Usage of Blogging Software for Laboratory Management to Support Weekly Seminars Using Research Activity Reports

AbstractThis paper reports the design and use of blogging software in laboratory management to support weekly seminars, in which activity reports are an important resource for checking participants’ research activity. The software has three basic functions to support seminars: a report editing, comment, and chat. In order to support knowledge management, we added an evaluation function corresponding to each seminar report and a To-Do-List function to support driven objects as sub-goals. The blogging system was installed in a laboratory seminar, in which a teacher, a doctoral student, and seven students pursuing their master's degree participated over the course of five months. Results show that seminars conducted using the blogging software were evaluated more highly than paper-based seminars. However, only a few participants used the comment function, and the chat function was minimally used

Forbidden City Explorer: A Guide System that Gives Priority to Shared Images and Chats

Abstract. We have developed a prototype guide system, which was named The Forbidden City Explorer. This system has real-time information sharing functions including image data, chatting, and mutual location information. It gives priority to shared images and chats, supporting a friendly user interface and simple operation methods, especially creating shared images to be used by general people. We applied the system twice to the Forbidden City in Beijing. Users were Chinese. The results of the experiments are as follows

EVALUATION AND APPLICATION OF CREATIVITY COLLABORATION SUPPORT SYSTEM GUNGEN DX II FOR CONSENSUS-BUILDING AMONG USERS

We have developed a creativity collaboration support system, called GUNGEN, which supports the KJ method. The KJ method is one of the popular idea generation methods in Japan, like brainstorming. This method consists of four steps: entering ideas, grouping ideas, structuring groups, and writing composition. We have used about one hundred idea labels in the experiments. Several hundred labels are optimal to improve the results of the KJ method. However, long time is necessary to group more labels. Therefore, we have developed GUNGEN DX II for several hundred labels. GUNGEN DX II has a special function to group labels easily and efficiently. The feature for grouping labels is to restrict time and to operate easily. The function generates islands from the common parts of each user's groups automatically by majority decision. We have carried out the KJ method and compared it with the previous system. Even if the number of labels increased, the time required to group labels decreased by about 30%.Creativity collaboration groupware, KJ method, grouping method, consensus among users, automatic arrangement