special social networks to be used in academic environments. ... web sites. Hence, having some good experiences by creating the Iranian Experts. Social ...
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Eliciting Essential Requirements for Social Networks in Academic Environments Vala Ali Rohani
Siew Hock Ow Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Computer Science University of Malaya Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
has spawned such words as twitter, tweed, and twitterati [16]. Half the Internet users in Brazil are registered in orkut while 87% of the Internet users in the Philippines are members of Friendster. These two social networks originated in the US, but have been overshadowed by other sites and instead enjoy popularity elsewhere. [17].
Abstract: Recent years have witnessed the generation of online social networking web sites, in which millions of members publicly articulate mutual friendship relations and share user-created contents. But it is just a few years that we have seen some efforts to create special social networks to be used in academic environments. Considering the increasing needs for this kind of web sites, we did a comprehensive survey on more than 20 academic social networks for gathering and categorizing the essential requirements for this kind of web sites.
Universities, Colleges and higher education institutions are constantly being refreshed with new members while being connected with graduates seems to be vital too. In most cases, Students use the systems only out of necessity rather than choice, preferring to self create study groups on Facebook.
Hence, having some good experiences by creating the Iranian Experts Social Network with more than 120,000 official members, in this paper we try to clarify the features of Social Networks in academic environments and propose a category for their requirements.
Keywords: Social Networks, Requirement Elicitation
Academic
Social
But is obvious that the academic society and definitely their members, need some special facilities to leverage the regarding communication between students, graduates, instructors and all other members of academic environments.
Networks,
The Social Friend in MySpace sometimes equates to an old and valued friend but also equates to a celebrity fan. The Social Friend in an academic network has status, trust, funding, tenure and potential associated with it [18].
INTRODUCTION The majority of Internet users have visited thousands of social networking sites. They have taken advantage of the free services of such sites in order to stay connected online with their offline friends and new online acquaintances, or to share user-created contents, such as photos, videos, bookmarks, blogs, etc.
In 2007 the University of Cambridge experimented with exposing secure content from its Virtual Learning Environment to sites like FaceBook and iGoogle, as well as desktop Widgets such as Mac Desktop Widgets, Windows Vista Sidebar Widgets and Google Desktop Gadgets. During the same period the University carried out a Learning Landscape study that investigated, among other things, student use of technology. Our conclusion was that use of, and dependence on, external sites for mainstream learning support has significant drawbacks - such as lack of access to content for marking and record keeping, lack of even student control over content, privacy concerns, etc.
Most of these social networks are developed for public purposes which allow a wide range of internet users in different ages, interests, social and academic levels to join them and make their own friendship network. As two most popular ones, MySpace claims over 250 million registered users while Just recently, Facebook has announced that it has passed the 500 million member mark [14,15]. Twitter, the social networking site that features 140-character messages, called microblogs, are so popular in the US that it
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find like-minded individuals and forge potential connections. I briefly mentioned that users can post publications, but I want to emphasize what an easy way this is for academics to highlight the work they feel best represents what theyre currently interested in. Furthermore, the Academia.edu site allows users to easily write blog posts that become part of their online profile.
However, it was equally clear that students found their interactions with social networking sites far more rewarding and intuitive than their interaction with institutional software [19]. LITERATURE REVIEW There are thousands of social Web sites and several ones in academic environments which differ in details and layouts of the features they provide. Further, they continue to add new features and make changes to existing features. In this section we tried to do a literature review on social networks in academic environments with the aim of eliciting features which cover the essential needs of academic social networks.
The information about thousands of post-secondary institutions has been populated into the Academia.edu database. So when a new academic user first registers, the site intuitively auto-populates the information about their academic institution and department. A simple example of this is the fact a PhD candidate from, say, the University of Waterloos English department, can choose the appropriate departmental title, the Department of English Language and Literature, instead of simply a generic title like the Department of English. Academia.edu achieves this by allowing users to populate the database as they register. So the first registrant of a given department paves the way for subsequent registrants to easily select their department from a list of options.
