Discussing Public Voting in the Web as a Measure to

Democratize Award Decisions Martin Ebner, Sandra Schön, Alexander Stocker, Hannes Rothe und

Philipp Tsang

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„In the last decade public voting has become quite popular as a concept. A

plethora of social media based platforms has arisen, allowing an easy gathering of votes

and ratings by activating not only their native users, but in fact the communities of

the different applicants to public voting contests. The new rationale is that organizers of public voting contests will draw a lot of

attention on their topics and at best they will get a lot of data of potential futures

customers and platform visitors.“

„Public voting is intended to let the public decide (i.e. vote) about the applicants’

submissions.“

„The big challenge of public voting in the Web is mainly to overcome fraudulent activities

and cheating.“

„The big challenge of public voting in the Web is mainly to overcome fraudulent activities

and cheating.“

http://moocfellowship.org

MOOC-Fellowship„The “Stifterverband für die deutsche

Wissenschaft” announced in March 2013 the foundation of ten MOOC production

fellowships each to be funded with 25.000€“

• The applicants must be a professor• The proposed course must adress students• There will be a public voting and a follow-up jury decision, which should use the public voting as starting point.

Following requirements defined beforehand:

„In this reserach study we want to explore, whether and how this public voting suc- ceeded. We want to learn about the

participant’s strategies for maximizing their votes and moreover if there were any hints

concerning cheating?“

Research Question

Overview of the result

Methodology

„In this research study we concentrated on following-up the activities of the different online-communities harnessed by the top-

placed applicants additionally to the automatic tracking of Pickhardt“

• Which target group does the applicant address? • Which arguments or incentives are used by the applicant to maximize votes for their MOOC? • What are the core social media and web activities?

Following question should be answered:

https://www.facebook.com/sectiochirurgica

„Sectio Chirurgica“

https://www.facebook.com/mba.triesdorf

„International Agrarmanagement“

http://www.twitter.com/policystudies

„Harry Potter andIssues in International

Politics“

„L3T‘s MOOC“

http://futurezone.at/digitallife/15804-online-lehrkurs-oesterreicher-hoffen-auf-preis.php

„Design 101 (or Design Basics)“

https://www.facebook.com/whoamigame

„Introduction to welfare and health care“

https://www.facebook.com/FH.Diakonie

Following arguments motivated the online communities to support the courses:

• “Support the development of Open Educational Resources” (addressing the relevance of openness in education as a social goal to attract voters)

•“Support an open course for a specific topic” or “Support the development or the extension of a big media center” (addressing the relevance of a particular topic to attract voters)

•“Support a project from your country, your town or your university” (addressing the relevance for a country, town or institution to attract liked minded persons)

•“Help us to win against competitor” or “Help us to defend our current ranking” (addressing the need for support in a subjective way)

•“If you support us, you will get a reward” (addressing the desire for prices)

„Applicants simply need a big supporting community and all top-ranked course already owned such a community before the start

of the voting. Nevertheless also the cheating percentage was rather high and we can

confirm that this seems to be quite usual. If you would like to be successful you have to play the game, just waiting for public votes

will be to less“

Did the public decide?

Graz University of Technology

SOCIAL LEARNINGComputer and Information Services

Graz University of Technology

Martin Ebner

http://elearning.tugraz.athttp://elearningblog.tugraz.at

Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at

mebner

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