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wiki is no longer updated. It is posted here for archival purposes
only.
External
links are NOT be fixed. The
contents of this wiki are as such was on October 31, 2013.
The wiki used to be hosted at
https://ict4empl.wikispaces.com/
Definitions
We also acknowledge that there is
no universally-accepted definition of the term volunteer,
and that some organizations have a more narrow, or a more broad, view of
who is and isn't a volunteer.
In this study, the term internet-mediated volunteering
refers to the donation of labour to non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
charities, community organisations etc., where an online system (accessed
through a computer, a mobile device, etc.) plays a key role in
recruitment, facilitating access to tasks, and conducting that task.
Other terms for
internet-mediated volunteering
include:
- virtual
volunteering (and variations such as virtual volunteers)
- online
volunteering (and variations such as online volunteers)
- evolunteering
(and variations such as e-volunteering, e-volunteers, etc.)
- digital
volunteers, digital volunteering
- e-mentoring
(and variations such as online mentors, online mentoring,
telementoring, etc.)
- español:
voluntarios virtuales, voluntarios en línea,
voluntarios digitales, voluntarios en red
- français: L’e-bénévolat, bénévolat
virtuel, bénévolat enligne, bénévolat Internet
- Polish:
e-wolontariat
- Italiano: virtuali volontariato, digitali
volontariato, volontari digitali
- português: voluntários digitais
- Catalan: voluntariat virtual, voluntaris digitals,
voluntariat virtual
- Deutsch:
digitales Ehrenamt, virtuelles Ehrenamt
- Deutsch:
Online-Freiwilligenarbeit
- Deutsch:
Freiwilliges Online-Engagement
|
- microvolunteering (and variations such as
micro-volunteering, microvolunteers, etc.)
- microtasking
- micro
work
- crowdsourcing
- wisdom
of the crowd
- crowd
computing
- distributed
computing
- distributed
development
- distributed
thinking
- hive
mind
- smart
mob
- virtual
community of practice
- virtual
management
- virtual
teams
- virtual
workforce
- Internet-mediated
volunteering
|
Internet-mediated volunteering can be similar to
telecommuting,
except that, instead of online employees who are paid, these are
volunteers who are not paid, and they are working to benefit a
non-governmental organization, charity, or other not-for-profit entity, as
opposed to a for-profit business. Or it can be thought of as unpaid
microtasking or crowdsourcing, where people don't make an ongoing
commitment to the cause, non-governmental organization or charity they
help online.
With all of that said, we also acknowledge that all of these are contested
terms, and there is not universal agreement in their definitions or how
they are a part (or not a part) of the greater volunteering landscape.
People engaged in virtual volunteering undertake a variety of activities
from locations remote to the organization or people they are assisting,
via a computer or other Internet-connected device, such as:
- translating documents
- researching subjects
- creating web pages
- editing or writing proposals, press releases, newsletter articles,
etc.
- developing material for a curriculum
- designing a database
- designing graphics
- providing legal, business, medical, agricultural or any other
expertise
- counseling people
- tutoring
or mentoring
students
- moderating online
discussion groups
- writing songs
- creating a podcast
- editing a video
- monitoring the news
- answering questions
- tagging
photos and files
- managing other online volunteers
Online
micro-volunteering
is also an example of virtual volunteering and crowdsourcing, where
volunteers undertake assignments via their
PDAs
or
smartphones.
These volunteers either aren't required to undergo any screening or
training by the nonprofit for such tasks, and do not have to make any
other commitment when a micro-task is completed, or, have already
undergone screening or training by the nonprofit, and are therefore
approved to take on micro-tasks as their availability and interests allow.
Online micro-volunteering was originally called "byte-sized volunteering"
by the Virtual Volunteering Project, and has always been a part of the
more than 30-year-old practice of online volunteering.
[4[[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_volunteering#cite_note-3|]]]
An early example of both micro-volunteering and crowdsourcing is
ClickWorkers,
a small NASA project begun in 2001 that engaged online volunteers in
scientific-related tasks that required just a person's perception and
common sense, but not scientific training, such as identifying craters on
Mars in photos the project posted online; volunteers were not trained or
screened before participating.
