Mobile support in CSCW applications and groupware development frameworks

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an established subset of the field of Human Computer Interaction that deals with the how people use computing technology to enhance group interaction and collaboration. Mobile CSCW has emerged as a result of the progression from personal desktop computing to the mobile device platforms that are ubiquitous today. CSCW aims to not only connect people and facilitate communication through using computers; it aims to provide conceptual models coupled with technology to manage, mediate, and assist collaborative processes. Mobile CSCW research looks to fulfil these aims through the adoption of mobile technology and consideration for the mobile user. Facilitating collaboration using mobile devices brings new challenges. Some of these challenges are inherent to the nature of the device hardware, while others focus on the understanding of how to engineer software to maximize effectiveness for the end-users. This paper reviews seminal and state-of-the-art cooperative software applications and development frameworks, and their support for mobile devices

Event-based awareness services for P2P groupware systems

P2P systems enable decentralised applications for supporting collaborating groups and communities, where the collaboration may involve both sharing of data and sharing of group processes among group members. In such applications, monitoring and awareness are critical functionalities required for an effective collaboration. However, to date there has been little research into providing generic, application-independent awareness in P2P groupware systems. We present a distributed event-based awareness approach for such systems that provides different forms of awareness through a set of interoperating, low-level awareness services. The user and technical requirements for the approach are motivated with reference to Project-Based Learning in a P2P environment. We describe the implementation of a superpeer P2P network on a Cloud platform and the provision of reliable awareness services (AaaS - Awareness as a Service) from the Cloud. We report on the outcomes of an empirical evaluation of the performance and scalability of the approach

Towards a generic platform for developing CSCL applications using Grid infrastructure

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of using CSCL component-based software under a Grid infrastructure. The merge of these technologies represents an attractive, but probably quite laborious enterprise if we consider not only the benefits but also the barriers that we have to overcome. This work presents an attempt toward this direction by developing a generic platform of CSCL components and discussing the advantages that we could obtain if we adapted it to the Grid. We then propose a means that could make this adjustment possible due to the high degree of genericity that our library component is endowed with by being based on the generic programming paradigm. Finally, an application of our library is proposed both for validating the adequacy of the platform which it is based on and for indicating the possibilities gained by using it under the Grid.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

JXTA-Overlay: a P2P platform for distributed, collaborative, and ubiquitous computing

With the fast growth of the Internet infrastructure and the use of large-scale complex applications in industries, transport, logistics, government, health, and businesses, there is an increasing need to design and deploy multifeatured networking applications. Important features of such applications include the capability to be self-organized, be decentralized, integrate different types of resources (personal computers, laptops, and mobile and sensor devices), and provide global, transparent, and secure access to resources. Moreover, such applications should support not only traditional forms of reliable distributing computing and optimization of resources but also various forms of collaborative activities, such as business, online learning, and social networks in an intelligent and secure environment. In this paper, we present the Juxtapose (JXTA)-Overlay, which is a JXTA-based peer-to-peer (P2P) platform designed with the aim to leverage capabilities of Java, JXTA, and P2P technologies to support distributed and collaborative systems. The platform can be used not only for efficient and reliable distributed computing but also for collaborative activities and ubiquitous computing by integrating in the platform end devices. The design of a user interface as well as security issues are also tackled. We evaluate the proposed system by experimental study and show its usefulness for massive processing computations and e-learning applications.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

SAGA reloaded: towards a generic platform for developing cooperative applications

Groupware specification and development has always been a complex task, requiring special attention to issues such as notification of cooperative actions and ensuring consistency of shared data. Some years ago SAGA was developed as a framework to build groupware applications based on a set of core web services that provide the most common cooperative functionalities. Despite its potential, the last few years brought some technological developments that placed new challenges. This paper presents a new generation of the SAGA platform that adds to the original framework features that emerged recently, namely the regulation of social interaction, incorporation of new communication technologies, connectors to several external services and interaction environments, and the addition of contextual information

Updating freeTribe to Support Efficient Synchronous Awareness in the Web Context

Abstract: The research field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work has been reflected fundamentally in theoretical contributions. This contributions have constitute the base to carry out several intents to facilitate the work of the collaborative systems developers, however, current tool-kits, APIs or class libraries only eliminate partially the gap between the technical aspects that impose the information technology and the stressed social character of the process of collaboration in the World Wide Web. In this paper is presented the framework freeTribe, which involve the domain of the distributed groupwares leaning on the Cooperative Model of the methodology AMENITIES, in the middleware platform ICE and in RIA technologies; freeTribe has been designed as a software framework, to maximize its reusability and adaptability with a minimal programming effort. Support for synchronous group tasks in the Web context is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for collaborative systems and several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same goals to work together, but many issues for these collaborative systems remain under studied. We identified synchronous awareness as one of these issues in collaborative systems, and updated freeTribe with four well-accepted kinds of awareness (group awareness, workspace awareness, contextual awareness, and peripheral awareness) by the community focusing our interest in its synchronous mechanism for efficient interaction in Web contexts.Keywords: computer-supported cooperative work, groupware, synchronous awareness.

An adaptive event-based system for anytime, anywhere, awareness services in online teamworks

The fast development in mobile technologies is drastically changing the way people work, learn, collaborate and socialise. One such important activity that has emerged and is being consolidated more each time is the online learning through virtual campuses. While most of online learning services are at present offered through web-based platforms, due to ever-increasing use of smart devices such as smartphones and tablets, researchers and developers are paying attention to exploit the advantages of mobile systems to support online learning. Specifically, the implementation of the A3 paradigm: anytime, anywhere, awareness - that is, notifying users about ongoing activity in their online workspace - provides various advantages to online learners organised in online teams. In this paper, we present the requirement analysis, the building blocks of the architecture for efficient event-based system and a prototype implementation of the A3 paradigm that adaptively supports the online collaborative activity.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Building a software service for mobile devices to enhance awareness in web collaboration

(c) 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.In this paper, we propose the construction of an effective event notification software service for mobile devices to provide anytime anywhere awareness to online work teams during Web collaboration. The software service is first designed to achieve the required flexibility to be used in different collaborative work situations, from professional work to informal communities of practice. Then, the building of our event-oriented service for mobile clients is reported from all the stages of our software engineering methodology and it is prototyped for evaluation purposes. We believe the outcomes of our approach will be very beneficial for achieving more productive and quality Web collaboration practices. The ultimate aim of this research is to provide software designers of Web collaboration tools and applications with general guidelines as for how to face common issues and challenges when incorporating a complete event management and notification system in their developments.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft