Views of work and the design and use of group support systems

The view of work embodied in a group support system constitutes a designer's understanding of how work gets done in collaborative settings. This paper argues that a designer's view of collaborative work shapes the design space of a group support system. This in turn affects the system's functionality, as well as the manner in which it is used. An analysis of the views of work underlying four group support systems used in research and commercial domains, reveals sharp differences in their perspectives on collaborative work. Our approach suggests three implications. First the design process should be driven by an explicit articulation of the view of work. Second, examining convergence between a system's view of work and the work practices of a setting, can usefully indicate whether the system is appropriate for the setting. Finally, research on the mediating role of the view of work in the effectiveness of group support systems, can lead to a richer understanding of the impact of such systems.     

Articulation of work process models for organizational alignment and informed information system design

Articulating and representing procedural aspects of work in conceptual models is a prerequisite for informed information system (IS) design. Instruments supporting articulation need to establish common ground about the interaction of the collaborating actors. This article proposes a methodology for the articulation of work processes by inexperienced modelers. It consists of phases of articulation and consolidation of case-based models and interactive elaboration toward comprehensive representation of the process via virtual enactment. The resulting models can be directly interpreted by IS. A case study confirms that the methodology meets the identified requirements and identifies areas of improvement.     

Computer-based systems that support the structural, social, political and symbolic dimensions of work

The requirements definition needs attention to a number of issues related to the way people understand organisations, do their work and use the tools available to support that work. Most well-known requirements engineering methods focus on technical aspects of work. This paper proposes a way of looking at work situations in order to gain a deep understanding of their inherent complexity. The knowledge obtained will help to define requirements for a computer-based system that supports both explicit and tacit aspects of the organisational work.     

Articulating collaboration in a learning community

A common computer-based collaborative learning approach is to simply introduce contemporary computermediated communication technology into the classroom to support prescribed learning activities. This approach assumes that all students collaborate in similar ways and that presentday technology is sufficient to accommodate all collaboration forms. This view is superficial and limiting. Students collaborate in different ways at different levels on different learning activities. A more detailed articulation of collaboration in learning is crucial to understanding and extending the pedagogical capabilities and usefulness of collaborative technologies. A model is presented for a more finely articulated form of analysis that enumerates types of collaborative learning activities and evaluates how these activities may be supported through different design options. The analysis is based on actual classroom scenarios and the collaboration requirements that emerge from them. The authors have successfully applied this analysis model in the design of a computer-based collaborative learning environment for science education.     

Making drilling operations visible: the role of articulation work for organisational safety

In the petroleum industry, new technologies and work processes are currently being developed as an innovation strategy for better, faster and safer drilling. In this article, some features of today’s work processes that contribute to successful operations are presented and discussed. The articulation work involved in handling the transient complexity of operations involves making black-boxed and invisible work processes visible and transparent. It is argued that this articulation work contributes to the organisation’s understanding and knowledge of the drilling processes and the dependencies that exist between different actors. In addition to contributing to ongoing problem solving, the articulation work also contributes to the awareness of possible future events. Following this insight, it is argued that efforts to improve operational efficiency and safety by introducing new tools and work processes should focus not only on the capability of new tools to support decisions and actions by instrumentation and automation, but attention should also be paid to the existing articulation work and its role in the accomplishment of work. In that way, the contributions of today’s articulation work can be strengthened instead of lost, and the outcome of the change processes can be even better than anticipated.     

Mobility Work: The Spatial Dimension of Collaboration at a Hospital

We posit the concept of Mobility Work to describe efforts of moving about people and things as part of accomplishing tasks. Mobility work can be seen as a spatial parallel to the concept of articulation work proposed by the sociologist Anselm Strauss. Articulation work describes efforts of coordination necessary in cooperative work, but focuses, we argue, mainly on the temporal aspects of cooperative work. As a supplement, the concept of mobility work focuses on the spatial aspects of cooperative work. Whereas actors seek to diminish the amount of articulation work needed in collaboration by constructing Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs), actors minimise mobility work by constructing Standard Operation Configurations (SOCs). We apply the concept of mobility work to the ethnography of hospital work, and argue that mobility arises because of the need to get access to people, places, knowledge and/or resources. To accomplish their work, actors have to make the right configuration of these four aspects emerge.     

