Crowdsourcing Convergence: Aggregating Partial Clusters to Facilitate Collaborative Convergence

This paper is an exploratory effort to investigate the possibility of using crowdsourcing to execute part of the collaborative convergence process. Participants were assigned with creating buckets or clusters from a random subset of the overall pool of brainstorming ideas. These sub-sorts were aggregated into a weighted graph and partitioned into discrete buckets. Analysis of this aggregated, consensus sort provides support that crowdsourcing may be a feasible option when organizing brainstorming ideas into discrete categories or buckets

Introduction to Processes and Technologies for Small and Large Team Collaboration Minitrack

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The Effect of Organizational Commitment on Collusive Supervision Over Reporting

We apply the Theory of Planned Behavior framework and find that attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) influence supervisor intentions to involve subordinates in aggressive reporting practices to the supervisor’s advantage. We refer to this behavior as collusive supervision over reporting (CSOR). Using PLS Path Modeling, we find stronger materialism leads to stronger attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC) to engage in CSOR. We find that organizational commitment counters this influence. Stronger organizational commitment is associated with reduced attitudes and subjective norms to engage in CSOR. We also consider the collision of these two variables, materialism and organizational commitment, and explain interaction effects. Our findings suggest that subordinates navigating situations wherein they are pressured to engage in aggressive reporting practices can make petitions to the supervisor’s sense of organizational commitment. Organizational commitment favorably dampens the effect of materialism on attitude towards CSOR. However, the interaction effect of organizational commitment and materialism on subjective norms towards CSOR is more complicated. Through social projection supervisors project their own materialism levels onto their supervisors, and then increasing organizational commitment causes them to want to fit in even more with these supervisors. When materialism is low for a supervisor, increasing organizational commitment results in further dampening the effect of materialism, leading to improved subjective norms and lower intentions to engage in CSOR. When materialism is high, however, increasing organizational commitment amplifies the effect of materialism on subjective norms, leading to increased CSOR

Peer-reviewed Brainstorming to Facilitate Large Group Collaboration

This paper examines the impact of peer-reviewed brainstorming on the quality of brainstorming ideas. Peer-reviewed brainstorming aims to improve the quality of the brainstorming ideas and reduce the number of noisy comments. A pilot study was conducted that compared traditional, free brainstorming to a peer-reviewed brainstorming process, which requires each idea to be reviewed and edited by peers. The peer-review process did reduce the number of low quality ideas. This process was also rated higher in satisfaction ratings than traditional brainstorming

Enhancing E-learning using Artifact-Based Collaboration

Given the increased focus on e-learning, educators are interested in finding new ways to incorporate techniques that foster active learning. To leverage the asynchronous nature of e-learning settings and provide collaborative learning opportunities for participants that go beyond mere information exchange, this paper proposes an integrated model of collaboration and elearning. This approach ties together two research streams, namely the distributed e-learning environment research and the information systems collaboration research. Further, descriptive categories of collaboration approaches are presented: solution-based collaboration and artifact-based collaboration. An artifact-based collaborative e-learning tool is developed and discussed with the aim to improve the collaborative, e-learning process

Improving Collaborative Convergence through Distributed and Parallel Sorting

This paper examines a convergence process of organizing ideas that are generated during collaborative idea generation activities. The method presented reduces the impact of organizing brainstorming ideas on individual participants by dividing the convergence activity into smaller, discrete tasks that can be completed individually, and in parallel, by the participants. The entire pool of brainstorming ideas is subdivided into smaller pools and each participant is then tasked with organizing one of the subsets of ideas. The results show that by dividing up the overall activity into subtasks, the subjects experienced a more favorable environment. Furthermore, the subjects were able to work through their subset of ideas and produce results that were similar to those performing the full sort of the entire pool

HSP90 inhibitors reduce cholesterol storage in Niemann-Pick type C1 mutant fibroblasts

Niemann Pick type C1 (NPC1) disease is a lysosomal lipid storage disorder caused by mutations of the NPC1 gene. More than 300 disease-associated mutations are reported in patients, resulting in abnormal accumulation of unesterified cholesterol, glycosphingolipids and other lipids in late endosomes and lysosomes (LE/Ly) of many cell types. Previously, we showed that treatment of many different NPC1 mutant fibroblasts with histone deacetylase inhibitors resulted in reduction of cholesterol storage, and we found that this was associated with enhanced exit of the NPC1 protein from the endoplasmic reticulum and delivery to LE/Ly. This suggested that histone deacetylase inhibitors may work through changes in protein chaperones to enhance the folding of NPC1 mutants, allowing them to be delivered to LE/Ly. In this study we evaluated the effect of several HSP90 inhibitors on NPC

Participant-Driven Group Support Systems: An Approach to Distributed, Asynchronous Collaborative Systems

This dissertation presents the Participant-driven Group Support System (PD-GSS)framework. This framework presents an approach for Group Support System (GSS)designers to accommodate distributed or asynchronous groups through the use ofdifferent technologies and processes than traditional GSS.The goal of the PD-GSS framework is to further involve the collaborativeparticipants during the workflow in an effort to reduce the load on the meetingfacilitator. As the name implies, it is the participants that are increasingly responsiblefor conducting and executing the required actions during a collaborative processes. Thesystem empowers the participants in the meeting to conduct the meeting themselves,reducing the need for a dedicated facilitator to guide the process.One of the modules from the PD-GSS framework, Peer-reviewed Brainstorming,was developed into a prototype and tested experimentally. This module requires eachbrainstorming idea to be routed through a peer-review process whereby the originalbrainstorming idea is edited for clarity and completeness. The goal of this new moduleis to reduce the number of low quality, noisy comments while increasing the quantity ofhigh quality comments.Ten six-person groups participated in the first experiment. Five groups wereplaced in a traditional electronic brainstorming GSS while the other five groups wereplaced in the peer-review treatment. The results indicate that the peer-review processdid control the brainstorming process, yielding a higher percentage of validbrainstorming ideas.The second module examined was the categorization module, allowing groups towork autonomously to identify similar ideas that should be grouped together in the samecategory or bucket. This new approach to the categorization of brainstorming ideasenables groups to work independently, asynchronously, and anonymously to organizethe brainstorming input.An existing GSS, ThinkTank by GroupSystems, was utilized. Eighty-one groupswere used in the second experiment to test the ability of groups to work independently,without a facilitator, in an attempt to organize brainstorming ideas. The groups workingsynchronously outperformed the groups working in a mock asynchronous setting.Likewise, the groups that had to categorize the fewest number of brainstorming ideasreceived the highest performance measures