1. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
2. I remember that I participated in an online experiment that our psychology professor asked us
to do three years ago -- when I got the account. However, having that experience, I still got
confused by how I should find a hit, and why I would need to wait 48 hours to get accepted by
a hit (which said no requirement needed). I didn't know before that there are so many
interesting experiments and tasks possible for us to explore around.
3. I was struggling with how to participate in the requests that I got accepted to, and especially
why I had to wait 48 hours to wait for the request to get back to me. I spent a lot of time on
finding a task to start with.
4. I would say 6.
5. If I was able to change one aspect of it, I would like the interface to be simpler. There are a
lot of hyperlinks to click on to, but not all of them lead to the information I needed. I was
wondering if it would become easier for users to look around for hits if the interface were
designed in another layout.
6. https://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=3QG9DTEQJMRSWLDRWMJN7XH489ZAWY
7. I find this posting interesting because I understand what the task is asking for and what they
want to test out. I like to find out where the contact information is and see if a site provides
users accessible information.
8. I expect there to be no change (4).
9. I made this assumption of no change (4) out of my observation throughout the past three
years, from the first time I got to know about MTurk to now -- there is not much change in how
my surroundings talk about MTurk. For now, I don't see why people would spend more time on
MTurk or much less time on it. I look forward to seeing what it's going to happen!
Below is the instruction:
Instructions
Pick a crowdsourcing platform and spend at least half an hour doing crowdwork on it. You’ll need to sign up
for the platform of your choice and complete some tasks. Along the way, you could earn some extra money or
advance human knowledge. This could be a citizen science platform or a paid crowdsourcing platform. Some
examples you might consider include: Foldit, MechanicalTurk, Upwork, Wikipedia, Duolingo, Lab-in-thewild. Afterwards, find a discussion forum for that platform. It could be a third party site like Turkopticon, or a
built-in forum like a Wikipedia Talk page. Get a sense of the discussion themes, as you’ll be reporting on
them.
Your submission for this assignment consists of two parts. The first will be a set of 3-5 screenshots in pdf form
that capture your experience using the crowdsourcing platform. The second will be a text response to the
questions below. Your answers should be numbered in correspondence with the question answered.
1. List the URL of the crowdsourcing platform. For platforms like Mechanical Turk and Upwork that
list specific tasks as URL’s, use the URL of a task you completed.
2. Describe your experience in 3-4 sentences.
3. In 2-3 sentences describe what was the hardest thing to figure out.
4. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being least, 10 being most), how much did you enjoy the experience?
5. In 2-3 sentences answer the question: If you could change one aspect of the platform, what
would it be?
6. List the URL of a forum post that you thought was particularly interesting.
7. In 2-3 sentences describe why you thought this forum post was particularly interesting.
8. In five years, will crowdsourcing be more popular or less? Answer on a scale from 1-7: 1
significantly less popular, 4 no change, 7 significantly more popular.
9. In 2-3 sentences describe your reasoning for your answer to question 8.
Review criterialess
Submissions will be graded on the following criteria:

Url of the crowdsourcing platform evaluated, and forum visited are each worth 1 point. (2 points
total)

Each screenshot is worth 2 points. (6 points total)

Each multi-sentence question is worth 2 points. (10 points total)

Each rating question is worth 1 point. (2 points total)
The assignment is worth a total of 20 points.