Tutorials
Tutorials |
Monday 8 September 1997 | |
The following tutorials took place at ECSCW '97offering participants
the opportunity to learn about specific CSCW concepts, methods and techniques
from recognised experts.
Tutorial 1: CSCW, Groupware and Workflow: Experiences, State of Art, and Future Trends
Steven Poltrock, Boeing Information and Support Services;
Jonathan Grudin, Information and Computer Science
Objective: Participants in this overview tutorial learn about the history and composition of CSCW, what groupware technologies are being used, what problems people have encountered, and how successes were attained. They have opportunities to connect their individual experiences to those of other participants and the organizers. They receive an update on the state of the art in a range of research and technology areas. We outline specific and general groupware technology trends. Participants are reminded of the many disciplines that potentially contribute to use and design. We discuss global issues that are emerging as these technologies come into use: Issues that affect individuals, organizations and society.
Contents: This full-day tutorial draws on the experiences of the participants and instructors with groupware and workflow technologies, and CSCW issues and methods, to construct an informed picture of what is happening and possible. It emphasizes structured subgroup activity by participants. Interspersed lecture materials provide state of the art summaries of research and technology areas, and frame or expand upon subgroup activities. We cover (1) the multi-disciplinary nature of CSCW and the opportunities this provides, (2) state of the art technologies that support communication, collaboration, and/or coordination, and experiences with each, (3) behavioral, social, and organizational challenges to developing, acquiring, or using these technologies, and approaches that lead to success, (4) future trends in groupware and global social impacts that are becoming evident.
Who should attend: This introductory tutorial is intended for people interested in collaborative work and technologies that support it. Minimal requirements are a general background in HCI or CSCW and experience working collaboratively. Knowledge or experience with collaborative technologies is not necessary. Intended participants include users, developers, researchers, marketers, or managers of some aspect of CSCW, groupware, or workflow systems.
About the Instructors: Jonathan Grudin and Steven Poltrock began collaborating in 1986, studying group work in human-computer interface design and development. Jonathan Grudin has worked as developer, researcher and consultant, and has written technical and popular articles on groupware, including survey articles published in IEEE Computer and Communications of the ACM. Steven Poltrock introduces, evaluates, and deploys groupware systems that support information sharing, organizational memory, concurrent engineering, collaborative authoring, and workflow management.
Dave Randall, Manchester Metropolitan University
Mark Rouncefield, Lancaster University
In recent years, ethnographic methods of work analysis have risen to a position of prominence within the CSCW community. The reasons for this popularity are not difficult to trace, owing much to the origins of CSCW and its emphasis on designing group-support systems that are sensitive to the work context in which they are deployed. The methodological foundations of ethnography, with an emphasis on analysing work `as is', `in situ', and from a completely neutral stance, sit well in a community whose founding principle is the `situatedness' of group activities. However, despite this resonance at the methodological level, it is becoming clear as more and more ethnographic workplace studies are performed, that the mapping from an ethnographic approach to improvements in the design of CSCW systems is by no means straightforward.
This tutorial aims to explore this relationship between ethnography and systems development from an objective, practical standpoint. Far from hyping ethnographic methods, the intention is to specify and elaborate the problems inherent in integrating such methods as part of an ongoing systems development process. These problems will be highlighted by way of case studies taken from the tutors' own research, in fields as varied as Air Traffic Control, Financial Retail Services and Software Project Management. Participants will learn the practical problems in `doing ethnography', in academic, inter-disciplinary and commercial contexts, and will develop an appreciation for the ways in which a carefully-managed study can contribute to the needs analysis, requirements elicitation, prototyping, evaluation and training needs of new computer systems.
The morning section of the tutorial introduces ethnography and discusses its role as a means to inform the capture of system requirements. Its relationship to other methods of analysis, such as Participatory Design, are quantified, and the problems with performing ethnography as part of a requirements capture process are presented
The afternoon portion of the tutorial broadens the discussion to show how ethnographic methods have a role to play in the wider context of system design activity. In addition, the practical issues of performing ethnography in a more commercial context will be covered, as well as conflicts between ethnographic methods and currently-popular change methodologies such as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and Total Quality Management (TQM).
