Article View: comp.society
Article #7CSCW'92 workshops (very long message)
From: Rob Kling
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:12
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:12
1098 lines
49194 bytes
49194 bytes
The following workshops are being organized n concert with:
ACM 1992 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
October 31 - November 4, 1992
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA
> Forwarded message:
From Mantei%Erg%WMW@civp.utwente.nl Wed Jul 15 10:43:34 1992
X-Ns-Transport-Id: 08002008D0FD001FEBA9
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1992 02:58:28 PDT
From: Mantei%Erg%WMW@civp.utwente.nl
Subject: CSCW'92 Workshops
To: announcements.chi@xerox.com
Message-Id: <92Jul15.005856pdt.11820@alpha.xerox.com>
***** ATTACHMENT: x:workshop *****
The following text is a much more detailed description of the
CSCW'92 Workshop Call for Participation than we are able to
put into the advance program for the conference. We are
distributing this electronically to provide as complete a
description of the workshops as we can to potential participants.
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
CSCW'92 -- SHARED PERSPECTIVES
ACM 1992 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work
October 31 - November 4, 1992
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA
-------------------------------------------------
W O R K S H O P S - Saturday October 31, 1992
------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT DEADLINES AND REQUIREMENTS
FOR PARTICIPANTS
Workshop participation will be by invitation only.
Invitations will be issued in response to short (3-5
page) position papers, which should include the
prospective participant(s) experience and/or interests
in the area, as well as a discussion of relevant
problems and/or CSCW development work. Prospective
participants are referred to workshop descriptions for
more detailed content requirements of the position papers.
Five copies of position papers should be sent by August 10,
1992 to the Contact Person. Invitations will be sent by
September 1, 1992. Please include your name, address,
telephone number, email address and FAX number on
your submission. Accepted workshop participants will
be expected to pay a $60.00 CND workshops fee at the
conference site. Workshops are full-day sessions (9:00
- 5:30).
***************************************
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF WORK AND
CSCW SYSTEM DESIGN
John Hughes, Lancaster University
David Randall, Lancaster University
Graham Button, Plymouth Polytechnic & Rank Xerox
EuroPARC
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
As a number of commentators have noted, one of the major
causes of system "failure" is the mismatch between the
functionalities of the system as conceived by designers and its
contexts of use: a problem which becomes more acute as, and to
adapt a phrase of Grudin's, the interface moves outward into the
world of work. Thus, additional problems face the designer not the
the least of which is capturing the relevant features of socially
organised work activities.
Within CSCW ethnographic studies of work are
increasingly seen as one of the more important means
by which system designers can become better informed about the
social organisation of work activities with a view to designing
appropriate computer support which resonates with those
activities rather than works against them. Though often
accompanied by no little hyperbole about what ethnographic
methods can achieve, there is little doubt that they are becoming
more prominent in the field of CSCW. However, although
ethnography has a long and honourable tradition in sociology
and anthropology, system design is a new context for the
method, and appropriate ways of working with system designers
is in the process of being worked out. It is relatively rare, for
example, for ethnographers to be placed in an applied role in
which their materials are not only used in design but have to be
communicated to persons trained in the styles of a very different
discipline with its own ways of working. To put it simply,
whereas system designers need to "decompose" tasks and
activities in order to build appropriate models of the processes to
be engineered, ethnographers tend to see tasks and activities as
woven together in some socially organised collectivity.
A related problem is organising ethnographic materials in a
form which is easily communicable to designers. Fieldnotes,
for example, prior to analysis and writing up, are normally relatively
incohate, discursive, informal and rarely of a form which specifies
system requirements with the formal precision required by designers.
Although such differences are not necessarily antithetical, they
do pose problems of collaboration between system designers and
ethnographers.
A further issue has to do with the context of research. Design
in an industrial context, for example, is much more constrained
by time than it is in a research context, and this has ramifications
for ethnographic methods which, normally and in a
sociological/anthropological context, are much more
prolonged than many industrial contexts would allow. In
addition, and following on from the last point, are issues to do
with the relationship of ethnographic methods for informing
system design to other methods including, for example,
participant-centred design, task-oriented analyses of work, and
so on.