During our research in this field, we faced to 10 popular social networks which specially were used in academic environments such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate.com, mendeley.com, UniversityNetwork.org, classmates.com, teachstreet.com, gradeguru.com, campusbuddy.com, Digication.com and Sakai. As the result of our survey, we introduce the features of the four most popular academic social networks.
In terms of user interface, Academia.edu has done everything right. The layout is clean and clear with solid web architecture. And one of the most noticeable aspects of the site is the visual layout of academic departments. Once a user has chosen their institution and department, they can see the other faculty members, graduate students, and staffs who are also Academia.edu users.
A. Academia.edu This section is about Academia.edu, a social networking website for academics which leverages powerful techniques from the social networking web in a way that is easy and accessible for academics. But it overlooks some the most fundamental social networking techniques as well.
Of course, it has some problems too. Users cant filter the sites feeds. The feeds are scrolling updates about users posting papers, status updates, profile changes, etc. Youll be most familiar with this user interface from Facebook. Academia.edu claims that the site uses your reported research interests to populate your feed with information youll find relevant. Well this is just not true.
When you sign up, you create a user profile as you would on most social networks, but with one big difference: you tag yourself with topics that are related to your research. The site can be used to keep in touch with your peers, but one of its biggest selling points is its News Feed, which includes a stream of research items that the site believes youll be interested in based on those tags. This is similar in some ways to Facebooks News Feed, with one key difference: Facebook tends to suggest items your friends are interested in. Academia.edu does this too, but it has more of a discovery focus, and tries to surface articles youll be interested in even if they havent been shared by one of your coworkers.
In most cases, the users are interdisciplinary researcher with interests in different areas. Perhaps this diversity is the reason his/ her feed is constantly clogged with information about academics who he/she not interested in and papers. Although the site allows you to Follow the work of some academics, this doesnt occlude the work of academics youve never heard of from appearing in your newsfeed.
As the positive points, we can mention to its functionality, database and interface. Academia.edu is a free and easy way for academics to publish their bios, publications, contact information, and Twitter-like status updates for the entire world to see. Further to that, users can use specialized search terms like research interests and departmental affiliations to
B. ResearchGate.com ResearchGATE is a free social networking site and collaboration tool aimed at scientific researchers from all
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disciplines of science (Fig. 1). It provides web applications including semantic searching (whole abstract searching), filesharing, publication database sharing (e.g. endnote libraries), forums, methodology discussions, groups etc. Members can create their personal blog within the network. Since May 2008, ResearchGATE has gathered a user base of more than 250,000 researchers from 196 countries [3].
When you view an article you can see other members that have added it to their personal library which you can then view. Every scientific paper accessible via our search engines can be rated and commented on by ResearchGATE members. This unique tool creates a new way of discussing and sharing research results within the scientific community. Since our publication database of more than 35 million articles is updated daily, you can rate even the most recent publications. You can select between five different rank levels from not interesting to remarkable. The number of rankings and the average ranking level will be displayed.
The custom designed semantic search engine built by ResearchGATE represents a new way to search for information. Instead of simply relying on matching keywords, semantic search returns hits that are meaningfully related to what you're looking for. Using semantic search allows you to be more efficient and effective than ever before.
C. Mandely.com The semantic search engine also uses your profile information to recommend fellow researchers, groups, literature, and other ResearchGATE resources that may be of interest to you.
Mendeley is a research management tool for desktop & web. You can also explore research trends and connect to other academics in your discipline. Mendeley is used at, and endorsed by, some of the world's leading research institutions (Fig. 2). Based in London, it is funded by some of the people behind Skype, Last.fm, and Warner Music [5].
Using ResearchGATE's internal search engine allows you to simultaneously search seven major databases consisting of over 35,000,000 articles and conference abstracts. All databases are updated daily. The databases are: Pubmed , Arxiv , Pubmed Central , IEEE , RePEc , Citeseer , NASA Library and Directory of Open Access Journals.
