Individual Cognition in Group Decision Making: What Were They Thinking?

The goal of this study is to probe more deeply into reasons for the failure of individual cognition in decision making groups using groupware and to develop a set of techniques to overcome them. There are many potential causes for the lack of cognition. One possibility is that individuals do not attend to information they receive. Other possibilities include that information integration may be impaired by a lack of cognitive resources, a lack of credibility in the information received from other group members, or a failure to apply the proper criteria

Analyzing and designing the group cognition experience

nternational Journal of Cooperative Information Systems, 15(2), 157-178.More than we realize it, knowledge is often constructed through interactions among people in small groups. The Internet, by allowing people to communicate globally in limitless combinations, has opened enormous opportunities for the creation of knowledge and understanding. A major barrier today is the poverty of adequate groupware. To design more powerful software that can facilitate the building of collaborative knowledge, we need to better understand the nature of group cognition—the processes whereby ideas are developed by small groups. We need to analyze interaction at both the individual and the group unit of analysis in order to understand the variety of processes that groupware should be supporting. This paper will look closely at an empirical example of an online group problem-solving experience and suggest implications for groupware design

The nature of virtual communities

The impressive development of electronic communication techniques has given rise to virtual\ud communities. The nature of these computer-mediated communities has been the subject of much recent\ud debate. Are they ordinary social groups in electronic form, or are they fundamentally different from\ud traditional communities? Understanding virtual communities seems a prerequisite for the design of better\ud communication systems. To clarify this debate, we will resort to the classical sociological distinction\ud between small traditional communities (based on personal relations) and modern social groups (bound by\ud looser, more impersonal links). We will argue that the discussion about virtual communities is often\ud vitiated by a simplistic assimilation to traditional communities, whereas they may be in fact quite different\ud and much more impersonal. Virtual communities are often bound by reference to common objects or\ud goals, and not by personal relations. In this respect, virtual communities are just another example of a\ud long-term evolution of modern society toward more abstract social relationships

The evolution of a cooperative work framework for e-Learning

This paper details the evolution of a Framework for e-Learning, to a Cooperative Work Framework for e-Learning, as presented at the IASK conference (Graham 2008a) and annotated accordingly. It begins by discussing the development of the original Framework for e-Learning, and how this study resulted in a further study investigating whether the use of Blended Learning could fulfill or at least accommodate some of the human requirements presently neglected by current e-Learning systems as identified by the original Framework. This second study evaluated an in-house system: Teachmat, and discussed how the use of Blended Learning had become increasingly prevalent as a result of the enhancement and expansion of Teachmat. It looked at the employment of Blended Learning and Teachmat’s relationship to human and pedagogical issues, as well as both the positive and negative implications of this reality. PESTE factors from Sociology were then applied to appraise the adoption of e-Learning, leading to the proposal of PESTE factors for educational software and e-Learning in particular. Finally, the study evolved to reconsider e-Learning in relation to a Cooperative Work Framework, revealing critical weakness in the fundamental nature of e-Learning and its consequent propensity for failure

Co-ordinating distributed knowledge: An investigation into the use of an organisational memory

This paper presents an ethnographically informed investigation into the use of an organisational memory, focusing in particular on how information was used in the performance of work. We argue that understanding how people make use of distributed knowledge is crucial to the design of an organisational memory. However, we take the perspective that an ‘organisational memory’ is not technology dependant, but is an emergent property of group interaction. In this sense, the technology does not form the organisational memory, but provides a novel means of augmenting the co-ordination of collaborative action. The study examines the generation, development and maintenance of knowledge repositories and archives. The knowledge and information captured in the organisational memory enabled the team members to establish a common understanding of the design and to gain an appreciation of the issues and concerns of the other disciplines. The study demonstrates why technology should not be thought of in isolation from its contexts of use, but also how designers can make use of the creative flexibility that people employ in their everyday activities. The findings of the study are therefore of direct relevance to both the design of knowledge archives and to the management of this information within organisations

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

Space for Two to Think: Large, High-Resolution Displays for Co-located Collaborative Sensemaking

Large, high-resolution displays carry the potential to enhance single display groupware collaborative sensemaking for intelligence analysis tasks by providing space for common ground to develop, but it is up to the visual analytics tools to utilize this space effectively. In an exploratory study, we compared two tools (Jigsaw and a document viewer), which were adapted to support multiple input devices, to observe how the large display space was used in establishing and maintaining common ground during an intelligence analysis scenario using 50 textual documents. We discuss the spatial strategies employed by the pairs of participants, which were largely dependent on tool type (data-centric or function-centric), as well as how different visual analytics tools used collaboratively on large, high-resolution displays impact common ground in both process and solution. Using these findings, we suggest design considerations to enable future co-located collaborative sensemaking tools to take advantage of the benefits of collaborating on large, high-resolution displays

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

Enhancing design learning using a digital repository

The process of design is context dependent and open-ended, and therefore does not revolve around a specific body of information or knowledge. The educational paradigm shift in the area of engineering design from teaching to coaching and the increased use of social constructivist learning ideals requires students to have access to as wide a range of information as possible. Digital resources provide an excellent opportunity for extending the range of information available to design students and to this end, as part of a joint research program with Stanford University, the University of Strathclyde has developed a groupware product called LauLima to provide students with a collaborative environment which allows them to gather, organise, store and share information. This paper describes the improvement to design learning, based on a Design Knowledge Framework, in a 3rd year product design engineering project from session 03/04 to 04/05 which has been facilitated by the implementation of this technology

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings