This paper puts forth a vision and an architecture for a community knowledge evolution system. We propose augmenting a multimedia document repository (digital library) with innovative knowledge evolution support, including computer-mediated communications, community process support, decision support, advanced hypermedia features, and conceptual knowledge structures. These tools, and the techniques developed around them, would enable members of a virtual community to learn from, contribute to, and collectively build upon the community's knowledge and improve many member tasks. The resulting Collaborative Knowledge Evolution Support System (CKESS) would provide an enhanced digital library infrastructure serving as an ever-evolving repository of the community's knowledge, which members would actively use in everyday tasks and regularly update.
Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) are a form of "e-learning" that emphasizes the use of the Internet to support class discussions and activities. This paper presents a qualitative study of role changes that occur when faculty become online or "virtual" professors. In 20 semi-structured interviews of faculty, coded with pattern analysis software, the authors captured role changes enacted by instructors in ALN settings--cognitive roles, affective roles, and managerial roles. The cognitive role, which relates to mental processes of learning, information storage, and thinking, shifts to one of deeper cognitive complexity. The affective role, which relates to influencing the relationships between students, the instructor, and the classroom atmosphere, required faculty to find new tools to express emotion, yet they found the relationships with students more intimate. The managerial role, which deals with class and course management, requires grater attention to detail, more structure, and additional student monitoring. Overall, faculty reported a change in their teaching persona, toward more precision in their presentation of materials and instruction, combined with a shift to a more Socratic pedagogy, emphasizing multilogues with students. The main sources of frustration and of fulfillment of the virtual professor is explored.
This paper presents a descriptive evaluation of 54 case and field studies from 79 published papers spanning two decades of group support systems (GSS) research. It organizes the methodology and results of these studies into a four-factor framework consisting of contextual factors, intervening factors, adaptation factors, and outcome factors. The tables will provide the GSS researcher with a summary of what has been studied. The appendices provide a detailed description of the methodology and the results.
Research on computer-mediated communication and group support systems has focused on the study of a single mode of communication technology in comparison to unsupported face-to-face (FtF) groups. However, as organizations combine traditional FtF meetings with a variety of anytime/anyplace communication technologies to support collaborative work, the need to study these new forms of interaction grows greater. This experiment builds on prior work by comparing the effectiveness of four modes of communication for groups working on the upstream phases of software development: (1) face-to-face, (2) synchronous computer conferencing, (3) asynchronous computer conferencing, and (4) combined FtF and asynchronous computer conferencing. Teams of graduate students determined the requirements for an automated post office as a course assignment over a period of two weeks. The creativity and quality of solutions produced by groups in the combined condition were higher than those in the remaining three communication modes. Combined groups were generally more satisfied with their solutions, although no differences among conditions were found regarding satisfaction with the process used to accomplish work.
By mid-1998, approximately 200 different controlled experiments had been published in 230 articles in refereed journals or major conference proceedings, which examined processes and outcomes in computer-supported group decision making. This paper is a concise overview of what has been studied and how: the systems, independent, intervening, adaptation, and dependent variables, manipulated or measured, and experimental procedures employed. Part I categorizes the contextual and intervening factors. Part II analyzes 1,582 hypotheses resulting from pairings of independent and dependent variables. The results show that the modal outcome for group support systems (GSS) compared with face-to-face (FtF) methods is "no difference," while the overall percentage of positive effects for hypotheses that compare GSS with FtF is a disappointing 16.6 percent. Experiments with seven to ten groups per treatment condition working on idea-generation tasks and using GSS technology show an improvement up to 29.0 percent. These results are moderated by technology, process structure, communication mode, group factors, task type, the number of experimental groups per treatment condition, and the type of dependent variable measured. The purpose of this paper is to aid the GSS researcher by presenting detailed results of what has been studied and found in previous experiments, along with a discussion of what needs to be studied.
Distributed group support systems are likely to be widely used in the future as a means for dispersed groups of people to work together through computer networks. They combine the characteristics of computer-mediated communication systems with the specialized tools and processes developed in the context of group decision support systems, to provide communications, a group memory, and tools and structures to coordinate the group process and analyze data. These tools and structures can take a wide variety of forms in order to best support computer-mediated interaction for different types of tasks and groups. This article summarizes five case studies of different distributed group support systems developed by the authors and their colleagues over the last decade to support different types of tasks and to accommodate fairly large numbers of participants (tens to hundreds). The case studies are placed within conceptual frameworks that aid in classifying and comparing such systems. The results of the case studies demonstrate that design requirements and the associated research issues for group support systems can be very different in the distributed environment as compared to the decision room approach.
Twenty-four groups of five professionals and managers used computer conferences to reach agreement on the best solution to a complex ranking problem. Two software tools for structuring the conferences were employed in a two-by-two factorial design. Groups with "designated leadership" (DL) used software support to elect a discussion leader. Groups with"statistical feedback" (SF) were presented with tables periodically that displayed the mean rank and degree of consensus for each item. DL improved levels of consensus; in the absence of a leader, SF improved level of agreement slightly. Statistical feedback as operationalized in this experiment was detrimental to the ability of a group to achieve "collective intelligence," defined as a group decision better than the prediscussion decision of any of its individual members. Characteristics of the individuals and groups were also associated with variations in outcomes.