Collaborative Multidisciplinary Design in Virtual Environments

International audienceThe application designers can usually define their own “virtual environments” by selecting the appropriate computing resources required, or reuse and compose existing environments. The approach is generic by allowing various application domains to benefit from potential hardware and software resources located on remote computing facilities in a simple and intuitive way. The computing resources are defined by services made available as sets of standardized interfaces performing specific tasks: application workflow, input data streams, output visualization tools, monitoring facilities, etc. Services can be composed and hierarchically defined. Transparent access to heterogeneous hardware and software operating systems is guaranteed. An aeroelasticity example in airliner design is given

Interactivity and Spatiality. Design of Future IT-enhanced Work Places

In this paper I will discuss interactivity and spatiality, including the relationships between technology-in-use, design and everyday practices. The paper reports some initial experiences from a field study at a technology-intensive control room and of using work-oriented approaches for collaborative design. In several studies a group of multidisciplinary researchers has carried out experiments of collaborative design in full-scale as well as virtual environments. The aim was to invetigate how well these methods could support participatory design of work environments. Some important concerns I believe we need to face are how the characteristics of technology-enhanced environments may influence the development of new work practices when emergent technologies give entirely new possibilities for communication and co-ordination over extended distances. Hence, an urgent matter is to create a holistic view on design of future IT-enhanced work places that takes into account the users experiences and everyday practices

Media Culture 2020: collaborative teaching and blended learning using social media and cloud-based technologies

The Media Culture 2020 project was considered to be a great success by all the partners, academics and especially the students who took part. It is a true example of an intercultural, multidisciplinary, blended learning experience in higher education that achieved it goals of breaking down classroom walls and bridging geographical distance and cultural barriers. The students with different skills, coming from different countries and cultures, interacting with other enlarges the possibilities of creativity, collaboration and quality work. The blend of both synchronous and asynchronous teaching methods fostered an open, blended learning environment, one that extended the traditional boundaries of the classroom in time and space. The interactive and decentralized nature of digital tools enabled staff and students to communicate and strengthen social ties, alongside participation in the production of new knowledge and media content. For students and lecturers, the implementation of social media and cloud platforms offered an innovative solution to both teaching and learning in a collaborative manner. By leveraging the interactive and decentralised capabilities of a range of technologies in an educational context, this model of digital scholarship facilitates an open and dynamic working environment. Blended teaching methods allow for expansive collaboration, whereby information and knowledge can be accessed and disseminated across a number of networked devices

Collaborative pedagogy and digital scholarship: a case study of 'Media Culture 2020'

This paper presents an educational case study of ‘Media Culture 2020’, an EU Erasmus Intensive Programme that utilised a range social media platforms and computer software to create open, virtual spaces where students from different countries and fields could explore and learn together. The multi-disciplinary project featured five universities from across Europe and was designed to develop new pedagogical frameworks to encourage collaborative approaches to teaching and learning in the arts. The main objective of the project was to break down classroom and campus walls by creating digital learning environments that facilitated new forms of production, transmission and representation of knowledge. Media Culture 2020 was designed to pilot a novel mode of ‘blended learning’, demonstrating a number of ways in which ‘Web 2.0’ networked technologies might be adopted by academics to encourage open and collaborative modes of practice. The project utilised a number of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Google Hangout, Google Docs and Blogger) to enhance the learning experiences of a diverse set of students from different cultural and international contexts. In doing so, Media Culture 2020 enabled participants with a diverse range skills and cultural experiences to develop new working practices that respond to the convergence of digital media and art, as well as the internationalisation of media production and business, through the use of open, interactive software

DIGITAL: multidisciplinary and multidimensional in the classrooms

In this paper our aim is to analyse and present some pedagogical paths that prefigure and guide the teaching-learning devices developed "around" the digital tools. In this context issues related to the implementation with teaching methodologies and teaching techniques acquire a new dimension due to the need of transpose them into online learning environments (technologies to teach to technologies to learn). This starting point is a deep understanding from the analysis of actors in the online learning process: student, teacher, platform and e- contents. Thus, it is our goal in this chapter to promote digital education, think of teaching methods, tools and learning processes, to adapted to eLearninginfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sticks, balls or a ribbon? Results of a formative user study with bioinformaticians

User interfaces in modern bioinformatics tools are designed for experts. They are too complicated for\ud novice users such as bench biologists. This report presents the full results of a formative user study as part of a\ud domain and requirements analysis to enhance user interfaces and collaborative environments for\ud multidisciplinary teamwork. Contextual field observations, questionnaires and interviews with bioinformatics\ud researchers of different levels of expertise and various backgrounds were performed in order to gain insight into\ud their needs and working practices. The analysed results are presented as a user profile description and user\ud requirements for designing user interfaces that support the collaboration of multidisciplinary research teams in\ud scientific collaborative environments. Although the number of participants limits the generalisability of the\ud findings, the combination of recurrent observations with other user analysis techniques in real-life settings\ud makes the contribution of this user study novel

Model-based groupware solution for distributed real-time collaborative 4D planning via teamwork

Construction planning plays a fundamental role in construction project management that requires team working among planners from a diverse range of disciplines and in geographically dispersed working situations. Model-based four-dimensional (4D) computer-aided design (CAD) groupware, though considered a possible approach to supporting collaborative planning, is still short of effective collaborative mechanisms for teamwork due to methodological, technological and social challenges. Targeting this problem, this paper proposes a model-based groupware solution to enable a group of multidisciplinary planners to perform real-time collaborative 4D planning across the Internet. In the light of the interactive definition method, and its computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) design analysis, the paper discusses the realization of interactive collaborative mechanisms from software architecture, application mode, and data exchange protocol. These mechanisms have been integrated into a groupware solution, which was validated by a planning team in a truly geographically dispersed condition. Analysis of the validation results revealed that the proposed solution is feasible for real-time collaborative 4D planning to gain a robust construction plan through collaborative teamwork. The realization of this solution triggers further considerations about its enhancement for wider groupware applications

Common Ground: Exploring the intersection between information, technology, art and design

University research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary in both the nature of the problems being investigated and the makeup of the teams of researchers that tackle these complex challenges. Information schools are in a unique position to participate across a range of these projects. This poster describes an initiative to discover potential areas for collaboration between Syracuse University???s iSchool and the College of Visual and Performing Arts, focusing on the synergies between information, technology, art and design