What this workshop proposes to do is provide a forum in which
researchers, both social scientists and system designers, can
discuss their various experiences and methods of bringing
ethnographic studies of work to bear on system design. The
objective is to emphasise practical issues rather than theoretical
ones. Among the issues we would hope to discuss include:
problems of ethnographic research in various
contexts of work - what constitutes good ethnography in
the system design context;
working and communicating in an
interdisciplinary context - solutions to the problems of
language, culture and perspective;
informing the design process - problems of
completeness and consistency
ethnography and models of system development -
waterfall approaches versus rapid prototyping
ethnography in research and industrial context of
system design - cost and time constraints of research
the relationship of ethnography to other methods
of requirements capture
The specific goals of the workshop are to bring researchers and
practitioners interested in using ethnographic styles of research to
inform CSCW system design and to identify common problems
and practical solutions.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
The workshop will cover a single day. It will consist of short
presentations focussed around the practical problems of relating
ethnography to system design. One of the presentations will be
our own experience in the air traffic control project The
presentations will take place in the morning session at the end of
which 3 or 4 issues will be selected for fuller discussion in the
afternoon session. This may involve a number of subgroups each
working on a theme for the concluding presentations.
PARTICIPANTS:
We are mainly interested in attracting those, social and computer
scientists, who have, or are intending to use, ethnographic
studies of work in system design. Those who wish to present their
work to the workshop are asked to prepare a position paper related
to the themes of the workshop. (See the general introductory section
to these workshops for submission deadlines and paper length
requirements. Please send all position papers to the contact person
indicated at the end of the workshop description.)
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
JOHN A HUGHES, Department of Sociology and
CSCW Centre, Lancaster University, UK, and has been
involved in a number of projects in relating ethnographic studies
of work to system design, most recently including air traffic
control and software engineering.
DAVE RANDALL, Department of Sociology and CSCW Centre,
Lancaster University, is an ethnographer currently working on a
project on air traffic control in which the study of controllers at
work is being used to inform the design of a visual display of
flight progress information.
GRAHAM BUTTON, Plymouth Polytechnic and Rank Xerox,
Europarc, has done ethnographic studies of software engineers
and organised a workshop on similar themes at E-CSCW '91,
Amsterdam.
CONTACT PERSON:
Professor John A. Hughes
Department of Sociology
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster LA1 4YL
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 524 65201 ext 4174
Email: soa010@lancaster.ac.ak
***************************************
UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORTING
SUCCESSFUL GROUP WORK IN SOFTWARE
DESIGN
John Bennett, IBM Almaden Research Center
John Karat, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
This workshop will provide an opportunity for experienced
practitioners and reflective researchers interested in improving
software design group activities to come together for focusing
discussion. People at the workshop will have an opportunity to
characterize group work in design with emphasis on different types
of support and interventions intended to increase the probability of
outcomes successful in terms of both work process and work
results. By providing a forum for discussion we can develop an
integrated and more comprehensive view of what needs to be
addressed when we consider support for groups engaged in complex
activities such as software design. The result will be a step towards
collected techniques and an understanding of how to use them that
could be applied to both the group processes in design and
development of software (groupware) and the use of such software
in group meetings (CSCW).
We have all been a part of many working groups. Some of these
groups produce results that meet the criteria for success, and
the members of the group feel a sense of satisfaction. Other
groups are less successful and, as participants, we could all tell
stories illustrating the many factors (technical, interpersonal,
organizational) that appear correlated with the outcome. In this
workshop we will explore from a practitioner and research
perspective the experiences that appear important in the group
process. What ways of acting and reflecting appear to make
a difference in the likelihood that a group engaging in a complex
task will produce good results?
We are particularly interested in attracting workshop participants
with experience and ideas relevant to the group activites involved
in the design of software systems. What characterizes groups that
are successful, both in terms of the members and what they need to
do? As an extension to this picture of successful groups, we
encourage suggestions which address what might be done to support
or facilitate groups in becoming successful. Here we are interested
both in techniques which may be based on "technology" (such as
group support tools) an in techniques which rely on development of
human skills (such as the use or training of group facilitators). How
can we change the way groups work so that future group work is
productive? What is needed (in terms of training, technology, and
organizational changes) to really improve effectiveness?
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
We view our primary responsibility as organizers to serve as
discussion facilitators for the workshop, and we will plan the details
of the agenda with the participants in advance of the workshop.
We anticipate that the workshop will include brief presentations
by each of the participants, followed by a discussion within
the group and the development of an outline for a report on
"Understanding and Supporting Successful Group Work in Software
Design". Producing the outline report will serve to focus the activity
of the workshop and provide a summary to the CSCW community.
The position papers received will be distributed to the workshop
participants approximately a month before the workshop, and a
discussion of the agenda will be conducted by email. This will aid in
the efficient use of time at the actual one-day event. A report of
the workshop will be prepared for the SIGCHI and SIGOIS Bulletins.
PARTICIPANTS:
We invite interested individuals to submit a brief position paper
which will outline their work on the theme described above.
(See workshop introduction for instructions on length and due
dates for papers. Papers are to be sent to the contact person
listed at the end of this workshop description.) We hope to
attract participants who represent a broad range of experiences
with group activities. We seek a balance of both practitioners
and researchers interested in improving our shared understanding
of successful group activites related to software design, we would
encourage submissions from anyone with experiences that they
believe to be relevant. We expect to select approximately 20
participants from those submitting position papers. Selection will be
based on the papers received with respect to the estimated quality
of work, breadth of experience, and balance in the points of view
at the workshop. The organizers will act as the workshop selection
committee.
We will be open to participation by anyone based on the information
provided in the position papers. It is our goal to have participants
with practical experience play a key role in the discussion, and we
will take steps to canvass and recruit practitioners to balance the
research perspective.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
JOHN KARAT is a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center. His current activity is focused on support for design
activities in the development of computer systems. He organized a
workshop for CHI '90 which resulted in a book on techniques for HCI
design ("Taking Software Design Seriously: Practical techniques for
human-computer interaction design," Academic Press, 1991). He is
active in the development of international standards for human-
computer interaction and is chair of the HFS/ANSI HCI Standards
commitee. He is the CHI '92 Workshop Chair, and he has participated
in CHI workshops on modeling, consistency, context, and
standardization.
JOHN BENNETT is a research staff member at the IBM Almaden
Research Center. His current research activity is focused on effective
understanding, teaching, and application of group facilitation in
design activities. He was co-organizer of the CHI '88 Workshop on
Analytical Models (SIGCHI Bulletin, April, 1989). His experience with
group activities includes serving as mentor in support of the student
design processes in the course "Human-Computer Interaction" taught
by Terry Winograd in the Stanford Computer Science Department
1990-92. He was Co-Chair of the CHI'92 Technical Program
Committee.
CONTACT PERSON:
John Karat
IBM T. J.. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
USA
Phone: (914) 784-7832
Fax: (914) 784-7279
Email: jkarat@watson.ibm.com
***************************************
PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS IN CSCW
Andrew Clement, University of Toronto
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
The development of CSCW applications generally implies new ways
of recording and transmiting detailed information about individual
users' behavior. This is especially the case for those working in
"media spaces," involving video cameras, microphones and location
devices (e.g. active badges). Such information dissemination
capabilities pose the possibility of unwelcome interruption and
exposure. Unless adequate provisions are made for individuals to
retain control of information about themselves, their privacy may be
threatened. The development of CSCW technologies may also be
inhibited.
This workshop has the following aims:
to form a group of researchers and practitioners who have an
ongoing interest in the privacy implications of CSCW technologies
to identify the major privacy issues in CSCW, particularly in
relation to the paradigmatic applications (e.g. email, media spaces)
to propose a framework to guide CSCW developers and
implementors in creating applications that are sensitive to privacy
concerns
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
In the morning session, participants will explore in detail several
realistic scenarios involving privacy issues. These will reflect a
range of common/plausible situations by drawing upon prior
research and participants' written submissions. Discussions of each
scenario will focus on identifying the sources of concern, the relative
contributions of technological and social factors, and the ways in
which any privacy violation may be avoided or diminished.
The afternoon session will identify and elaborate the general
principles that underlie the scenarios analysed earlier. These will
cover recommendations and appropriate rationales concerning
technical design, implementaion policy and standards of conduct.
The main product will be a draft outline of a report suitable for
publication in both the SIGCHI and SIGOIS Bulletins.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
ANDREW CLEMENT's research has been on the social and organizational
implications of workplace computerization. A central theme of this
work has been the ways in which users exercise control and are
controlled through computing technology. He has written several
papers on the subject of electronic workplace surveillance and, as a
member of the CAVECAT and Telepresence projects, is currently
researching the privacy aspects of media spaces.
PARTICIPANTS:
Prospective participants are asked to submit a short position
statement describing their background, nature of interest in privacy,
and what they consider to be the primary issues. In addition, they
should submit a brief scenario description, suitable for discussion in
the workshop. These should describe a situation, preferably based
on experience, which raises a privacy concern in connection with the
use of CSCW technologies. Identities of individuals and organizations
should be suitably disguised. Position statements and scenarios will
be distributed to participants in advance of the session. Participants,
to a maximum of 20, will be selected to promote a stimulating mix of
researchers, developers, implementors and just plain users of CSCW
technologies.
