“I FELT LIKE A CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF THE CLASS”: INCREASING CLASS PARTICIPATION WITH CLASSCOMMONS

ABSTRACT

Public displays have become pervasive in everyday life. Recent technological development has decreased the cost of such displays and they have been adopted increasingly in places where people meet each other, e.g., town centers, cafés, classrooms, libraries, offices. Currently, most public displays are non-interactive, serving a broadcast function (TV news, ads, etc). Our informal observations around public displays in our own building indicate that people pay little attention to the displays. In fact, it is generally accepted that most large public displays are under-utilized. However, given their strategic spatial positioning such displays might easily be used to attract the attention of people who are working or relaxing in the area. The work reported here explores the question of whether social interaction through a public display can also promote a sense of community amongst the participants. The design and first deployment experiences of a platform-independent, interactive video commenting system, ClassCommons, using a large public display in two sections of a large-enrollment university class, is described here. The preliminary evaluation suggests that students enjoyed the activity of commenting, that they participated a great deal, and that their sense of community was greater after using the system. Further analysis revealed that reading the comments and posting relevant comments are associated with increases in community members’ sense of community. Finally, lessons learned from this initial experience and further work using this and similar interactive activities will be discussed.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Public displays have become pervasive in everyday life. Recent technological development has decreased the cost of such displays and they have been adopted increasingly in places where people meet each other, e.g., town centers, cafés, classrooms, libraries, offices.

Currently, most public displays are non-interactive (Churchill, Denoue et al. 2004), serving a broadcast function (TV news, ads, etc). Our informal observations around public displays in our own building indicate that people pay little attention to the displays. In fact, it is generally accepted that most large public displays are under-utilized. However, given their strategic spatial positioning such displays might easily be used to attract the attention of people who are working or relaxing in the area; if the displays also accept input from these individuals, they can enable social interaction and  networking (Churchill, Denoue et al. 2004). The work reported here explores the question of whether social interaction through a public display can also promote a sense of community amongst the participants.

Feelings of community within a group of individuals can have important consequences for their behavior. The phrase sense of community has been defined to be the “feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ need will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan and Chavis 1986). In neighborhoods, a sense of community helps to build social capital (Pooley, Cohen et al. 2005), encouraging neighbors to request and offer help to one another in times of need. In workplaces, employees who have a sense of community realize that they are expected to be responsible citizens in the organization as well as in the larger society (Burroughs and Eby 1998). In educational settings, studies have found that for schools with a strong sense of community, the number of students who feel lost is reduced, students’ feeling of anxiety, depression and loneliness is ameliorated, and personal growth, motivation and retention rate are improved (Lounsbury and DeNeui 1996; Bailey, Bauman et al. 1998; Cartland, Ruch-Ross et al. 2003).

However, simply working or living in the same place does not guarantee a sense of community. According to Gusfield, community involves two dimensions: shared territory and social relationships (Gusfield 1975). To build community, people who share a space must also build and maintain relationships. Sometimes people who live in the same neighborhood do not engage in the social interactions that can be a basis of relationships (Lee and Newby 1983); this may lead to what is known as “absent ties” in social network theory (Granovetter 1973).

One way to facilitate community development is to increase the amount of social interaction among members. For example, studies have found that an environment that allows community members to interact in a cohesive manner can build a sense of community (Graves 1992; Westheimer and Kahne 1993). The ClassCommons tool reported here offers university students a lightweight mechanism for interaction, namely commenting together on large public display. Thus our research question is whether the interactions that result will build or enhance students’ feelings of community.

In this thesis, I first review related work on interactive public displays. After this I describe ClassCommons, the public video commenting system I developed (commons refers to shared property in a community, and is often used as a metaphor for social capital). Next, the early deployment experiences in a university classroom setting are described. Although classes are only semi-public, the lessons we have learned from this experience can be used to guide future work with interactive displays in public places. Currently, the ClassCommons system is being used in IST413 class. One of its variations, namely CafeCommons, is being used in a campus cafe. The thesis is concluded with some initial result about the use of these systems in these two settings.

“I FELT LIKE A CONTRIBUTING MEMBER OF THE CLASS”: INCREASING CLASS PARTICIPATION WITH CLASSCOMMONS

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