. S., & Adamic, L. (2007). Expertise networks in online communities: Structure and algorithms. Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web, 221-230.

This week we focus on alternative to coordination through communication and mutual adjustment. When does non-communication-based communication work and when does it fail.  Can one re-engineer online tasks (say in Wikipedia) to reduce needs for communication?.

Nov 28: Thanksgiving break

Dec 5: Starting an online community

• Katz, M. L., & Shapiro, C. (1994). Systems competition and network effects. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(2), 93-115.
• Chen, Y., Konstan, J., & Resnick, P. (In preparation). Starting an online community. In R. E. Kraut, P. Resnick, S. Kiesler, J. Riedl, J. Konstan & Y. Chen (Eds.), Designing from theory: Using the social sciences as the basis for building online communities.
• Barnett, W. P., & Leslie, M. (2006). Case e-220: Facebook. Stanford CA: Stanford University.
• Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., & Watts, D. J. (2006). Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market. Science, 311(5762), 854-856.
• Barabási, A. L., & Albert, R. (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science, 286(5439), 509.
• Caldarelli, G., Capocci, A., De Los Rios, P., & Munoz, M. A. (2002). Scale-free networks without growth or preferential attachment: Good get richer. Arxiv preprint cond-mat/0207366.

Homework: Your online discussion this week should include a critique of the Chen, Y., Konstan, J., & Resnick, P. (In preparation) draft.  Does it do a decent job of translating a social science research literature into design recommendations? What parts are convincing or unconvincing? What relevant literatures are missing?  On what important design questions does it fail to provide useful guidance?

Final exam period: Final presentations