Systemic effector conceptual model in groupware implementation

Network software systems and groupware within organizations differ from other information technologies, requiring individuals to 'design' their own use. Users and groups can choose how to engage with these systems (Hassall, 1998), and use is dependent upon existing technological framing (Orlikowski, 1992). Groupware provides opportunities to study interaction between technological and organizational potentials. The action and structure duality of structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) points to the need for systemic understandings. Moreover, deconstructive schemes (e.g. Dudley and Hassall 1995,1996) demonstrate a plurality of overt and ulterior motivations in use. The Systemic Effector Model has been developed based upon longitudinal research in groupware implementation. This abstracted perspective relates choice of facility and design of action to important motivators at the individual and systemic levels. The genesis and explanatory power of the model is explored through survey and case study data

Environments to support collaborative software engineering

With increasing globalisation of software production, widespread use of software components, and the need to maintain software systems over long periods of time, there has been a recognition that better support for collaborative working is needed by software engineers. In this paper, two approaches to developing improved system support for collaborative software engineering are described: GENESIS and OPHELIA. As both projects are moving towards industrial trials and eventual publicreleases of their systems, this exercise of comparing and contrasting our approaches has provided the basis for future collaboration between our projects particularly in carrying out comparative studies of our approaches in practical use

Simulation of networks of spiking neurons: A review of tools and strategies

We review different aspects of the simulation of spiking neural networks. We start by reviewing the different types of simulation strategies and algorithms that are currently implemented. We next review the precision of those simulation strategies, in particular in cases where plasticity depends on the exact timing of the spikes. We overview different simulators and simulation environments presently available (restricted to those freely available, open source and documented). For each simulation tool, its advantages and pitfalls are reviewed, with an aim to allow the reader to identify which simulator is appropriate for a given task. Finally, we provide a series of benchmark simulations of different types of networks of spiking neurons, including Hodgkin-Huxley type, integrate-and-fire models, interacting with current-based or conductance-based synapses, using clock-driven or event-driven integration strategies. The same set of models are implemented on the different simulators, and the codes are made available. The ultimate goal of this review is to provide a resource to facilitate identifying the appropriate integration strategy and simulation tool to use for a given modeling problem related to spiking neural networks.Comment: 49 pages, 24 figures, 1 table; review article, Journal of Computational Neuroscience, in press (2007

Web-based support for managing large collections of software artefacts

There has been a long history of CASE tool development, with an underlying software repository at the heart of most systems. Usually such tools, even the more recently web-based systems, are focused on supporting individual projects within an enterprise or across a number of distributed sites. Little support for maintaining large heterogeneous collections of software artefacts across a number of projects has been developed. Within the GENESIS project, this has been a key consideration in the development of the Open Source Component Artefact Repository (OSCAR). Its most recent extensions are explicitly addressing the provision of cross project global views of large software collections as well as historical views of individual artefacts within a collection. The long-term benefits of such support can only be realised if OSCAR is widely adopted and various steps to facilitate this are described

Teaching Ourselves: A Model to Improve, Assess and Spread the Word

This paper presents a model for small, interdisciplinary groups of faculty to work together to improve their teaching while engaging in research that provides evidence of improved student learning. In doing so, we have developed a four-step process of faculty-driven scholarship of teaching and learning: Genesis, Organization, Implementation and Dissemination. We illustrate this model by describing our use of Fink’s (2003) concepts of course design to reshape our courses and assess the effectiveness of these changes through examination of student learning. We describe how others may follow this approach with a variety of applications