Potential participants are referred to the position paper
submission guidelines preceding the workshop descriptions for length
restrictions and due dates. They should submit their position papers
to the designated contact person.
CONTACT PERSON:
Andrew Clement
Faculty of Library and Information Science
University of Toronto
140 St. George Street,
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 1A1
Phone: (416) 978-3111
Fax: (416) 971-1399
Email: clement@flis.utoronto.ca
***************************************
REAL TIME GROUP DRAWING AND
WRITING TOOLS
Saul Greenberg, University of Calgary
Stephen Hayne, University of Calgary
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
Participants at conventional real time meetings often share physical
work with each other. These include: notes, documents, plans, slides
and drawings, as well as some common work space that allows each
person to annotate, draw, brainstorm, record, and convey ideas
during the meeting's process. Given that an individual's work is
commonly centered around a computer workstation, the networked
computer can become a valuable medium for people to share on-line
work with each other in both face-to-face and geographically
distributed environments.
In this workshop, participants will focus on technology that provides
face-to-face or geographically distributed groups with real-time
access to shared drawing or writing spaces. Emphasis will be placed
on (but not limited to):
the human factors research and requirements behind the design of
shared drawing/writing tools;
the technical factors involved in building these systems;
the technical and social innovations in implementation;
specific applications;
empirical validation or experiences with people using shared work
spaces;
the factors involved in the adoption of these tools by groups and
organizations;
The technological breakthroughs of building computer-based group
drawing and writing spaces was made several years ago. Many
researchers are now busy constructing their own group tools and
toolkits and/or pursuing human factors issues. We feel there is a
great deal of replication of the original ideas, as well as a great deal
of overlap. The time is ripe to proceed beyond mere replication and
move towards empiricism, where lessons are drawn from experience;
we need to formulate empirical design rules.
The goals of the workshop are three-fold:
to bring together the practitioners to discuss the human and
technical issues surrounding shared drawing/writing tools;
to create a community aware of its innovations and collective
experiences;
to produce a document (a book) that collects together relevant
findings of the community as a whole.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
The workshop is intended to be small, an intimate gathering of 10-20
people.
Before the workshop. All participants will be expected to submit a
position paper accompanied by a full paper (which may have been
published previously) that best describes their work. These will be
used as a basis of selecting workshop participants. (NOTE: The full paper
is in addition to the general requirements listed at the beginning of
this document for workshop submission. This material should be
submitted to the designated contact person.)
A proceedings of working papers will be made available to attendees
at least two weeks in advance of the workshop. All participants will
be expected to read these proceedings prior to the workshop.
During the workshop: In the morning, each participant will present
and discuss their work through short mini-talks. These talks are
meant to summarize the previously-read papers and to highlight
critical issues.
In the afternoon: The participants will break up into several small
groups of 3-5 members each. Groups will likely be focused around
the five points mentioned in the theme section. Each group will elect
a chairperson who will be responsible for coordinating a book section
on that topic. That is, the chairperson will write a brief introduction
to the topic, and will coordinate individual contributions from other
members of the group.
After the workshop, Saul Greenberg and Stephen Hayne, with the
help of the group chairpersons, will edit a book tentatively titled
"Real Time Group Drawing and Writing Tools". The book will contain
an editors' introduction, and will be split into several sections
corresponding to each group topic. A section will contain an
introduction by the group chairperson, and relevant published
material for the attendees (this may include previously-published,
revised, and new papers).
PARTICIPANTS:
All submitters must provide a position paper accompanied by a
previously published paper. It is critical that workshop participants
also agree to supply a high-quality book contribution within four
months of the workshop.
Workshop participants will be accepted based upon the
appropriateness, quality, and novelty of their research, as well as
their commitment to work towards a book contribution.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
SAUL GREENBERG is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the
University of Calgary. His research field is both Human-Computer
Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. Dr.
Greenberg and his colleagues are concerned with the human and
technical factors of groupware. They are building GROUPLAB, a suite
of groupware tools that include shared drawings and writing tools,
groupware toolkits, and shared view systems. He has published
several articles in the area, and is the editor of the 1991 book
"Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware", Academic
Press.
STEPHEN HAYNE's research interests lie mainly in distributed database
design, knowledge-based technology and group support systems.
