Synchronous Collaborative Environment Research Articles

Presence and Team Performance in Synchronous Collaborative Virtual Environments

Synchronous collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow distributed teams to interact and work. CVEs afford a sense of presence, or “being there” in the workspace, as well as the opportunity to “do there” via interactions within the environment. However, there has been limited empirical evidence to support the link of presence and team performance, especially for CVE work. We identified multiple dimensions of presence that reflect relationships known to be essential to collaborative work and conducted a CVE experiment with 80 teams. Our results suggest certain aspects of presence are more important than others in driving virtual team performance.

Digital competence of a teacher involved in the implementation of a cross-border lesson for classrooms in Brazil and Chile

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine the digital competence displayed by a primary school teacher who implemented an interdisciplinary cross-border lesson that was designed with the lesson study methodology and involved two countries: Brazil and Chile.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative methodology was adopted via the case study method through which the case of a sixth-grade Chilean teacher participating in the study was documented. The data were collected through a lesson plan, a videotape of the implemented lesson and a questionnaire. A professional digital competence framework for teachers provided an analytical perspective via data analysis.FindingsThe results show that the teacher displayed digital competence in a synchronous collaborative learning environment in which she had time to reflect on the educational value of technology and appropriate teaching methods involving information and communication technologies. Certain elements of the studied case contributed to this performance, namely the cross-border context, the classroom setting and the collaborative Lesson Study methodology.Practical implicationsThe lesson study methodology facilitated the teacher's performance in the “Pedagogy and didactics” digital competence by enabling her to participate in planning and implementing a lesson that allowed all those who collaborated, including teachers and researchers, to reflect on teaching in a digital learning environment.Social implicationsThe cross-border context, which involved co-designing and implementing a lesson in two countries, allowed the teacher to display her “School in society” and “Ethics” competencies. This was achieved through connecting two classrooms with different languages and cultures digitally and synchronously, thereby providing students the opportunity to debate and participate in a global and local problem such as a country's responsibility for energy consumption.Originality/valueModern society requires the transformation of school practices, and new teaching approaches should include the provision of collaborative spaces that incorporate digital technologies. In this sense, this paper shows that cross-border lessons involving a synchronous learning environment offer a potential alternative, as digital teaching competence enables teachers to bring together different social and cultural groups virtually, thereby contributing to the reduction of social gaps and to the promotion of positive identity among less advantaged students.

An Exploratory Study Comparing CAD Tools and Working Styles for Implementing Design Changes

AbstractThis paper presents the findings of a preliminary study comparing implementation of design changes using various computer-aided design (CAD) working styles. Our study compares individuals’ and pairs’ completion of a series of changes to a toy car CAD model. We discuss the results in terms of productivity and value added ratio, derived from time-based quantitative data. We also discuss qualitative findings acquired through post-study surveys. Overall, our findings suggest that pairs were less efficient than individual designers due to overheads like communication, history dependency and complex couplings within the CAD model tree. However, it is also noteworthy that within each pair the lead participant's performance was at par with individual participants. Lastly, we also discuss behaviors and patterns that emerge as unique to the synchronous collaborative environment, motivating future work.

Use of a Synchronous Collaborative Learning Environment in a Face‐to‐Face Molecular Biology Classroom

As stated in “Vision and Change”, biology is an increasingly collaborative endeavor, requiring scientists to work well in teams and across disciplines. Yet, too often our classrooms are designed to be lecture‐based and don't provide sufficient opportunity for students to practice collaboration and teamwork. Here we describe a synchronous collaborative learning tool, MeTL, wherein students in face‐to‐face classrooms work together on problem sets and case studies. Rather than submitting a paper assignment at the conclusion of class time, the students instead work in an online environment that is accessible even after class has ended. Group members can see each other's work in real time and can thus provide assistance in creation of the group submission. Feedback provided to the students is viewable instantaneously, by all group members, and can be synced with Learning Management Systems. Students receive a grade for the work that was completed in addition to a scaled grade based on how well their peers felt they contributed to the activity of the day. We anticipate MeTL being useful to classrooms in many disciplines, but especially the molecular biology classroom.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Investigation to Peer-to-Peer-based collaborative working platform for product development

The current globalising industry is highly desired for synchronous collaborative working environment to perform multisited and multiuser cooperation during complex product design among partners, to provide customisation-oriented service to fulfil market demands and to satisfy customer's requirement around the world. This paper introduces a preliminary research work about Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based collaborative communication environment that attempts to support codesign 3D CAD model in synchronous Collaborative Product Design (CPD) in the way of What You See Is What I see (WYSIWIS). A prototype with communication means of document cosharing and editing, draft codrawing, instant message and VRML-based visualisation space is developed on the basis of JXTA development platform. Collaborative model modification can be performed by the cooperation between document coediting space and VRML visualisation space.

The relationship between task structure and collaborative group interactions in a synchronous peer interaction collaborative learning environment for a course of Physics

Although collaborative group work is used by many instructors as a useful educational tool, there is much room for research on how learning actually occurs within collaborative learning environments. This paper attempts to explore the relationship(if any) between task structure and collaborative group interactions in a synchronous peer interaction collaborative learning environment. For this reason, we used the Cmap during a Physics course for Grade 12 students. This paper compares two groups of students, one studying concept maps with single answer task, and the other studying concept maps with variable answer task. The aim of the study presented in this article is to also investigate the influence of task structure on students' interactivity according to certain indicators and cognitive performance.

Tools for transparent synchronous collaborative environments

Synchronous collaborative environments can provide an identical visual and operable working area among geographically separated participants. There are two basic approaches for providing a shared workspace. They are collaborative-aware approach and collaborative-unaware approach. Since the second approach allows single-user applications to be reused, most users choose to use it. Our work is based on the collaborative-unaware environment. This paper describes the design and implementation of some transparent synchronous collaborative tools. They are: (1) the latecomer support for Java applications, Java applets and JMF players (2) the client synchronization to minimize data transmission latency and (3) the lightweight multi-session support to let different collaboration groups work at the same time. These tools optimize existing transparent synchronous collaboration systems and make them more realistic, more complete and more generic.

Supporting synchronous collaborative learning: A generic, multi-dimensional model

Future CSCL technologies are described by the community as flexible, tailorable, negotiable, and appropriate for various collaborative settings, conditions and contexts. This paper describes the key design issues of a generic synchronous collaborative learning environment, called Omega+. In this approach, model-based genericity is applied to the four dimensions of collaborative learning: the situation, the interaction, the process, and the way of monitoring individual and group performance. These four aspects are explicitly specified in a set of models that serve as parameters for the generic environment. This opens the possibility of combining many structuring/scaffolding techniques that have been proposed in isolation in the CSCL literature. The paper also emphasizes the specificities and difficulties of evaluating a comprehensive generic support approach. Experimental evaluations conducted by system designers generally isolate the effects of a particular design feature on learning. This kind of evaluation can hardly demonstrate the usefulness of a generic model at the global level and the feasibility of system customization by non-specialist teachers. To address these difficulties, Omega+ is integrated into a larger collaborative web platform dedicated to CSCL practice, evaluation (by collecting anonymized logs), and dissemination (by supporting the technical and pedagogical development of teachers).

Multidisciplinary collaborative design in virtual environments

Design projects in the AEC domain involve collaboration among a number of design disciplines, usually in separate locations. There has been an increase in the interest in synchronous collaborative virtual environments as an alternative or extension to collaborating using CAD systems. This paper puts forward a 3D virtual world environment which provides real-time multi-user collaboration for designers in different locations and allows for the different design disciplines to model their view of a building as different representations. This 3D world is extended to provide a more complete collaborative environment. Relationships between the objects in the different models are seen as central to the maintenance of consistency and control while changing the design. Agent technology is used to manage the different views, the creation and modification of objects in the 3D virtual world and the necessary relationships with the database(s) belonging to each discipline.

CyberCAD: a collaborative approach in 3D-CAD technology in a multimedia-supported environment

Three-dimensional Computer-Aided Design (3D-CAD) is considered as one of the most important technologies for the survival of modern enterprises. The increasing development of CAD features empowered by current Internet and Intranet development leads to the emergence of new collaborative CAD (COCAD) system. A COCAD system extends an existing single-location CAD system to a multi-location CAD application so that two or more geographically dispersed users can work together on a 3D-CAD geometry co-editing and CAD-related tasks dynamically and collaboratively. A proposed COCAD system named “CyberCAD” is developed on Java™ platform in this project to dynamically support large volumes of 3D-CAD data transmission. Over the last few years, computer-based videoconferencing has evolved to become one of today’s most exciting multimedia application. Implementing videoconferencing technique, CyberCAD aims to establish a virtual synchronous collaborative design environment to overcome geographical constraints, shorten product development time and cost through the Internet. The design activities have been studied and implemented to enable effective and efficient collaborative design.

An Attempt to Design Synchronous Collaborative Learning Environments for Peer Dyads on the World Wide Web

This article describes the design, implementation, and preliminary evaluation of three synchronous distributed learning prototype systems. Each of these systems supports a particular style of interaction, referred to as a socio- activity learning model, between members of student dyads (pairs). The first two systems, Co-Working System and Working Along System, are realizations of two basic models of collaborative, one-on-one, synchronous, and networked learning, while the third one, the Hybrid System, is a combined model of the two. This work intends to identify a set of domain independent tools necessary for these models and collect information for future development through some preliminary evaluation of some experimental trials of these systems. All these systems were implemented on WWW using the computer language Java.

Learning and teaching in a synchronous collaborative environment

Despite obvious domination of asynchronous collaborative technologies, especially for virtual classrooms and distance education, the work presented in this paper is based on the assumption that some students will still prefer the experience of on‐campus, face‐to‐face collaborative learning. For those students a new synchronous collaborative environment is created by combining an innovative methodology for ‘same‐time, same‐place’ interactive learning and the technology called Group Support Systems which is designed to provide not only communication but rather computer‐mediated collaboration. This paper introduces this learning methodology and illustrates its potential to improve critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills of all students who are stimulated to participate as equal learners. It also describes how teachers are transformed from ‘information delivery specialists’ to guides and facilitators of learning.