| Computer-Supported Collaborative Drawing in Primary School Education -- Technical Realization and Empirical Findings | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-16 | |
| Lars Bollen; Hannie Gijlers; Wouter R. van Joolingen | |||
| Self-constructed external representation, especially when embedded in peer
inter-actions, are supposed to be beneficial in learning and teaching and can
positively affect the course and type of reasoning for various reasons, e.g. by
providing a ground for explanations and self-explanations, by helping to
disambiguate learners' mental models of phenomena, by reducing working memory
load, and by increasing and sharing the task focus. This paper reports on the
results of research efforts in investigating conditions that are advantageous
in collaborative drawing activities in learning scenarios for young students.
We describe the design, technical implementation and empirical results of a
study with 94 primary school students working on a collaborative drawing task
in various conditions that include awareness information, prompting and
scripted activities. Keywords: external representations; collaboration; shared workspace; primary school
education; scripted collaboration; awareness support | |||
| Training Conflict Management in a Collaborative Virtual Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 17-32 | |
| Katharina Emmerich; Katja Neuwald; Julia Othlinghaus; Sabrina Ziebarth; Heinz Ulrich Hoppe | |||
| In this paper we present a collaborative serious game for conflict
management training in a role-playing scenario. The game ColCoMa (Collaborative
Conflict Management) engages two players to participate in a conversation lead
by an AIML chat bot mediator in a 2D virtual environment. Learning how to
behave in conflict solving talks is supported by the separation of the game
into a conversation phase and a reflection phase, causing players to change
their perspective. Additionally, the learning process is emphasized by means of
adaptive feedback based on individual analyses. Due to a multi-agent
architecture approach, our implementation can be used as an easily adaptable
framework for related collaborative learning scenarios. Keywords: collaboration; multi-agent architecture; conflict management; serious games;
role-play | |||
| Reusability of Data Flow Designs in Complex CSCL Scripts: Evaluation Results from a Case Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 33-40 | |
| Osmel Bordiés; Eloy D. Villasclaras-Fernández; Yannis A. Dimitriadis; Adolfo Ruiz-Calleja | |||
| Several approaches have addressed the consistency and automatic enactment
dimensions of CSCL scripts with data flow, but they have not appropriately
tackled the problem of reusing such learning designs. For instance,
workflow-based solutions such as LeadFlow4LD only capture particular case
behaviors, instead of describing generic data flow situations. This limitation
hinders the reusability of these designs because the workflow needs to be
adapted for specific technical, teaching and social contexts. This adaptation
is complex and time consuming, especially with a large number of students. In
order to show the relevance of this problem, this paper analyzes the
LeadFlow4LD approach through a real-world complex CSCL script. The study
characterizes the reuse effort of CSCL scripts with and without data flow
definition, in different social context settings. The findings illustrate how
the data flow representation may affect the particularization of complex CSCL
scripts, and pave the path for alternative, higher abstraction level
representations of data flows, to reduce the reuse effort. Keywords: reusability; data flow; complex CSCL scripts; workflow | |||
| Towards an Overarching Classification Model of CSCW and Groupware: A Socio-technical Perspective | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 41-56 | |
| Armando Cruz; António Correia; Hugo Paredes; Benjamim Fonseca; Leonel Morgado; Paulo Martins | |||
| The development of groupware systems can be supported by the perspectives
provided by taxonomies categorizing collaboration systems and theoretical
approaches from the multidisciplinary field of Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work (CSCW). In the last decades, multiple taxonomic schemes were developed
with different classification dimensions, but only a few addressed the
socio-technical perspective that encompasses the interaction between groups of
people and technology in work contexts. Moreover, there is an ambiguity in the
use of the categories presented in the literature. Aiming to tackle this
vagueness and support the development of future groupware systems aware of
social phenomena, we present a comprehensive classification model to
interrelate technological requirements with CSCW dimensions of communication,
coordination, cooperation, time and space, regulation, awareness, group
dynamics, and complementary categories obtained from a taxonomic literature
review. Keywords: CSCW; groupware; taxonomy; classification scheme; meta-review;
socio-technical requirements; group process support | |||
| Normal Users Cooperating on Process Models: Is It Possible at All? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 57-72 | |
| Alexander Nolte; Michael Prilla | |||
| Can normal people use process models for self-directed cooperation, that is,
without expert guidance? According to modeling experts and corresponding
contemporary research, they cannot, because they lack competencies for such
usage. While the importance of artifacts such as texts, pictures and diagrams
to cooperative work has been shown in many studies in CSCW and related fields,
there are no answers to this question from our discipline. This paper aims at
