Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Reading Course for the Winter term 2002

Prof. Dr. Rainer Unland – visiting Dr. Ulieru

Course Title

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Prerequisite:

This course is oriented towards graduates who have serious interest in Computer Supported Cooperative Work and who already have some basic knowledge in this area.

Learning Methods:

The course is a combination of reading and seminar course. A list of readings, organized by topic, will be provided to students. Students are supposed to present and discuss the readings and their implications. It is expected that they take ownership of particular topics, and it will be their responsibility to gather and distribute the readings, and to run the class on that topic.

Description of Course:

This course will cover selected, more recent topics in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

Structure of the Course:

The topics will depend on the interests of the students:

A possible structure of the course is:

1.         CSCW-Tools (Groupware) and their application

2.         New Paradigms in CSCW: The Holonic Enterprise

a.       Web-Centric Virtual Enterprises

b.      Modeling Enterprises as Agents

c.       The Holonic Enterprise as a Multi-Agent System

3.         Multi-Agent Systems: Issues relevant to CSCW

a.       Agents as autonomous systems

b.      Agents as holons

c.       Cooperation, Coordination and Negotiation in MAS

4.         Basic techniques and tools

a.         Communication-oriented synchronous tools

b.        Communication-oriented asynchronous tools

c.         Tools for coordination

d.        Collaboration-oriented synchronous tools

e.         Collaboration-oriented asynchronous tools

5.         Architectures of CSCW systems

a.         Synchronous architectures

b.        Enterprise-related groupware platforms

c.         MAS architectures (FIPA architectural standard)

d.        Agent Platforms (Agentcities)

 

6.         Generally applicable tools and techniques

a.         Workflow management systems

b.        Tele conference systems

c.         Group (decision) support systems resp. electronic meeting systems

7.         Domain specific tools and techniques

a.         Cooperative teaching and learning

b.        Cooperative Software Development

c.         Community-Support Systems

8.         CSCW-related concepts

a.         Adaptability

b.        Awareness

c.         Collaborative Filtering

d.        Anonymity

e.         Parallelism

f.          Shared material and group resp. organizational memory

g.         Group productivity

9.         More recent approaches and visions

a.         Ubiquitous computing

b.        Cooperative buildings and roomware

c.         Community-Support Systems