Articulating collaboration in a learning community

A common computer-based collaborative learning approach is to simply introduce contemporary computermediated communication technology into the classroom to support prescribed learning activities. This approach assumes that all students collaborate in similar ways and that presentday technology is sufficient to accommodate all collaboration forms. This view is superficial and limiting. Students collaborate in different ways at different levels on different learning activities. A more detailed articulation of collaboration in learning is crucial to understanding and extending the pedagogical capabilities and usefulness of collaborative technologies. A model is presented for a more finely articulated form of analysis that enumerates types of collaborative learning activities and evaluates how these activities may be supported through different design options. The analysis is based on actual classroom scenarios and the collaboration requirements that emerge from them. The authors have successfully applied this analysis model in the design of a computer-based collaborative learning environment for science education.     

Designing context-sensitive systems: An integrated approach

Context-sensitive systems (CSS) are computer systems that use context to provide more relevant services or information to support users performing their tasks, where context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation in which something exists or occurs. CSS demand that designers consider new aspects and challenges in comparison to traditional applications. In a preliminary experiment, we observed that developers find it difficult to include the concept of context in their applications. However, only few approaches offer integrated domain-independent support on developing CSS. This paper presents an integrated approach to assist the design of CSS. The originality of this work lies on the proposed way of thinking about context, on the proposed context metamodel and on the specification of a process for designing CSS. The metamodel supports building context models by making explicit the concepts related to context manipulation and by separating the context structure model from the CSS behavior model. The design process details the main activities related to context specification and the design of CSS, providing a systematic way to execute these tasks. This work also advances the state of the art related to the understanding of the concept of context (and its associated concepts). Three experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the proposal: its instantiation in the design of a context-sensitive Expert Recommender System, its usage by distinct designers on their CSS projects, and a qualitative evaluation of the overall proposal by experienced CSS developers. These studies showed a good acceptance of our approach and indicated the feasibility of using it on real projects.     

DCLM framework: understanding collaboration in open-ended tabletop learning environments

There is a growing understanding of the unique ways that tabletops support effective collaboration; however, this research mostly focuses on environments in which learners work towards a single shared goal. Underpinning this perspective, either implicitly or explicitly, is the theory that collaborative learning is a process of attaining convergent conceptual change. However, this model of collaboration may not apply to all scenarios where learners are working together. In particular, informal, open-ended exploratory environments support (and often promote) shared activities where the goal may not be for all participants to emerge with a single, shared understanding. There is increased interest in understanding the efficacy of designs that support (and encourage) learners to collaborate while seeking divergent goals, ideas, and conceptions. This paper advances a framework (Divergent Collaboration Learning Mechanisms - DCLM) for recognizing and coding collaboration and divergent learning in such environments. We apply the DCLM framework to an informal tabletop environment (Oztoc) as a means of highlighting how DCLM may reveal new productive interactions environments that support divergent forms of collaboration, mentorship, and learning. Analysis of participants’ interactions within Oztoc revealed that participants who have non-aligned goals can still productively collaborate, and in many cases can provide insight and feedback that would not be possible in shared-goal activities. We conclude with an examination of how open-ended exploratory environments can support communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation, and the importance of divergent inquiry and divergent conceptual change across a range of learning environments.     

