Synchronous Groupware Research Articles

How Data Scientists Use Computational Notebooks for Real-Time Collaboration

Effective collaboration in data science can leverage domain expertise from each team member and thus improve the quality and efficiency of the work. Computational notebooks give data scientists a convenient interactive solution for sharing and keeping track of the data exploration process through a combination of code, narrative text, visualizations, and other rich media. In this paper, we report how synchronous editing in computational notebooks changes the way data scientists work together compared to working on individual notebooks. We first conducted a formative survey with 195 data scientists to understand their past experience with collaboration in the context of data science. Next, we carried out an observational study of 24 data scientists working in pairs remotely to solve a typical data science predictive modeling problem, working on either notebooks supported by synchronous groupware or individual notebooks in a collaborative setting. The study showed that working on the synchronous notebooks improves collaboration by creating a shared context, encouraging more exploration, and reducing communication costs. However, the current synchronous editing features may lead to unbalanced participation and activity interference without strategic coordination. The synchronous notebooks may also amplify the tension between quick exploration and clear explanations. Building on these findings, we propose several design implications aimed at better supporting collaborative editing in computational notebooks, and thus improving efficiency in teamwork among data scientists.

A Grounded Theory for ICT-Mediated Tacit Knowledge Transferability in MNCs

Aim/Purpose: A vital business activity within organizations is tacit knowledge (TK) transfer. This work aims to propose a novel framework for TK transferability in multinational corporations (MNCs) from the information and communication technology (ICT) perspective. Background: In the past two decades, researchers have developed several frameworks for TK transfer based on humanistic, business, and educational perspectives. However, a review of the existing work revealed that TK transfer has seldom been examined from an ICT perspective. Methodology: A qualitative method was adopted because it was considered the most appropriate for the research requirements. A grounded theory approach was employed to generate the items that potentially affect the transferability of TK. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, along with observations when possible. The study sample consisted of 20 expert interviewees in Malaysia. An inductive ongoing data analysis process based on grounded theory via open, axial, and selective coding was used as the primary analysis method. In addition, comparative and frequency count analyses were used to examine the collected data. Contribution: The main contribution of this study is its use of the grounded theory approach, which resulted in the generation of items that affect the transferability of TK, not all of which had been identified by previous researchers. This paper reports one of the few inductive studies conducted on TK transferability among MNCs and, therefore, makes distinct contributions to the literature on TK management, specifically bringing to the fore the intricacies involved in TK transferability. Findings: Information and communication technology plays a crucial role in and has a positive impact on TK transfer in MNCs. This study evaluated the potential of various ICT channels to facilitate TK transfer. The findings show that ICT tools cannot completely substitute for face-to-face contact. Tacit knowledge that has a high degree of complexity requires sophisticated channel features for its transfer. From this standpoint, virtual face-to-face communication is the richest communication medium in the ICT hierarchy. On the other hand, email and voicemail are less effective channels for TK transfer, while synchronous groupware is an intermediate communication medium. The findings highlight the importance of utilizing an appropriate mix of channels to improve TK transferability. Recommendations for Practitioners: It is recommended that practitioners consider the diverse aspects of TK and the potential of a range of ICT channels for the TK transfer process in order to increase the efficiency of TK transfer. The analytic categories developed in this study may give managers new insights into and a better understanding of how TK can be supported in a modern organization and how to overcome the barriers to TK transfer.

A PEER-TO-PEER COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR GROUPWARE APPLICATIONS

Many advances have been done to allow groups of people to work together and collaborate in the Internet. Collaborative systems are characterized by the way participants interact. In many cases, equal standing members should cooperate in a non-authoritative environment, where no entity or authority is or should be in charge of regulating the group. Therefore, decentralized communication infrastructures have been hailed as promising alternatives. Recently, decentralized infrastructures based on P2P approaches have drawn the attention of the research community because of their benefits in terms of scalability, robustness, availability and potentials for leveraging computational resources distributed across the Internet. In this paper, a scalable peer-to-peer (P2P) communication Infrastructure for groupware applications is presented. It enables a large number of people to join and cooperate in a robust, decentralized and easy deployable way, without requiring high capacity servers or any other special network infrastructure. The communication infrastructure is based on a binary tree as overlay structure, which implements all groupware communication functionality, including membership management and packet forwarding, at application level, making it an inexpensive and fast deployable solution for equal standing members, such as home users with a domestic connection to the Internet. Two applications, one for synchronous groupware and the other for asynchronous collaboration, have been developed to validate the approach. Comparisons with other communication infrastructures in aspects such as end-to-end propagation delay, group latency, throughput, protocol overhead, failure recovery and link stress, show that our approach is a scalable and robust alternative.