Figure2. Mendeley web site User Interface
Mendeley Desktop organizes your research paper collection and citations. It automatically extracts references from documents, generates bibliographies, and is freely available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It automatically extracts bibliographic data, keywords, and cited references from your PDFs and turns them into a searchable full-text database. Also it imports and exports different file formats like BibTeX, RIS or EndNoteTM XML. It also syncs continuously with other reference managers like Zotero or CiteULike.
Figure1. ResearchGATE web site
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support and commercial support, each with unique benefits and costs [12].
Mendeley Web lets you access your research paper library from anywhere, share documents in closed groups, and collaborate on research projects online. It connects you to likeminded academics and puts the latest research trend statistics at your fingertips.
Sakai provides users with a suite of capabilities that best meet the needs of todays teachers and learners. The functionality can be assembled to create spaces for a variety of purposes. The list of Sakai current core tools is provided below. In addition, there are a large number of add-on tools (called contrib) available that are in use by many Sakai institutions.
D. TeachStreet.com TeachStreet is a dynamic online community that brings motivated learners and talented teachers together. On one hand, this is a place where people who love to learn can find classes that are just right for them. On the other, we offer a public forum that helps teachers, coaches, and other experts share what they know. In the process, TeachStreet helps these experts grow their businesses with simple online tools they can use to promote their classes, workshops and special events.
The Sakai CLE is a flexible, enterprise application that supports teaching, learning and scholarly collaboration in either fully or partially online environments. Sakai also has a robust and full-featured online portfolio system built-in. The Sakai CLE is distributed as free, open-source software, which offers the ultimate in flexibility and avoids the risks of vendor lock-in and escalating license costs.
In short, the TeachStreet team is a bunch of dreamers and tech geeks who want to encourage people to get away from their computers, get out into the real world, and learn something new. So we support that goal by helping people find experts in their own neighborhoods who can teach them face-to-face.
ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF ACADEMIC SOCIAL NETWORKS In this section, we will provide taxonomy of essential features of academic social web sites and then, compare them to current social networks features in academic environments.
TeachStreet is privately-funded and located in downtown Seattle, WA. It has formally launched in major cities all over the U.S. and are growing bigger all the time. In fact, customers have listed classes in more than 500 cities across the country.
They are separated in 4 categories: a) b) c) d)
E. Sakai Leading educational institutions throughout the world choose Sakai to enable powerful teaching and learning and research collaboration. Depending on where you are in the world, Sakai might be called a Course Management System (CMS), a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Management System (LMS). While Sakai is typically used for teaching and learning (similar to products like Blackboard and Moodle) we call it a Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) because it embraces uses beyond the classroom.
Administrative Features Collaborative Features Reporting Features Integrating Features
As mentioned in TABLE 1, the administrative features of academic social networks are categorized to 6 groups. The first 6 capabilities are common between all types of users are considered as General. The assignment uploading is considered for students who use this model and join this academic social network. Lecturers also need some special feature for handling their tasks in this model. Four features are considered for lecturers. There are other types of users which we can them as Researchers. They are not necessarily the lecturers. So we consider Research Field Following Management and My Publications Management for this kind of users. There are two level of administration in this model which will be handled by university and social network administrators. The last two groups of features is dedicated to this type of users.
Sakais open approach allows institutions to deploy, host and modify the software in whatever manner best supports institutions skills, needs and goals. Sakais open development process allows local enhancements to be incorporated into future versions of the software. This social network embraces both open source and open standards. We use open source software within our technology whenever possible and base as much work as we can on open standards. Sakai enables an open approach to support models allowing choices between institutional support, community
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TABLE 1. Administrative Features of Academic Social Networks A) 1.Create and Editing profile
users. TABLE 3 shows the list of necessary reporting features for our model in academic social networks.
Administrative Features 1. Assignment Uploading
2.Editing Privacy Settings
Pointing and ranking mechanism can create an enthusiasm for users to increase their rank and enhance their position in the social network of their university or colleges. We can consider different parameters for using in pointing mechanisms. Usually the number of invites, the count of scientific posts and also rate of user activities in answering to other members questions are considered as basic parameters for this purpose.
