Entangled Design Knowledge: Relationships as an Approach to Claims Reuse

As a discipline, human-computer interaction produces creative and innovative designs that could provide a reusable collection of design knowledge on which future efforts could build. It is unfortunate that so much of this knowledge is not fully reused by designers today. To encourage the use of previously identified HCI knowledge, we propose a model of reuse building on Carroll?s notion of claims, design knowledge components that capture the positive and negative psychological effects of design features. We address four challenges associated with reuse in a library of claims, adopted from software engineering?a discipline in which the notion of reuse has been prevalent for quite some time. Building on Krueger?s definition of reuse and his conceptualization of four key aspects?abstraction, selection, specification, and integration?we propose a reuse approach based on incorporating these four aspects into the design process. To abstract, select, specify and integrate claims, we identify claim relationships, descriptions of connections between claims. We portray how claim relationships can be used to aid in identifying claim types, searching for claims, creating new claims, and aggregating claims. By integrating relationships into a claims library, we demonstrate how they can be applied to assist claims reuse and present studies related to each application of the relationships

COBRA: A Constraint-Based Awareness Management Framework

The effective and efficient cooperation in communities and groups requires that the members of the community or group have adequate information about each other and the environment. In this paper, we outline the basic challenges of managing awareness information. We analyse the management of awareness information in face-to-face situations, and discuss challenges and requirements for the support of awareness management in distributed settings. Finally, after taking a look at related work, we present a simple, yet powerful framework for awareness management based on constraint pattern named COBRA

Teacher competence development – a European perspective

This chapter provides an European perspectives on teacher competence development

Community-based mentoring and innovating through Web 2.0

The rise of social software, often termed Web 2.0, has resulted in heightened awareness of the opportunities for creative and innovative approaches to learning that are afforded by network technologies. Social software platforms and social networking technologies have become part of the learning landscape both for those who learn formally within institutions, and for those who learn informally via emergent web-based learning communities. As collaborative online learning becomes a reality, new skills in communication and collaboration are required in order to use new technologies effectively, develop real digital literacy and other 21st century skills

Supporting awareness in heterogeneous collaboration environments

Rapid technological advancements have made it possible for humans to collaborate as never before. However demands of group work necessitate distributed collaboration in very heterogeneous environments. Heterogeneity as in various applications, platforms, hardware and communication infrastructure. User mobility, lack of availability and cost often make imposing a common collaboration environment infeasible. Awareness is essential for successful collaboration. Awareness is a key design criterion in groupware but often collaboration occurs with applications not designed to support useful awareness. This dissertation deals with the issue of effective group awareness support in heterogeneous environments.;Awareness propagation is effective if the appropriate amount of information, relevant to the user\u27s sphere of activity is delivered in a timely, unobtrusive fashion. Thus issues such as information overload, and distraction have to be addressed. Furthermore ability to establish the appropriate balance between awareness and privacy is essential. Enhanced forms of awareness such as intersubjectivity and historical awareness are often invaluable. Heterogeneous environments significantly impact the above quality factors impeding effective awareness propagation. Users are unable to tailor the quality of awareness received.;Heterogeneity issues that affect awareness quality are identified. An awareness framework is proposed that binds various sources of awareness information. However for effective awareness support, physical integration must be augmented by information integration. As a solution, an awareness model is proposed. Specification of the awareness model and framework\u27s architecture and features is the key contribution. The proposed model has been validated through simulations of realistic collaboration involving human participation. Scenarios created, have tested the model\u27s usefulness in enhancing the quality of group work by propagating effective awareness among users. To accomplish the same, an Awareness Simulator application has been created. In the validation process, efforts made to create an experimental methodology revealed some techniques related to awareness evaluation in CSCW, which are proposed. Various issues required to successfully engineer such awareness frameworks are identified and their impact on requirements such as security and performance, discussed. With various standards and technologies that can be harnessed to create awareness frameworks, there is great promise that barriers in heterogeneous collaboration environments can be overcome