Much of his research is rooted in the desire to use innovative
technology to solve real business problems. To this end he has
implemented tools in graphical environments to assist groups in
communication and decision-making, i.e., shared drawing, group
brainstorming, the handling of concurrent issues and consolidation. He is
also applying this technology to support decision making during crisis
situations. Several of his articles have been published on technical
innovation and empirical validation of group support systems.
CONTACT PERSON:
Saul Greenberg
Department of Computer Science
University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2N 1N4
Phone: (403) 220-6087
Email: saul@cpsc.ucalgary.ca
***************************************
TECHNOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY FOR
COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING IN
A CONTEXT FOR LEARNING
Denis Newman, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.
Timothy Koschmann, Southern Illinois University
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
A large part of the current school reform movement centers around
changing the nature of the educational activity in school from
teacher-led lessons on subject matter content to project-based work
in which students are active problem-solvers and theorists while the
teacher plays more of a coaching role. Very often, the complexity of
the projects invites collaborative work as a way to bring multiple
perspectives on the problem and for students to learn from each
other. We are seeing collaborative problem solving being used all
the way from elementary school math classrooms to teaching clinical
science in medical school. This workshop will bring together people
working in all aspects of collaborative learning in education to begin
building a solid research and development community. One of the
outcomes of the workshop will be plans for taking advantage of new
government funding opportunities.
Problem solving is the focus of this workshop because of its relation
to school reform and restructuring efforts and because it is a domain of
pedagogy that can benefit most immediately from the developments
in CSCW technology. Problem solving includes activities such as
collecting and analyzing data, working with simulations of physical or
biological systems, finding the best mathematical analysis of a real
life scenarios, and the case-based learning used in many schools of law
and medicine. Collaborative problem solving in schools is making
use of computer tools for analysis, simulation, display, and
communication. The workshop will investigate ways to mold the
technology and the pedagogy to take best advantage of student
collaboration.
There are two distinct domains of work that this workshop intends to
develop and bring together.
1) WIDE AREA WORK GROUPS. Teachers, researchers and developers
in recent years have worked with a variety of projects that make use
of wide area connections among learners and schools. With
increasing attention to the Internet as a means of school networking,
these projects are on the verge of rapid expansion towards universal
access.
2) LOCAL WORK GROUPS. Teachers, researchers and developers have
also been working within classrooms to develop collaborative
techniques. Some of these are migrating to local area networks to
better support collaboration and communication.
Cross-cutting these two contexts for learning are distinct concerns for,
first, technology design and implementation and, second, research on
the impact on classrooms and the design of a new pedagogy that can
take advantage of the technology.
To conceptualize the issues we will address in this workshop, we
have constructed the accompanying two-by-two matrix. Each of the
cells will be represented by a member of the program committee
with expertise in that area. While we believe that work done within
each cell has distinct properties and will benefit from in-depth
discussion, we also believe that the integration across these cells will
be necessary if the workers in this field are to form a vibrant
community. We do not think these divisions are artificial but
represent real clusters of expertise that need to be brought together.
WITHIN CLASSROOMS BETWEEN SCHOOLS
PEDAGOGY ISSUES
theory Group 1 Group 2
research methods moderator: moderator:
problem applica- ROY PEA SHELLEY GOLDMAN
tions, teachers as
researchers
TECHNOLOGY ISSUES
design Group 3 Group 4
implementation moderator: moderator:
standards EARL WOODRUFF BEVERLY HUNTER
market strategies
Clearly, the research and pedagogical concerns must maintain a
consistent conversation with the development and design. Perhaps
more difficult, but critically important, is the integration of work
done within the the classroom and done over wide area networks. A
major goal of the workshop is to bring these together so that a
coherent approach can be taken to the opportunities for
internetworking in schools. Internet technology that is just now
beginning to enter schools is bringing these two worlds together for
the first time.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
Our workshop will be organized around discussions within and
between the four groups. After a period of introductions and
general discussion, the workshop will break into four parallel
sessions in which each participant will present their work informally.
We will encourage the use of video and software demonstrations in
these 2 hour sessions which will conclude with a discussion
summarizing the main findings and designing a presentation to
the whole group. After the lunch break, we will reconvene as a
whole group and hear reports from each subgroup. We will then
divide the remaining discussion between a session on the research/
pedagogical issues and the technical/design issues possibly running
part of that discussion in two parellel tracks.
PARTICIPANTS:
We expect to invite approximately 20 participants (in addition
to the program committee), with interests divided among the cells.
