Computer Supported Cooperative Work Community Research Articles

Reflexivity of Account, Professional Vision, and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: Working in the Maritime Domain

Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) researchers have plenty to say about designing through texts. However, the relationships between implementation and design are often misunderstood by engineering project systems developers who design collaborative systems, among others. This problem is not new; how to utilize CSCW insights effectively and correctly in engineering projects has long been a concern in the CSCW community. By reviewing year-long, multiple-site ethnographic studies in the maritime domain conducted since 2015, this paper reflects on the "reflexivity of account" and "professional vision" as complementary concepts for ensuring that actors' actions and reasonings are designed in such a way that actors-in this case, maritime operators, systems developers, educators, policymakers, and shipowners-are accountable in and through their member groups. Rather than generalizing my findings and my role in the maritime domain as explicit knowledge to help other CSCW researchers in studying engineering projects, the goal of this paper is to seek intersubjective knowledge of my fieldwork to trigger the utilization of CSCW insights as a fundamental basis for facilitating systems design. The aim is to shape and reshape systems in line with what those actors do in reality.

A Seat at the Table

Game-based second language (L2) learning represents an ideal alternative to foreign language classroom instruction. However, despite a diverse player demographic, the design of L2 games is often not informed by players representative of marginalized populations, especially women of color (i.e., Black women). Such oversight in the design process contributes to games that perpetuate gendered and racist stereotypes, and therefore, are less appealing to women of color. In response this dilemma, we utilize Black Feminist Thought (BFT) as a critical framework to engage Black women, a marginalized and understudied population within the gaming subculture, and more broadly, the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) community in game design. Twenty-five Black women take on multiple roles as game designers, foreign language instructor, and informants who represent both producers and consumers throughout the conceptualization phase of a L2 mobile game prototype. Applying BFT principles, we leverage Black women\textquotesingle s lived intersectional experiences to transform the traditional game design process into a more inclusive design experience for Black women. In the context of games that support L2 learning, our findings reveal that Black women appreciate games that: 1. provide authentic cultural experiences; 2. feature intersectional game characters that reflect real life experiences; 3. accurately portray the diversity of Black women's bodies; and 4. provide opportunities for players to customize game assets. As a disruptor to traditional game design, BFT makes salient oppressive design practices within the gaming culture that also extend to the larger CSCW community, signifying the need to embrace more inclusive design practices that benefit Black women and other marginalized populations.

Familiar problems re‐visited: the cooperative aspects of an e‐learning environment

PurposeThis paper sets out to highlight conclusions from computer‐supported cooperative work (CSCW) research, which are relevant to e‐learning environments, in this case, WebCT.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses the CSCW literature and identifies the main findings relating to the use and acceptance of collaborative technologies. These findings are applied to the analysis of 65 free‐form accounts of the use of WebCT obtained from student users in a higher education institution.FindingsThe challenges to cooperative work tools widely demonstrated within the CSCW research community since the early 1990s are alive and well in the context of e‐learning technology more than ten years later. In particular, there is strong evidence of discrepancies in benefits for different stakeholders, the need for a critical mass of users, and problems with lack of fit with social norms.Research limitations/implicationsConclusions are based on computing students from one institution, but there is no reason to believe that the sample is atypical.Practical implicationsThe conclusions identify a need for stakeholder involvement in the introduction of e‐learning environments in the tradition of participative design.Originality/valueThe paper brings well‐established findings from the CSCW community to the e‐learning domain.

When Plans do not Work Out: How Plans are Used in Software Development Projects

Based on empirical material from the area of software engineering, this article discusses the issue of plans and planning as an integral part of and prerequisite for software development work. It relates observed practices to literature produced by the Computer Supported Cooperative Work community. Empirical studies of software development practice seldom address re-planning. By analyzing the empirical material from one project we are able to show how certain kinds of co-ordination problems arise and how they may be dealt with. The empirical research does not focus primarily on the character of plans; instead, it raises the question `what means are necessary and should be provided in order to cope with situations when plans do not work out? In relation to plans, especial emphasis is on "due process", i.e. how the project plan and the company wide project model are maintained to enable the identification and articulation of deviations from it. On the basis of our empirical analysis we propose to support the articulation and coordination work necessary in situations where plans do not adequately work out.

Psychology

The Internet explosion and broad interest in collaborative technology have driven increased interest in the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Historically, behavioral research on CSCW applications has reflected a strong influence from ethnomethodology. This article argues that the CSCW community should adopt a stronger orientation to other social science disciplines, particularly psychology. Greater attention to the psychological literature provides three benefits. First, psychologists offer well-validated principles about human behavior in group and organizational contexts that are relevant to CSCW research. Second, psychologists offer reliable and proven measures of human behavior that, if adopted by CSCW researchers, can provide a uniform basis for comparison across studies. Finally, psychologists offer data collection and analysis methods that identify salient and generalizable features of human behavior, which may lead to the development of universal principles of CSCW design.

The relevance of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for advanced manufacturing

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is faced with issues which are crucial to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). However, despite the large amount of work on Enterprise Integration and its obvious links to the CSCW field, this domain is almost totally absent in the work of the CSCW community. Therefore, this paper is intended to contribute to the discussion on the relevance of CSCW in manufacturing and to combine new concepts for cooperative work with requirements for information system design in production. Production related models, e.g., an order-driven mode of coordination, can be augmented with mechanisms of interaction for coordination, collaboration and co-decision and the design of customer/supplier chains. It is suggested, as one example, to use workflow management technology in advanced manufacturing for shop-floor production planning and control (PPC). The proposed enterprise model and support technology is especially useful for small-batch production.

