The Virtual Participant — 28th June 1999 Page 1.

The Virtual ParticipantKnowledge Management and

Electronic Conferencing

Project team: Simon Masterton, Stuart Watt

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Overview

• Problems and Goals• How does it work?• What were we looking for?

– The Virtual Participant in action

• What really happened?– And what the students thought

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The Problem

• Use of Electronic Conferencing growing– Required component of many courses– Distributed student body– Supplement to tutorials

• This has problems– Not all students use it– It can be expensive– Some students have no other contact– It does not offer enough to students

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Goals

• to re-use the knowledge contained in discussions from previous years;

• to reduce the load on the tutors from answering common problems;

• to encourage students to use the technology and participate

• to provide some support to students which is always available.

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The Study

• 3 years, October 95 - September 98• B882: MBA elective, 850 students• Conferencing since 1991• Initial prototype• Study - evaluate - revise• Second prototype.• Improvement

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So how does it work?

• Another ‘Participant’– Exactly the same access as all students– No special hardware or software required

• Reads all messages in chosen conferences– Stores contents of every message– Stores ‘History’ of every message

• Keyword and phrase matching– Stored from all messages in a thread– Considers all possible stories– Threshold for triggering

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Example interaction

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What we were looking for

• VP should match threads with stories– A response is then triggered saying a ‘possible’

match relevant to the current discussion has been found

• Students will read its messages– The curious will ask it questions– Critics will make comments

• Tutor follow up– The tutors will post messages giving their own

opinions and comments on how useful/less the VP has been

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The VP in action

• Creative Management– Second year MBA elective - conferencing

since ‘91

• Uncle Bulgaria– Womble Metaphor - Recycling Knowledge

• Tutors Response– Distraction– Might go mad?– Why Uncle Bulgaria– Every year is different

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What really happened

• Some of them liked it!• Tutor follow up

– Important VP message followed up by tutor to draw attention to the point raised

• Students can’t read instructions• Name can affect students view

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Students Comments

• Name

• Presentation

• Content and Context

• User Confusion

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Re-implementation

• Second version– Name - Active Archive– Presentation - FirstClass Gateway– Interaction - Private (and public)– Content, Maintenance, Control– Retrieval - Thresholds reduced

• Further EvaluationQuestionnaire/Interview

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The Survey (98)

• AA posted a total of 42 messages• AA sent a total of 302 messages• 401 students read 1 or more AA

message• 179 read 9 or more AA messages• Surveyed all participants• 60 responses - after one week.

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Choice Highlights• Did you learn anything:• 13 responses

– Yes, primarily the structure of TMA’s– Yes: e.g. interpretation of KAI score.– Yes - gave some leads for TMA subjects– Have helped to broaden understanding of

various topics without wading through drivel

– More information / ideas

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Choice Highlights

• Questions– Should continue to be used: 90%

agreed– Name: 79% agreed– Put me off: 11%– Reduce discussion: 9% agreed– Relevant: 95% agreed– Direct to participants: 15% agreed

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And Finally...

• Four dimensions of acceptance– Anthropomorphic versus

Mechanomorphic– Private versus Public– Closed versus Open– Fixed versus Extensible