This open call for participation requests a summary of a position
with respect to one or more cells. The page lengths and due dates
for the position papers are listed in the general instructions
preceding the workshop descriptions. These papers should be
mailed directly to the contact person on or before the indicated date.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
SHELLEY GOLDMAN, a senior scientist at the Institute for Research on
Learning, has conducted ethnographic research on classroom and
computer-mediated discourse in schools and research settings.
BEVERLY HUNTER is the program officer at the National Science
Foundation responsible for research and development of
communication infrastructures for schools.
TIMOTHY KOSCHMANN (co-organizer), a professor at the Southern
Illinois University School of Medicine, chaired a workshop at SIU last
fall that brought together medical educators with researchers
involved with collaborative learning in schools.
DENIS NEWMAN (co-organizer), a senior scientist at Bolt Benerak
and Newman Inc., has conducted research and development on local
and wide area networks for schools.
ROY PEA is John Evans Professor of Education and Social Policy at
Northwestern University and a senior member of the Institute for
the Learning Sciences where his research and development work
includes multimedia and collaborative reasoning technologies.
EARL WOODRUFF is a professor in the Faculty of Education,
University of Toronto where he has been developing classroom
supports for constructivists models of learning as a contributor to the
CSILE project and in his work contrasting face-to-face and networked
learning groups.
CONTACT PERSON:
Denis Newman
Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.
10 Moulton St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
Phone: (619) 942-2180
Fax: (619) 942-2181
Email: dnewman@kirin.bbn.com
***************************************
CSCW TOOLS AND IMPLMENTATION
Simon Kaplan, University of Illinois
Prasun Dewan, Purdue University
Tom Rodden, Lancaster University
Steve Benford, Nottingham University
Philip Johnson, University of Hawaii
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
The current generation of CSCW applications provide models and
mechanisms aimed at supporting either a particular cooperative
activity or class of activities. These applications are often unaware of
the existence of other applications and provide few mechanisms for
working in conjunction with other applications. However, the nature
of cooperative work is that it occurs in conjunction with many
ongoing activities often in a seamless fashion.
Consequently, as CSCW applications become more widely available, it
will become increasingly necessary to focus on the computer
environment which supports them. Such an environment should be
aimed at allowing a multiplicity of CSCW approaches and paradigms
to co-exist. A central aim of such an environment should be the co-
existence of many forms of cooperation including:
remote/local cooperation
personal/group work
synchronous/asynchronous work
In addition CSCW applications are an integral part of the activities
which take place within the organization they are embedded. If one
considers the nature of groups working on a large scale over a long
time period, it becomes apparent that any major activity typically
involves the complex interaction of numerous sub-activities often
taking place within different applications. The general picture is of
many interrelated activities taking place within a world of shared
resources, people and information. Very often, the environment will
be the representation of the organization(s) within which activities
occur.
This workshop will examine the provision of services to support
cooperative applications at an architectural or systems environment
level. Important issues to be considered will include:
Appropriate architectures to support CSCW applications.
The provision of generic services for CSCW applications.
The impact of CSCW on existing supporting technologies and
architectures.
The development of appropriate models to promote cooperation
across CSCW applications.
Techniques to make appropriate features of supporting platforms
tailorable by both end-users and developers.
The development of techniques to allow organisational information
and resources to be shared between applications.
The incorporation of different media forms within supporting
infrastructures.
The role of standards in environments to support CSCW
applications.
The specific goals of the workshop are to:
Bring together researchers and practitioners interested in all
aspects of the problems associated with designing and implementing
systems support for CSCW applications.
Identify problems with current platforms and environments and
suggest possible solutions.
Identify and discuss appropriate theoretical and practical models
which are suitable to describe important characteristics of
supporting environments.
Identify the important future trends both in technological
development and standardization which are likely to influence CSCW
applications development.
This list of goals is not intended to be complete but rather an
indication of the kinds of topics we wish to discuss at the workshop.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
The proposed workshop will run for an entire day. The morning
session will consist of short selected presentaions from
participants. This session will end by selecting three or
four issues from a wider list of issues extracted from the
input documents. The afternoon session will discuss these
issues in greater depth. This may involve a number of different
subgroups depending on the number of participants. The goal of
the afternoon session will be to arrive at a set of clear
statements on each of the issues. These statements will be
incorporated into a final workshop report.