Audio Narrowcasting and Privacy for Multipresent Avatars on Workstations and Mobile Phones

Our group is exploring interactive multi- and hypermedia, especially applied to virtual and mixed reality multimodal groupware systems. We are researching user interfaces to control source→sink transmissions in synchronous groupware (like teleconferences, chatspaces, virtual concerts, etc.). We have developed two interfaces for privacy visualization of narrowcasting (selection) functions in collaborative virtual environments (CVES): for a workstation WIMP (windows/icon/menu/pointer) GUI (graphical user interface), and for networked mobile devices, 2.5- and 3rd-generation mobile phones. The interfaces are integrated with other CVE clients, interoperating with a heterogeneous multimodal groupware suite, including stereographic panoramic browsers and spatial audio backends & speaker arrays. The narrowcasting operations comprise an idiom for selective attention, presence, and privacy--- an infrastructure for rich conferencing capability.

A computer-supported group decision-making system for timber procurement planning in Finland

A group decision-making model was designed to improve co-operation during the process of making decisions to support timber procurement goals. The model was used in a Finnish forest company with a district team and six local teams. Co-operation among managers in the wood procurement organization was supported by decentralized synchronous groupware (MetaFrame), a computerized system where communication takes place over the Internet. This groupware provided the foundation for the decision-making system. The main research objective was to survey the opinions of the local managers towards the use of the system; it was assumed that co-operation would improve between managerial levels. Another objective was to investigate whether the groupware increased communication efficiency during this co-operation. The results showed that opinions on the computer-supported process were positive. The timber procurement goals were more acceptable to local teams when the goals and opinions of the district managers could be integrated into the decision-making process, and timber procurement planning was also faster (by 2 days). Therefore, the groupware increased communication efficiency and improved timber procurement planning as a consequence of the facilitated group decision-making process.

Supporting real‐time collaborative learning with web‐based groupware

The Wireless Online Tutoring System (WOTS) is a web‐based, synchronous groupware system that has been developed to facilitate student collaboration in group projects. It supports interactive and collaborative structured‐diagramming and is equipped with group awareness features such as remote cursors, locking, and text‐based instant messaging. Users can access WOTS from both personal computers and handheld devices, allowing it to be used in wireless classrooms or distributed environments. Tests on student software design projects validate the ability of WOTS to support student collaboration in group projects, and show that its architecture is scalable and reliable. Its performance is expected to improve as more powerful handheld devices and wireless technologies come on to the market.

Integrating internet-based multimedia technology into technical education

In this paper, two multimedia educational concepts and tools, MODULO and PASSENGER, are introduced. The differences in learning processes, cognitive styles and the needs of divergent students are discussed. The integration of a new multimedia teaching and learning system, called MODULO, into the technical education at GMU Germany, is presented. MODULO is a web-based environment that aims to provide students with a flexible, decentralised and differentiated learning environment based on their educational background. The synchronous groupware called PASSENGER is a new application that aims to support virtual student teams during laboratory exercises. It supports software development teams in performing their cooperative work in software engineering laboratories. This paper presents preliminary results of the study conducted to discover ways in which PASSENGER can be used to support group work in laboratory exercises.

OodOPT: A semantics-based concurrency control framework for fully-replicated architecture

Concurrency control has always been one of the most important issues in the design of synchronous groupware systems with fully-replicated architecture. An ideal strategy should be able to support natural and flexible human-to-computer and human-to-human interactions while maintaining the consistency of the system. This paper summarizes previous researches on this topic and points out the deficiencies of the existing results. A novel semantics-based concurrency control framework,oodOPT, is proposed. The main idea of the framework is to resolve conflicts by utilizing semantics of the operations and the accessed data objects. With this approach, complexities in concurrency control are shifted completely from application developers to the framework. Conflicts among operations on objects with different semantics and the strategies resolving these conflicts are analyzed. After describing the algorithm in full detail, the discussion ends up with a comparison with other related work and some considerations for open problems.

