=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-266/paper-5
|storemode=property
|title=Attention Metadata Visualizations: Plotting Attendance and Reuse
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-266/paper05.pdf
|volume=Vol-266
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/jcdl/TomadakiSQ07
}}
==Attention Metadata Visualizations: Plotting Attendance and Reuse==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-266/paper05.pdf
Attention Metadata Visualizations: Plotting Attendance
and Reuse
Eleftheria Tomadaki Peter J. Scott Kevin A. Quick
Knowledge Media Institute Knowledge Media Institute Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University The Open University The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK Milton Keynes, UK Milton Keynes, UK
+44 1908 653169 +44 1908 655763 +44 1908 654916
E.Tomadaki@open.ac.uk Peter.Scott@open.ac.uk K.A.Quick@open.ac.uk
ABSTRACT the context, and used to rank and recommend resources and
Contextualized attention metadata can be used to visualize the learning objects [4].
attendance in online events and communities, as well as to Aspects of the users’ context may include their geo-locations or
indicate an online object’s reuse. In this paper, we describe work activities and community contributions. In collaborative
in progress showing that attention metadata generated by desktop scenarios, Contextualized Attention Metadata (CAM) can be used
videoconferencing systems, such as FlashMeeting, can be used to to map social proxies and collective activity. Visualizing social
plot community activity and to give some insights into a learning presence can stimulate group awareness and the building of
object’s impact on a private community or worldwide. We report collective knowledge in online communities. Presence has
on results from a quantitative analysis using attention metadata evolved from just being ‘online’ or ‘offline’ to a range of
visualizations in different datasets to demonstrate the preferences such as availability, location, activity awareness and
FlashMeeting live and replay impact on specific communities or others [1], [2]. Geo-location maps are currently combined with a
globally. Community participation is represented through live range of communication tools, such as instant messengers or
event attendance mapping, and learning object reuse through activity awareness applications. Collective awareness can be
visualizing replay consumption. Future work directions focus on enhanced with tools, such as TwitterVision or Google maps,
providing additional evidence regarding the extent to which representing the individuals’ presence with icons on maps.
plotting unique IPs on a geo-location map can be considered as an Mapping individual attendance in collective events organized by
accurate method of measuring a learning object’s impact. communities of practice having a common knowledge objective is
useful to visualize their evolution.
Categories and Subject Descriptors Visualizing attention metadata produced in online collaboration
scenarios can be used on the one hand to map community activity
C.4 [Computer Systems Organization]: Performance of Systems and attendance and on the other to measure an online object’s
- measurement techniques; [Information Storage and Retrieval] consumption. This paper presents work in progress on the
H.3.7 Digital Libraries - user issues; [Information Systems attention metadata produced by videoconferencing interactions,
Applications]: H.4.3 Communications Applications – showing what people are consuming when using online
videoconferencing; [Computers and Society]: K.4.3 communication systems. We give some insights into how
Organizational Impacts - computer-supported collaborative work attention metadata visualizations can help represent community
participation and activity and investigate whether attention
General Terms metadata on IP logs can indicate the impact of learning objects in
Measurement, Performance virtual communities worldwide.
