Computing Research Institute

Project Title: "Mining social media for actionable knowledge to
build the next generation of informal learning tools."

Dr. Matei specializes in data mining of social media, particularly Wikipedia. Some of the research questions that he will explore as a Discovery Park fellow, include: How do spontaneous groups and leadership positions emerge in social media, especially Wikipedia? How do these groups produce usable knowledge? How do they foster informal learning? How can the answers to these questions be turned into practical advice for building the next generation of learning and knowledge management tools? He will work with colleagues from the Cyber Center and the Discovery Learning and Research Center to mine a dataset that includes editorial interactions between 3 million individuals over ten years, for a total of 250 million data points. The results will generate measures and tools that will enhance two existing scholarly collaboration and learning platforms, CRIS and Visible Effort (http://veffort.us), which have the potential to shape an emerging informal learning platform, RIPPLE, for K-12 STEM education. The tools will help online groups self-moderate and their members better integrate in the collaborative flow. Using such tools, group members will know when the activity of their community is optimally structured, when leaders have emerged, and when output is of good quality. Congratulations to Sorin Matei as the 2012-2013 Discovery Park Research Fellow.