PARTICIPANTS:
We expect the audience to consist primarily of systems
developers interested in developing novel technology to
support CSCW. To ensure a coherent workshop, and because
attendence will most likely need to be limited, admission
will be by invitation only. Invitations will be issued in response
to a position paper. The paper should address participants work
relative to the issues surrounding the support of CSCW applications.
Details about the due deadlines and the length of the position
paper are listed in the paragraphs preceding these workshop
descriptions. The position papers should be sent directly to the
contact person.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
In order to encourage an international flavour to the workshop we
will have both a European and an American organisation body. The
European organisation will be shared between a group of European
researchers and will be coordinated by Tom Rodden and Steve
Benford. The USA organisation will be coordinated by Simon Kaplan
and Philip Johnson.
TOM RODDEN has been active in CSCW research since 1987. He was
co-organiser of the previous developers workshop in Amsterdam
which concentrated on Open CSCW systems. He is a member of the
organising committee for the UK special interest group on CSCW and
has been a program committee member for the last two European
conferences on CSCW. Dr. Rodden is also a member of the advisory
board for the International Journal on CSCW and co-director of the
recently established multidiscipinary CSCW research centre at
Lancaster University.
Dr. Rodden's current research interests are in the development of
appropriate supporting technology for cooperative work. A
significant amount of this research involves close cooperation with
other disciplines. He is a member of a Euorpean COTECH working
group investigating the development of an environment to support
cooperative working.
STEVE BENFORD is a member of the Communication Research Group
at the University of Nottingham. Over the past five years, he has
worked on a number of CSCW projects including AMIGO, COSMOS and
more recently, GRACE and the European MOCCA project. He has co-
edited two books on CSCW and has been a member of the organising
committee for the E-CSCW'89 and E-CSCW'91 conferences. He
is also a delegate to the ISO international standards group which is
currently developing a standard to support Asynchronous Group
Communication within the context of OSI.
Dr. Benford's current research interests are concerned with support
for large, heterogeneous groups. This includes the development of
distributed information sharing systems and also of CSCW
cyberspaces which provide distributed virtual worlds for interaction.
SIMON KAPLAN is Associate Professor of Computer Science and
Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests
include CSCW, software engineering, human-computer interaction,
programming languages and software environments and tools. He
was co-organiser (with Tom Rodden) of the E-CSCW-91 developers
workshop in Amsterdam, is on the program committee of the E-CSCW-
93 and is technical program committee chairman for the 1993 ACM COCS
Conference. His research group is developing the
ConversationBuilder, an open environment for support of
collaborative work.
PHILIP JOHNSON is an Assistant Professor of Computer and
Information Science at the University of Hawaii, and Director of the
Collaborative Software Development Laboratory. His research
interests include computer-supported cooperative work, software
engineering, and type systems for programming languages. His
research group is currently implementing a system for
representation and support of structural evolution in collaborative
systems.
CONTACT PERSON:
Simon Kaplan
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1304 W. Springfield Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
USA
Phone: (217) 244-0392
FAX: (217)333-3501
Email: kaplan@cs.uiuc.edu
***************************************
INTERDISCIPLINARY THEORY FOR
CSCW DESIGN
Yvonne Waern, University of Stockholm
Dan Shapiro, Lancaster University
Thomas Schael, Instituto RSP
***************************************
OBJECTIVES AND THEMES:
It is important, or at the very least useful, to be able to
state clearly why CSCW should be taken seriously. This
involves us in theoretical as well as practical issues.
We need CSCW:
1. because work is done in highly complex contexts of
inter-relationship with others (and becoming more so);
2. to improve the quality of working life by matching
systems to the complexity of work rather than
constraining people to the simplicity of systems;
3. to improve commercial competitiveness and efficiency
in the delivery of public services.
We need MULTIDISCIPLINARY CSCW:
1. because the domain issues have become too complex to
be tackled by non-specialists on the basis of 'common
sense' alone;
2. because otherwise crucial aspects (e.g. interface
issues) are likely to be overlooked.
We need INTERDISCIPLINARY CSCW:
because without explicit and directed effort, the separate
contributing disciplines will take only limited account of
each others' needs, interests, conventions and languages,
and so their findings and developments will not be mutually
usable.
We need interdisciplinary THEORY for CSCW:
1. because each contributing discipline has a very
different understanding of its participation in design;
2. to get a comparative grip on what terms and concepts
different participants seem to need to work with, and
what problems or contributions these constitute for
other participants.
