An Investigation of the Utility of Microblogging in a Virtual Organisation

Virtualisation is one possible business strategy of an organisation. The nature of virtual organisations is that individuals or teams are distributed over different work sites. This leads to barriers in communication,coordination and collaboration between these entities due to dispersed expertise, time zones, languages, cultures, etc. To address these issues, virtual organisations have invested in ICT for supporting collaboration between cross-site colleagues. One very new collaborative technology is microblogging. Microblogging supports asynchronous communication between multiple persons. Microblogging is based upon transmission of short messages that can be sent from Web-based microblogging systems, instant messaging tools, email or mobile phones. Microblogging has some relevant features like simplicity, immediacy, accessibility and presence. This paper describes our investigation of the utility of microblogging, particularly the Twitter tool, for collaboration support in a virtual organisation. Since microblogging is very new and was introduced only recently, no work has been done on this exact topic. The investigation involved conducting an online survey to collect participants’ opinions about the utility of Twitter in the workplace after using Twitter over a three-week period. The study yielded quantitative and qualitative results regarding participants’ experience of Twitter. It was found that microblogging could be adapted to virtual organisations quickly due to ease of use in terms of taking less time and effort for creating microblogs. Twitter could be used in virtual organisations for collaboration support because it is believed that the use of Twitter could somewhat improve communication between cross-site co-workers. However, to be well accepted by virtual organisations, Twitter needs improvement and addition to its existing functionality

The F@ Framework of Designing Awareness Mechanisms in Instant Messaging

This paper presents our research on awareness support in Instant Messaging (IM). The paper starts with a brief overview of empirical study of IM, using an online survey and face-to-face interviews to identify user needs for awareness support. The study identified a need for supporting four aspects of awareness, awareness of multiple concurrent conversations, conversational awareness, presence awareness of a group conversation, and visibility of moment-to-moment listeners and viewers. Based on the empirical study and existing research on awareness, we have developed the F@ (read as fat) framework of awareness. F@ comprises of the abstract level and the concrete level. The former includes an in-depth description of various awareness aspects in IM, whilst the latter utilises temporal logic to formalise fundamental time-related awareness aspects. F@ helps developers gain a better understanding of awareness and thereby design usable mechanisms to support awareness. Applying F@, we have designed several mechanisms to support various aspect of awareness in IM

USABILITY EVALUATION OF A DISCRETE EVENT- BASED VISUAL HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT SIMULATOR

ABSTRACT Hospital Management is a complex and dynamic organisational challenge. Hospital managers (HM

Enhancing Clinical Nurse Workflow through Redesign of Networked Wireless Laptop Computers

Nurses spend a substantial amount of their time documenting observations and care processes, leaving less time for patient-centred activities. This paper covers our study of the application of mobile-wireless laptop computers to clinical workflow within the nursing unit. An observational study design was used to explore ergonomic and functionality issues of networked wireless computers and to determine the practical utility of the networked wireless computer for clinical workflow processes. A small group of nurses were observed over a six-month period in using two laptops affixed to trolleys for access in wards and at beds. Four main purposes for the laptops were discovered: ward rounds, diagnostic information, team meetings and education. This paper covers various findings related to each of these purposes. Additionally, findings for ergonomics and functional design related to the laptops are described. For instance, the inclination towards a traditional mouse as opposed to a touch-pad mouse. We also discuss the application of our findings to future use of mobile-wireless laptop computers in the unit setting

SwinDeW: a p2p-based decentralised workflow management system

Workflow technology undoubtedly has been one of the most important domains of interest over the past decades, from both research and practice perspectives. However, problems such as potential poor performance, lack of reliability, limited scalability, insufficient user support, and unsatisfactory system openness are largely ignored. This research reveals that these problems are mainly caused by the mismatch between application nature, i.e., distributed, and system design, i.e., centralized management. Therefore, conventional approaches based on the client-server architecture have not addressed them properly so far. The authors abandon the dominating client-server architecture in supporting workflow because of its inherent limitations. Instead, the peer-to-peer infrastructure is used to provide genuinely decentralized workflow support, which removes the centralized data repository and control engine from the system. Consequently, both data and control are distributed so that workflow functions are fulfilled through the direct communication and coordination among the relevant peers. With the support of this approach, performance bottlenecks are likely to be eliminated while increased resilience to failure, enhanced scalability, and better user support are likely to be achieved. Moreover, this approach also provides a more open framework for service-oriented workflow over the Internet. This paper presents the authors' innovative decentralized workflow system design. The paper also covers the corresponding mechanisms for system functions and the Swinburne Decentralized Workflow prototype, which implements and demonstrates this design and functions

