The Influence of Students' Social Networks on Group Participation

The next speaker at Web Science 2016 is Jenna Mittelmeier, whose focus is on cross-cultural collaboration. Group work has always been difficult, and the majority of online contributions are from a small subset of all users; this free riding by non-participants is especially problematic in educational settings that require all users to participate equally.

How do users offline networks translate into their online collaboration practices? Jenna's study examined a group of 118 students in the UK, including 92% international students; these students varied from having highly homophilous to very country-diverse networks. These networks did not have any direct influence in students' willingness to participate in group activities, however.

But the diversity of students' networks did affecte how much they contributed (in terms of both number and length of posts). This demonstrates a clear linkage between offline and online social spaces, and shows that traditionally quantifiable data may not capture all of the human experience. Social agency emerges as a factor for participation instead – but all of this still needs a great deal more research, with larger participant populations.