1.Uploading assignments 2.Building Courses 3.Managing Course Student Forums
3.Uploading Publications
4.Course Membership Management
4.Billboard management 5.File Repository Management
Sending daily scientific news to members email is one of the most effective alternatives for encouraging users to login to their profile periodically.
6.Freinds Network Management 7.Membership 8. Forum activities 1.Research Field Following management
1.Editing University Information
2.My Publications management
2.Managing Faculties Information
TABLE 3. Reporting Features of Academic Social Networks
1.Confirming a University 2.Abuse Report Management
C)
Reporting Features
1.Points & Ranks Management and Reporting 2.Daily Scientific News Letter Sending
3.Abuse Report Management
3.Different Transaction Notifications
4.News Letter Management
The most important feature group of this model is Integrating Features (TABLE 4). TABLE 4. Integrating Features of Academic Social Networks
For persuading the social network users to check their profiles continuously, we should pay special attention to the collaborative features. TABLE 2 shows the list of suggested collaborative features in academic social networks. Personal billboards are amazing capability for announcing the personal feelings while the general billboard can be helpful in informing the last news of an organization (e.g. a university). All of the social network users need peer-to- peer message passing system and friendship network to be connected to their friends. Discussion forums and online groups can play a significant role in mechanizing the organizations in academic environments. We cannot forget the online chat as one of the most favorite features of social networks.
A) 1.Common Billboard 2.Single Signup Mechanism
Integrating Features 1.Group Building 2.Common Assignments
3.Common Calendar
1.Common Research Following UP 2.Common Paper Reviewing Service
1.Common Course Management 2.Common Q&A Service 3.Common Paper Reviewing Service
1.Common News Letter 2.Common Discussion Forum Topics 3.Common Survey
TABLE 2. Collaborative Features of Academic Social Networks B)
Collaborative Features
1. Personal and General Billboard
5.Discussion Forums
2.Peer-to-Peer Message passing
6.Online Groups
3.General Announcement
7.Online Chat
According to survey in academic environment, we face to the need of integration between academic organizations social networks. Hence, we categorize these types of features in five groups according to its user domains.
4.Friendship Network
Reporting services in social network can update the user information about his/her current position among the other
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Some features like Common Billboard and Calendar are common among all social network members. Also, this model should prepare a special service to enable the its users to have several profiles regarding different social networks while having just a single Username and password. We named this service the Single Signup Mechanism.
The authors wish to acknowledge the collaborative funding support from the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS). Under grant no. FRGS/1/10/TK/UM/02/14. We also wish to acknowledge the valuable contributions of the numerous companies and individuals who participated in the surveys.
Regarding the students view point, this model provides some features for building scientific groups and also some services for doing teamwork in group assignments.
REFERENCES This kind of features helps lecturers managing the shared course contents as well as handling the common Question and Answers services. Usually, the lecturers and researchers needs to cooperate with each others in some scholarly tasks such as paper reviewing. They can use the prepared service in this manner to interact with each other as well as possible.
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Maybe it would be too amazing for autonomous universities to share some services of their separated social networks with each other. In these cases, the integrating features which considered for University Administrators level can enable them to have inter-organization newsletters and discussion forums.
[6] [7] [8]
[9]
[10]
CONCLUSION
[11] [12] [13] [14]
This paper did a survey on current academic social networks for eliciting the social networks necessary requirements in academic environments. According to our investigations, each of them had their own positive and negative points.
[15]
After investigating their most popular ones, we categorized the most important and necessary features of a model for developing academic social networks in four categories includes Administrative, Collaborative, Reporting and Integrating features.
[16] [17] [18]
This set of requirements can be used to design an architecture for autonomous and integrated social networks to enhance the interaction and teamwork between the students, graduates, lecturers, official staffs and researchers. By using this architecture, Universities and higher education colleges will be able to have their own social network for managing the academic e-content in their domains.
[19]
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