Towards collaborative learning via shared artefacts over the Grid

The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; and its use to support eLearning has been highly successful. There are many web-based Virtual Learning Environments such as WebCT, FirstClass, and BlackBoard as well as associated web-based Managed Learning Environments. In the future, the Grid promises to provide an extremely powerful infrastructure allowing both learners and teachers to collaborate in various learning contexts and to share learning materials, learning processes, learning systems, and experiences. This position paper addresses the role of support for sharing artefacts in distributed systems such as the Grid. An analogy is made between collaborative software development and collaborative learning with the goal of gaining insights into the requisite support for artefact sharing within the eLearning community

Learning Human Aspects of Collaborative Software Development

Collaboration has become increasingly widespread in the software industry as systems have become larger and more complex, adding human complexity to the technological complexity already involved in developing software systems. To deal with this complexity, human-centric software development methods, such as Extreme Programming and other agile methods, have been developed and implemented. Aiming to prepare future software developers for today\u27s software industry, this paper presents a framework for developing collaborative learning tools and activities, and examples that were developed for the course Human Aspects of Software Engineering in order to assist students in learning collaborative software development. The learning processes and knowledge construction undergone by the students in the study were examined empirically, both in general and with respect to collaboration in particular. Results indicate that, based on their individual and group in-class experiences and reflections, students developed skills and constructed both practical and theoretical knowledge relating to successful collaborative software development

The benefits of in silico modeling to identify possible small-molecule drugs and their off-target interactions

Accepted for publication in a future issue of Future Medicinal Chemistry.The research into the use of small molecules as drugs continues to be a key driver in the development of molecular databases, computer-aided drug design software and collaborative platforms. The evolution of computational approaches is driven by the essential criteria that a drug molecule has to fulfill, from the affinity to targets to minimal side effects while having adequate absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties. A combination of ligand- and structure-based drug development approaches is already used to obtain consensus predictions of small molecule activities and their off-target interactions. Further integration of these methods into easy-to-use workflows informed by systems biology could realize the full potential of available data in the drug discovery and reduce the attrition of drug candidates.Peer reviewe

Rethinking Consideration in the Electronic Age

Our fast-paced age of electronic agreements that ostensibly govern transactions as diverse as downloading software, ordering goods, and engaging in collaborative development projects raises questions regarding thesuitability of contract law as the appropriate legal framework. While this question arises in many settings, we focus here on the free and open source software (FOSS) movement because of the maturity and success of its model and the ubiquity of its software. We explore in particular whether open source licenses are supported by consideration, and argue that they are, and that open source licenses are contracts. We further argue that a contractual framework working in tandem with the intellectual property laws is the appropriate legal structure to govern FOSS transactions. Our discussion holds implications for the understanding ofconsideration doctrine and contract law generally outside of the FOSS example and, indeed, for collaborative development and electronic agreements generally. The article is thus an exercise in understandingconsideration doctrine\u27s past and future

Rethinking Consideration in the Electronic Age

Our fast-paced age of electronic agreements that ostensibly govern transactions as diverse as downloading software, ordering goods, and engaging in collaborative development projects raises questions regarding the suitability of contract law as the appropriate legal framework. While this question arises in many settings, we focus here on the free and open source software (FOSS) movement because of the maturity and success of its model and the ubiquity of its software. We explore in particular whether open source licenses are supported by consideration, and argue that they are, and that open source licenses are contracts. We further argue that a contractual framework working in tandem with the intellectual property laws is the appropriate legal structure to govern FOSS transactions. Our discussion holds implications for the understanding of consideration doctrine and contract law generally outside of the FOSS example and, indeed, for collaborative development and electronic agreements generally. The Article is thus an exercise in understanding consideration doctrine\u27s past and future

Rethinking Consideration in the Electronic Age

Our fast-paced age of electronic agreements that ostensibly govern transactions as diverse as downloading software, ordering goods, and engaging in collaborative development projects raises questions regarding the suitability of contract law as the appropriate legal framework. While this question arises in many settings, we focus here on the free and open source software (FOSS) movement because of the maturity and success of its model and the ubiquity of its software. We explore in particular whether open source licenses are supported by consideration, and argue that they are, and that open source licenses are contracts. We further argue that a contractual framework working in tandem with the intellectual property laws is the appropriate legal structure to govern FOSS transactions. Our discussion holds implications for the understanding of consideration doctrine and contract law generally outside of the FOSS example and, indeed, for collaborative development and electronic agreements generally. The Article is thus an exercise in understanding consideration doctrine\u27s past and future

Open Collaborative Mechanical / Product Design - User as Developer A New Design Methodology for Internet Era Business Innovations and Entrepreneurship

In product design and development projects, the most important part is identifying user needs. Traditional methods such as surveys, focus group studies and interviews are expensive and sometime inaccurate in identifying those needs. Inspired by the open source software development, along with the research that has been done on the lead user method, the method of using collective customer wisdom to modify old products or even develop new products has become an emerging new design method and is starting to get popularity and success. However, the effectiveness of such method comparing to the traditional face to face close development method is a question that keeping established businesses from apply such method. At the same time, failures of early attempts to use such methods also cast doubts about the quality of this method. We set up two experiments to compare this method and the traditional face to face method, and found out that the effectiveness of both methods were about the same. Problems of implementing such method also emerged from the experiment, possible solutions are discussed, and future studies are also identified. Comparing this method to the open source software design, there is one stage of the development that is unique for mechanical products. The prototyping and manufacturing of mechanical products involved cost and quality control issues that don\u27t exist in software development. We conducted an experiment of applying a collaborative open design approach to test the possibility and necessity of applying such design method during prototype fabrication. Our results showed that open collaborative design is necessary to identify true customer needs. A product prototyping and manufacturing method is also proposed for real world practice. The open collaborative design method is new and is not easily adopted by established businesses, as they are often reluctant to implement new approaches. Entrepreneurs can usually take advantage of this situation and establish their share of the market, even possibly driving out the established businesses later on. We argue that the open collaborative design method is one such technology. Future research and practice is proposed and discussed