exploring this contradictory situation by exploring how users without or with
little modeling practice work with models. Based on an exploratory study, we
show opportunities and barriers to self-directed cooperative work with models
and derive requirements for tool support. These results are compared with
existing work and show that despite the special characteristics of process
models, patterns known from the usage of other artifacts can also be observed
in cooperative work with models. Users also showed behavior typically
attributed to modeling experts, thus transcending such generic cooperation
tasks. Keywords: Cooperation support; process models; lay modeling | |||
| Designing the Software Support for Partially Virtual Communities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 73-88 | |
| Francisco Gutierrez; Nelson Baloian; Sergio F. Ochoa; Gustavo Ansaldi Zurita | |||
| Designing software platforms to support the activities of partially virtual
communities (PVC) is a challenging task since the supporting services must
evolve continually according to the community evolution. Moreover, unsuitable
supporting services usually lead the community to its demise. Therefore, these
platforms must count on a flexible architecture that provides suitable services
as a way to support interactions among community members, and thus contributing
to keep the community sustainability. This article proposes a software
architecture that helps software designers to address this challenge. Such a
model can be used not only to ease the architectural design process, but also
to evaluate already implemented PVC supporting systems. The article also shows
a preliminary evaluation of both roles of the proposed model and discusses the
obtained results. Keywords: Social system architecture; software architecture; partially virtual
communities; supporting systems | |||
| Supporting Social Tasks of Individuals: A Matter of Access to Cooperation Systems | | BIBA | Full-Text | 89-96 | |
| Michael Prilla | |||
| Today, people use cooperation systems with many different devices and interfaces. Popular systems such as Twitter illustrate this, as they can be used with many devices, provide numerous interfaces and can be integrated into many systems and web pages. As smaller cooperation systems might also benefit from such opportunities, this paper introduces the concept of 'access' to capture the different ways to interact with systems and argues that access should be regarded as a major factor for the design of cooperation systems. It understands access as vehicle to support users in carrying out their social tasks in a way that fits their needs, thus choosing from a variety of means to access systems. From an analysis of related work and of four cases of access design, it describes initial insights into influencing factors and design qualities of access. | |||
| Characterizing Key Developers: A Case Study with Apache Ant | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 97-112 | |
| Gustavo Ansaldi Oliva; Francisco W. Santana; Kleverton C. M. de Oliveira; Cleidson R. B. de Souza; Marco Aurélio Gerosa | |||
| The software architecture of a software system and the coordination efforts
necessary to create such system are intrinsically related. Making changes to
components that a large number of other components rely on, the technical core,
is usually difficult due to the complexity of the coordination of all involved
developers. However, a distinct group of developers effectively help evolving
the technical core of software projects. This group of developers is called key
developers. In this paper we describe a case study involving the Apache Ant
project aimed to identify and characterize key developers in terms of their
volume of contribution and social participation. Our results indicated that
only 25% of the developers may be considered as key developers. Results also
showed that key developers are often active in the developers' mailing list and
often fulfilled the coordination requirements that emerged from their
development tasks. Finally, we observed that the set of key developers was
indistinguishable from the set of top contributors. We expect that this
characterization enables further exploration over contribution patterns and the
establishment of profiles of FLOSS key developers. Keywords: software architecture; collaboration; socio-technical analysis; mining
software repositories; case study | |||
| An Exploratory Study on Collaboration Understanding in Software Development Social Networks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 113-120 | |
| Andréa Magalhães Magdaleno; Renata Mendes de Araujo; Cláudia Maria Lima Werner | |||
| Collaboration is important for productivity, quality, and knowledge sharing
in software development. In this context, the use of social networks analysis
can help to track the level of collaboration in a development project. In this
work, an exploratory study was conducted, in the context of free/open source
software, using EvolTrack-SocialNetwork tool, to investigate collaboration in
software teams. The preliminary results indicate a potential to increase one's
ability to understand the course that the collaboration is taking. Keywords: Collaboration; social network; software development | |||
| Keeping Up with Friends' Updates on Facebook | | BIBA | Full-Text | 121-128 | |
| Shi Shi; Thomas Largillier; Julita Vassileva | |||
| Users of social network sites, such as Facebook, are becoming increasingly
overwhelmed by the growing number of updates generated by their friends. It is
very easy to miss potentially interesting updates, it is hard to get a sense of
which friends are active and especially, which are passive or completely gone.
