Aware Community Portals: Shared Information Appliances for Transitional Spaces

People wish to maintain a level of awareness of timely information, including presence of others in the workplace and other social settings. We believe this provides better exchange, coordination and contact within a community, especially as people work in asynchronous times and distributed locations. The challenge is to develop lightweight techniques for awareness, interaction and communication using shared information appliances. In this paper, we describe the design of an exploratory responsive display projected within a shared workspace at the MIT Media Lab. The system uses visual sensing to provide relevant information and constructs traces of people’s activity over time. Such aware portals may be deployed in casual workplace domains, distributed workgroups, and everyday public spaces.     

基于Web方式的协同远程教学模型的研究

介绍了计算机支持的协同工作(CSCW)的技术，并将CSCW应用于远程教学方案之中，提出了一个基于Web方式的协同工作的远程教学模型及其技术实现。     

Influence of group member familiarity on online collaborative learning

This study investigated the effects of group member familiarity during computer-supported collaborative learning. Familiarity may have an impact on online collaboration, because it may help group members to progress more quickly through the stages of group development, and may lead to higher group cohesion. It was therefore hypothesized that increased familiarity would lead to (a) more critical and exploratory group norms, (b) more positive perceptions of online communication and collaboration, (c) more efficient and positive collaboration, and (d) better group performance. To investigate these hypotheses, 105 secondary education students collaborated in groups of three. The results of this study indicate that higher familiarity led to more critical and exploratory group norm perceptions, and more positive perceptions of online communication and collaboration. Furthermore, in familiar groups students needed to devote less time to regulating their task-related activities. The expectation that familiarity would lead to better group performance was not confirmed. These findings imply that online educators pay attention to the effects group member familiarity has on online collaborative learning.     

Construction of interaction observation systems for collaboration analysis in groupware applications

Interaction observation systems for groupware applications capture and process all the actions performed by users engaged in workgroups. These actions are then stored in log documents that enable the work process carried out by the users to be analyzed and the interaction between users to be studied. This article proposes an approach, based on ontological models, which is devised to help the developer of an observation system for a groupware application to structure and record user actions. In order to achieve this aim, we present a specific ontology that shapes the collaborative work process of the users so as to obtain an XML-based log document that stores all the actions carried out by the users and facilitates the subsequent analysis of the system usage and users’ behavior. This approach has been used to improve communication and collaboration capabilities in the COLLECE groupware application.     

Getting used with groupware: a first class experience

This article reports on an empirical investigation of long-term use of a groupware system in a spatially and massively distributed network of educators. It is a case study based investigation aimed at understanding the impacts of collaboration technology in supporting social interaction. The paradigm of social constructivism and the perspective of structuration are proposed as frameworks for understanding the impacts of technology on mediating social interaction. Utilizing these perspectives in an empirical investigation, the case study findings demonstrate how collaboration technology can serve as a change agent in transforming the culture and structure of social interaction. This is enacted in two ways: through the various meanings which people construct when interacting with technology and in benefiting from the structural properties of a system through its technical affordances.     

Serviceflow Management

Der Artikel stellt den Begriff Serviceflow-Management zur Diskussion und analysiert die über Workflow-Management hinausgehenden neuen Herausforderungen an eine angemessene IT-Unterstützung.     

群件对群决策支持系统性能影响的研究

群件是以交流、协调、合作和信息共享为目标，面向群体工作需要的应用软件，在分析影响群决策支持系统的最终决策结果的系统处理任务、系统可用资源，群成员间交互方式等因素的基础上，研究了群件系统的实现方式、结构形式及通讯模式，群件系统在同时同地，同时异地，异时同地和异时异地情况下提供了4种实现方式：会议、Project Room、远程会议、电子和声音邮件系统。并分析了群件系统的实现模式对GDSS效率的影响，群件通信模式对GDSS最终结果的影响，最后给出了构建基于群件系统的群决策支持系统时选取合适的工作方式要充分考虑系统的功能需求，宜采用用户驱动模式或控制员驱动模式，应选择合理的标准将信息类化等准则。