It is intended that this tutorial will be of use to those intending to embark on studies themselves, in an academic or commercial context, as well as system developers who wish to familiarise themselves with issues arising from the adoption of ethnographic methods as an adjunct to process modelling activities.
The instructors are active researchers in the field of CSCW. They have worked and continue to work on projects involving the use of ethnographic techniques for the development of collaborative systems.
Prasun Dewan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
In the past decade, a variety of applications and infrastructures have been developed to support collaboration. These systems have been developed in diverse fields including user-interfaces, multimedia, operating systems, database systems, programming languages, networking, computer hardware, distributed systems, and hypermedia. This tutorial will take the audience on a tour of these systems.
The target audience is practitioners interested in state-of-the-art collaborative applications and infrastructures, and researchers interested in understanding the issues raised by the design of these systems. The tutorial will assume that the audience are software developers but will make no assumptions about their familiarity with the field of CSCW. Thus it will be accessible to "beginners" in this field. At the end of the tutorial, the audience will understand the relationship among the surveyed systems and their contributions to CSCW.
The tutorial will first address collaborative applications. It will first consider three traditional tools for collaboration, mail, chat, and databases, and show that the more recent collaborative applications, essentially, mix and extend features of these systems. It will consider most of the influential collaborative applications including MUDs, Hydra, DIVE, MASSIVE, Information Lens, Coordinator, Computational Mail, GroupLens, PREP, IBIS, RTCAL, Cognoter, GROVE, CES, GroupDraw, ClearBoard, and TeamWorkstation. It will also present several taxonomies for classifying these applications.
The second part of the tutorial will address collaborative infrastructures. In particular, it will look at shared distributed repositories, mechanisms for supporting distributed communication, shared objects, and shared user-interfaces. Some of the infrastructures we will consider are: Lotus Notes, Coda, ISIS, MBone, Web, Java, Obliq, Rover, Rendezvous, Clock, XTV, DistView, GroupKit, and Suite. While not all of them have made an impact in the CSCW community, each of the them has been influential in the field in which it was developed and offers useful abstractions for collaboration. To compare these systems and understand how they work, we will outline how a simple, group "hello world," program can be implemented using these systems. We will also evaluate their contribution to CSCW by discussing the kind of collaborative applications they support.
I am Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina. My interests are in infrastructure for implementing groupware, collaborative software engineering, object-oriented database systems, and distributed operating systems. I am also Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Information Systems and a member of the IFIP WG2.7 group on Engineering for Human Computer Interaction.
John L. Bennett, Consultant; John Karat, IBM
Objectives: As we design computing technologies to support collaboration face to face and at a distance, it is important for us to have a basic understanding of collaboration. What is required to make collaboration work? We will consider the effect of different backgrounds and "cultures" (e.g., organizational, professional, national) on the quality of collaboration.
As a result of the tutorial, the participants will be able to:
Who should attend: This intermediate level tutorial is intended for anyone interested in gaining new insights on the dynamics of collaboration and considering the influence of emerging technologies on the quality of collaborations. We welcome a wide variety of perspectives and experience.
About the instructors: Bennett and Karat have worked together on numerous design projects for a decade and have consulted on, and published in, topics related to collaboration. They successfully presented different tutorials at CSCW'94 and CSCW'96.
John Mariani, Lancaster University
This tutorial covers the issues surrounding the design and construction of shared information systems. The tutorial will cover both the lessons learned from empirical studies and the limits and possibilities of different techniques. At the end of the tutorial attendees will understand the principles surrounding shared information spaces and the techniques used to realise them.
The concept of shared information around which group working is focused is well established within CSCW. In order for this concept to be successfully translated to computer-based systems, we must understand and appreciate how real-world artefacts are actually used to support cooperation and how to translate this understanding into electronic techniques.
Computer Science has long provided database management systems to support multi-user access to shared information. However, the great dichotomy facing CSCW is that this sharing is accomplished at the expense of user isolation. Each user is made to feel as if they are the only person accessing the data. A central part of this tutorial is the development of techniques to make users more aware of the activities of others and the context within which this activity takes place.
Awareness techniques and systems to promote awareness are well-established within CSCW. This awareness makes available to others in the communal system both the presence and activities of users. Rather than working in isolation users are presented with various cues concerning the use of information. As part of this tutorial, we will examine the different techniques for the presentation of this information in both 2-D and 3-D environments.