Such awareness is important to build trusted social networks. However, the
current social network sites provide very awareness of these two kinds.
This paper proposes a interactive method to visualize the activity level of friends. It creates a time- and an activity-pattern awareness for the user, as well as an awareness of the lurkers. The proposed visualization help the user to browse her friends depending on how recently they have posted and how much interactions their updates have caused. | |||
| Formal Modeling of Multi-user Interfaces in Cooperative Work | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 129-136 | |
| Benjamin Weyers; Wolfram Luther; Nelson Baloian; José A. Pino | |||
| Support systems for cooperative work lack consistent modeling tools for user
interface creation and execution that are flexible enough to combine both data
processing and the logical aspects of a user interface and, at the same time,
dialog and cooperation modeling aspects. This paper introduces a new concept to
model user interfaces for cooperative work: the so-called multi-user interfaces
aimed at distributed scenarios involving mobile devices implementing
cooperative work. These multi-user interfaces are modeled in a hierarchical
structure of dialog models and interaction logic based on a formal modeling
language called FILL. For execution and verification, FILL models are
automatically transformed to reference nets, a type of Petri nets, making the
entire user interface and cooperation model accessible to simulation and
verification tools. This new approach seeks to integrate more closely modeling
and implementation based on a formalized interface design and user-machine
dialogue. Formal graph rewriting concepts allow both the user interface and the
collaboration model to be easily adapted in various ways by the modeler or
user. Keywords: Multi-user interfaces; mobile cooperative work; formal UI models | |||
| Using Collective Trust for Group Formation | | BIBA | Full-Text | 137-144 | |
| Thomas Largillier; Julita Vassileva | |||
| Group formation is a difficult task that arises in many different contexts. It is either done manually or using methods based on individual users' criteria. Users may not be willing to fill a profile or their profile may evolve with time without users updating it. A collaboration may also fail for personal reasons between users with compatible profiles as it may be a success between antagonist users that may start a productive conflict inside a team. Existing methods do not take into account previous successful or unsuccessful collaborations to forge new ones. The authors introduce a new model of collaborative trust to help select the "best" fitted group for a task. This paper also presents one heuristic to find the best possible group since in practice considering all the possibilities is hardly an option. | |||
| Time Series Analysis of Collaborative Activities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 145-152 | |
| Irene-Angelica Chounta; Nikolaos M. Avouris | |||
| Analysis of collaborative activities is a popular research area in CSCW and
CSCL fields since it provides useful information for improving the quality and
efficiency of collaborative activities. Prior research has focused on
qualitative methods for evaluating collaboration while machine learning
algorithms and logfile analysis have been proposed for post-assessment. In this
paper we propose the use of time series analysis techniques in order to
classify synchronous, collaborative learning activities. Time is an important
aspect of collaboration, especially when it takes place synchronously, and can
reveal the underlying group dynamics. Therefore time series analysis should be
considered as an option when we wish to have a clear view of the process and
final outcome of a collaborative activity. We argue that classification of
collaborative activities based on time series will also reflect on their
qualitative aspects. Collaborative sessions that share similar time series,
will also share similar qualitative properties. Keywords: time-series; collaboration; classification; logfile analysis | |||
| SoCCR -- Optimistic Concurrency Control for the Web-Based Collaborative Framework Metafora | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 153-160 | |
| Andreas Harrer; Thomas Irgang; Norbert Sattes; Kerstin Pfahler | |||
| In this paper we present the concurrency control used in the
computer-supported collaborative learning framework Metafora. Metafora is an
environment that supports complex learning scenarios utilizing multiple
learning tools, such as a tool for the planning of learning activities, a
graphical argumentation tool and several microworlds in the domains of science
and mathematics. Since Metafora is a web-based framework, specific requirements
have to be fulfilled for smooth collaboration and inter-tool communication. For
smooth collaboration we will describe our optimistic concurrency control
approach that allows concurrent modification of shared objects in a workspace
