Integrating groupware technology into the learning environment

This paper presents the hard lessons learned from the introduction of groupware technology within a final‐year software engineering module. The module began in 1997 and is now in its fourth year. The paper provides a detailed account of our successes and failures in each year, and describes what the authors now feel is a successful model for integrating groupware into the learning environment. The paper is important because it provides a longitudinal study of the use of groupware within a learning environment and an insight into the key success factors associated with the use of groupware. Success factors relate not only to the technology but also to social factors such as group facilitation and social protocols, to factors associated with monitoring and assessment, and to factors related to the skills development associated with being a member of a global team

A review of the empirical studies of computer supported human-to-human communication

This paper presents a review of the empirical studies of human-to-human communication which have been carried out over the last three decades. Although this review is primarily concerned with the empirical studies of computer supported human-to-human communication, a number of studies dealing with group work in non-computer-based collaborative environments, which form the basis of many of the empirical studies of the recent years in the area of CSCW, are also discussed. The concept of person and task spaces is introduced and then subsequently used to categorise the large volume of studies reported in this review. This paper also gives a comparative analysis of the findings of these studies, and draws a number of general conclusions to guide the design and evaluation of future CSCW systems

On sharing and synchronizing groupware calendars under android platform

(c) 2016 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.Sharing a calendar of tasks and events is a cornerstone in collaborative group work. Indeed, the individual work of the members of the group as well as the group work as a whole need the calendar to guide their activity and to meet the deadlines, milestones, deliverables of a project, etc. Additionally the members of the group should be able to work both offline and online, which arises when members of the group use smartphones and can eventually run out of Internet connection from time to time, or simply want to develop some activities locally. In the former case, they should have access to the calendar locally, while in the later case they should access the calendar online, shared by all members of the group. In both cases they should be able to see eventually the same information, namely the local calendars of the members should be synchronized with the group calendar. For the case of smartphones under Android system, one solution could be using the Google calendar, however, that is not easily tailorable to collaborative group work. In this paper we present an analysis, design and implementation of group work calendar that meets several requirements such as 1) sharing among all of members of the group, 2) synchronization among local calendars of members and global group calendar, 3) conflict resolution through a voting system, 4) awareness of changes in the entries (tasks, members, events, etc.) of the calendar and 5) all these requirements under proper privacy, confidentiality and security mechanisms. Moreover, we extend the sharing of calendars among different groups, a situation which often arises in enterprises when different groups need to be aware of other projects' development, or, when some members participate in more than one project at the same time.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Harnessing Intellectual Resources in a Collaborative Context to Create Value

The value of electronic collaboration has arisen as successful organisations recognize that they need to convert their intellectual resources into customized services. The shift from personal computing to interpersonal or collaborative computing has given rise to ways of working that may bring about better and more effective use of intellectual resources. Current efforts in managing knowledge have concentrated on producing; sharing and storing knowledge while business problems require the combined use of these intellectual resources to enable organisations to provide innovative and customized services. In this chapter the collaborative context is developed using a model for electronic collaboration through the use of which organisations may mobilse collaborative technologies and intellectual resources towards achieving joint effect.electronic collaboration;value creation;collaborative computing;knowledge management and intellectual resources

Desktop multimedia environments to support collaborative distance learning

Desktop multimedia conferencing, when two or more persons can communicate among themselves via personal computers with the opportunity to see and hear one another as well as communicate via text messages while working with commonly available stored resources, appears to have important applications to the support of collaborative learning. In this paper we explore this potential in three ways: (a) through an analysis of particular learner needs when learning and working collaboratively with others outside of face-to-face situations; (b) through an analysis of different forms of conferencing environments, including desktop multimedia environments, relative to their effectiveness in terms of meeting learner needs for distributed collaboration; and (c) through reporting the results of a formative evaluation of a prototype desktop multimedia conferencing system developed especially for the support of collaborative learning. Via these analyses, suggestions are offered relating to the functionalities of desktop multimedia conferencing systems for the support of collaborative learning, reflecting new developments in both the technologies available for such systems and in our awareness of learner needs when working collaboratively with one other outside of face-to-face situations

