Zooniverse research (2016-2017 archive): Difference between revisions

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'''notes from observations'''
'''notes from observations''' [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SVroeouuxPLIVybM8H0aZVQXVefJYYXCO-H6wd_kzac/edit?usp=sharing '''(classification shared doc)''']


* question level vs. board/discussion level
* question level vs. board/discussion level

Revision as of 13:00, 13 April 2016

Playground for Jim, Darren, and Aaron to build up a project analyzing volunteer management in the Zooniverse.

Action items for next meeting

  • Read Best Practices Guide (all sections) for Zooniverse Project Builder.
    • Map shared leadership concepts to best practices document.
  • Keep doing classifications to familiarize with projects.
  • Find a structured/methodical way to read a bunch of talk/forum interactions between Science Team members and volunteers.
    • Suggested projects included: GalaxyZoo2, PlanetHunters, Snapshot Serengeti, SpaceWarps.
    • Take notes about the kinds of interactions you observe with an eye towards which ones might embody different leadership/management practices and styles (start w. Zhu et al's "shared leadership" categories and build from there) that could lead to different volunteer behaviors.
  • reading and lit review from Zotero directory

Pending Action Items

  • Build out planning document draft based on Aaron's rough rationale for the project.
  • More reading (start w Zooniverse and shared leadership then move on from there).
    • volunteer engagement
    • (shared) leadership
    • community management
    • citizen science
    • Kevin Crowston
    • Carsten Oesterlund
    • Andrea Wiggins
    • Rob Simpson
    • Chris Lintott (academic director of zooniverse)

Meeting logs

03-29-16: laid out plans for the quarter; set some preliminary work goals.

04-04-16: talked about predicted probabilities for unrelated projects; revised and updated work goals for next week.

Goals

Spring 2016

  • Fully developed planning document including a thorough analysis plan.
  • A cleaned up dataset (variables and measures that we can model; not just raw database records).

Preliminary Project Overview

Understanding Effective Leadership and Volunteer Engagement in Citizen Science

Rationale:

Prior research investigating the mechanisms of effective crowd work and citizen science has focused on volunteer/worker motivations, algorithmic and computational techniques for quality control/improvement, and task/incentive design. Despite a number of findings indicating that the patterns of interaction between requesters and volunteers/workers shape participant experiences and work contributions in important ways, these interactions remain largely unexplored as a domain of analysis, design, and intervention. This is arguably an especially important design space in the context of citizen science, where "the crowd" consists entirely of volunteers and poor volunteer management or relations would likely result in complete project failure.

As task requesters in citizen science are scientists who perform important leadership functions for the project as a whole, we draw on prior literature analyzing effective leadership in volunteer online communities. Several studies by Haiyi Zhu and colleagues in the context of peer production show that "shared leadership" behaviors increase newcomer motivation and participation along multiple dimensions, but may adversely affect experienced participant motivation and participation.

This study will contribute a comparative analysis of requester-volunteer interactions in a sample of citizen science projects from within the Zooniverse platform. Building on literature on crowd work, citizen science, and studies of effective leadership in online communities and peer production, we construct models to test whether shared leadership behaviors lead to enhanced citizen scientist engagement.

Analytic approach:

Use observational data drawn from Zooniverse database records to build variables and multilevel models that test whether science team member behaviors and science team - volunteer interactions consistent with shared leadership predict increased volunteer engagement and higher quality contributions. <more details needed here>

Dependent variables (all nested within projects):

  • Count of volunteer contributions
  • Median/total quality of contributions (using gold-standard data where available)
  • Volunteer survival rate: time on zooniverse platform, completed project (0/1)
  • Number of active volunteers throughout project?
  • Risk of highly negative interactions between volunteers and science team members (if we can identify these)
    • from my observations I have yet to find these.
    • these seems like an independent, not a dependent variable

Notes

notes 04-04-16 to 04-13-16


types of shared leadership (from Zhu et al.)

  • transactional (positive feedback)
  • aversive (negative feedback)
  • directive (directive message)
  • person focused (social message)


Zooniverse Best Practices

  • building a great project
    • Some of our most successful projects in terms of engagement have been those built in cooperation with volunteers. (all)
    • You can (and should) discuss your research goals in depth on your project’s Research page. (directive)
    • two way communication--volunteer testing (including the formal Zooniverse "project review" stage) will reveal things to alter (directive, social)
  • the launch rush
    • importance of the launch period, most traffic during initial spike
    • Write a newsletter. (directive? informational?)
    • have a promotion plan, recruit from outside zooniverse
    • use talk during initial launch (all)
    • moderators for talk (all)
  • in for the long hall
    • reminder emails (all)
    • create community--more commitment from volunteers involved in talk (all, social)
    • positive feedback, report on accomplishments (transactional)


notes from observations (classification shared doc)

  • question level vs. board/discussion level
  • scientist feedback and volunteer feedback--supports shared leadership
  • most feedback isn't exactly "leadership". responding to requests for information, information sharing, not exactly directive leadership.
  • single response vs multi-response questions
  • questions from research team vs questions from public
  • most chat is response to questions
  • not much traditional "leadership" because instructions are pretty clear/explicit. most discussion above & beyond the project
    • only examples of transactional (and possibly directive) leadership
    • we might find examples of social leadership, but likely in smaller projects
  • could "questions asked" be an independent variable?
  • is an informational post directive leadership? is it directive leadership when it responds to a question?
    • information sharing is an important component of engaging volunteers, but isn't necessarily "leadership"
    • can we find lit on information sharing? communities of practice?
  • responses to questions might be a good indication of leadership
    • sometimes responses are just informational
  • types of contributors
    • volunteer
    • moderator
    • scientist
    • zooniverse employee
    • admin (spacewarps)


independent vars

  • levels: question, board, project
  • question lvl vars (possibly omit this level because it's too complicated and not that helpful):
    • is question: 0/1
    • response (is two way communication): 0/1
    • response time
    • poster role
    • answer role
    • leadership? (transactional, aversive, directive, person focused)
  • discussion lvl vars:
    • object/discussion
    • num posts
    • num contributors
    • num responses (in response to)
    • avg response time
    • num volunteers, num mods, num scientists, num zooniverse team
    • num leadership (transactional, aversive, directive, person focused)
  • project level vars
    • num volunteers, num mods, num scientists, num zooniverse team
    • num discussions
    • num objects
    • project length (time)
    • frequency of blog posts
    • length of blog posts