A LIGHTWEIGHT APPROACH TO UNBREAKABLE LINKS IN WWW-BASED HYPERTEXT ENVIRONMENTS Keywords: Link Consistency, hypertext, CSCL. “Users and tools want to break links”

Abstract: In this paper, we present a lightweight approach to achieve link consistency through a combination of object pointers and WWW-style path-oriented links. Our goal is to allow the use of common web-based tools with our CSCW/L system steam, but at the same time achieve link consistency within the system.

A network component architecture for collaboration in mobile settings

Abstract: Today Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is used in broad areas of human cooperation. With the propagation of radio-based communication and ad hoc networking it may enter new areas of human cooperation. One important aspect is the new quality in CSCW of being independent from special network-enabled places. Another aspect is the more intuitive support of face-to-face cooperation utilizing personal mobile devices. To open this field of collaboration our approach featuring Distributed Cooperative Knowledge Spaces specifically addresses conceptual issues pertaining to the transition from classical, server-centered to mobile, distributed collaboration environments. With this concept we introduce persistent and personal knowledge spaces as well as so-called temporary knowledge areas and groups. Our prototypical application for spontaneous collaboration implements this approach. We are able to draw here on many years of experience in the development and testing of our concept of Cooperative Virtual Knowledge Spaces.

A FRAMEWORK FOR DISTRIBUTED OBJECTS IN PEER-TO-PEER COOPERATION ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract: Mobile forms of cooperative knowledge organization need system architectures that also allow spontaneous (ad hoc) networking and collaboration structures. An essential requirement here, besides establishing the peerto-peer network, is the design of suitable framework architectures for object distribution. This article presents our approach to developing a basic architecture for distributed systems that support cooperation. This also involves creating interfaces to existing classical CSCW architectures and systems. The novel element of our approach, which is based on a JXTA network, is its use of JXTA services to distribute objects among peers, thus achieving the desired object distribution.

Human computer interaction and cooperative learning in mobile environments

Starting out on network supported cooperative learning environments for classical learning scenarios, this article discusses their possible enhancements with respect to new standards of mobile learning scenarios. Exemplary, the pursued adaptation will be described by means of the learning platform sTeam.

Abstract

Mobile cooperation systems are in focus of current CSCW/L research. Most approaches try to build special clients for mobile devices or new architectures for distributed cooperation systems. The same is true for mobility aware visualization systems. Often, the principal purpose of these approaches is just to use the computation power of portable devices for presenting reduced visualizations because the rendering of three-dimensional graphical representations of complex datasets is too computation extensive. Our approach combines two sophisticated technologies. On the visualization part it deploys remote render farms to produce the representation as video streams, separately for every cooperation partner. Thus the mobile devices only need to be able to play MEPG-4 compliant video streams, commonly provided by off-the-shelf PDAs and laptops. On the part of the collaboration support we use a full-featured CSCW system. This allows embedding the visualization as an active object into a cooperative knowledge space for supporting the cooperation process with a document centered environment and communication facilities. The visualization is displayed as an active picture on the cooperative shared whiteboard. Users may manipulate the visualization scene as well as the whiteboard representation which is actually a view on an area of the persistent knowledge space saved in the CSCW system.