Document-related Awareness Elements in Synchronous Collaborative Authoring

Simultaneous collaboration on documents by distributed authors has been supported by numerous synchronous collaborative authoring systems that are widely available. Originally, these tools were found to lack in providing rich enough interaction during authoring. As a result, group awareness in collaborative authoring arose as a very important issue in understanding how to provide comprehensive knowledge about other authors and activities they perform upon the document. To promote effectual authoring of documents simultaneously, group awareness is required to allow authors the best possible understanding of others' work on the document. This paper reports results about document-related awareness elements from an empirical and experimental study of group awareness. Awareness elements reflect fundamental awareness information in supporting group awareness. Such results teach us what sort of document-related awareness should be provided for collaborative authoring

Collaborative Web-based Development of an Electronic Meeting Agenda using Secretarius Moderation

Traditional, formal, face-to-face meetings are heavily reliant on documents for their conduct. One of the most prominent and important documents is the agenda. The agenda is vital for structuring and driving meeting discussion. The development of the agenda relies on contributions of items for discussion from meeting participants before the meeting. The secretary considers these items for their relevance and potential to achieve the meeting goal. A formal, electronic meeting, being a computer-supported equivalent of a traditional meeting, is also dependent on a useful and effective agenda for its success. This research article presents Logan, a Web Electronic Meeting Document Manager (WEMDM), that provides a novel, hypermedia-based technique for supporting the above agenda development process. Logan allows asynchronous, collaborative development of a meeting agenda. High participant involvement is supported through item contribution and secretarius moderation of contributions. Through a contribution rejection system, moderation supports selection of appropriate contributions for the agenda. Participants are helped in contributing relevant agenda items or prevented from contributing one similar to those in the current agenda via rejected contributions. The process allows flexibility in agenda development as the process may involve one or more iterations. The agenda development process is covered by displaying the interworking of participant agenda development pages. The many Web user interfaces used by the secretarius and other participants in agenda development are shown and described

Exploiting derivatives, meeting guides and summary points in developing electronic meeting minutes

A Web-based technique for development of minutes for electronic meetings is presented. The minutes are developed by the secretarius (a participant responsible for administrative meeting activities) using Logan, a Web Electronic Meeting Document Manager (WEMDM). A WEMDM is used to support a range of meeting document functionality, such as creation of agendas. Input into the post-meeting minutes creation process comes from both analysed meeting discussion and the re-use of summary points used during the review of the meeting. Analysis of discussion is provided by the verbatim minutes, one of a range of derivative documents generated by Logan to assist and enhance meeting discussion. The mechanism for minutes creation is covered, as well as explanation of derivatives, meeting guides and summary points created by using meeting guides

The F@ Framework of Designing Awareness Mechanisms in Instant Messaging

This paper presents our research on awareness support in Instant Messaging (IM). The paper starts with a brief overview of empirical study of IM, using an online survey and face-to-face interviews to identify user needs for awareness support. The study identified a need for supporting four aspects of awareness, awareness of multiple concurrent conversations, conversational awareness, presence awareness of a group conversation, and visibility of moment-to-moment listeners and viewers. Based on the empirical study and existing research on awareness, we have developed the F@ (read as fat) framework of awareness. F@ comprises of the abstract level and the concrete level. The former includes an in-depth description of various awareness aspects in IM, whilst the latter utilises temporal logic to formalise fundamental time-related awareness aspects. F@ helps developers gain a better understanding of awareness and thereby design usable mechanisms to support awareness. Applying F@, we have designed several mechanisms to support various aspect of awareness in IM