Computer Mediated Communications and Communities of Practice

Within the Knowledge Management context, there is growing interest in computer support for group knowledge sharing and the role that Communities of Practice play in this. Communities of Practice are groups of individuals with a common purpose and who share some background, language or experience. The community is regenerated as newcomers join the group and old-timers leave. The newcomers have access to the old- timers and learn from them. This generally takes place through situated learning. New group knowledge is also created as members of the community have a problem to solve and swap experiences and anecdotes to solve the problem, possibly arriving at a novel solution. This may then be further shared through anecdotes so that it eventually becomes part of the group's store of collective knowledge. Communities of Practice provide an excellent forum for knowledge sharing and a vital question is whether the new communications media, which provide new possibilities for collaboration and distributed working, could support the existence of such groups in a distributed environment. This question takes on an added relevance with the rapid internationalization of business that can spread the distribution over national boundaries posing problems of cultural and temporal as well as physical distance. This paper reports on a case study which was the first stage in exploring whether Computer Mediated Communications technologies (CMCs) can support distributed international Communities of Practice. The aim of the case study was to explore the possible existence of Communities of Practice in an international organization, to identify such groups and to ascertain the media used.Computer Mediated Communications technologies, CMC, Communities of Practice, CoP, Knowledge Management, KM

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

Evaluation Factors for Multi-Stakeholder Broadband Visual Communication Projects

This paper presents a summary of multifaceted evaluation factors that we have identified through our research with Broadband Visual Communication (BVC) projects involving multiple stakeholders. The main benefit of these evaluation factors is that they provide a general evaluation framework for multiple stakeholder projects. The factors are social infrastructure, technical infrastructure, physical space, interaction style and content

Using natural user interfaces to support synchronous distributed collaborative work

Synchronous Distributed Collaborative Work (SDCW) occurs when group members work together at the same time from different places together to achieve a common goal. Effective SDCW requires good communication, continuous coordination and shared information among group members. SDCW is possible because of groupware, a class of computer software systems that supports group work. Shared-workspace groupware systems are systems that provide a common workspace that aims to replicate aspects of a physical workspace that is shared among group members in a co-located environment. Shared-workspace groupware systems have failed to provide the same degree of coordination and awareness among distributed group members that exists in co-located groups owing to unintuitive interaction techniques that these systems have incorporated. Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) focus on reusing natural human abilities such as touch, speech, gestures and proximity awareness to allow intuitive human-computer interaction. These interaction techniques could provide solutions to the existing issues of groupware systems by breaking down the barrier between people and technology created by the interaction techniques currently utilised. The aim of this research was to investigate how NUI interaction techniques could be used to effectively support SDCW. An architecture for such a shared-workspace groupware system was proposed and a prototype, called GroupAware, was designed and developed based on this architecture. GroupAware allows multiple users from distributed locations to simultaneously view and annotate text documents, and create graphic designs in a shared workspace. Documents are represented as visual objects that can be manipulated through touch gestures. Group coordination and awareness is maintained through document updates via immediate workspace synchronization, user action tracking via user labels and user availability identification via basic proxemic interaction. Members can effectively communicate via audio and video conferencing. A user study was conducted to evaluate GroupAware and determine whether NUI interaction techniques effectively supported SDCW. Ten groups of three members each participated in the study. High levels of performance, user satisfaction and collaboration demonstrated that GroupAware was an effective groupware system that was easy to learn and use, and effectively supported group work in terms of communication, coordination and information sharing. Participants gave highly positive comments about the system that further supported the results. The successful implementation of GroupAware and the positive results obtained from the user evaluation provides evidence that NUI interaction techniques can effectively support SDCW

Harnessing Intellectual Resources in a Collaborative Context to Create Value

The value of electronic collaboration has arisen as successful organisations recognize that they need to convert their intellectual resources into customized services. The shift from personal computing to interpersonal or collaborative computing has given rise to ways of working that may bring about better and more effective use of intellectual resources. Current efforts in managing knowledge have concentrated on producing; sharing and storing knowledge while business problems require the combined use of these intellectual resources to enable organisations to provide innovative and customized services. In this chapter the collaborative context is developed using a model for electronic collaboration through the use of which organisations may mobilse collaborative technologies and intellectual resources towards achieving joint effect