The book offers two themes: one is about Communities of Practice (CoPs) and learning, the other i... more The book offers two themes: one is about Communities of Practice (CoPs) and learning, the other is about social informatics approaches. First, in order to facilitate designing effective learning environments both online and offline, this book calls attention to the importance of CoPs to facilitate informal learning as part of professional development. Communities of Practice are informal networks that support a group of practitioners to develop a shared meaning and engage in knowledge building among the members. The concept of CoPs is ...
Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2017
The prevalence of sites in which users can contribute content increases ordinary citizens' partic... more The prevalence of sites in which users can contribute content increases ordinary citizens' participation in emerging forms of knowledge sharing. This paper investigates the practices associated with the roles of participants who actively contribute to the co-production of knowledge in three online communities and how these roles differ in controversial and non-controversial threads. The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine was selected as a contentious scientific topic because of persistent belief about an alleged link between the vaccine and autism. Contributions to three online communities that engage mothers with young children were analyzed to identify participant roles. No consistent roles were evident in non-controversial threads, but the role of mediator consistently appeared in controversial threads in all three communities. This study helps to articulate the roles played in online communities that engage in knowledge collaboration. The variety of roles in online communities has implications for both the study for practice and the design of information technologies.
This paper investigates how knowledge is constructed collaboratively in a crowd-sourced environme... more This paper investigates how knowledge is constructed collaboratively in a crowd-sourced environment. More specifically, the study presented in this paper empirically analyzes online discussions in regard to Wikipedia entries on the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster that occurred in March 2011 in Japan. For this study, we examined the encyclopedia articles in both the English and Japanese versions of Wikipedia. The findings indicate similarities and differences between the two language versions. The implications of the study for collaborative knowledge production are also discussed.
Knowledge sharing online has flourished within organizations as well as open online communities d... more Knowledge sharing online has flourished within organizations as well as open online communities due to the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 platforms. This paper builds on previous studies of social construction of knowledge online and investigates how contributors in online communities collaboratively share and construct controversial scientific knowledge. As the general public participates in such knowledge collaboration, understanding the processes through which they contribute content and roles that they play is imperative. The authors conducted the content analysis of three online communities that engage in knowledge collaboration on the subject of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccination, which is perceived as contentious knowledge by the public due to the widespread myth among parents that the MMR vaccine is associated with autism. The study's findings include that the content discussed is influenced by the purposes of the communities, nature of the tasks, and demographics of participants, although they discussed the same topic. The authors also found that the framework of knowledge reuse and knowledge co-construction sites is useful for investigating the content and roles that appeared in the three communities. The contribution of the paper includes the analytical framework of knowledge reuse and knowledge co-construction, articulation of the content and roles that appeared in online communities, and unboxing of discourses in three different online communities. Future research directions are also discussed.
Biochemistry and molecular biology education : a bimonthly publication of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Although doctoral mentors recognize the benefits of providing quality advisement and close guidan... more Although doctoral mentors recognize the benefits of providing quality advisement and close guidance, those of sharing project management responsibilities with mentees are still not well recognized. We observed that mentees, who have the opportunity to co-manage projects, generate more written output. Here we examine the link between research productivity, doctoral mentoring practices (DMP), and doctoral research experiences (DRE) of mentees in programs in the non-West. Inspired by previous findings that early career productivity is a strong predictor of later productivity, we examine the research productivity of 210 molecular biology doctoral students in selected programs in Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Using principal component (PC) analysis, we derive two sets of PCs: one set from 15 DMP and another set from 16 DRE items. We model research productivity using Poisson and negative-binomial regression models with these sets as predictors. Our findings suggest a need to re-think exta...
2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2014
ABSTRACT As various forms of collaboration are enabled (and constrained) by the affordances avail... more ABSTRACT As various forms of collaboration are enabled (and constrained) by the affordances available in social media, researchers are investigating a range of issues including: 1) the diverse ways in which people collaborate to create, manage, curate and manipulate online content and how these activities affect digital repositories, 2) how those who manage these repositories are responding to the co-creation of online content 3) the dynamics of crowd sourced online collaborations and online communities of practice, and 4) the ways in which we can best describe the socio-technical interaction networks that facilitate and inhibit mass knowledge production. This minitrack focuses on online interactions for knowledge production on crowd sourced sites.
AbstractThis article reports a cross-cultural analysis of four Wikipedias in different languages ... more AbstractThis article reports a cross-cultural analysis of four Wikipedias in different languages and demonstrates their roles as communities of practice (CoPs). Prior research on CoPs and on the Wikipedia community often lacks cross-cultural analysis. Despite the fact that over 75% of Wikipedia is written in languages other than English, research on Wikipedia primarily focuses on the English Wikipedia and tends to overlook Wikipedias in other languages. This article first argues that Wikipedia communities can be analyzed and understood as CoPs. Second, norms of behaviors are examined in four Wikipedia languages (English, Hebrew, Japanese, and Malay), and the similarities and differences across these four languages are reported. Specifically, typical behaviors on three types of discussion spaces (talk, user talk, and Wikipedia talk) are identified and examined across languages. Hofstede's dimensions of cultural diversity as well as the size of the community and the function of each discussion area provide lenses for understanding the similarities and differences. As such, this article expands the research on online CoPs through an examination of cultural variations across multiple CoPs and increases our understanding of Wikipedia communities in various languages.
