Katherine Panciera, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
- Milwaukee WI UNITED STATES
- Diercks Hall: DH435
- Humanities, Social Science and Communication
Dr. Katherine Panciera is an expert in the areas of user experience and human computer interaction.
Education, Licensure and Certification
Ph.D.
Computer Science
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
2014
M.S.
Computer Science
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
2012
B.A.
Mathematics and Computer Science
Berea College
2005
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2006-2009
Affiliations
- Association of Computing Machinery: Member
- ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education: Member
- ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction: Member
- User Experience Professionals Association: Member
- Computer Science Teachers Association: Member
Social
Event and Speaking Appearances
Promoting Student Mental Health During Personal, National, and Global Trauma
Teaching Professor- October 2022 Virtual Conference
Panelist
ACM-W Mental Health and Wellness Panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpwDaDl3v0
Careers in Industry Panel CS&E 50th Anniversary Celebration
Computer Science Homecoming Lecture University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Research Interests
Computer Science Education
My research focuses on underrepresented groups in computing and the lived experience of being a computing student. While work has been done over the past forty years to better understand how to improve the experience for underrepresented people, few shifts have been seen. It seems clear that there is no one intervention that can be implemented that would address the problem. Working in conjunction with EECS, I’m active in activities to both measure and improve the experience for students specifically focusing on our unique student body. Future interests include looking at the lived experience across different types of institutions to better understand how interventions might need to be adjusted based on the type of institution or particulars of the student body.
Selected Publications
Crème de la crème: Elite contributors in an online community
Proceedings of The International Symposium on Open CollaborationKatherine Panciera, Mikhil Masli, Loren Terveen
2014-08-27
In open content communities like Wikipedia and StackOverflow and in open source software projects, a small proportion of users produce a majority of the content and take on much of the required community maintenance work. Understanding this class of users is crucial to creating and sustaining healthy communities. We carried out a mixed-method study of core contributors to the Cyclopath geographic wiki and bicycle routing web site. We present our findings and organize our discussion using concepts from activity theory. We found that the Cyclopath core contributors aren't the dedicated cyclists and that the characteristics of the community shape the site, the rules, and the tools for contributing. Additionally, we found that numerous aspects about the surrounding ecology of related systems and communities may help to shape how the site functions and views itself.
Consumers, editors, and power editors at work: diversity of users in Online peer production communities
Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital ConservancyKatherine Panciera
2014-09-01
Many people rely on open collaboration projects to run their computer (Linux), browse the web (Mozilla Firefox), and get information (Wikipedia). Open content web sites are peer production communities which depend on users to produce content. In this thesis, we analyze three types of users in peer production communities: consumers, contributors, and core contributors. Consumers don't edit or add content while contributors add some content. Core contributors edit or contribute much more content than others on the site. The three types of users each serve a different role in the community, receive different benefits from the community, and are important to the survival of a community.We look at users in two communities: Wikipedia and Cyclopath. Wikipedia is the largest and most well-known peer production community. The majority of the work in this dissertation is from Cyclopath, a geowiki for bicyclists developed by GroupLens. Since we built Cyclopath, we have access to data that allowed us to delve much deeper into the divide between the three types of users. First, we wanted to understand what the quantitative differences between core contributors and contributors were. On Wikipedia and Cyclopath, core contributors start editing more intensely from their first day on the site. On Cyclopath we were able to look at pre-registration activity and found equivocal evidence for "educational lurking". Building on this quantitative analysis, we turned to qualitative questions. By surveying and interviewing Cyclopath users, we learned what motivates them to participate and what benefits they derive from participating.
"How should I go from _ to _ without getting killed?" motivation and benefits in open collaboration
Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open CollaborationKatherine Panciera, Mikhil Masli, Loren Terveen
2011-10-03
Many people rely on open collaboration projects to run their computer (Linux), browse the web (Mozilla Firefox), and get information (Wikipedia). While these projects are successful, many such efforts suffer from lack of participation. Understanding what motivates users to participate and the benefits they perceive from their participation can help address this problem. We examined these issues through a survey of contributors and information consumers in the Cyclopath geographic wiki. We analyzed subject responses to identify a number of key motives and perceived benefits. Based on these results, we articulate several general techniques to encourage more and new forms of participation in open collaboration communities. Some of these techniques have the potential to engage information consumers more deeply and productively in the life of open collaboration communities.
User lifecycles in cyclopath: a survey of users
Proceedings of the 2011 iConferenceKatherine Panciera
2011-02-08
To be online, for most people, means to be part of some online communities, but the moment you visit a website, you are beginning your user lifecycle with that site. Previous quantitative work has shown that the early stages of the user lifecycle are the most important. We asked 400 users of the Cyclopath geowiki to complete a survey asking, among other things, about why they chose to register and what their first experiences on the site were. The responses allow us to think more carefully about the difficult barrier of registration and how this may be impacting the user lifecycles on Cyclopath and other online communities.
Lurking? Cyclopaths? A quantitative lifecycle analysis of user behavior in a geowiki
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsKatherine Panciera, Reid Priedhorsky, Thomas Erickson, Loren Terveen
2010-04-10
Online communities produce rich behavioral datasets, e.g., Usenet news conversations, Wikipedia edits, and Facebook friend networks. Analysis of such datasets yields important insights (like the "long tail" of user participation) and suggests novel design interventions (like targeting users with personalized opportunities and work requests). However, certain key user data typically are unavailable, specifically viewing, pre-registration, and non-logged-in activity. The absence of data makes some questions hard to answer; ac- cess to it can strengthen, extend, or cast doubt on previous results. We report on analysis of user behavior in Cyclopath, a geographic wiki and route-finder for bicyclists. With access to viewing and non-logged-in activity data, we were able to: (a) replicate and extend prior work on user lifecycles in Wikipedia, (b) bring to light some pre-registration activity, thus testing for the presence of "educational lurking," and (c) demonstrate the locality of geographic activity and how editing and viewing are geographically correlated.
