| Groupware and Text Technologies | | BIBA | Full-Text | 3-6 | |
| Christine Neuwirth | |||
| In this talk, I will outline the history of text technologies and the ways in which they have supported groups working across time and place and changed work practices. I will focus on the rise of annotation practices and its importance to reading and writing processes, and review new technologies that are likely to change the ways in which annotation can enhance and will alter traditional reading and writing practices, both in collaborative writing and in cooperative learning to write. I will raise some directions for future research, including how professionals read and annotate, how readers might make use of annotations produced by others, and how interfaces to annotations are likely to affect communication and collaboration. I will identify outstanding research issues, research methods that are likely to be productive in furthering our theories of workplace and classroom communication, and draw implications for the design of annotation technologies in groupware. | |||
| Groupware Goes to School | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 7-24 | |
| Gerry Stahl | |||
| Groupware for cooperative work (CSCW) and for collaborative learning (CSCL)
have many important commonalities as well as different requirements. By
transforming a generic CSCW platform into an environment to support a
particular vision of education as collaborative knowledge building, we saw how
functionality had to be adopted, transformed and refined to meet the specific
educational social setting. By "taking groupware to school," we discovered the
need to extend the original system into a CSCL application that could
facilitate collaborative learning, knowledge building, perspective
intertwining, knowledge negotiation, portfolio sharing and knowledge artifacts
in active, structured virtual learning places. In the paper, we describe the
resulting system and reflect on issues of design and implementation that
differentiate our CSCL approach from its closely related CSCW basis. Keywords: CSCL; educational groupware; knowledge negotiation; collaborative knowledge
building | |||
| Collaborative Learning in a Web-Accessible Workbench | | BIBA | Full-Text | 25-34 | |
| Jose M. Martins Ferreira; Gustavo R. Alves; Ricardo Costa; Nick A. Hine | |||
| Web-based course management and delivery is regarded by many institutions as a key factor in an increasingly competitive education and training world, but the systems currently available are largely unsatisfactory in terms of supporting collaborative work and access to practical science facilities. These limitations are less important in areas where "pen-and-paper" courseware is the mainstream, but become unacceptably restrictive when student assignments require real-time teamwork and access to laboratory equipment. This paper presents a web-accessible workbench for electronics design and test, which was developed in the scope of an European IST project entitled PEARL, with the aim of supporting two main features: full web access and collaborative learning facilities. | |||
| Document Management in a Computer-Integrated Classroom | | BIBA | Full-Text | 35-46 | |
| Nelson A. Baloian; Alexander Berges; Stephan Buschmann; Katrin Gaßner; Jens Hardings; Heinz Ulrich Hoppe; Wolfram Luther | |||
| This paper reports on a work in-progress scenario of a computer-integrated classroom (CiC) with a focus on document management and document sharing. Following a brief introduction on the topic of distributed (distance) and non-distributed (face-to-face) learning, the systems' functionalities and architecture are being described, as well as the file structure to be found in the document archive. The system uses a unique type of XML document that can be created and edited by the FreeStyler application. The paper then concludes with a short description about the future work on the project. | |||
| Handheld CSCW in the Meeting Environment | | BIBA | Full-Text | 47-60 | |
| Pedro Antunes; Carlos J. Costa | |||
| This paper discusses the role of PDA in the meeting environment. Three fundamental design issues are raised: PDA as mobile devices, CSCW devices and coordination devices. The research work described in this paper is focused on the coordination facet. The paper proposes three levels of detail to characterize meetings as coordination mechanisms and ascertain the role of PDA in that process. The first level identifies meeting agents and roles, as well as the tangible things necessary to support those roles. The second level describes how the tangible things are organized in meetings, highlighting repetitive patterns in meeting processes. Finally, the third level draws the functional requirements of the PDA support to the tangible things. The paper applies the proposed approach to a specific meeting environment, staff briefings, and uses a small consulting company as test bed. The PDA functionality was specified from analyzing how the test bed organization conducted staff briefings. A prototype was then developed. The test bed organization also produced feedback information on the prototype use. The obtained results indicate a general satisfaction with the functionality and increased enthusiasm with PDA usage in the meeting environment. | |||