Keywords 2. FLASHMEETING METADATA
FlashMeeting, contextualized attention metadata, metadata
visualization, map, learning object, reuse, virtual communities Initially developed to produce a useful in-house communication
tool, FlashMeeting appears to currently have a global impact,
used by over 33 European projects and numerous other
1. INTRODUCTION communities of learners, educational practitioners and other
Attention metadata refers to any content that a user pays attention professionals, counting over 4,000 naturalistic virtual meetings on
to and consumes, from websites, wikis, blogs, text chats, emails its servers. FlashMeeting is a light-weight application, running on
etc. [3]. Attention metadata has been used to measure the impact a web browser, as long as the Adobe Flash player plug-in
of different online objects, such as in Amazon, or citations, such (Version 7 and above) is installed
as CiteSeer, or popularity tags found in del.icio.us, where the (http://flashmeeting.open.ac.uk/). The meeting booker submits a
number of users having bookmarked a page may be a valid form and the system generates a URL, which can be forwarded to
measure for its overall significance. This metadata can be other participants and clicked to access the meeting. The system
contextualized, taking into consideration the user, the content and favours simplex audio, allowing only one person to broadcast at
any one time, suitable for meetings with multiple participants. In 3. PLOTTING ATTENDANCE AND REUSE
order to broadcast, one has to push-to-talk, while attendees
wishing to speak, raise a symbolic hand and queue until the In order to represent the FlashMeeting global impact on
current speaker stops broadcasting, or click on the ‘interrupt’ knowledge transfer communities, we indicate individual
button. Other communication channels include text chat, voting, attendance by using attention metadata indicating user browser
displaying mood indicators, URL firing and a whiteboard facility hits and plotting the geographical location of unique IPs on maps
for uploaded slides and real-time annotations. One of the principal showing the participation in live events and the event replay
features of FlashMeeting is the ability to record meetings. These reuse.
recordings form effectively a complete record of the event
including the browsing of individual broadcasts by time code and 3.1 Live Event Attendance
participant name, text chat, voting, fired URLs, whiteboards etc.
Attention metadata produced by live logs can indicate the
Anything that captures the user’s attention and performance, individual attendance in one meeting, or show the attendance of
during all videoconferencing interactions, from booking the individuals in a virtual community holding a set of meetings.
meeting, to displaying an emoticon, is logged on the servers. The FlashMeeting CAM is also used to show pairs of individuals co-
FlashMeeting client communicates via PHP scripts on the server attending events, and generate contact lists. The extensive logging
to log all the data to MySQL database tables. The logged attention employed in FlashMeeting allows metadata based on a user’s IP
and performance metadata is then available for dynamic access address to be collected and used to plot on a world map the
and manipulation after the meeting. This metadata includes the location of people who have attended meetings. IP addresses are
booking logs, the unique IP logs of meeting attendees, the email registered to physical postal addresses, and these can therefore be
addresses of signed-in users, the replay hits and the IP addresses plotted to a map. For the majority of cases the registration address
of the replay viewers, the booking keywords, annotations, the of an IP very closely matches that of the individual to which it has
participant names, the number and duration of broadcasts, the chat been issued (particularly within organizations and companies),
logs, the emoticons and URLs fired, interruptions, raised hands, however, occasionally there can be discrepancies, which can lead
and the voting and whiteboard logs. Such metadata produced in to an individual’s location being incorrectly located. Additionally,
collaborative environments can be merged with additional as IP addresses are continually being registered, the database used
attention metadata, e.g. from blog, in AttentionXML streams to to resolve IPs to geographical locations continually has to be
feed personalization or recommender systems [3]. The IP logs can updated (the database we have used is provided by Maxmind
be used in a variety of ways to visualize for example live meeting LLC, http://www.maxmind.com), and at the point of plotting a
attendance and replay reuse. A meetings’ minutes’ page shows map it is possible that a few IPs may not yet exist in the database
representations of much of the metadata generated by a meeting and so their locations will not be plotted.
and its subsequent reuse. The data has also been used by different
systems for different applications, such as generating
visualizations of the event shape to show user roles or event type.
Other applications include linearly mapping the knowledge
communicated in a virtual event or keyword search of replays
(http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/amg/SamgiFM/SamgiFM.html).
Figure 2. The global impact of the live FlashMeeting system in
April 2007
Figure 2 above is a plot of the attendees to meetings held in April
2007 on the research FlashMeeting server at the Knowledge
Media Institute of the Open University, UK. It shows the location
of the 900 unique IP addresses accessing meetings (7 IPs were not
plotted because they were not in the IP database). People
connecting to live meetings during this period are located
throughout the world, most of them situated in Europe and North
Figure 1. An example of integration of an XML FlashMeeting America.
file with the Compendium knowledge mapping tool Looking at the number of attendees of meetings against time (see
Figure 1 presents the integration of the XML file generated by the figure 3), it can be observed that there is an upward trend in
FlashMeeting server for a public event replay with the attendance in a 21-month period, starting with 300 attendees in
Compendium system (http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/) for August 2005, with peaks of around 900 unique IPs in March 2006
knowledge mapping, representing linearly the URLs exchanged in and more recently in April 2007. It seems that there is an
that meeting, linking them with the corresponding time-stamped established global community of an average of 600 users holding
video segment. FlashMeeting events during a two-year period.