as far as possible. While move and edit actions can be performed in parallel, a
Social Concurrency Conflict Resolution (SoCCR) protocol enables collaborative
editing of text nodes in the planning space. We will illustrate this with an
example of user interaction in the Metafora system involving the concurrency
mechanism. Keywords: Web-based collaborative applications; collaborative workspaces;
computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL); concurrency control | |||
| Enabling and Evaluating Mobile Learning Scenarios with Multiple Input Channels | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 161-175 | |
| Lars Bollen; Sabrina Eimler; Marc Jansen; Jan Engler | |||
| Applications and research efforts in Mobile Learning constitute a growing
field in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning. However, despite a permanent
increase of mobile internet accessibility and availability of mobile devices
over the past years, a mobile learning environment that is easy to use, widely
accepted by teachers and learners, uses widespread off-the-shelf software, and
that covers various application scenarios and mobile devices, is not yet
available. In this paper, we address this issue by presenting an approach and
technical framework called "Mobile Contributions" ("MoCo"). MoCo supports
learners to create and send contributions through various channels (including
third-party solutions like Twitter, SMS and Facebook), which are collected and
stored in a central repository for processing, filtering and visualization on a
shared display. A set of different learning and teaching scenarios that can be
realized with MoCo are described along with first experiences and insights
gained from qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Keywords: mobile learning; heterogeneous devices; multiple input channels; SMS;
Twitter; Facebook; visualization; one-minute paper; self-learning phases;
evaluation | |||
| Software Requirements to Support QoS in Collaborative M-Learning Activities | | BIBA | Full-Text | 176-183 | |
| Didac Gil de la Iglesia; Marcelo Milrad; Jesper Andersson | |||
| The use of collaborative activities in education has proven to be an effective way to enhance students' learning outcomes by increasing their engagement and motivating discussions on the learning topics under exploration. In the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), the use of information and communication technologies has been extensively studied to provide alternative methods to support collaborative learning activities, combining different applications and tools. Mobile learning, a subset of TEL, has become a prominent area of research as it offers promising tools to enhance students' collaboration and it provides alternative views for teaching and learning subject matter in relevant and authentic scenarios. While many studies have focused on the pedagogical opportunities provided by mobile technologies, fewer are the efforts looking at technological related aspects. Hardware and software issues in this field still remain as challenges that require a deeper level of study and analysis. This paper presents and discusses the findings of a deep analysis based on the outcomes of three mobile collaborative learning activities and their requirements. These results have helped us to identify a number of arising challenges that need to be addressed in order to warranty Quality of Service (QoS) in these collaborative M-learning activities. Moreover, the paper offers a view on current practices in M-learning activities, which evidences the lack of research addressing software engineering aspects in mobile collaborative learning. | |||
| Systems Integration Challenges for Supporting Cross Context Collaborative Pedagogical Scenarios | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 184-191 | |
| Dan Kohen-Vacs; Arianit Kurti; Marcelo Milrad; Miky Ronen | |||
| This paper discusses the potential and challenges of integrating
collaborative and mobile technologies in order to support a wide variety of
learning activities across contexts. We present and illustrate two examples of
such integrations aiming to expand the functionalities of an existing CSCL
environment by introducing mobile technologies. Our goal is to enable the
design and enactment of pedagogical scenarios that include asynchronous
learning, outdoor collaborative activities and tasks performed in class using
personal response systems. These examples are used to identify and analyze
different challenges related to software systems integration issues. The
outcome of these efforts is a proposed cross context systems integration model
that can serve as the basis for future work that leads towards the integration
of additional mobile applications designed and implemented to support novel
collaborative learning scenarios. Keywords: systems integration; pedagogical scripts; learning across contexts | |||
| Tangible and Wearable User Interfaces for Supporting Collaboration among Emergency Workers | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 192-199 | |