Questions addressed at the tutorial will include : How well do DBMS support group work? How have existing groupware systems overcome the problems posed by traditional DBMS technology? How have groupware systems chosen to organise their data and the access to that data? How is access and use of information made available to others? How are notions of awareness supported? What cues can be made available and how are they presented?
As a case study, the design of the COMIC Shared Object Service (SOS) will be presented and discussed.
Qualifications and expertise of instructor: Dr. John Mariani of the Computing Department at Lancaster University has been part of national and international research teams working on the central issues of the tutorial, including the design of the COMIC S.O.S and a number of data visualisation systems intended to support group activities (Populated Information Terrains or PITs).
Intended audience: people who are involved in, or expect to become involved in, the provision of a shared information system. This could cover the design, implementation or use of such systems. While the tutorial has a technical bent, it is hoped that the material will be accessible to end-users as well as implementers.
Steve Benford & Chris Greenhalgh, University of Nottingham
This tutorial is aimed at CSCW researchers who wish to acquire an understanding of the emerging technology of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs). Its contents will include: a definition and history of CVEs; social and technical motivations behind their development; the spatial model of interaction; design issues for user embodiment; network architectures for CVEs; populated information terrains; mixed realities; and future developments. The tutorial will draw on the recent work of the presenters which has appeared at ECSCW, CSCW and CHI conferences, as well as on the work of others in the field. Extensive use will be made of video material.
Erik Andriessen and Albert Arnold, Technical University
of Delft;
Anne Anderson and Anne Marie Fleming, University of
Glasgow
Goals and Objectives
Our participants will appreciate:
Those researchers and practitioners in CSCW who are interested in evaluating the impact of CSCW systems: developers of CSCW systems: no previous the tutorial will assume no prior evaluation knowledge or expertise.
Max number of Participants: 25
The tutorial will give an overview of the benefits of planning and conducting an effective evaluation cycle. The different purposes for CSCW evaluations will be described. These purposes can range from the scientific (e.g., an interest in the understanding of human behaviour when interacting with IT), to the commercial (e.g., a tightly constrained stage in the design cycle of new product development).
As CSCW systems can be extremely complex, both socially and technically, there is a requirement that evaluation should be grounded in an appropriate analytical framework. One such framework will be described. This framework consists of a model, a checklist and an inventory.
The model describes the range of potentially relevant factors which should be considered in planning an evaluation strategy for any given CSCW application. These factors include potential psychological, social and organisational impacts of the co-operative system. Examples of these are: aspects of the usability of systems and their impact on the performance of work; the facilities offered by the CSCW application and their impact on human interaction and communication; and the outcome of the adoption of the system upon the organisational environment.
The tutorial will describe a technique for identifying the relevant aspects of the model with respect to any given CSCW application. This technique is a systematic checklist which produces, as an outcome, a set of evaluation criteria for use in devising an evaluation plan. Participants in the tutorial will have the chance to gain hands-on experience in applying this technique to a range of CSCW scenarios.
The tutorial will outline an extensive inventory of existing evaluation tools and techniques, the pre-requisites for their effective application, and their likely costs in time and effort for a range of potential CSCW applications. Information will be provided about the availability of the various assessment instruments and the associated support available to help in their use and interpretation.
The tutorial notes will contain full details of the evaluation framework including the model, the checklist and the inventory of evaluation tools.
Tutorial Instructors
Professor Erik Andriessen and Dr Albert Arnold of Technical University
of Delft, Netherlands,
http://www.wtm.tudelft.nl/secties/AOP/homeng.html
Dr Anne Anderson and Ms Anne Marie Fleming, University of Glasgow,
http://www.mcg.gla.ac.uk/
The instructors are international experts in evaluating the impact of CSCW systems, multimedia applications, work and organisational psychology. They also have extensive experience in providing evaluation support for academic and commercial developers of CSCW systems. The instructors collaborate on the EC funded Telematics Applications Project, MEGATAQ, which provides advice and consultancy on evaluation of CSCW applications, http://www.megataq.mcg.gla.ac.uk/.
| Back to ECSCW'97 Home Page |