This project investigates how education and training methods from traditional work settings can be applied to paid online crowdsourcing. The focus is on how methods such as scaffolding, examples, critique, and apprenticeship affect worker performance, learning, task perseverance, and satisfaction. The project will produce guidelines for a more sustainable crowdsourcing infrastructure where employers can embed relevant domain knowledge into online tasks, and workers can learn key principles and then train less experienced members. The research focuses on worker-centered training strategies in the domain of visual design, which will yield knowledge about effective design principles and instructional methods for visual design.
Broader impacts: The project will contribute to increase the availability of online work. It will expand the capabilities and skills of crowd workers, thereby allowing online work to become a more viable part of the American economy. The project will also lead to novel methods for organizations to achieve complex visual design work. More generally, the project will lead to new knowledge about how to train crowds to perform a complex activity and produce practical guidelines to help requesters write tasks and manage the crowd. Finally, the project will provide interdisciplinary training for graduate and undergraduate students in socio-computational system design, HCI concepts, educational theory, and evaluation methodologies. All course materials will be available online for reuse and adaptation. Undergraduate researcher training will focus on supporting underrepresented student groups.
