This paper introduces COAST, an object-oriented toolkit for the development of synchronous groupware, which enhances the usability and simplifies the development of such applications. COAST offers basic and generic components for the design of synchronous groupware and is complemented by a methodology for groupware development.Basic features of the toolkit include transaction-controlled access to replicated shared objects, transparent replication management, and a filly optimistic concurrency control. Development support is provided by a session concept supporting the flexible coupling of shared objects' aspects between concurrent users and by a fully transparent updating concept for displays which is based on declarative programming.
rom the beginning, hypermedia application design has been drii'en primarily by technological innovations and constrained by technical feasibility. For the last few years, however, usability methods and results from human factors research have been gaining mon; influence [17]. Despite this trend toward user-oriented development procedures, issues of cognition and human information processing still are widely neglected and barely influence hypermedia design.
Early hypertext systems were monolithic and closed, but newer systems tend to be open, distributed, and support collaboration. While this development has resulted in increased openness and flexibility, integrating or adapting various different tools, such as content editors, viewers or even other link servers has remained a tedious task. Many developers were implementing essentially similar components, simply for the benefit of having their own platform on which to experiment with hypertexts.The open hypermedia community is addressing this issue of interoperability between open hypermedia systems. The goal of the community is to provide an open hypermedia framework that can be used by application developers outside the community to construct more powerful hypermedia-aware applications. The design and evolution of this framework is presented along with the requirements that drove its development. The framework has matured to the point where it has supported the creation of a number of research prototypes. These prototypes are described and evaluated with respect to their use of the framework. KEYWORDS:Open hypermedia protocol navigational interface (OHP-Nav), component-based open hypermedia system (CB-OHS), reference architecture, data model, interoperability, open hypermedia systems working group (OHSWG), structural computing.
Today, most cooperative systems support primarily either asynchronous or synchronous (real time) cooperative work. We feel that both synchronous and asynchronous cooperation are extremely important aspects of working in groups, and to ignore one or the other is to supply only half a solution to users. In this paper, we describe the extension of the hypertext authoring system SEPIA developed at GMD-IPSI to support cooperative work among hypertext authors. Cooperative SEPIA is unique not only in its ability to support cooperative work in both of these categories, but also in how smoothly and naturally it supports the transition between these two categories.
This study reports findings from an experimental field study of scripted collaboration for net-based learning in the context of a one-semester university course on operating systems. In scripted collaboration, activities of learners are coordinated and guided according to particular rules, implemented via respective tools in the learning environment. Forty-two distributed groups of three students collaborated on five successive assignments employing the virtual learning environment CURE. Three collaborative tasksbrainstorming, clustering, and essay writing-were implemented as scripts with dedicated tools guiding the net-based collaborative process. Half of the groups collaborated via scripted task versions, and, as a control, half of the groups performed the tasks in a nonscripted manner. No general advantage of scripting was found concerning acquisition of knowledge; nor was overscripting observed. Collaborative scripting appears to be neither generally advantageous nor disadvantageous, but highly contingent on the particular content and task under consideration. Results suggest that scripting might be slightly more supportive in more complex tasks such as essay writing, in contrast to undemanding tasks such as brainstorming.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.