The book offers two themes: one is about Communities of Practice (CoPs) and learning, the other i... more The book offers two themes: one is about Communities of Practice (CoPs) and learning, the other is about social informatics approaches. First, in order to facilitate designing effective learning environments both online and offline, this book calls attention to the importance of CoPs to facilitate informal learning as part of professional development. Communities of Practice are informal networks that support a group of practitioners to develop a shared meaning and engage in knowledge building among the members. The concept of CoPs is ...
Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 2017
The prevalence of sites in which users can contribute content increases ordinary citizens' partic... more The prevalence of sites in which users can contribute content increases ordinary citizens' participation in emerging forms of knowledge sharing. This paper investigates the practices associated with the roles of participants who actively contribute to the co-production of knowledge in three online communities and how these roles differ in controversial and non-controversial threads. The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine was selected as a contentious scientific topic because of persistent belief about an alleged link between the vaccine and autism. Contributions to three online communities that engage mothers with young children were analyzed to identify participant roles. No consistent roles were evident in non-controversial threads, but the role of mediator consistently appeared in controversial threads in all three communities. This study helps to articulate the roles played in online communities that engage in knowledge collaboration. The variety of roles in online communities has implications for both the study for practice and the design of information technologies.
This paper investigates how knowledge is constructed collaboratively in a crowd-sourced environme... more This paper investigates how knowledge is constructed collaboratively in a crowd-sourced environment. More specifically, the study presented in this paper empirically analyzes online discussions in regard to Wikipedia entries on the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster that occurred in March 2011 in Japan. For this study, we examined the encyclopedia articles in both the English and Japanese versions of Wikipedia. The findings indicate similarities and differences between the two language versions. The implications of the study for collaborative knowledge production are also discussed.
Knowledge sharing online has flourished within organizations as well as open online communities d... more Knowledge sharing online has flourished within organizations as well as open online communities due to the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 platforms. This paper builds on previous studies of social construction of knowledge online and investigates how contributors in online communities collaboratively share and construct controversial scientific knowledge. As the general public participates in such knowledge collaboration, understanding the processes through which they contribute content and roles that they play is imperative. The authors conducted the content analysis of three online communities that engage in knowledge collaboration on the subject of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccination, which is perceived as contentious knowledge by the public due to the widespread myth among parents that the MMR vaccine is associated with autism. The study's findings include that the content discussed is influenced by the purposes of the communities, nature of the tasks, and demographics of participants, although they discussed the same topic. The authors also found that the framework of knowledge reuse and knowledge co-construction sites is useful for investigating the content and roles that appeared in the three communities. The contribution of the paper includes the analytical framework of knowledge reuse and knowledge co-construction, articulation of the content and roles that appeared in online communities, and unboxing of discourses in three different online communities. Future research directions are also discussed.
Biochemistry and molecular biology education : a bimonthly publication of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Although doctoral mentors recognize the benefits of providing quality advisement and close guidan... more Although doctoral mentors recognize the benefits of providing quality advisement and close guidance, those of sharing project management responsibilities with mentees are still not well recognized. We observed that mentees, who have the opportunity to co-manage projects, generate more written output. Here we examine the link between research productivity, doctoral mentoring practices (DMP), and doctoral research experiences (DRE) of mentees in programs in the non-West. Inspired by previous findings that early career productivity is a strong predictor of later productivity, we examine the research productivity of 210 molecular biology doctoral students in selected programs in Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan. Using principal component (PC) analysis, we derive two sets of PCs: one set from 15 DMP and another set from 16 DRE items. We model research productivity using Poisson and negative-binomial regression models with these sets as predictors. Our findings suggest a need to re-think exta...
2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2014
ABSTRACT As various forms of collaboration are enabled (and constrained) by the affordances avail... more ABSTRACT As various forms of collaboration are enabled (and constrained) by the affordances available in social media, researchers are investigating a range of issues including: 1) the diverse ways in which people collaborate to create, manage, curate and manipulate online content and how these activities affect digital repositories, 2) how those who manage these repositories are responding to the co-creation of online content 3) the dynamics of crowd sourced online collaborations and online communities of practice, and 4) the ways in which we can best describe the socio-technical interaction networks that facilitate and inhibit mass knowledge production. This minitrack focuses on online interactions for knowledge production on crowd sourced sites.
AbstractThis article reports a cross-cultural analysis of four Wikipedias in different languages ... more AbstractThis article reports a cross-cultural analysis of four Wikipedias in different languages and demonstrates their roles as communities of practice (CoPs). Prior research on CoPs and on the Wikipedia community often lacks cross-cultural analysis. Despite the fact that over 75% of Wikipedia is written in languages other than English, research on Wikipedia primarily focuses on the English Wikipedia and tends to overlook Wikipedias in other languages. This article first argues that Wikipedia communities can be analyzed and understood as CoPs. Second, norms of behaviors are examined in four Wikipedia languages (English, Hebrew, Japanese, and Malay), and the similarities and differences across these four languages are reported. Specifically, typical behaviors on three types of discussion spaces (talk, user talk, and Wikipedia talk) are identified and examined across languages. Hofstede's dimensions of cultural diversity as well as the size of the community and the function of each discussion area provide lenses for understanding the similarities and differences. As such, this article expands the research on online CoPs through an examination of cultural variations across multiple CoPs and increases our understanding of Wikipedia communities in various languages.
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