Abstract
The paper reports on the findings made on an experiential exercise of Bachelor of Science Honours in Statistics (BSc Hons Stat) in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research (SOR) of the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) in South Africa. SOR is a small, understaffed department, which offers courses for degrees from Bachelor to Doctoral levels in the subfields of Artificial Intelligence, Data Mining, Operations Research, Statistics and related ones. On SMU campus, expertize in some of these fields is also available in the Department of Computer Science (DCS). In the 2015 academic year SOR admitted 20 BSc Hons Stat students beyond its staffing capacity. Then, SOR invited DCS in a crowdsourcing initiative to jointly supervise student projects in the various subfields mentioned. The challenges include conflict and limited experience. These are managed satisfactorily though, but mainly because they occur at low levels. This crowdsourcing arrangement nevertheless results in timely submissions of final projects, improved quality projects worthy of being published, innovation, quality teamwork, and some synergistic outcomes. Coordinators also learn and/or improved some project management skills
Highlights
The utilization of multitudes of partners to enhance quality in work has become fashionable, justifiably so because of the value that many intellects add to work. Agrawal, Christiana and Avi (2014) point out that a prudent use of crowds can assist to improve economies
The exercise which started with few resources in a scarce skill was undertaken by a team from two vital skills in the modern economy, which are computer science and statistics
Students supervised in Department of Computer Science (DCS) felt they were overworked as compared to those in Statistics and Operations Research (SOR)
Summary
The utilization of multitudes of partners to enhance quality in work has become fashionable, justifiably so because of the value that many intellects add to work. Agrawal, Christiana and Avi (2014) point out that a prudent use of crowds can assist to improve economies. This paper discusses the manner in which crowdsourcing was applied in the 2015 academic year in postgraduate student supervision in the SOR It explains the benefits achieved compared to when there was no crowdsourcing, as well as some possible conflicts. Crowdsourcing is a thoughtful process of getting work done from a crowd of people It entails the process of locating needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people (Estellés-Arolas & González-Ladrón-deGuevara, 2012). This mode of sourcing is often used to divide work between participants by combining the efforts of several willing individuals, where each contributor adds a contribution that may combine with those of others to achieve a greater result. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations influence decisions to participate in crowdsourcing
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