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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Computer Sciences

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Computer Science Faculty Publications

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Deliberate Barriers To User Participation On Metafilter, Hannah Pileggi, Briana B. Morrison, Amy Bruckman Jan 2014

Deliberate Barriers To User Participation On Metafilter, Hannah Pileggi, Briana B. Morrison, Amy Bruckman

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This descriptive study explores deliberate barriers to user participation on the long-lived discussion site Metafilter.com. Metafilter has been in continuous operation since its founding in 1999, and at the time of this writing has around 12,000 active users. While many newer online sites appear eager to eliminate barriers to participation and recruit as many new members as possible, Metafilter charges a $5 fee to join and has a mandatory one-week waiting period before new users are allowed to post. In this paper, we explore both why these barriers were imposed and why some users choose to surmount the barriers to …


Performance And Use Evaluation Of An Electronic Book For Introductory Python Programming, Christine Alvarado, Briana B. Morrison, Barbara Ericson, Mark Guzdial, Brad Miller, David L. Ranum Jan 2012

Performance And Use Evaluation Of An Electronic Book For Introductory Python Programming, Christine Alvarado, Briana B. Morrison, Barbara Ericson, Mark Guzdial, Brad Miller, David L. Ranum

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Electronic books (ebooks) provide the opportunity to go beyond the limitations of a physical page. These opportunities are particularly important for computing education, where dynamic information is a key characteristic of our domain. An electronic book can provide opportunities to program or conduct analyses that are impossible on the physical page, integrating instructional information with creative exploration. However, just because ebooks provide these opportunities does not mean that we know how students will actually use ebooks in the context of a class. Miller and Ranum have produced an electronic book for teaching introductory computing in Python. We explored how students …