Collaboration and coordination in process-centered software development environments: a review of the literature

Process-centered software development environments are systems that provide automated support for software development activities.Such environments mediate the efforts of potentially large groups of developers working on a common project. This mediation is based on runtime support for actual work performance based on formal representations of work.In the present work, we survey and assess the contributions of the software process literature under the perspective of support for collaboration and coordination. A broad range of alternative approaches to various aspects of representation and runtime support are identified, based on the analysis of an expressive number of systems. The identified functionality can serve both as a guide for the evaluation and selection of systems of this kind as well as a roadmap for the development of new, improved systems.     

Comprehensibility of UML-based software product line specifications

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) deals with developing artifacts that capture the common and variable aspects of software product families. Domain models are one kind of such artifacts. Being developed in early stages, domain models need to specify commonality and variability and guide the reuse of the artifacts in particular software products. Although different modeling methods have been proposed to manage and support these activities, the assessment of these methods is still in an inceptive stage. In this work, we examined the comprehensibility of domain models specified in ADOM, a UML-based SPLE method. In particular, we conducted a controlled experiment in which 116 undergraduate students were required to answer comprehension questions regarding a domain model that was equipped with explicit reuse guidance and/or variability specification. We found that explicit specification of reuse guidance within the domain model helped understand the model, whereas explicit specification of variability increased comprehensibility only to a limited extent. Explicit specification of both reuse guidance and variability often provided intermediate results, namely, results that were better than specification of variability without reuse guidance, but worse than specification of reuse guidance without variability. All these results were perceived in different UML diagram types, namely, use case, class, and sequence diagrams and for different commonality-, variability-, and reuse-related aspects.     

Software process representation and analysis for framework instantiation

Object-oriented frameworks are currently regarded as a promising technology for reusing designs and implementations. However, developers find there is still a steep learning curve when extracting the design rationale and understanding the framework documentation during framework instantiation. Thus, instantiation is a costly process in terms of time, people, and other resources. These problems raise a number of questions including: "How can we raise the level of abstraction in which the framework instantiation is expressed, reasoned about and implemented?" "How can the same high-level design abstractions that were used to develop the framework be used during framework instantiation instead of using source code as is done currently?" "How can we define extended design abstractions that can allow framework instantiation to be explicitly represented and validated?" We present an approach to framework instantiation based on software processes that addresses these issues. Our main goal is to represent the framework design models in an explicit and declarative way, and support changes to this design based on explicit instantiation tasks based on software processes while maintaining system integrity, invariants, and general constraints. In this way, the framework instantiation can be performed in a valid and controlled way.     

Creating knowledge maps by exploiting dependent relationships

Knowledge is an interesting concept that has attracted the attention of philosophers for thousands of years. In more recent times, researchers have investigated knowledge in a more applied way with the chief aim of bringing knowledge to life in machines. Artificial Intelligence has provided some degree of rigour to the study of knowledge and Expert Systems are able to use knowledge to solve problems and answer questions.Current business, social, political and technological pressures have forced organisations to take greater control of the knowledge asset. Software suppliers and others offering valuable solutions in this area have unfortunately clouded the issue of knowledge. Information and data control are seen as implicit knowledge management tools and many have abandoned the search for explicit knowledge management methods.Knowledge representation schemes help to identify knowledge. They allow for human understanding and machine application and they can support the automated use of knowledge in problem solving. Some of these representation methods also employ spatial techniques that add an extra dimension to human understanding.Knowledge mapping defined in this work uses learning dependency to organise the map and draws on the ideas of what knowledge is and on spatial representation structures. Knowledge maps can support metrics that provide information about the knowledge asset. Knowledge maps create a visible knowledge framework that supports the explicit management of knowledge by organisation managers and directors. Knowledge maps also offer other advantages to the organisation, the individual and to educational institutions.     

