Abstract
A theoretically-grounded learning feedback tool suite, the Visible Effort Mediawiki extension is proposed for optimizing online group learning activities by measuring the amount of equality and the emergence of social structure in groups that participate in Computer-Mediated Collaboration (CMC). Building on social entropy theory, which is drawn from Shannon’s Mathematical Theory of Communication, Visible Effort captures levels of CMC unevenness and group structure and visualizes them on wiki Web pages through background colors, charts, and tabular data. Visual information provides users feedback on how balanced and equitable collaboration is within their online group, helping them to maintain it within optimal levels. We present the theoretical and practical implications of Visible Effort and the measures behind it, as well as illustrate its capabilities by describing a quasi-experimental teaching activity (use scenario) in tandem with a detailed discussion of theoretical justification, methodological underpinning, and technological capabilities of the approach.
A version of this paper has been presented at the Global Communication Forum, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, September 29–30, 2010.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the programmers Bill Schroeder and Shammi Diddla, as well as David Eisert and Terri Patterson who worked on the software code of the MediaWiki extension. Visible Effort is supported by a competitive grant awarded by the Teaching and Learning Technologies Unit at Purdue University.
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Matei, S.A., Bruno, R., Morris, P.L. (2015). Visible Effort: Visualizing and Measuring Group Structuration Through Social Entropy. In: Matei, S., Russell, M., Bertino, E. (eds) Transparency in Social Media. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18552-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18552-1_6
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