Figure 3. FlashMeeting attendance from August 05 to April 07
Figure 5. Replay reuse from August 05 to April 07
3.2 Replay Impact It is clear that the reuse of FlashMeeting recordings has increased
The FlashMeeting recording facility reminds the live meeting significantly since 2005, with a peak in January 2007 reaching
attendees and informs community members that were unable to over 23,000 hits (see Fig. 5). This is being enhanced due to the
attend the meeting of what happened during the event, providing public syndication of replays by users, released in March 2006,
an auditable record of actions taken. It can also act as a reusable making replays publicly accessible to people who may never have
learning resource, either for a private community, or by making participated in a live FlashMeeting.
the resource available to the public.
3.3 Visualizing Community Activity
The time-stamped logging of the IP addresses of people accessing
all replays allows these 'hits' to be plotted on a world map. Figure The attention metadata produced by live logs can be used to map
4 shows such a plot for April 2007 on the research Flashmeeting the participation of individuals in a community and to portray a
server at the Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, general view of the community activity. All logs of unique IPs of
UK. The map shows a plot of the 15,995 hits from 4,509 unique people who attended the meeting are recorded on the live
user IPs who reused the replays, showing the truly global use attendance map of the event. Although these individuals may play
being made of FlashMeeting recordings (see figure 4). different roles in the community, being more or less active than
others, it is important to acknowledge their participation in the
event, by clicking on the web page and accessing the meeting.
The FlashMeeting server hosts a series of public events, such as
seminars on Learning Objects, Metadata and Interoperability
(LOMI), starting in May 2005, seminars on Knowledge Mapping,
starting in December 2006 and others, with experts in various
research areas, discussing current topics of interest. Different
communities hold their meetings via FlashMeeting, ranging from
‘video-bloggers’ and ‘animation’ students participating in peer-to-
peer events, to e-learning communities holding project meetings,
interviews and seminars.
Figure 4. Replay reuse in April 2007
Since March 2006, users have been encouraged to syndicate some 25
20
of their meetings and share their experiences and events with the
15
world. Several users syndicated some of their past events and IPs 10
continue to share their future ones. Public replays appear in a 5
folksonomy of keywords added by the meeting bookers, which 0
includes at the moment a variety of nearly 200 events: interviews,
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seminars, virtual lectures, web-casts of presentations, workshops
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or lectures, moderated project meetings, peer-to-peer support
03
events in learning or counseling contexts and others [5]. Some
types of syndicated replays, such as virtual seminars including Figure 6. The attendance of LOMI seminars from May 2005
experts from different parts of the world discussing a current to March 2007
research issue, appear to be rich sources of learning, being reused IP logs can be used to show the attendance in a series of events. In
hundreds of times. As opposed to private replays, public replays figure 6, we present the event attendance using the example of 34
are not only viewed by the live meeting attendees, but also by LOMI seminars from May 2005 to present, each one including
other people around the world, who may have never used the live from 1 to 22 participants and a mean average of 9 participants per
system, but can learn from the replays, thanks to the value of meeting. It seems that a stable community of around 10
syndication (http://flashmeeting.com/public). individuals regularly attend LOMI events, while 22 attendees is
the highest attendance number noted in these seminars.