| Effect of the Coordination Modes in Supporting Group Multiple Criteria Decision Making in a Distributed and Asynchronous Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 61-69 | |
| Juan Carlos Leyva López; Dina Esperanza López Elizalde | |||
| To solve a multiple criteria decision problem by a collaborative group is
necessary to have an adequate coordination process. This paper discusses an
on-going research project, which aims to develop an internet-based Multiple
Criteria Group Decision Support System (MCGDSS) -- which will support to
collaborative group decision makers in reaching a consensus when they try to
solve a ranking problem -- and to further investigate the impacts of such a
system on group multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) process performed in
parallel and sequential coordination modes. Features of the MCGDSS prototype
and design of a follow-up laboratory experiment are described in this paper. Keywords: Group Decision Support Systems; Multiple Criteria Decision Aid; Ranking
Problem; Coordination Modes; ELECTRE Methods | |||
| A Cooperative Visual Hypermedia Approach to Planning and Conducting Virtual Meetings | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 70-92 | |
| Weigang Wang; Jörg M. Haake; Jessica Rubart | |||
| Most distributed meeting support systems focus on meeting management and
audio/video communication mechanisms. They provide little support for a
flexible meeting process and a shared information space with structure-rich
visual artifacts. In this work, a cooperative visual hypermedia system is
developed to provide visual hypermedia artifacts for team members to manipulate
in a distributed meeting. The visual hypermedia system is a hypermedia-based
drawing system that integrates visual hypermedia artifacts and structures found
in multiple hypertext domains. In addition, the visual hypermedia is integrated
with process support for flexible meeting control and for easy setup of
audio/video and application sharing communication channels. A use cases is
presented, which shows that using the cooperative visual hypermedia,
distributed teams can perform many kinds of meetings, in the meantime, enjoying
dedicated support for the planning, control, information management, and
follow-up activities of a distributed meeting. Keywords: Cooperative hypermedia; visual hypermedia; process support; distributed
meeting support | |||
| Towards UML-G: A UML Profile for Modeling Groupware | | BIBA | Full-Text | 93-113 | |
| Jessica Rubart; Peter Dawabi | |||
| Groupware is explicitly designed to support the cooperation among group members. The implementation of cooperation-aware groupware is supported by several object-oriented toolkits and frameworks, but there is no unified way to model applications built on top of these. We propose UML-G as an extensible UML profile for modeling groupware and want the community to contribute to it. We identify groupware specific modeling needs related to shared data modeling. Since these needs are not addressed by standard UML, we define UML-G's shared data modeling part. Usage scenarios demonstrate how UML-G can be used to assist groupware modeling. UML-G supports explicit modeling of groupware related needs. Moreover, a shared understanding between developers is backed, which abstracts from the implementation. In addition, CASE tool support for UML-G strengthens its practical relevance. | |||
| Designing the Communications Infrastructure of Groupware Systems | | BIBA | Full-Text | 114-133 | |
| Sergio F. Ochoa; Luis A. Guerrero; David A. Fuller; Oriel A. Herrera | |||
| In the development of groupware systems a well designed communications infrastructure is required, due to the high complexity of the communication scenario. Also, the design and implementation of coordination and collaboration mechanisms depends on the communications infrastructure. Actually there are no well known guidelines to design this infrastructure. Therefore, this paper proposes an architectural pattern that helps carry out the design of this communications infrastructure. The proposed pattern supports all the groupware systems communication scenarios, taking in account their particularities. This pattern has been used in the design of several groupware applications and a groupware framework with very good results. | |||
| A Component-Based Architecture to Support Collaborative Application Design | | BIBA | Full-Text | 134-146 | |
