Technology-Mediated Social Participation

New technologies are giving researchers new ways to work together to find information, compare and interpret research results, and share their knowledge. Collaboration tools range from commercial services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to specialized, discipline-specific collaboration tools. Yet, these tools are only useful if researchers use them. To be successful online communities of researchers must attract a critical mass of users. Dr. Preece is the author of one of the first academic books about online communities, Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester, UK; John Wiley & Sons. (439 pages) Not only has she studied the technologies of online collaboration, she is a leading expert on the sociability and usability issues that affect online community development. She is the Principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation-funded project on Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP), which is investigating human social interaction and how to develop socially intelligent systems in which human collaboration is mediated by machines. Better systems for online collaboration could produce profound transformations in health care, community safety, disaster response, life-long learning, business innovation, energy sustainability, environmental protection, and other spheres of important national priorities. So far, the TMSP project has sponsored three workshops in order to draw up a scientific research agenda and educational recommendations for creating a cohesive community that generates the foundational science, engineering, and graduate training necessary for a new era of social participation technologies. The project has produced a fifty-page white paper and is already helping shape Federal research programs in this exciting new field. For more details, see http://www.tmsp.umd.edu/