| Daniel Cernea; Simone Mora; Alfredo Perez; Achim Ebert; Andreas Kerren; Monica Divitini; Didac Gil de la Iglesia; Nuno Otero | |||
| Ensuring a constant flow of information is essential for offering quick help
in different types of disasters. In the following, we report on a
work-in-progress distributed, collaborative and tangible system for supporting
crisis management. On one hand, field operators need devices that collect
information -- personal notes and sensor data -- without interrupting their
work. On the other hand, a disaster management system must operate in different
scenarios and be available to people with different preferences, backgrounds
and roles. Our work addresses these issues by introducing a multi-level
collaborative system that manages real-time data flow and analysis for various
rescue operators. Keywords: Wearable tangible device; collaborative crisis management | |||
| Contextual Analysis of the Victims' Social Network for People Recommendation on the Emergency Scenario | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 200-207 | |
| Sírius Thadeu Ferreira da Silva; Jonice Oliveira; Marcos R. S. Borges | |||
| The growing use of mobile devices by the population and the high popularity
of the social media in current society, such as Facebook and Twitter, produces
more and more information, plenty of them with contextual data. One of the
major obstacles to the emergency response team during the response phase of
emergency management is to obtain information that could lead to solving a
particular situation involving emergency victims. In this paper we present a
proposal which aims to collect information from social media and mobile
devices, identify the contextual information and analyze them to indicate
people who could help in the identification of victims. This work focuses on
identifying the social network of victims and look for people who can provide
important and reliable information about them, thus assisting the emergency
team in its work. We use this contextual information to improve the
recommendation process, identifying people with high degree of closeness. Keywords: Social Networks; Emergency Response; Recommendation | |||
| Matchballs -- A Multi-Agent-System for Ontology-Based Collaborative Learning Games | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 208-222 | |
| Sabrina Ziebarth; Nils Malzahn; Heinz Ulrich Hoppe | |||
| Computer games are currently one of the computer science applications with
the highest amount of users. The "serious gaming" approach tries to use the
attraction (i.e. the fun factor) of such media not only for entertainment
purposes, but also to convey serious content at the same time. Serious games
have been established in vocational and advanced training over the last years
and have a big potential for informal further vocational training. This paper
presents a multi-agent-architecture for collaborative, serious and casual
games. The focus is on casual games, since these are known to be small games
with a high potential for frequent gaming by people of various social and
educational background. To be flexible concerning the learning domain an
ontology-based approach has been used. The ontology may easily be exchanged to
adapt the game to another domain. Furthermore, the data created in the games
can be used in a "wisdom of the crowd" approach to enhance the ontology. To
test our architecture, an ontology on food safety and hazardous material
regulations was created and the game was evaluated with a group of technician
students of a professional training academy. Keywords: CSCL; Multi-Agent-Architecture; Serious Games; Games with a Purpose;
Ontologies | |||
| Towards a Monitoring-Aware Design Process for CSCL Scripts | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 223-236 | |
| María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana; Alejandra Martínez-Monés; Juan I. Asensio-Pérez; Yannis A. Dimitriadis | |||
| Scripting and monitoring are two well-known strategies to enhance
collaboration in CSCL settings. Teachers are incorporating them increasingly
into their practice, however it is not common to find both of them aligned. We
are working on the definition of a learning design process that takes
monitoring issues into account and leads to better and more efficient
monitoring when the scripts are put into practice. Moreover, if the learning
design is based on patterns, the information given by these patterns can help
to shape this enhanced design process. This paper presents a pilot study where
a participatory design approach was followed. The first author and a teacher
co-designed a CSCL situation in higher education based on the Jigsaw pattern.
The analysis of the co-design process gave us a first structure of the data to
be considered in monitoring-aware learning designs and a set of measures for
enhancing monitoring at design-time. Keywords: CSCL; learning design; scripting; monitoring; collaborative learning flow
patterns | |||