| Ana P. T. Bacelo Blois; Karin Becker | |||
| In the Software Engineering field, reuse techniques have presented solutions targeted at increasing quality, and reducing costs and development time. Such expectations motivate the proposition of reusable solutions in various domains, CSCL (Computer-Supported Cooperative Learning) among them. In this paper, we analyze the contributions and limitations to the CSCL field of two striking reuse techniques: components and object-oriented frameworks. Based on this analysis, we present some initial ideas on a component-based architecture to support the design of CSCL applications. The main goal is to allow a designer to primarily focus on the design of his application, based on the selection, adaptation and binding of components targeted at collaborative applications. | |||
| Before Getting There: Potential and Actual Collaboration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 147-167 | |
| Alberto L. Morán; Jesús Favela; Ana María Martínez Enríquez; Dominique Decouchant | |||
| In this paper we introduce the concepts of Actual and Potential
Collaboration Spaces. The former applies to the space where collaborative
activities are performed, while the second relates to the initial space where
opportunities for collaboration are identified and an initial interaction is
established. We present a characterization for Potential Collaboration Spaces
featuring awareness elements for the potential of collaboration and mechanisms
to gather and present them, as well as mechanisms to establish an initial
interaction and associated GUI elements. We argue that by making this
distinction explicit, and characterizing Potential Collaboration Spaces,
designers of groupware can better identify the technical requirements of their
systems and thus provide solutions that more appropriately address their users
concerns. We illustrate this concept with the design of an application that
supports Potential Collaboration Spaces for the PIÑAS web-based
coauthoring middleware. Keywords: Potential and Actual Collaboration Spaces; Potential Collaboration
Awareness; Casual and Informal Interactions; PIÑAS; Doc2U | |||
| Intelligent Awareness in Support of Collaborative Virtual Work Groups | | BIBA | Full-Text | 168-188 | |
| Rosa Alarcón; David A. Fuller | |||
| Collaborative Virtual Work Groups (CVWG) are small groups of people that perform tasks, share responsibilities, goals and decisions but are distanced in terms of space, time and cultures, and maintain their connections through technology. Collaborative Systems support them enabling a shared environment and informing of its state and changes through a mechanism called Awareness. In this paper we argue that these changes and their consequences can be understood in an ontological work context (we call it "semantic awareness"). This approach allows us to infer the relevance of the awareness information and control its delivery. To do so, we determine a user context (location, device, preferences), which allows us to infer the user willingness to be exposed to this information. The mechanism is enabled through a Multi-Agent System (MAS), where an agency represents each user's perception and actual context. We also present a case study and discuss the obtained results. | |||
| The 3-Ontology: A Framework to Place Cooperative Awareness | | BIBA | Full-Text | 189-202 | |
| Edmundo P. Leiva-Lobos; Eliana Covarrubias | |||
| Understanding and supporting cooperative awareness in CSCW have no definitive answer. Actual awareness models have addressed spatial aspects of interaction rather than other forms of awareness. While technology has privileged event notification by specialized servers it is not clear how both spatial and temporal aspects can be met together in a coherent framework. This paper presents a framework called 3-ontology which takes events, places, and communities as starting points to conceptualize cooperative awareness. Each element in the 3-ontology represents a perspective to cope with cooperative awareness. Technologically, this model has been mapped to a software architecture called JAZZ which has a pool of shared data with 3 servers representing each element of the model. From the client side, this arrangement allows us always to gather information from any cooperative system relative to 3-ontology. So, one way to prove the generality of our cooperative awareness formulation is to see how other models can be mapped to our model. | |||
| Evaluating Collaborative Learning Processes | | BIBA | Full-Text | 203-221 | |
| César A. Collazos; Luis A. Guerrero; José A. Pino; Sergio F. Ochoa | |||
