We present the results of a study of the learning practices of adult women in a 10 week software engineering bootcamp in San Francisco. We explore the technical, social, and pedagogical constructionist practices resulting from student immersion in this organization. The results of our research reveal how cultivating a distributed and collocated learning process that incorporates communal support at the peer and instructional levels, while providing a network of alums and industry mentors to encourage and refine career prospects, can facilitate successful inclusion and transitioning of non-technical women into the software engineering field.

Collaborative writing has become increasingly common and complex. Many researchers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) have conducted extensive research on this topic for the last 25 years. Technologies were built and tested in the laboratory. I continue this stream of work by revisiting computer-supported collaborative writing within today’s context. Today, many commercially available word processors have built-in features to support collaboration, such as supporting synchronous editing and archiving editing history. Now that these features are available outside laboratories, how are people actually using these new capabilities in the wild? In my dissertation project, I aim to explore this question using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In addition, to analyze the collaborative writing practices utilizing the detailed behavioral data traces, I have built an information visualization system, DocuViz, that complements existing research methods. This dissertation work contributes both a visualization system and the novel research approach of using these visualizations to study collaborative writing. This work also reveals various features and practices that people use to write collaboratively. By quantifying collaboration markers, such as styles of work or participation equity, the statistical analyses reveal the relationships between the practices that people use and the quality of the documents that they produce. Our results suggest that people write collaboratively more often than they used to, and they use various styles of working (e.g., outline then divide and conquer or template) to coordinate their collaborations. A few factors (e.g., power dynamics, privacy, and community’s norms) influence the practices that people choose. Some group behaviors (e.g., having a leader or equal participation) are associated with higher quality outcomes. In summary, I construct a holistic understanding of the users’ perceptions and practices that they developed in adapting to today’s collaborative writing technology. By synthesizing both the findings from my research and previous literature, I extend the existing research framework of collaborative writing, propose behavioral guidelines for users who want to write together better, and generate design implications for system designers. In addition, I offer two visualization tools used in this research that might be useful to authors themselves as well as to future research.

We present the results of a study of the learning practices of adult women in a 10 week

software engineering bootcamp in San Francisco. We explore the technical, social, and

pedagogical constructionist practices resulting from student immersion in this

organization. The results of our research reveal how cultivating a distributed and

collocated learning process that incorporates communal support at the peer and

instructional levels, while providing a network of alums and industry mentors to encourage

and refine career prospects, can facilitate successful inclusion and transitioning of nontechnical women into the software engineering field.

Digital technologies have fundamentally altered how journalists communicate with their sources, enabling them to exchange information through social media as well as video, audio, and text chat. Simultaneously, journalists are increasingly concerned with corporate and government surveillance as a threat to their ability to speak with sources in confidence and to conduct basic reporting. In response, some U.S. journalists are learning information security techniques as well as nontechnical approaches to source protection and slowing surveillance. I conducted thirty interviews with journalists and press advocates to learn about their information security practices and their perceptions of the impediments that government and corporate surveillance impose on their ability to complete their work. I found that most of the time, journalists had routine sources who did not require strict confidentiality. However, journalists expressed deep concerns regarding the confidentiality of their sources when working on sensitive stories and when their sources place themselves at risk. While I found the journalists shared widespread concerns about surveillance, they also had diverse and inconsistent approaches to their digital security. When conducting sensitive work, some journalists shared experiences about speaking with their sources over encrypted channels, avoiding cell phones, or avoiding commercial phone and Web services that could be subpoenaed for their user data. To minimize their electronic records and for the sake of convenience, many of the journalists have been meeting sensitive sources in person whenever possible. However, unless absolutely necessary, many journalists preferred to speak with sources through the most convenient communication channels—for example, text messages and phone calls—even when they were concerned about issues of confidentiality. Even in stereotypically sensitive reporting (e.g., national security), the journalists would often forgo comprehensive security measures to speak with their sources. I argue that the security approaches often compete with journalists’ other interests, such as communicating with sources and working with colleagues to publish within strict timelines.

Silicon Valley is known the world over as an epicenter of technology innovation. As such it is frequently analyzed, compared, and imitated. Accelerators, short-term incubators that foster technology startups, attempt to appropriate many elements of Silicon Valley and apply them in different global contexts. They bring together cohorts of technology startups in various global locations to help them develop their teams and products and learn from and connect with others in the ecosystem in a limited-duration “bootcamp.” Since the initial one was created in 2005, accelerators have expanded rapidly into all corners of the globe with the promise of providing the necessary soft infrastructure for creating technology startups and fostering an ecosystem. But can this ideal type of Silicon Valley be appropriated through emulating its environments, culture, and practices?

To explore this, I conducted an in-depth qualitative study of startup accelerators situated in different locations globally. Much of this research was conducted in situ through ethnographic fieldwork over the several-month courses of accelerator programs in Singapore and Buenos Aires, providing a rich view into the day-to-day workings of these accelerators. This was complemented by foundational research through interviews in Silicon Valley and abroad with a variety of accelerator participants and personnel globally.

This research presents a framework of Silicon Valley as a model ecosystem, consisting of nine major components. It demonstrates the ways in which accelerators attempt to appropriate this model and the isomorphic mechanisms that play a role in this. At the team level, it investigates issues that arise for founders participating in the startup culture of accelerators in different global contexts. And at the practice level, it examines the surprising roles of Lean Startup methods and of pitching in both innovation and social transformation.

This work highlights the interplay of innovation and legitimacy for these accelerators and startups and shows how accelerators are shaping the flow of innovation globally by spreading a model that prioritizes diffusion of innovation at the front end of the process. This has implications for the development of accelerators and innovation ecosystems at the global and local levels.