Principles and Tools for Collaborative Entity-Based Intelligence Analysis

Software tools that make it easier for analysts to collaborate as a natural part of their work will lead to better analysis that is informed by more perspectives. We are interested to know if software tools can be designed that support collaboration even as they allow analysts to find documents and organize information (including evidence, schemas, and hypotheses). We have modified the Entity Workspace system, described previously, to test such designs. We have evaluated the resulting design in both a laboratory study and a study where it is situated with an analysis team. In both cases, effects on collaboration appear to be positive. Key aspects of the design include an evidence notebook optimized for organizing entities (rather than text characters), information structures that can be collapsed and expanded, visualization of evidence that emphasizes events and documents (rather than emphasizing the entity graph), and a notification system that finds entities of mutual interest to multiple analysts. Long-term tests suggest that this approach can support both top-down and bottom-up styles of analysis.     

Supporting participation in planning new roads by using virtual reality systems

A road planning process runs through several phases, takes several years, incorporates many decision-making procedures and includes numerous experts and interest groups from different areas. Today, Virtual Reality (VR) systems can benefit this process. By simulating different future alternatives, together with their possible environmental impact, a common understanding of the consequences of the respective alternatives can be obtained. Furthermore, since many of the models are obtainable from the Internet, a wider public can be reached already in the early phases of the planning process. The goal of the paper is to provide a better understanding of the use of VR models for supporting involvement and collaboration in the road planning process. The background data are from two large road planning projects through cultural heritage areas in Sweden. Observations on using VR models to support public participation, and facilitate communication between different interested parties, are presented. The results argue for the benefits of using VR models during the whole road planning process and shed further light on a range of social issues associated with using this technology.     

Towards an Integrated Graph Based Semantics for UML

Recently, we proposed an integrated formal semantics based on graph transformation for central aspects of UML class, object and state diagrams. In this paper, we explain the basic ideas of that approach and show how two more UML diagram types, sequence and collaboration diagrams, can be captured. For UML models consisting of a class diagram and particular state diagrams, a graph transformation system can be defined. Its graphs are associated with system states and its rules with operations in the class diagram and transitions in the state diagrams. Sequence and collaboration diagrams then characterize sequences of operation applications and therefore sequences of transformation rule applications. Thus valid sequence and collaboration diagrams correspond to derivations induced by the graph transformation system. Proceeding this way, it can be checked for example whether such an operation application sequence may be applied in a specific system state.     

A review and framework of laser-based collaboration support

New technologies are emerging to enable and support physical, implicit and explicit collaborations. They are essential for dealing with increasingly complex systems in unstructured, dynamic environments. The purpose of this article is to review the role of laser technology in enabling better, more precise interactions and their control, and to identify opportunities and challenges in this area. While the most common applications of laser technology are found in medical and health care, manufacturing, and communication, other domains such as safety, quality assurance, agriculture, construction, entertainment, defense, transportation, and law enforcement also benefit from it. In spite of the rapid dissemination of this technology, its role in support of collaboration and discovery is still in its infancy. Research activities concerning new ways of using lasers as a collaboration supporting technology that may strengthen new areas have been relatively limited. Nevertheless, the translation to this domain of collaboration support has been recognized as vital for activities that demand increasingly more coordinated effort among interacting agents (e.g., humans, machines, particles) and digital, possibly also photonic agents. Recent advances in laser technology in a number of application domains are reviewed in this article, focusing primarily on lasers’ role for supporting different forms of precision interactions and collaboration. In addition, a framework with five collaboration support functions and five collaboration dimensions is defined for this review. The taxonomy framework is useful for enabling better understanding of the existing and emerging opportunities that laser-based technology offers for collaboration support, its advantages and several research gaps.     

Modeling with the semantic Web in the geosciences

Earth system science deals with complex systems that pose many significant representation challenges. Ontologies as knowledge repositories have been developed to support the primary goal of sharing knowledge in a manner that aids understanding. DARPA is currently developing an extension to OWL called SWRL (semantic Web rule language), which lets to express some aspects of rules and process behaviors. The semantic Web facilitates researchers' collaboration and model components automated discovery and use. Spatial data plays a key role in modeling the earth system as the input to models and as a measure against which results are validated.