Resource sharing for replicated synchronous groupware

We describe problems associated with accessing data resources external to the application, which we term externalities, in replicated synchronous collaborative applications. Accessing externalities such as files, databases, network connections, environment variables, and the system clock is not as straightforward in replicated collaborative software as in single-user applications or centralized collaborative systems. We describe ad hoc solutions that add to development cost and complexity because the developer must program different behavior for different replicas. We introduce a novel general approach to accessing externalities uniformly in a replicated collaborative system. The approach uses a semireplicated architecture where the actual externality resides at a single location and is accessed via replicated proxies. This approach allows developers of replicated synchronous groupware to (1) use similar externality access mechanisms as in traditional single-user applications, and (2) program all replicas to execute the same behavior. We describe a general design for proxied access to read-only, write-only, and read-write externalities and discuss the tradeoffs of this semireplicated approach over full, literal replication and the class of applications to which this approach can be successfully applied. We also describe details of a prototype implementation of this approach within a replicated collaboration-transparency system, called Flexible JAMM (Java Applets Made Multiuser).

An extensible platform for the development of synchronous groupware

The development of groupware is a complex endeavor due to several inherent features not present in single-user applications. To address this complexity many authors have presented useful platforms that permit the reutilization of code to facilitate the implementation of groupware applications. However, design reusability could be of greater value than code reusability and facilitate the use and extension of groupware features. This paper describes COCHI (Collaborative Objects for Communication and Human Interaction), an extensible pattern system for groupware applications that aims to provide reusability and extensibility of design patterns represented as COCHI subsystems and implemented as a class framework. This pattern system has proved to be useful for the rapid development of groupware applications, while being flexible enough to incorporate important extensions to the original framework. Overall, it provides a good balance between ease of use and flexibility.

A comparative analysis of groupware application protocols

Two of the most difficult problems faced by developers of synchronous groupware applications are the handling of multiple session connections and the maintenance of replicated data. Protocols and algorithms to solve these problems have evolved over the years as developers gained experience and network standards were developed and enriched. This paper analyzes the efficiency of three common application level protocols used for the development of groupware systems. These include central sequencing, distributed operations, and independent-immutable objects. In order to perform the analysis, nine measures of network and processor efficiency were developed. The result of the analysis showed the independent object method to be superior in overall efficiency. Central sequencing is recommended for applications that are not conducive to the use of independent objects.

The Notification Service Transfer Protocol (NSTP): infrastructure for synchronous groupware

The Notification Service Transfer Protocol (NSTP) is an infrastructure for building synchronous groupware. It is based on the idea of a coordinating notification server that is independent of any given synchronous groupware application. NSTP is intended in some ways to be the synchronous analog of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). We describe the features of NSTP, emphasizing similarities and differences with respect to HTTP, and present our rationale for including those features.

LICRA: A replicated-data management algorithm for distributed synchronous groupware applications

Replicated data consistency is a key issue in the design of distributed real time groupware applications. In this paper, we propose a new protocol to cope with this problem. The proposed algorithm guarantees an optimal response time while ensuring data consistency at system quiescence. The originality of our proposition relies on the fact that neither locks nor clocks nor global information are required to establish data consistency. Instead, direct dependency relations between generated operations as well as operation transformation mechanism are used. The coupling of the above two mentioned mechanisms is shown to realize a good trade-off between the different requirements of groupware applications. Advantages of our approach are illustrated by comparing the algorithm to two well known optimistic concurrency control protocols for groupware applications: dOPT and ORESTE.

A taxonomy of architectures for synchronous groupware applications

I offer a taxonomy for characterizing various architectures for synchronous groupware applications. Unlike teleconferencing per se, these are applications that have been implemented in such a way that users may simultaneously interact with the applications. The analysis rests on the following two premises:• The primary challenge tot synchronous groupware applications is to ensure state consistency,and• Applications may be divided into four levels of state.Figure 1 below depicts the four levels of state that I envision within any application. 4 The display state is the information that drives the user's display; the view state is the information that relates the user's display to the underlying information in the application; the model is the underlying information; and, the file is a persistent representation of the underlying information.Figure 1 5 below depicts the situation for a single user application. With multiple users there will be multiple displays, one per user. In synchronous groupware, one must ensure that these displays have access to some form of consistent state. There are two ways to achieve this consistency: by maintaining only one copy of the state or by maintaining multiple copies and using a consistency maintaining protocol. The next three sections discuss various architectures derived by applying these two approaches to consistency. The last section discusses a variety of residual issues that the evolving taxonomy does not easily address.

Session services and synchronous groupware (abstract)

No abstract available.