We want to understand the common elements required for people to trust technological solutions and work collaboratively with them.

Below are examples of research projects that GVU faculty and students are currently working on:

Post-Conflict Computing
Post-conflict reconstruction, development, and peace building are some of today’s greatest and most pressing challenges in many areas. We are examining the role of computing and communications in post-conflict development. Working with Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission we’ve developed a new interactive story-sharing systems to support understanding and healing. We’ve also studied the use of mobile phones throughout the country, and the internet among the Liberian diaspora, as tools for security, reconstruction, and reconciliation. In new work we are designing virtual war memorials as lasting testaments to this civil conflict.
Technologies & International Development

Collaborative Knowledge Sharing
Public access to information and communication technologies is often viewed as second-best when compared to individual private access. In the developing world public access is viewed as being due to scarcities of income, human capacities, and technological infrastructures. We hypothesize, however, contexts where public access is not a second-best substitute but a preferred condition. In these contexts the computer end-users share cognitive, social, technological, and architectural affordances of these public spaces such that their experience is enhanced. We are examining and inventing systems that support the best forms of public access through survey and design work in laboratory settings at Tech and cybercafés in Ghana, West Africa. Ultimately our goal is to understand the state of end-user sharing in public facilities while also examining and innovating upon potential designs, policies, and architectures that support and enhance the best forms of end-user sharing.
Technologies & International Development

Computing & Civic Participation
Information and communication technologies have been shown to be important tools to ensure free and fair elections across Africa. But most of this work has focused on the use of ICTs for activities such as poll monitoring or voter registration. We are interested in the use of ICTs to enhance civic participation and engagement more broadly in African elections. We have been designing social or user-created media technologies that support grass roots involvement in civic and electoral activities. Ultimately we intend to deploy this system to support the critical Nigerian election in 2011.
Technologies & International Development

Leadership and Collaboration in Online Communities
How do people with different skills and from different countries collaborate over the Internet to produce high-quality animated movies? To find out, we interviewed 31 animators and analyzed over 900 animation projects to identify patterns and trends. We found that project leaders are heavily burdened and lack adequate technological support to help them design, manage, and complete successful collaborative projects. As a result, most of these projects fail. Based on our findings, we are designing a Web-based software tool, Pipeline, to deploy in online animation communities. One mode will support existing practices by scaffolding strong leadership and planning. Another will transform existing practices by facilitating decentralized leadership and improvisation. We plan to compare and contrast the processes and products generated by users of both modes to elicit broader principles of online creative collaboration.
Electronic Learning Communities Lab

Technology Enabled Visual Cognition in Virtual Teams
To make sense of rich and complex data in real time, virtual teams increasingly rely on visual representation technologies to select, transform and present data in a rich visual format. We argue that using visual representation technologies engages distinct cognitive processes based on the human perceptual system that can help decision makers discover patterns in large amounts of data and reach shared understanding. We call this Technology-Enabled Visual Cognition (TEVC). We hypothesize that virtual teams will be more likely to draw on visual representation technologies when initial team consensus is low or in more exacting environments and that use of these technologies will be even greater when both conditions are true. We also posit that a higher use of visual representation technologies will improve team performance. Over a three-year period, we examine the daily technology use and decisions of a virtual team that makes smog forecasts having large economic and health consequences. As hypothesized, we find increased use of visual representation technologies when there is low initial team consensus and when the consequences of errors are higher. Further, the effects of low team consensus on the proportionate use of visual representation technologies are magnified under high exactingness. However, increased use of visual representation technologies reduces forecast bias but does not improve forecast accuracy. Our study extends the literature on technology use in virtual teams by examining the link between visual cognition and technology choices in a consequential, real-world decision setting in which the team and task are relatively constant but the demands of the context vary. Implications for technology design in virtual team settings are discussed.
Biz Lab

Social Networks and the Value of Collaborative User-Generated Content
User-generated content is increasingly created through the collaborative efforts of multiple individuals. We argue that the social network responsible for the creation of collaborative content impacts its value. A social network analysis of Wikipedia’s Medicine Wikiproject shows a curvilinear relationship between the number of distinct contributors to user-generated content and viewership, and that content more centrally located in the global network of contributors and content —characterized by greater intensity of collaboration and by work on more important content—generate greater viewership. Contrary to previous theory, we find that centrality in the local network of contributors of content is actually negatively associated with viewership. These social network effects are stronger for newer user-generated content. We also find a recursive relationship between contribution and viewership activity, suggesting a developmental cycle that matures and stabilizes over time. Finally, we find these effects of the collaborative network hold only for the “typical” content source – the most and least heavily viewed sources exhibit somewhat different effects of the network. Implications for fostering collaborative user-generated content are discussed.
Biz Lab

Discount of Online Opinions Based on Inferences about Motivation
Substantial research suggests that negative information is more impactful than positive information. Empirical research of online Word-of-Mouth (WOM) communication has found that in general, negative reviews are viewed to be more useful than positive reviews. Researchers attribute these findings to the fact that negative information is less common than positive information, and therefore offers more useful information. In our research, we find conditions under which positive information is viewed as equally, if not more, useful than negative information. We attribute these findings to the fact that when judging credibility and usefulness of others’ opinions, consumers take into account both what is explicitly stated in the review and also motivational inferences they make about the person who is sharing the opinion.
Biz Lab