Authors: Kyle Rector, Richard Ladner and Michelle Shepardson.

Abstract: The ASL-STEM Forum is a web forum which allows people who know American Sign Language (ASL), to contribute signs in the fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). A key problem is increasing participation and contributions to the forum. To solve this problem, we introduced personal smart notifications, based on user profiles, which encourage users to contribute to the forum by adding new signs for STEM terms or commenting on existing signs. Since there might be a chance that a member will be familiar with the author of a topic or sign, they might be more inclined to contribute. In future work, a user study will follow to evaluate whether personal smart notifications will increase contributions to the ASL-STEM forum.

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