research-article

Being present in online communities: learning in citizen science

Authors:

Carsten Østerlund,

Corey Brian Jackson,

Kevin CrowstonAuthors Info & Claims

C&T '15: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies

Pages 129 - 138

https://doi.org/10.1145/2768545.2768555

Published: 27 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

How online community members learn to become valuable contributors constitutes a long-standing concern of Community & Technology researchers. The literature tends to highlight participants' access to practice, feedback from experienced members, and relationship building. However, not all crowdsourcing environments offer participants opportunities for access, feedback, and relationship building (e.g., Citizen Science). We study how volunteers learn to participate in a citizen science project, Planet Hunters, through participant observation, interviews, and trace ethnography. Drawing on Sørensen's sociomaterial theories of presence, we extend the notion of situated learning to include several modes of learning. The empirical findings suggest that volunteers in citizen science engage more than one form of access to practice, feedback, and relationship building. Communal relations characterize only one form of learning. Equally important to their learning are authority--subject and agent-centered forms of access, feedback, and relationship building.

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Cited By

Krukowski SHoppe HBodemer D(2024)Characterising Learning in Informal Settings Using Deep Learning with Network DataArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-3-031-64299-9_40(431-438)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
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Index Terms

Being present in online communities: learning in citizen science
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Other conferences

C&T '15: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies

June 2015

167 pages

ISBN:9781450334600

DOI:10.1145/2768545

Conference Chair:
Gabriela Avram
University of Limerick, Ireland
,
Program Chairs:
Fiorella De Cindio
University of Milano, Italy
,
Volkmar Pipek
University of Siegen, Germany

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2015

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National Science Foundation

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C&T '15

C&T '15: Communities and Technologies 2015

June 27 - 30, 2015

Limerick, Ireland

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Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 183 submissions, 44%

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Cited By

Krukowski SHoppe HBodemer D(2024)Characterising Learning in Informal Settings Using Deep Learning with Network DataArtificial Intelligence in Education10.1007/978-3-031-64299-9_40(431-438)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64299-9_40
Cazacu SMulder IVande Moere ASteenberghen T(2023)Revealing the role of values in developing a garden data ecosystem through a reflective participatory design approachProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Communities and Technologies10.1145/3593743.3593777(156-162)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593743.3593777
Faas TDombrowski LYoung AMiller A(2018)Watch Me CodeProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/32743192:CSCW(1-18)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3274319
Maskell TCrivellaro CAnderson RNappey TAraújo-Soares VMontague KMandryk RHancock MPerry MCox A(2018)SpokespeopleProceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3173574.3173979(1-12)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3173574.3173979
Johri AYang SSchuler DLewkowicz MRohde MMulder I(2017)Scaffolded Help for LearningProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies10.1145/3083671.3083694(149-158)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2017
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Richardson DCrivellaro CKharrufa AMontague KOlivier PSchuler DLewkowicz MRohde MMulder I(2017)Exploring Public Places as Infrastructures for Civic M-LearningProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies10.1145/3083671.3083678(222-231)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3083671.3083678
Radchenko IMaksimenkova O(2016)Principles of Citizen Science in Open Educational Projects Based on Open DataProceedings of the 12th Central and Eastern European Software Engineering Conference in Russia10.1145/3022211.3022216(1-5)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022211.3022216
Tinati RLuczak-Roesch MSimperl EHall WNejdl WHall WParigi PStaab S(2016)Because science is awesomeProceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science10.1145/2908131.2908151(45-54)Online publication date: 22-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2908131.2908151

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