| Understanding and analyzing collaborative learning processes require a fine-grained sequential analysis of the group interaction in the context of learning goals. Several researchers in the area of cooperative work take as a success criterion the quality of the group outcome. Nevertheless, recent findings are giving importance to the quality of the cooperation process itself. This paper presents a set of indicators which main objective is to evaluate the collaborative learning process. We have defined an experiment with a tool instrumented to gather data from groups working in a simple task. This data is then useful to build the cooperation indicators, which in turn allow us to estimate the quality of the work process. | |||
| The CSCW Lab for Groupware Evaluation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 222-231 | |
| Renata Mendes de Araujo; Flávia Maria Santoro; Marcos R. S. Borges | |||
| The aim of this paper is to report the initiative of a research project called the CSCW Lab. The CSCW Lab is an approach for applying evaluation methodologies in the context of a groupware research group. We identify the major dimensions of groupware evaluation and describe how the CSCW Lab addresses them. The first experiments using CSCW Lab are also described. | |||
| Tailoring Group Work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 232-244 | |
| Alejandro Fernández; Jörg M. Haake; Adele Goldberg | |||
| The success of groupware lies partially with its design. Well-designed groupware will still fail to meet its users' expectations if those users do not feel empowered by its use. Providing groups of users with the means of tailoring groupware in the wider context of group work may be the answer. This paper introduces our vision for tailoring group work, clarifies the principles underlying tailoring group work, and lays out the research approach we are currently taking, in expectation of stimulating interest in this challenging area. | |||
| Building Groupwares over Duplicated Object Systems | | BIBA | Full-Text | 245-254 | |
| Hechmi Khlifi; Jocelyn Desbiens; Mohamed Cheriet | |||
| Groupware toolkits let developers build applications for synchronous and distributed computer-based conferencing. Duplicated object systems1 (or DoS), on the other hand, manage distributed objects over the Internet and, since they include high-level features such as communication facilities, load balancing, fault tolerance, and hierarchical messaging, may be leveraged as building blocks for rapidly developing groupware toolkits. This paper describes how we built such a groupware starting from a particular DoS. The system contains a run-time architecture that automatically manages the creation, interconnection, and communications of the distributed processes involved in the working sessions, a set of groupware facilities allowing users to collaborate, to take action on state changes, and to share relevant data, and a session management and user control mechanisms accommodating the group's working style. | |||
| Adaptive and Transparent Data Distribution Support for Synchronous Groupware | | BIBA | Full-Text | 255-274 | |
| Stephan Lukosch | |||
| The data of a groupware application must be shared to support interactions between collaborating users. There have been a lot of discussions about the best distribution scheme for the data of a groupware application. Many existing groupware platforms only support one distribution scheme, e.g. a replicated or a central scheme. The selected scheme applies to the entire application. In our opinion, none of these architectures fits well for every groupware application. In this paper we describe a development platform that allows a developer to determine the distribution scheme for each shared data object. With the help of an object-oriented programming principle it also achieves a maximum of transparency for the application developer. | |||
| COPSE-Web: An Infrastructure for Developing Web-Based Groupware Applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 275-284 | |
| José Maria N. David; Marcos R. S. Borges | |||
| The main approach for the development of groupware applications presented in
the literature, has been the use of toolkits. However, at least in the case of
groupware applications the main advantages of toolkits have not been fully
accomplished. They don't offer the necessary flexibility to address the social
aspects related to the interaction of geographically dispersed groups. Although
the web is the main application environment for current applications, only
recent toolkits have been able to support the groupware development for the
web. In this paper, we discuss and describe the work carried out in converting
COPSE to COPSE-Web, an infrastructure for the development of web-based
groupware applications. We used this work to discuss the requirements, the
architectural and implementation issues in the design of an integrated
groupware toolkit. We illustrate the advantages of our approach by describing
the development of the environment's administration tool. Keywords: World Wide Web; CSCW framework; groupware toolkit; Web-based development | |||