Groupware

Introduction || E-mail || Electronic communities || Group tools || Meetings || Video in groupwork || Augmented spaces

Introduction to Groupware

Main topics in the Introduction lectures

• What is a group? How does it differ from a community?
• What kind of groupware is there?
• How does groupware differ from single user or organizational software?
• What are the main challenges a groupware developer faces when compared to developing a single-user application or software for the whole organization?
• Engelbart's historic video http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

Readings

Jonathan Grudin, Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for Developers. Comm. ACM 37, 1 (Jan. 1994), 92-105.

Clarence A. Ellis, Simon J. Gibbs, Gail L. Rein, Groupware: Some Issues and Experiences. Comm. ACM 34, 1 (Jan. 1991), 38-58.

Assignment

The first work assignment for whole class will take place in BSCW which is the groupware platform this course will operate on. BUT, to gain access to BSCW, you will need to subscribe to the course mailing list first. Only then you will be invited to the course forum in BSCW. It is a closed forum and not reached by outsiders.

Details of the assignment will appear in BSCW.

• I will invite those on the class mailing list on Wednesday (14.1.) individually to register to the BSCW system
• you can access BSCW from any www browser
• study the functionality and get to know your fellow students -- there's a test forum in BSCW. Especially group building activities are needed now. Tell about yourself to your fellow students in the test forums of BSCW.
• To get the Groupware course started, there will be also a discussion going on about the experiences you and we have on groupware and working in groups.
• The paper "8 challenges for groupware developers" by Grudin is important, and you should start by reading it. There will be also a discussion on the challenges in the BSCW forum. Further detail in the forum. Participate!

Bonus Problems

1. In his recent article Grudin discusses the new potential of Groupware: From "Here and Now" to "Everywhere and Forever". What does he mean with this, and do you agree?
   Jonathan Grudin, Group Dynamics and Ubiquitous Computing. Comm. ACM 45, 12 (Dec. 2002), 74-78. ACM DOI: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/585597.585618. [PDF].

2. Jonathan Grudin discusses groupware's history in CSCW: History and Focus, IEEE Computer, 27, 5, 19-26, http://www1.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/IEEE94/. Read the paper. Who invented the terms Groupware and CSCW, and when did they emerge? What can you tell about the research efforts on CSCW and Groupware in different countries?

3. Think about the time-space matrix. In which category could you place electronic mail, and why? What about electronic calendars?

4. Electronic calendars are a good example of discretionary databases. What does that mean -- what is a discretionary database?

   Grudin and Palen have studied group calendars in two large organizations, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Their study in 1995 indicates that several groups used computer calendars for meeting scheduling though no managerial mandate for using the calendars was found. Why were the people still "forced" to use their electronic calendars? Read the study. Do you have similar experiences?

   • Grudin, J. and Palen, L., 1995. Why Groupware Succeeds: Discretion or Mandate? Proc. ECSCW'95, 263-278. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. http://www1.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/ECSCW95/ECSCW.html
   • L. Palen and J. Grudin, 2001. Discretionary Adoption of Group Support Software: Lessons from Calendar Applications. To appear in B.E. Munkvold (Ed.), Organizational implementation of collaboration technology. Available at http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/coet/Grudin/DiscChoice/paper.pdf.
5. Describe your own experiences on working in a group: what kind of groups do you know, and what has made them succesful/unsuccesful?

Link list

http://research.microsoft.com/~jgrudin/

The home page of Jonathan Grudin, with lots of recent publications in CSCW.

http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/augment-132811.htm

Douglas Engelbart, Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware. Proceedings of the Groupware'92 Conference, San Jose, CA, August 3-5, 1992, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

http://www.UsabilityFirst.com/groupware/

Usability First by Tom Brinck has excellent pages on Groupware. introduction, link lists and also a glossary.

Another introduction to the field of groupware

David Coleman, ed., Groupware: Collaborative Strategies for Corporate LANs and Intranets. Prentice Hall, 1997. Sample chapter is available on-line: David Coleman, Groupware - The Changing Environment. http://www.collaborate.com/publication/publications_resources_groupware_book_toc.htm

Computer Supported Co-operative Work

On-line book Computer Supported Co-operative Work (Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, ed.,1999, John Wiley & Sons Limited) contains 9 chapters on different trends in the topic. Available at http://www-ihm.lri.fr/~mbl/Trends-CSCW/fulltext.html

Office Automation

For instance TeamWARE Office (http://www.teamware.com/), initially been developed in Finland by ICL, is one example of a program family which has grown from enabling office automation to fully-featured groupware, and to the WWW.

January 12, 2004. Saila Ovaska (ov@cs.uta.fi)