Collaborative Web-based Applications Research Articles

Implementation of Coach McLungsSM into primary care using a cluster randomized stepped wedge trial design

BackgroundAsthma is a prevalent chronic disease that is difficult to manage and associated with marked disparities in outcomes. One promising approach to addressing disparities is shared decision making (SDM), a method by which the patient and provider cooperatively make a decision about asthma care. SDM is associated with improved outcomes for patients; however, time constraints and staff availability are noted implementation barriers. Use of health information technology (IT) solutions may facilitate the utilization of SDM. Coach McLungsSM is a collaborative web-based application that involves pediatric patients, their caregivers, and providers in a personalized experience while gathering patient-reported data. Background logic provides decision support so both audiences can develop a well-informed treatment plan together. The goal of this study is to evaluate the implementation of the Coach McLungsSM intervention into primary care.MethodsImplementation will be evaluated using a stepped wedge randomized control study design at 21 pediatric and family medicine practices within a large, integrated, nonprofit healthcare system. We will measure changes in emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and oral steroid use, which serve as surrogate measures for patient-centered asthma outcomes. We will use a generalized linear mixed models with logit link to test the hypothesis for the reduction in exacerbation rates specifying the fixed effects of intervention and time and random effects for practice and practice*time. This design achieves 84% power to detect the hypothesized effect size difference of 10% in overall exacerbation between control (40%) and intervention (30%) periods (two-sided, p = 0.05). Implementation will be guided using the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC), a compilation of implementation strategies, and evaluated using the CFIR (Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research) and RE-AIM (Reach Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance).DiscussionWe anticipate that a tailored implementation of Coach McLungsSM across diverse primary care practices will lead to a decrease in emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and oral steroid use for patients in the intervention group as compared to the control condition.Trial Registration: Clincaltrials.gov, NCT05059210. Registered 28 September 2021, https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05059210

SPLASSH: A Collaborative Web-Based Application That Crowdsources Environmental Data in Real Time

AbstractSPLASSH (Student Programs Like Aquatic Science Sampling Headquarters, <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" href="https://splassh.org">https://splassh.org</ext-link>) is a collaborative web-based application that crowdsources environmental data in real time. Originally launched in 2014, SPLASSH beta version 1.0 was designed to showcase water projects conducted by students. Through its development, it has broadened its reach from students to educators (formal and informal), researchers, resource managers, science professionals, and the public (citizen scientists). SPLASSH's beta version 2.0 (Patent Pending) has an innovative, customizable environmental tracker and project management capabilities that foster community building through collaboration. SPLASSH offers the public an opportunity to contribute more than just data to an existing project. It encourages citizens to play a lead role by initiating their own projects, truly validating and broadening the definition of citizen science. Learning and project outcomes will be measured for their impact and effectiveness.

GECO, the French Web-based application for knowledge management in agroecology

This paper proposes new approaches to the management and transfer of knowledge in agroecology, utilizing methodological tools developed by the French knowledge management group in the field of agroecology. These tools are based on the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge within organizations. We apply one of these tools to help better determine the best knowledge transfer method to implement. We also propose a collaborative Web-based application, Agro-PEPS as the prototype and GECO as the final application (geco.ecophytopic.fr), to facilitate knowledge transfer in agriculture. Agro-PEPS and GECO allow users to formalize knowledge in a collaborative manner and to make it available to a large community. These tools are based on semantic models related to agroecology.

Achieving Data Consistency by Contextualization in Web-Based Collaborative Applications

Recent years have witnessed the emergence and rapid development of collaborative Web-based applications exemplified by Web-based office productivity applications. One major challenge in building these applications is maintaining data consistency while meeting the requirements of fast local response, total work preservation, unconstrained interaction, and customizable collaboration mode. These requirements are important in determining users’ experiences in interaction and collaboration, and in meeting users’ diverse needs under complex and dynamic collaboration and networking environments; but none of existing solutions is able to meet all of them. In this article, we present a data consistency maintenance solution capable of meeting these requirements for collaborative Web-based applications. Major technical contributions include an efficient sequence-based operation transformation control algorithm based on the concept of contextualization, an operation broadcast protocol for supporting a variety of collaboration modes, an operation replaying algorithm for ensuring fast local response and efficient remote operation replay, and a set of communication protocols for managing the integrity of collaborative Web-based sessions. The proposed solution has been implemented in a prototype collaborative Web-based editor WRACE and the correctness of the solution is formally verified in the article.

A collaborative benchmarking framework for multibody system dynamics

Despite the importance given to the computational efficiency of multibody system (MBS) simulation tools, there is a lack of standard benchmarks to measure the performance of these kinds of numerical simulations. This works proposes a collaborative benchmarking framework to measure and compare the performance of different MBS simulation methods. The framework is made up of two main components: (a) an on-line repository of test problems with reference solutions and standardized procedures to measure computational efficiency and (b) a prototype implementation of a collaborative web-based application to collect, organize and share information about performance results in an intuitive and graphical form. The proposed benchmarking framework has been tested to evaluate the performance of a commercial MBS simulation software, and it proved to be an effective tool to collect and analyze information about the numerous factors which affect the computational efficiency of dynamic simulations of multibody systems.

Beyond Adoption to Invention: Teacher-Created Collaborative Activities in Higher Education

The potential learning benefits of the Web are diminished due to the complexity of creating interactive, collaborative Web-based applications. The CoWeb is a collaborative Web site that allows users to create collaborative applications with great flexibility. The CoWeb facilitates open authoring where any user can edit any existing page or creating new pages. Using the CoWeb, both teachers and students have invented a wide variety of educational applications. Thus, the CoWeb serves as an example of an educational technology that has led to teacher inventiveness.