Visualizing wiki author contributions in higher education
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Abstract
This thesis investigates how users contribute to wiki environments implemented in higher education settings. The type, extent and quality of users' edits is assessed by analyzing a student-generated wiki through a manual analysis carried by three raters. This project aims to present the relative contribution of wiki users as a way to motivate them to collaborate in a wiki-based group project. Manual as well as automatic programs are used to analyze the same set of wiki articles. Automatic algorithms are proposed to estimate users' relative contribution and ownership to the article. Suggested is the implementation of a visual representation known as a glyph (working as an add-on to the wiki) that shows statistics on participants’ contributions. Several glyph designs were tested by participants through interviews. These interviews showed that participants identified the visualization as a motivation enhancer to contribute to wikis.