New Jersey's Growing Remote Workforce and the Skill Requirements of Employers

Highlights factors driving the rise in remote work jobs, the ways remote work is affecting the workplace, and the skills workers need to be effective in remote work environments

Access Grid Nodes in Field Research

This article reports fieldwork with an Access Grid Node ('AGN') device, analogous to video teleconferencing but based on grid computational technology. The device enables research respondents to be interviewed at remote sites, with potential savings in travelling to conduct fieldwork. Practical, methodological and analytic aspects of the experimental fieldwork are reported. Findings include some distinctive features of AGN interviews relative to co-present interviews; overall, there were some benefits and some disadvantages to communication. The article concludes that this new research interview mode shows potential, particularly once the difficulties associated with a new research technology are resolved.Social Research Methods, Interview Methods, New Technologies for Social Research, Access Grid Nodes, Interview Communication, Witnesses at Court

Satellite-enabled interactive education: scenarios and systems architectures

There are specific sectors of the economy that can benefit from satellite-based tele-education. Areas, such as maritime and agriculture, share common needs for both broadband connectivity at remote geographical areas that cannot otherwise be covered, and for innovative content for tele-education purposes. Furthermore, each area has special requirements with regard to the type of content to be delivered. In this paper we propose a set of architectural designs and case scenarios that will realise such interactive end-to-end education systems based on satellite communications. Services requirements in this setting are also identified and discussed

Virtual Meeting Rooms: From Observation to Simulation

Virtual meeting rooms are used for simulation of real meeting behavior and can show how people behave, how they gesture, move their heads, bodies, their gaze behavior during conversations. They are used for visualising models of meeting behavior, and they can be used for the evaluation of these models. They are also used to show the effects of controlling certain parameters on the behavior and in experiments to see what the effect is on communication when various channels of information - speech, gaze, gesture, posture - are switched off or manipulated in other ways. The paper presents the various stages in the development of a virtual meeting room as well and illustrates its uses by presenting some results of experiments to see whether human judges can induce conversational roles in a virtual meeting situation when they only see the head movements of participants in the meeting

Gulliver project: performers and visitors

This paper discusses two projects in our research environment. The Gulliver project, an ambitious project conceived by some artists connected to our research efforts, and the Aveiro-project, as well ambitious, but with goals that can be achieved beause of technological developments, rather than be dependent on artistic and 'political' (read: financial) sources. Both projects are on virtual and augmented reality. The main goal is to design inhabited environments, where 'inhabited' refers to autonomous agents and agents that represent humans, realtime or off-line, visiting the virtual environment and interacting with other agents. The Gulliver environment has been designed by two artists: Matjaz Stuk and Alena Hudcovicova. The Aveiro project is a research effort of a group of researchers trying to design models of intelligence and interaction underlying the behavior of (groups of) agents inhabiting virtual worlds. In this paper we survey the current state of both projects and we discuss current and future attempts to have music performances by virtual and real performers in these environments

Overcoming distance in virtual teams : effects of communication media, experience, and time pressure on distributed teamwork

Een virtueel team is een team waarvan de leden elkaar niet of zelden in levenden lijve ontmoeten, bijvoorbeeld omdat de teamleden verschillende werktijden hebben of op verschillende vestigingen van een organisatie werken. Anders dan reguliere teams zijn virtuele teams in grote mate afhankelijk van informatie- en communicatietechnologie. Een voorbeeld van een virtueel team is een ontwerpteam dat binnen een multinationaal bedrijf een nieuwe productlijn ontwikkelt vanaf verschillende locaties door gebruik te maken van e-mail en videovergaderingen. Een belangrijke bijdrage van het huidige onderzoek is dat het laat zien dat de beperkingen van gedistribueerd samenwerken die de wijdverbreide toepassing van virtuele teams hinderen, zijn te overkomen. Door een combinatie van relevante groupware en ervaring met samenwerken op afstand, kunnen virtuele teams werk produceren dat qua kwaliteit en hoeveelheid vergelijkbaar is met het werk van face-to-face teams. Het lijkt er dan ook op dat virtuele teams geen modeverschijnsel zijn. Virtuele teams zijn de toekomst

Satellite-based delivery of educational content to geographically isolated communities: A service based approach

Enabling learning for members of geographically isolated communities presents benefits in terms of promoting regional development and cost savings for governments and companies. However, notwithstanding recent advances in e-Learning, from both technological and pedagogical perspectives, there are very few, if any, recognised methodologies for user-led design of satellite-based e-learning infrastructures. In this paper, we present a methodology for designing a satellite and wireless based network infrastructure and learning services to support distance learning for such isolated communities. This methodology entails (a) the involvement of community members in the development of targeted learning services from an early stage, and (b) a service-oriented approach to learning solution deployment. Results show, that, while the technological premises of distance learning can be accommodated by hybrid satellite/wireless infrastructures,this has to be complemented with (a) high-quality audio–visual educational material, and (b) the opportunity for community members to interact with other community members either as groups (common-room oriented scenarios) or individuals (home-based scenarios), thus providing an impetus for learner engagement in both formal and informal activities

Virtual Learning Environment (VLE): a Web-based collaborative learning system

Using the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) to support teaching or learning has become a trend in modern higher education. However, most distance-learning or virtual-learning sites are still limited to the dissemination of teaching materials. The strengths of the Internet and WWW have not been maximized nor have their functions (e.g. supporting autonomous, exploratory, interactive and collaborative learning) been fully utilized. Hong Kong University (HKU) has developed a virtual learning system, called the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), to prove that such kind of learning is possible with Internet and WWW technologies.published_or_final_versio

USAge of Groupware in Software Engineering Education at the Cscw Laboratory of University Duisburg-essen: Possibilities and Limitations

This paper analyzes the application level in CSCW laboratory there are Electronic meeting rooms, Video Conferencing, Desktop Conference (Passenger), and BSCW system which conducting in The University Duisburg – Essen Germany. This analysis included short analysis and discussion about possibilities and limitation of each experiment followed by outlook how this lab can be further developed.Multi-user to Multipoint Videoconferences is introduced to cover all of devices join to the conferences. A computer network, PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), ISDN Phone, Wireless Infrastructures (accessed by laptop, smart phone, PDA) and videoconferences systems is proposed to be integrate

Learning fast: broadband and the future of education

Educational institutions have always had a central place in the online age. Before the advent of high-speed broadband, other communications technologies and services also played a big role in education.  University researchers were among the first Australian users of what became known as the Internet. When the domain name system was deployed in the mid-1980s, the .au domain was delegated to Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne. When the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee decided to set up a national communications network to support research, Geoff Huston transferred to its payroll from ANU to work as technical manager for AARNet, whose current chief executive, Chris Hancock, is interviewed by Liz Fell in this issue. When a 56 kbps ARPANET link with Australia was made by NASA and the University of Hawaii via Intelsat in June 1989, the connection was established in Elz’s University of Melbourne laboratory. (Clarke 2004: 31) In earlier times, the postal service made learning-at-a-distance possible by ‘correspondence’, particularly in remote areas of Australia. Advances in radio communications made it easier and the interactivity more immediate. Television sets and later video cassette and DVD players and recorders made it more visual. The telephone provided a tool of communication for teachers and learners; the best of them understood that most people were both at different times. Then simple low bandwidth tools like email and web browsing provided new ways for students, teachers and their institutions to communicate and distribute and share information. Learning management systems like Blackboard have been widely deployed through the education sector. Information that was once housed in libraries is now available online and social media platforms are providing new ways for students to collaborate. Ubiquitous, faster broadband and mobile access via smartphones and tablets promise further transformations. &nbsp