The Relevance of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for Advanced Manufacturing

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is faced with issues which are crucial to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), However, despite the large amount of work on CIM and its obvious links to the CSCW field, this domain is almost totally absent in the work of the CSCW community. Therefore, this paper wants to open the discussion about the relevance of CSCW in manufacturing and to combine new concepts for cooperative work with requirements for information system design in production, Production related models, e.g., an order-driven mode of coordination, can be augmented with mechanisms of interaction for coordination, collaboration and co-decision and the design of customer/supplier chains. It is suggested, as one example, to use workflow management technology in advanced manufacturing for shop-floor production planning and control (PPC). The proposed enterprise model and support technology is especially useful for small-batch production.

Network issues in the growth and adoption of networked CSCW services

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) environments have traditionally made heavy use of network technology to allow users (often at different locations) to work together via computer systems. However, this dependency of CSCW applications on the underlying network technology has up to now not been a real issue within the community. CSCW research has traditionally focused on the design of shared environment applications that run on this underlying network, e.g., the development of interaction and presentation techniques for shared tasks. Also, CSCW has been a testbed for design methodologies such as the ethnographic analysis of user behaviour. Although we support this emphasis on social science within the field, we feel that in this truly multidisciplinary area researchers should become more aware of network-related research issues. A number of parallel events can be identified that triggered our concern: " The move from Local Area Network technology to Wide Area Network technology (the global Internet) for CSCW applications. " The evolution of this Internet towards commercialization of services and the privatisation of many telecommunication service providers in Europe. " The political debate over the Information Super Highway, necessary to support the increasing bandwidth requirements typical for CSCW applications that require the use of multiple channels of information. The move towards the Internet has given us the opportunity for global participation in CSCW environments, resulting in a more generic utilization of this technology. However, the caveat for the CSCW community lies in the fact that we now no longer fully control our shared environments, and have become more dependent on the global decision-making process regarding network infrastructure. The same institution that gave our research community access to internetworking in the late-1970s, the National Science Foundation (NSF), has decided that further governmental funding of the NSFNET backbone, which constituted a major part of Internet infrastructure in the USA, is no longer required. Commercial service providers now operate major backbone services for the Internet on a commercial basis [8]. These commercial network providers thus take charge over essential pieces of Internet infrastructure, taking decisions which could have a serious impact on distributed multimedia services provided by the Internet such as the World-Wide Web and MBONE, which we'll discuss further on. In Europe, a similar development is taking place: traditional, often monopoly-based, network providers such as British Telecom and the Dutch PTT Telecom have recently been privatised and are in the process of reconsidering their tasks and services. The debate in both the USA and Europe over the Information Super Highway or National Information Infrastructure (NII) gives further evidence that governments will not be able to maintain development and support of new high-bandwidth information services in the near future. This, however, is only one network-related development that directly concerns the CSCW community. New standards are emerging for the transmission of real-time high-bandwidth data over Internet connections. This high-bandwidth data typically involve video and audio information from shared multimedia communication environments. In the next section, we will discuss what these standards might provide in terms of functionality to the CSCW community, and what constraints these standards introduce. They are often defined by network researchers who have a genuine interest in providing network capabilities, but typically do not have the same means as the CSCW community to regard cognitive ergonomical aspects of network functionality. We try to demonstrate the importance of a dialogue between the two areas of research, a cross-fertilization from which both communities will benefit. The current attitude in the CSCW community towards connectivity is very similar to the attitude towards computing power in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the late 1970s: the infrastructure necessary to apply our research ideas is not of our concern, and will be delivered by others. That may have been true for direct manipulation systems, but to what extend will it be true for shared real-time multimedia environments?

The Relevance of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for Advanced Manufacturing

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is faced with issues which are crucial to Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). However, despite the large amount of work on CIM and its obvious links to the CSCW field, this domain is almost totally absent in the work of the CSCW community. Therefore, this paper wants to open the discussion about the relevance of CSCW in manufacturing and to combine new concepts for cooperative work with requirements for information system design in production. Production related models, e.g., an order-driven mode of coordination, can be augmented with mechanisms of interaction for coordination, collaboration and codecision and the design of customer/supplier chains. It is suggested, as one example, to use workflow management technology in advanced manufacturing.

CSCW requires open systems

Applications designed to support the work of groups will becoming increasingly important to future distributed systems. This paper considers the role of distributed systems within the development of cooperative systems. In particular we focus on the need to provide open Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems and their impact on distributed systems. The work currently being undertaken in Open Distributed Processing (ODP) is used to highlight significant trends for future open CSCW systems. It is shown that the CSCW and ODP community share mutual interests and have complementary aims and goals that are being developed from different perspectives. Within the paper we provide a brief introduction to CSCW, highlighting the requirements CSCW places on distributed systems. The development of an environment to support open CSCW systems is introduced and briefly described. Finally, the relationships between requirements and models for Open CSCW systems and the Basic Reference Model of ODP are discussed.