Browsing by Author "Kling, Rob"
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Item Academic Rewards for Scholarly Research Communication via Electronic Publishing(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Spector, LisaItem A Bit More To IT: Scholarly Communication Forums as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Kling, Rob; McKim, Geoffrey; King, AdamIn this article, we examine the conceptual models that help us understand the development and sustainability of scholarly and professional communication forums on the Internet, such as conferences, pre-print servers, field-wide data sets, and collaboratories. We first present and document the information processing model that is implicitly advanced in most discussions about scholarly communications -- the “Standard Model.” Then we present an alternative model, a model that considers information technologies as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs). STIN models provide a richer understanding of human behavior with online scholarly communications forums. They also help to further a more complete understanding of the conditions and activities that support the sustainability of these forums within a field than does the Standard Model. We illustrate the significance of the STIN model with examples of scholarly communication forums drawn from the fields of high energy physics, molecular biology, and information systems.Item Bits of Cities: Utopian Visions and Social Power in Placed-Based and Electronic Communities(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1996) Kling, Rob; Lamb, RobertaItem A Case Study of Students' Frustrations with a Web-Based Distance Education(University of Illinois at Chicago Library, 1999) Hara, Noriko; Kling, RobMany advocates of computer-mediated distance education emphasize its positive aspects and understate the kind of work that it requires for students and faculty. This article presents a qualitative case study of a Web-based distance education course at a major U.S. university. The case data reveal a taboo topic: students' persistent frustrations in Web-based distance education. First, this paper will analyze why these negative phenomena are not found in the literature. Second, this article will discuss whether students' frustrations inhibit their educational opportunities. In this study, students' frustrations were found in three interrelated sources: lack of prompt feedback, ambiguous instructions on the Web, and technical problems. It is concluded that these frustrations inhibited educational opportunities. This case study illustrates some student perspectives and calls attention to some fundamental issues that could make distance education a more satisfying learning experience.Item Conceiving IT-Enabled Organizational Change(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1998) Kling, Rob; Tillquist, JohnManagement models of IT-enabled organizational change like business process re-engineering, networking organizations, and complementary IT-to-business strategies, circulate broadly through the academic literature and popular business press. But h ow do these models carried within the management discourse influence the praxis of strategic planning? This study examines a strategic planning process as it is shaped by a popular IT-enabled change model. We found that popular cultural models of IT-ena bled change shape the organizational planning process by defining the mode of participant expression and pre-defining taken-for-granted assumptions of work and work organization. Our data show how models of IT-enabled change facilitate sense-making. We di fferentiate between socially-rich and socially-thin models, and argue that the latter, linked to popularized conceptions of management carried in the practitioner literature, are especially problematic for organizational participants and can undermine eff ective organizational action.Item Critical Professional Education about Information and Communications Technologies and Social Life(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, RobLooking back over the 1990s, it is easy to see the widespread troubles of many ventures that depended upon advanced IT applications, including business process reengineering projects, enterprise systems, knowledge management projects, online distance education courses, and famously -- some of the dot-com businesses of the 1990s. These "troubles" vary from substantial underperformance (ie. projects that were much more costly and/or produced much less social or business value than most of the participating IT professionals anticipated) and many outright failures. Many of these 'troubles" could have been avoided (or at least ameliorated) if the participating IT professionals had much more reliable and critical understanding of the relationships between IT configurations, socio-technical interventions, social behavior of other participants in different roles, and the dynamics of organizational and social change. Social Informatics is the name for the field that studies and theorizes this topic, and I will discuss it in more detail below. The key issue addressed in this paper is who will produce social informatics research for IT professionals, and where will they learn about important findings, theories, design approaches, etc.? The paper examines the record of computer science in the U.S. as a major contributor to the relevant research and teaching. It also examines the possibilities for new kinds of academic programs -- sometimes called “information schools” and "IT Schools" -- that are being developed to expand beyond the self-imposed boundaries of computer science and to integrate some organizational and social research as sites for social informatics.Item Digital Libraries and the Practices of Scholarly Communication(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Kling, Rob; Covi, LisaItem Digital Shift or Digital Drift?: Conceptualizing Transitions From Paper Media to Electronic Publishing and Digital Libraries in North American Universities(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Covi, Lisa; Kling, RobItem Electronic Journals, the Internet, and Scholarly Communication(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2001) Kling, Rob; Callahan, EwaItem From Users to Social Actors: Reconceptualizing Socially Rich Interaction Through Information and Communication Technology(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Lamb, Roberta; Kling, RobA concept of "the user" is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence people’s selections of information and communication technologies (ICTs). In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic “user” concept are limited. In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this “user” concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize "the user" as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily “users” of ICTs. Moreover, such socially thin and somewhat pejorative conceptualizations limit our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from "the user" concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting and using information systems.Item Group Behavior and Learning in Electronic Forums: A Socio-technical Approach(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Courtright, ChristinaItem Human Centered Systems in the Perspective of Organizational and Social Informatics(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Kling, Rob; Star, Leigh; Kiesler, Sara; Agre, Phil; Bowker, Geoffrey; Attewell, Paul; Ntuen, CelestineItem Informatics and Distributed Learning(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Hara, NorikoItem Information Technologies and the Strategic Reconfiguration of Libraries in Communication Networks(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2000) Kling, RobItem The Internet and the Velocity of Scholarly Journal Publishing(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Swygart-Hobaugh, Amanda J.Item The Internet and Unrefereed Scholarly Publishing(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2003) Kling, RobItem The Internet for Sociologists(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 1997) Kling, RobWithin the last five years, many sociologists have discovered electronic mail (e-mail) discussion lists (such as LISTSERVs) and the World Wide Web (WWW)-- services, that are associated with a network of computer networks popularly referred to as "the Internet." Over the last twenty years, academics in certain disciplines, especially the lab sciences, have found computer networking to be a viable means for sharing data, organizing professionals discussions, keeping in touch with colleagues, and distributing documents, such as conference programs, preprints, and syllabi. Within the last five years, many sociologists have discovered electronic mail (e-mail) discussion lists (such as LISTSERVs) and the World Wide Web (WWW)-- services, that are associated with a network of computer networks popularly referred to as "the Internet." Over the last twenty years, academics in certain disciplines, especially the lab sciences, have found computer networking to be a viable means for sharing data, organizing professionals discussions, keeping in touch with colleagues, and distributing documents, such as conference programs, preprints, and syllabi. This brief article has the unmodest ambition of explaining to sociologists why they should take the Internet seriously as a medium of professional communication, and why some sociologists should be specially interested in the Internet (or other computer networks) as social spaces in which to study shifting social relationships in our society. Part I may be specially useful to sociologists who have relatively limited experience with Internet services. Part II discusses sociological uses of the Internet to support research, teaching, and professional communication that could interest readers with significant Internet experiences.Item IT Supports for Communities of Practice: An Empirically-based Framework(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Hara, Noriko; Kling, RobDespite strong interest among practitioners and scholars, the study of communities of practice (CoPs) and Information Technology (IT) is short of empirical research. This paper presents a theoretical framework for communities of practice and provides alternative perspectives on IT supports for communities of practice. The framework was developed based on the literature and ethnographic case studies of communities of practice within two organizations. The study examines how people share and construct their knowledge and how they use collaborative IT to support work practices in two organizations. The surprising finding is that the groups that used IT most intensively had the least well-developed CoPs. The results of the study would inform practice and research in Knowledge Management.Item Leveling the playing field, or expanding the bleachers? Socio-Technical Interaction Networks and arXiv.org(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Meyer, Eric T.; Kling, RobIt is has been argued that the use of electronic forums for scientific communication has numerous positive consequences, including being an important means for increasing the participation of scientists who are in peripheral locations, such as less research-intensive universities. ArXiv.org, the electronic research manuscript repository for physics and related fields, is examined to understand the level-playing field story told about this kind of online resource. A random sample of research manuscript postings from 1993 and 1999 were coded and analyzed. We did not find evidence that arXiv.org has served as a leveling influence in the fields of theoretical high-energy physics, astrophysics and mathematics. As an alternative to the standard view of arXiv.org as a level playing field, the authors present a socio-technical interaction network model that better explains the roles of online scientific publishing within the matrix of resources that support the conduct of research.Item Locally Controlled Scholarly Publishing via the Internet: The Guild Model(Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics, 2002) Kling, Rob; Spector, Lisa; McKim, GeoffMany librarians and scholars believe that the Internet can be used to dramatically improve scholarly communication. During the last decade there has been substantial discussion of five major publishing models where readers could access articles without a fee: electronic journals, hybrid paper-electronic journals, authors' self-posting on web sites, free online access to all peer reviewed literature, and disciplinary repositories where authors post their own unrefereed articles. There have been numerous projects within each of these models, as well as extensive discussions about their strengths and limitations. While some of these projects have become important scholarly resources in specific disciplines; none of them has become commonplace across numerous disciplines. There is a sixth model that has been quietly adopted and developed in a number of disciplines -- the research publication series called working papers or technical reports that are sponsored by academic departments or research institutes. Many of these manuscript series are available to readers, online, and free of charge. This model -- which we call Guild Publishing -- has a distinct set of advantages and limitations when compared with the other five publishing models. This article explains the Guild Publishing Model, provides some examples, and discusses its strengths and limitations.