In approximately 8 months, the ‘video-blogging’ community replays, as there were 3 live meeting participants in North
members have drawn their attention to 36 videoconferencing America but 2,437 resolved IP addresses of replay ‘re-users’
events from September 2006 to May 2007. The event frequency spread all over the world, with many of them located in Europe
in such a short period of time shows the engagement of a very and North America (see figure 8). The replay map produced is
active community, holding social events that tend to happen impressive, showing more than 2,000 of people located in parts of
during weekdays, as well as on weekends. In Figure 7, we have the world different from the location of the live meeting
plotted the date of the event and the number of unique IPs, attendees, who have consequently learned from the recording.
showing a stable community attending events in a two-year
period, while the number of attendees per meeting may range 4. DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK
from 3 to 21. Can attention metadata based on IP logs be a reliable measure of
the impact of an online resource? In the different datasets
25
discussed here, there was a number of IPs not resolved, for
20
15
example 46 IPs were not resolved in the 4,509 user sample of the
IPs 10
April 2007 replay viewers. In addition, some IPs may have been
5
erroneously plotted. The accuracy of IP resolution is an issue, but
0
works quite well for the majority of user locations with a few
7 exceptions. Another issue affecting the objectivity of counting on
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a0 browser hits may be the demonstration of example replays by
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certain groups. For example, the highest number of hits in one
24
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14
28
10
21
31
11
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01
Figure 7. The attendance of ‘videoblogging’ events from LOMI seminar (1,170) with experts discussing ‘open content’
September 2006 to present may have been boosted by its inclusion in an online article linked
by a prestigious website. There may be occasions when one
replay is viewed thousands of times, due to its featuring as an
3.4 Visualizing Learning Object’s Reuse example in demos and linked from several other web sources.
The public replay hits can show the reuse of the meeting by the It would be useful to locate in the future how the users arrived at a
people who attended the event and by other people who may have certain replay. Popular replays may have been linked in forums or
not attended the specific event or any live FlashMeeting. Several blogs, or just contain keywords attracting the reader’s attention, or
FlashMeeting replays can be considered as learning objects. For including popular keywords, searched by users in search engines
example, the series of LOMI seminars can be reused to learn and pointed to their FlashMeeting replay. Knowing how the users
about learning objects and metadata, while there are other series arrived at the replay URL will give more insights into the reason
of events, seminars, lectures or presentations, with a goal to of attention to the specific event replay, e.g. it was linked in a
transfer knowledge. The FlashMeeting folksonomy of public forum, or in another website where the community of interest
meetings is based on the metadata produced by keywords added drew their attention to, or syndicated and appearing in the
when booking or editing the meeting. It is possible to give FlashMeeting folksonomy with an interesting keyword choice, or
insights into a learning object’s impact, by taking into advertised in online news stories or shown in demos. This will
consideration the hits and unique IPs of users who paid attention lead to contextualized recommendations of attention resources.
to its resources.
The most popular replays relate to a series of presentations called 5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
‘Historic Homeworks’ showing a range of house renovation This research is supported by the EU 6th Framework Network of
activities from window repairs to floor planing. From March 2006 Excellence in Professional Learning – Prolearn. We acknowledge
until May 2007 there had been 36 of these events. The replays of the contribution of Jon Linney to the FlashMeeting system design.
7 of these presentations had been each viewed more than 3,500
times and the replay of one of the presentations from October
2006 included the highest number of viewings, counting 6,012
6. REFERENCES
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[2] Lombard M. and Ditton, T. At the Heart of It All: The
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[3] Najjar, J., Wolpers, M. and Duval, E. Attention Metadata:
Collection and Management. WWW06 workshop on Logging
Traces of Web Activity, (Edinburgh, 2006).
[4] Ochoa, X. and Duval, E. Use of Contextualized Attention
Figure 8. The live attendance and replay maps of the most Metadata for Ranking and Recommending Learning Objects.
popular recording on the FlashMeeting server, counting 6,015 ACM SIGIR Conference CAMA workshop, (Virginia, 2006).
hits
[5] Scott, P.J, Tomadaki, E. and Quick, K.A. The Shape of Live
The comparison of the live attendance and replay maps shows Online Meetings. 3rd International Conference on
that users outside of the presenter’s community have accessed the Technology, Knowledge and Society, (Cambridge, 2007).