EAGER: Collaborative Research: FLASH! Fueling Learning Alliance in Sustainability in Higher education: Using social media and networks for science

虽然有相当多的证据表明，社交媒体的效用，使高水平的合作和沟通之间的分布和多样化的科学界，有很少的经验证据表明，社交媒体的效用，以帮助个人找到合适的人在这些社区连接。 与合适的个人联系在创造大规模创新和接受超越地理，文化和学科的可持续发展等全球问题方面特别具有催化作用。我们建议应用NSF VOSS项目（在西北大学）调查是什么激励形成有效的网络在虚拟组织中，以提高指导实践的NSF SEES项目（锚定在科罗拉多州立大学）开发的全球女性学者网络（GWSN）的见解。 我们的目标是实施和评估社会推荐系统的利用情况和成果，该系统将寻求在全球可持续性知识网络中加强对基层妇女与学者、政策领导人和学生的交叉指导。 我们采取了一个冒险的步骤来测试假设，即社交网络推荐系统是解决男女在科学和与可持续发展相关的政策决策方面挥之不去的差距的有效方法。我们认为，社交推荐系统创建了一个知识网络云，融合了文化，地理和机构的差距（基层到学术界，妇女到学生，政策制定者到研究生）。 这样的云网络是一种方式，可以在科学传播方式和谁参与这种传播方面产生变革性的变化。

While there has been considerable evidence of the utility of social media to enable high levels of collaboration and communication among distributed and diverse scientific communities, there is very little empirical evidence about the utility of social media to help individuals find the right people to connect with in these communities. Connecting with the right individuals is particularly catalytic in creating large scale innovation and acceptance of global issues such as sustainable development which transcends geography, culture and disciplines. We propose to apply the insights gained from an NSF VOSS project (at Northwestern University) investigating what motivates the formation of effective networks in virtual organizations to enhance mentoring practices in the NSF SEES project (anchored at Colorado State University) developing the Global Women Scholars Network (GWSN). Our goal is to implement and evaluate the utilization and outcome of a social recommender system that will seek to enhance cross-mentoring of grassroots women with academics, policy leaders and students in the globally-scaled knowledge network for sustainability. We take a risky step in testing the hypothesIs that social network recommender systems are an effective way to address the lingering gap between women and men in the sciences and policy decision-making associated with sustainable development. We posit that social recommender systems create a knowledge network cloud that merges across cultural, geographic, and institutional gaps (grassroots to academic, women to students, and policy makers to graduate students). Such a cloud network is one way that can make a transformational change in how science is communicated and who is engaged in that communication.