Ongoing project of Social Science Laboratory on-line

Social Science Laboratory on-line will consist of integrated tools: survey service on-line software to conduct social experiments and simulations LabSEE, research management software ORSEE, OpenID login server, modified e-learning platform and tools for statistical analysis of the results (the R -cran acting as a JAVA applet). The laboratory will allow for the establishment, maintenance, management and analysis of the results of research conducted on university computer labs, home computers and mobile devices (phone or notebook).

The combination of experimental tools, surveys, communication and process management in the form of laboratory research on-line will be one of the first such solutions in the social sciences in the world.

On-line survey service

Allows the creation of any type of on-line surveys. Vortal-registered user can use this service without restrictions in return for partial publication of research results. The existing service will be expanded to include additional functionality. The research team will be responsible for technical support and technical service training and courses. Service will be employable not only by scientists but also by small and medium-sized enterprises. Research templates and training materials will be created so that evaluation of the performance of the incentive systems within the company, marketing activities can be performed remotely.

Program for conducting social experiments and simulations LabSEE

Existing software version 1.4 LabSEE gathered a lot of interest from centers of experimental economics and psychology around the world. It is one of the first tools for creating experiments and simulations of decision games that takes full advantage of the World Wide Web. Up till now, experiments were based on individually created applications in PHP or Java. LabSEE is a tool that does not require the researcher as much programming knowledge. It offers functionality that is not like other tool of this type: multimedia and interactivity. The project research team will continue to develop and offer a platform ready LabSEE for economic and psychological experiments. Decision-making simulations and games will be prepared for trainings for entrepreneurs. In contrast to financial simulations of the Euromanager type, this project puts the emphasis on showing the interactions within teams or companies that lead to conflict and showing the pathways to resolving it.

Research management software ORSEE

project involves setting up a research management service available online.  Participant registration, mailing lists, alerts, results, participants rewards, etc. It will be a modification of the ORSEE (External Open Source Software)

All of these tools will be integrated with each other into a fully equipped laboratory of social sciences on-line.

Login

Access to the resources of the scientific publication base as well as laboratory and all its tools will be held by a single identification system OpenID. Most of the resources will be freely available for all to access. Acces to specific research tools will be limited by the user's status (to identify and verify the accuracy of the information).

E-learning Platform

Communication tools are the basis of successful on-line research management. For these purposes, e-learning tools are available. After reporting the desire to use the platform the vortal user is given the opportunity to create on-line research (the equivalent to opening a course on the e-learning platform) containing:

• tools and access to online courses, along with instructions how to use them

• customized tools to conduct research and communicate with participants of experiments, games, polls, etc.

• customized tools for multi-participant collaboration

• a place to publish the results in the form of an article (or an on-line lecture / readings and review and feedback from the vortal user community)

(The use of Open Source solutions such as platform Dokeos)

A tool for statistical analysis of results

A Java applet of R-cran statistical software will allow for an immediate analysis of the results. Software integrated with analytical tools for data processing will automatically generate basic statistics and basing on previously prepared templates, the user will be able to generate a more comprehensive statistical reports study.