History
of Internet-mediated volunteering
Internet-mediated volunteering is
not a new concept, - the
practice has been widespread for many years. It has been going on probably
as long as there has been an Internet (which itself is more than 30 years
old
[1]
).
The first instance of deliberately organising online volunteers to benefit
a cause is probably Project Gutenberg
[2]
, a global volunteer effort that began in 1971 to digitize, archive and
distribute written cultural works. Most of the items in its collection are
the full texts of public domain books, such as works by Jane Austen,
Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. These works
continue to be typed in and proofread by online volunteers
[3]
.
Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web,
made an online appearance at the United Nations Open Day in Geneva in
2001, during which he noted the role online volunteers had played in his
development of the Web a decade earlier
[4]
.
In 1995, a then-new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in
Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of
virtual
volunteering[5]
, a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online's
co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from
the James Irvine Foundation
[6]
to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering
and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the United
States. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project,
and the Web site was launched in early 1997
[7]
. After one year, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A.
Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became
VolunteerMatch.
The first two years of the Virtual Volunteer Project were spent reviewing
and adapting telecommuting manuals and existing volunteer management
recommendations with regard to virtual volunteering, as well as
identifying organizations that were involving online volunteers. By April
1999, almost 100 organizations around the world had been identified by the
Project as involving online volunteers and were listed on the Project's
Web site. By the end of 1999, as the numbers grew exponentially, the
Project stopped listing every organization involving online volunteers and
instead identified only those organizations with large or unique online
volunteering programs. The Project used its research about these
organizations to continually create and refine guidelines for engaging and
supporting online volunteers.
In the last part of the first decade or our current century,
microvolunteering became a popular form of virtual volunteering – online
volunteers under-taking very quick, small tasks, usually requiring little
specialized expertise, such as tagging photos or trying out a new online
resource for even just a few minutes and providing feedback. While the
practice of microvolunteering has always been a part of virtual
volunteering and, therefore, is as old as the Internet, the name for the
practice is relatively new (back in the 1990s, it was called it
byte-sized
volunteering by the Virtual Volunteering Project).
Here
is the final paper.
Wiki Contents
- More about
the overall project & researchers
- The
information we are seeking / How to submit information
- Outreach for this project
- Challenges to
this research (obstacles faced in gathering information)
- Case studies
(Europe focus)
- Online
Volunteering-related recruitment or matching web sites
- Organisations that involve
online volunteers in the EU
- Resources related to
volunteering as a contributor to employability
- Resources related to
arguments against and concerns about volunteering by
unions/professionals in Europe
- Resources and research
related to Internet-mediated volunteering (focused on, but not
limited to, Europe)
- Resources related
to telecommuting, virtual teams and remote management
- Legal status and regulations
regarding volunteers
- Resources
related to volunteer engagement and volunteerism in EU countries
statistics, studies, volunteer centres, volunteer matching sites,
sites for volunteers, sites for those that want to involve volunteers,
etc.
- Online work sites for
pay (rather than virtual volunteering sites, for no pay) -
examples and studies
- RSS feeds for
keywords associated with Internet-mediated volunteering
- Información en español
- Informations en français
- Informationen in Deutsch
- ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
- ^ http://www.gutenberg.org
- ^ Most online volunteers
that support Project Gutenberg now do so under the auspices of
Distributed Proofreaders, http://www.pgdp.net
- ^ "Results so far,"
United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS), http://www.communications.com/unites/results.html
- ^ Green, Marc (Fall,
1995). "Fundraising in Cyberspace: Direct email Campaigns, Virtual
Volunteers, Annual Fund Drives Online. Does the Information
Superhighway lead to new horizons or a dead end?", The Grantsmanship
Center Magazine, The Grantsmanship Center.
- ^ http://www.irvine.org
- ^ Cravens, Jayne
(February 2001). "who funds the virtual volunteering project?", The
Virtual Volunteering Project, University of Texas at Austin.