Novices learn innovation best through project-based learning (PBL), working in face-to-face teams to tackle real-world problems. Yet, real-world projects are complex, stressful, and especially challenging for novices. Online communities could provide social support to motivate novices, but it is unclear how to design online communities to support face-to-face PBL teams. Here we ask:How might we design an online system that enlists external supporters to provide online social support to motivate PBL students?Our need-finding study found that PBL students received infrequent social support, rarely engaged in help-seeking, and perceived little progress until the end of their projects. Based on these findings, we designedCheerOn, an online social support system that prompts novice student teams to externalize progress allowing external, online supporters to offer social support. We testedCheerOnwith 3 PBL teams and 15 external supporters over a 6-week course. We found that external supporters provided instrumental, informational, and emotional support that strengthened students’ bonds to the community, which increased help-seeking. Supporters also provided appraisal support, which increased students’ perceived value of their work. Supporters were more likely to offer informational and instrumental support when they were promoted or saw a clear need for help; supporters who received gratitude from students were more likely to offer emotional support in return; and supporters who were closely connected to the community were more likely to offer appraisal and instrumental support. Theoretically, this research contributes to our understanding of how hybrid face-to-face and online communities can impact the behavior of PBL students, specifically towards the facilitation of help-seeking behavior, as well as increased understanding of how different types of social support (i.e., appraisal, emotional, informational, and instrumental) can impact the participation of PBL students and supporters. Practically, this research contributes to our understanding of how to design socio-technical systems that facilitate social support for offline novice PBL students working, expanding the instructional resources available for preparing novices in PBL environments.

Recent years have seen the growth of physical crowdsourcing systems (e.g., Uber; TaskRabbit) that motivate large numbers of people to provide new and improved physical tasking and delivery services on-demand. In these systems, opportunistically relying on people to make convenient contributions may lead to incomplete solutions, while directing people to do inconvenient tasks requires high incentives. To increase people's willingness to participate and reduce the need to incentivize participation, we study on-the-go crowdsourcing as an alternative approach that suggests tasks along people’s existing routes that are conveniently on their way. We explore as a first step in this paper the design of task notification policies that decide when, where, and to whom to suggest tasks. Situating our work in the context of practical problems such as package delivery and lost-and-found searches, we conducted controlled experiments that show how small changes in task notification policy can influence individual participation and actions in significant ways that in turn affect system outcomes. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of future on-the-go crowdsourcing technologies and applications.

Creativity support tools help learners undertake creative work, such as facilitating coaching by creative professionals. How might we design creativity support tools that in-crease learners' access to coaching by creative professionals? This study took place in an extracurricular project-based learning program where students were co-located, and met professional coaches face-to-face once a week but otherwise communicated online. To test an online creativity support tool called the Loft and investigate coach-student communication we collected data from 47 interviews, online log data and field observations. We found that (a) explicit help-seeking was rare outside of meetings, (b) help from professionals was highly-valued but not sought out, and (c) online systems could surface learner struggles and trigger help-giving. Our findings suggested that online creativity platforms can support professional coaching through: (1) structured virtual updates (2) coach thanking, (3) Computer-Supported Group Critique, (4) disclosure of expertise, and (5) help-seeking training.

Crowdfunding is emerging as a new socio-technical system that is changing how entrepreneurs interact with their community of financial supporters. While computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) researchers have begun to explore how this new type of system influences entrepreneurial work, less is understood about how the system influences their psychological experience - specifically self-efficacy, or belief in one's own ability to succeed at a task, which affects persistence, learning, and performance. Drawing on Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, we conducted a qualitative study of 53 entrepreneurs using crowdfunding and found that crowdfunding can influence self-efficacy through (1) social validation, (2) role modeling, (3) mastery, and (4) physiological states supported by socio-technical features, such as displaying a concrete goal, examples of other's work, or public feedback. Results suggest how socio-technical systems can be designed to help entrepreneurs perform to enhance our economic and social prosperity.

This paper introduces the idea of presenting physical tasks into people’s existing routine so that people can contribute small tasks on-the-go with minimal effort. We present two on-the-go crowdsourcing systems: Libero for package delivery, and CrowdFound for finding lost items. To encourage contributions, we introduce notification techniques that present task opportunities when potential helpers are likely to accept. To direct people to regions where help is most needed, we introduce techniques for tracking a person’s location within a task region and directing their attention based on task history. Evaluation studies demonstrate the feasibility of on-the-go crowdsourcing and investigate questions over the likelihood of task completion, the perceived cost of disruption, and the effectiveness of tracking and coordination.