Yet in tackling interdisciplinary theory for CSCW we need a
very strong anchor of common sense, as otherwise we get
drawn into impossible projects, like effecting a general
theoretical, methodological and practical reconciliation
between computer science(s), psychology(s), systems and
management science(s), sociology(s), linguistics, etc. We
can help to do this by keeping our eye fixed firmly on
interdisciplinary theory FOR THE PRACTICAL PURPOSES
OF CSCW DESIGN.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES:
We propose to focus on four main bases for attacking the
problem of interdisciplinary participation:
(1) What are the key goals and methods, and the key
characteristics (rationalist; empirical; constructionist;
etc) of the different disciplines which contribute to CSCW
design?
(2) What are the key terms and concepts used for CSCW by
contributing disciplines? To what extent are they
reconcilable, and to what extent do they conflict?
(3) What clear examples are there of the ways in which
various disciplinary contributions "make a real difference"
to CSCW design?
(4) What practical experience is there of interdisciplinary
collaboration in CSCW design, and what lessons for theory
emerge?
The workshop day would be divided into four sessions, each
addressing one of these themes.
Different activities would be appropriate for each topic:
(1) would best be served by short position papers followed
by general discussion;
(2) by group structuring of concepts entered on scraps of
paper and tacked to a board for reference, discussion,
change or deletion;
(3) by brief descriptions of some target systems, followed
by discussion; and
(4) by the review of particular experiences of
collaboration, introduced by their protagonists.
PARTICIPANTS:
This proposal originates in the work of an
interdisciplinary and international research group funded
by the European Commission, which has been investigating
INterdisciplinary Theoretical Approaches for Cooperation
Technology - 'INTACT' ('Cooperation Technology' is a
European synonym for CSCW). This group of seven members
(four of whom expect to attend at Toronto) forms an initial
nucleus for the workshop. Additionally, Brigitte Jordan of
Xerox PARC and the Learning Research Center will
participate in the organization of the workshop, and she
and some of her colleagues will attend.
Participants will be invited:
1. to argue for modifications to the themes and structure
if they think this appropriate;
2. to choose a theme or combination of themes as the
focus of their contribution;
3. to prepare a position paper relating to their
chosen themes, for circulation in advance of the
workshop. The workshop organizers will provide at least
one substantial position paper on each of the four
themes.
Due dates and length requirements for the position
papers are described in the general submission guidelines
preceding the workshop descriptions. They should be sent
to the designated contact person for each workshop.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
YVONNE WAERN: Researcher in Human Computer Interaction
with a background in Cognitive Psychology. In the last few years
she has been involved in studies of problem solving work with
groups of mechanical design engineers. She is author and co-author of
several articles and books on cognitive psychology and cognitive
science and a grant holder on several large UK and European research
projects.
DAN SHAPIRO: Department of Sociology, University of Lancaster,
UK, and Director of the Centre for Research in CSCW. He is author
and co-author of several articles and two books on CSCW issues and
a grant holder on several large UK and European CSCW research projects.
THOMAS SCHAEL: Consultant and Partner at the Instituto RSO,
Milan, and member of University of Aachen (RWTH), Germany. He is
author and co-author of many articles and training materials on CSCW.
MEMBERS OF THE 'INTACT' GROUP:
Workshop organizers:
Yvonne Waern, Department of Psychology, Stockholm
University, Sweden
Dan Shapiro, Department of Sociology and Centre for
Research in CSCW, Lancaster University, UK
Thomas Schael, Instituto RSO, Milano, Italy
Other members:
Gerrit van der Veer, Department of Computer Science,
Free University, Amsterdam; and Department of
Ergonomics, Twente University, The Netherlands
(Chair)
Steven Guest, Department of Computer Science,
Loughborough University of Technology, UK
Michael Tauber, Department of Computer Science,
University of Paderborn, Germany
Roland Traunmueller, Department of Informatics,
University of Linz, Austria
CONTACT PERSON:
Dan Shapiro
Department of Sociology and
Centre for Research in CSCW
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4YL
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 524 65201 ext 4175
FAX: +44 524 844788
Email: shapiro@lancaster.ac.uk
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!socicom From: Rob Kling <kling@ics.uci.edu> Subject: CSCW'92 workshops (very long message) Newsgroups: comp.society Date: 22 Jul 92 16:12:23 GMT Message-ID: <9207220912.aa25756@q2.ics.uci.edu> Approved: socicom@auvm.american.edu 07/22/92 21:57:59 Sender: socicom@auvm.american.edu Lines: 1098