Request for participants - Education

10 May 2014

Hi all

I umm’d and ahh’d over whether this was an abuse of the mailing list – so my apologies if
you’re of that view (please let me know), and obviously just ignore it!

Essentially, I’m looking for participants to take part in some PhD research, if anyone has
a spare afternoon I’d really appreciate your help (sadly gratitude is all I can offer in
return). The study is of broad relevance to Wikimedians in that it involves collaborating
to find information, and writing a short shared piece based on that information.  I can
obviously provide further information particularly after the study is complete.

I’m currently looking for participants to take part in some PhD research. The study is of
broad relevance to Wikimedians in that it involves collaborating to find information
together, and writing a short shared piece based on that information. I thought this
community might be interested in two ways:

1)      take part yourself, if anyone has a spare afternoon I’d really appreciate your
help (sadly gratitude is all I can offer in return), 

2)      working with a student group, the task would be a great task for students
(undergraduates or above) to think about how they work together to find and evaluate
information

The study involves two collaborative tasks, the first of which involves reading a set of
assigned texts, and the second searching on the web. So to do that:

·         It involves downloading and using a firefox addon 

·         to work with a partner (someone you know, but it’s better if they’re not in the
same location – you can schedule this at your own convenience) 

·         to read some documents and write a short piece together

There are two tasks (total time 2.5-4 hours) but if you wanted to just sign up to 1 in the
first instance and then decide on the 2nd that’s possible. More information on the
website, so I’ll leave it with you.  The research findings would of course be shared back
to you.

Your help would be much appreciated!

If you’re interested in signing up, please check out the website at 
<http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/edusearch/>
http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/edusearch/  If you do sign up where your role is asked,
it’d be great if you could put whatever you consider your main role to be, + ‘Wikimedian’