Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The incorporation of computer resources into the classroom has given rise to the need for understanding how such technology can be used to achieve effective teaching practices. Collaborative learning aided by wirelessly connected mobile computers is a work mode that has generated benefits for student learning in small-group activities. It is therefore of interest to investigate whether these benefits are also present when working in large groups such as an entire class. This paper proposes a Mediation Model for Large Group Collaborative Teaching based on the interactions that occur between the components of a classroom technologically mediated using wirelessly connected mobile devices. A particular case of the model is presented, followed by an example of it in the form of a collaborative activity.

In this paper we describe how a statistical test on a hypothesis regarding collaborative math problem solving using online chats showed an unexpected result, whose understanding required the use of qualitative methods. The phenomenon behind the result is identified using Conversation Analysis. This paper demonstrates the importance of using qualitative methods to describe the perspective of participants as a way of interpreting statistical results, revising hypotheses and developing alternative coding schemes and procedures. The combined approach of quantitative and qualitative methods is applied on real data coming from Virtual Math Teams research project (Drexel University) and is identifying issues not addressed so far in the analysis of online collaborative group activity.

A Collaborative activity is designed and a software tool is developed to support teaching grammar to primary education students. The activity is intended to create interdependencies among students. The software tool helps to implement the activity. Activity and tool were designed for teaching Spanish grammar, but they can be adapted for teaching other languages.

The paper presents an analysis of a collaborative decision-making process related to the selection and implementation of a new corporate solution for collaboration and information management in a Norwegian oil company. Several challenges were identified in the decision-making process, related to ensuring continuity between different phases, enabling efficient communication among the different stakeholder groups, and gaining involvement and commitment from the business areas. The analysis also focuses on the utilization of various collaboration technologies in the different phases of the decision-making process. The study contributes to increase our understanding of collaborative IS decision-making processes, and the role of collaboration technologies for supporting these.

We propose a groupware tool supporting the Software Quality Function Deployment approach to software requirements validation. The design challenge is to involve several stakeholders, having conflicting views and attitudes which may be difficult to reconcile, in the requirements validation. The adopted approach integrates collaboration and negotiation support. Negotiation models inspired the development of a set of mechanisms promoting integrative attitudes and avoiding distributive ones. Experiments with the tool revealed some usability problems, but also showed that it is convenient to use and beneficial promoting consensus.

The use of software products in today’s world has increased dramatically making quality an important aspect of software development. There is a continuous need to develop processes to control and increase software quality. Software code inspection is one way to pursue this goal. This paper presents a collaborative code inspection process that was designed during an action research study using Collaboration Engineering principles and techniques. Our inspection process was implemented as a sequence of thinkLets, chunks of facilitation skill, that were subsequently field tested in a traditional paper-based and Group Support System (GSS)-based environment. It was found to be successful in uncovering many major, minor as well as false-positive defects in inspected pieces of code. Results illustrate the process’ efficiency in identifying duplicate defects thereby reducing follow-up time to correct each defect. The inspection process’ flexibility was observed as it was successfully applied to inspect both pieces of code or an entire module. Overall the collaborative inspection process was considered to be productive for code inspection and was satisfactory for the inspectors involved.

Many studies have reported on the problems that arise when trying to carry out successful meetings. Various authors have developed computerized tools for supporting the different stages of a meeting, but most of these have been conceived for large PCs or Notebooks, which tend to distract the participants from face-to-face interaction. Also, many meetings are organized in a spontaneous manner, sometimes with no access to PCs. In this paper, we propose a meeting support tool for handhelds that overcomes many of the problems inherent in the use of devices with large screens. However, the small size of handheld displays leads to other problems, especially in human-handheld and human-human interactions. The system proposed here is designed using gesture and concept-map principles that enable these problems to be resolved.

Many people are sharing digital resources through networks in order to facilitate, enhance or improve collaborative work. Information sharing is not only important to support collaborative work but it also represents the basis for design and implementation of solutions for typical design aspects of groupware applications, such as: floor control, group memory, shared objects replication and sessions and users management. Advances in mobile technology have extended the sharing information scenarios to Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs), which has brought new challenges. This paper presents a simple service platform to share information resources among members of a MANET-supported groupware session. People interact using notebooks and PDAs. In addition, a shared presentation tool which has been developed using the services of the platform is described. This presentation tool can be used to assist other collaborative activities, such as: technical presentations, casual interactions, meetings for decision making and software technical reviews.

Researchers from several different domains have conducted studies about cooperation, and a wealth of different models and theories have been generated as a result. In this paper we describe an initial version of an integrative model for the initiation of cooperation, with the theoretical background from which it was created. Our main goals were to gain a better understanding, organize and structure the most important aspects and recurrent themes that show up in cooperative behavior research, adapting them when necessary. We are especially interested in the initiation of cooperation, and in the determination of factors that lead to the establishment of cooperative endeavors with the final goal of understanding what affects and how to encourage cooperation. A model such as this could be applied to groupware tools to increase the levels of cooperation between users.

An important issue in groupware is how to improve interaction and collaboration among participants. Through the analysis of the context a user is in or the context that surrounds an interaction, groupware systems can provide users with useful information in that situation. A relevant issue when using context is how to represent context information. Ontologies constitute an interesting method for representing context, since they enable information sharing and reuse. They can also be used by existing inference machines to reason about various contexts. In this paper we propose an ontology to formally represent context in groupware systems. We also present an example where this ontology is used by a logic-based reasoning mechanism for tool recommendation based on the current context of group members. We believe that this ontology could help to understand the role of context in collaboration and thus make the development of context-aware groupware systems easier.