Who learns from whom? Supporting users and developers of a major biodiversity e-infrastructure

By

Brake, Irina
Duin, Daphne
Velde, Isabella van de
Smith, Vincent
Rycroft, Simon

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2011

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

150

Pages

177-192

Subjects

computer-supported cooperative work , e-infrastructures , issue tracking , Shared knowledge , software engineering

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.150.2191

 

Abstract

Support systems play an important role for the communication between users and developers of software. We studied two support systems, an issues tracker and an email service available for Scratchpads, a Web 2.0 social networking tool that enables communities to build, share, manage and publish biodiversity information on the Web. Our aim was to identify co-learning opportunities between users and developers of the Scratchpad system by asking which support system was used by whom and for what type of questions. Our results show that issues tracker and emails cater to different user mentalities as well as different kind of questions and suggest ways to improve the support system as part of the development under the EU funded ViBRANT programme.