Web 2.0 – blogs, social networks, discussion boards, virtual worlds.  How do these affect research?  How can research harness all of this user-generated content? 

One opportunity is to use the tools of Web 2.0 as the research instrument. An example is online bulletin board focus groups, which operate similar to discussion boards.  In asynchronous, multi-day threaded discussions researchers can recruit hard-to-reach respondents, and span geographical boundaries in a single group. While we give up the personal interaction and non-verbal cues of in-person research, we gain increased detail and enhanced probing by stretching the groups over more than two hours. By creating a platform that goes beyond the standard two hour group researchers can allow respondents to create their own mini-discussions which gives a great deal of detail and insight that cannot be gathered within a normal focus group framework. Additionally, the moderator and clients can spend time reviewing comments and posting follow-up questions over the multiple days allowing for a level of probing and interaction that other formats do not provide.

Online threaded discussions are not for every project nor do they replace in-person groups and contextual inquiry. However, they are a great new tool to supplement other forms of research and can be the main tool used on particular research projects, such as branding and messaging or pseudo-ethnography (where respondents describe their processes to accomplish tasks involving a product or website).

Virtual worlds and social networks can also be used as research instruments.  Here we find bleeding edge users who are ideal to tap for ideation, innovation, user generated design/copy, out-of-the-box thinking and international collaboration.  Although these types of groups and network members are not projectable to the broader population, they tend to provide excellent feedback for product development, or looking at innovation leaps, thus representativeness and demographics are not typically an issue. 

Santa Clara University recently used virtual worlds to inform the real-life development of their Information Commons and Library.  A replica of the library exterior was built in Second Life based on blueprints and architectural renderings.  The interior was designed to allow experimentation with ideas from students and faculty for a reference desk, classroom and theater spaces, group study and reading areas, a store, a multi-purpose studio, and a café. (Watch news story from NBC11 here.)  The real-life library was dedicated on March 14, 2008, complete with the variety of settings to support classes and learning experiences discovered in Second Life.

The main disadvantage of these methods is the relative anonymity of the web – how can we understand the profile of those we are talking to?  This can be overcome by separating recruitment from the methodology.  For bulletin board focus groups, we can recruit through traditional channels, and it is just the methodology that changes.  For virtual worlds and social networks, we can employ independent out-of-world/network verification.

Given the right research goals and objectives, research can be crowd-sourced in a truly Web 2.0 approach with respondents defining the terms of the research, the questions, process, and so forth.  However, this is not the lazy man’s solution to conducting research – this has to be managed, and conducted with as much energy, creativity and science – if not more – as traditional panels or customer research. With the correct set up, incentives, participant interaction, company interactions and technology platform, peer-2-peer innovation, research, chats and so forth are a huge opportunity to help companies better target, develop and message products and services.

What Is It?
StudentsKnow.com is the first social learning network of its kind, and we’re hoping it will help revolutionize the way college students learn, earn money and share knowledge. 

The site is an online interactive social network, knowledge base and study group all in one. On StudentsKnow.com you will find first-person accounts of college lessons, concepts and books all communicated through videos and podcasts created by students and tutors (and a few seed videos created by Sentient staff – go look and see if you can find us) to help students in their studies. Our site crosses class, school and geographical boundaries creating a universal college that connects online learning institutions with satellite schools and traditional campuses.

Users can view and search content by class name, book titles, subjects and more and get linked directly to videos and podcasts created by other students who are studying and preparing for the same things. We’re striving to become the best resource for information synthesized by students, for students.

We’ve also incorporated a Facebook Application to further assist students’ viewing habits. Once installed, our application allows users to access their videos directly from their Facebook page.  We’ve integrated features to stream updates as new videos are added to the site as well as filters that allow users to pick and choose exactly what they’d like to display on their profile page.  Check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/studentsknow.

As a secondary mission to learning, StudentsKnow.com incentivizes students to share knowledge by distributing 50% of advertising revenue generated by site content back to the students.  What’s more, we’ve setup a complex backend to help us track ad clicks and subsequent revenue generated on a video by video basis whether the content is viewed on our domain or shared via Facebook, Blogs, etc.  This means we are able to offer monetary incentives to students who create videos as well as to those who share videos and precisely divvy up revenue accordingly.  Thus, students are rewarded according to their ability to produce better, salient content.

Partnerships
BookRenter.com – innovation loves company.  Early on we found a fellow innovator in BookRenter.com.  Much like us, BookRenter.com is turning a paradigm on its head.  Their charter is to reinvent the traditional bookstore by providing a convenient, cost effective alternative to retail book sales and ultimately make education more affordable for students. Together, we’ve implemented a module into our site that reads ISBN tags users include on videos to dynamically pull book title, cover art, pricing and rental information from BookRenter.com’s database.  If our users enjoy the review or lesson featured in the video, they can easily click to rent the book immediately. 

MonsterTRAK – finding employment after college.  In April we began our partnership with MonsterTRAK to help our audience find a job or internship.  We added a Career Services section to StudentsKnow.com that is dedicated to capturing content intended to help students share their war stories from job/internship preparation, interview best practices and anything else they find relevant to their eminent entrance into the “real world.”  We’ve also incorporated a pervasive MonsterTRAK module which will allow StudentsKnow.com users to search MonsterTRAK’s comprehensive job and internship database, thus allowing them to find a job and prepare for the interview all in the same place.

All Things Considered
Our goal is to be the first and largest interactive peer-2-peer social network that extends beyond a class, school or geography. StudentsKnow.com connects students across multiple points allowing for truly interactive learning and teaching – making students smarter, quicker. All things considered, StudentsKnow.com has been a fantastic ride since we launched in March and we’ve got some very exciting, if not revolutionary, things in store in the very near future.  Check us out at www.StudentsKnow.com.