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This thesis addresses the need of Naval Aviation Maintenance to streamline and more effectively manage the process of technical consultation aboard deployed aircraft carriers. The current process involves the physical transportation of an appropriate technician to the carrier to perform required maintenance and/or repairs. In light of the technology currently available this process becomes obviously obsolete, overly costly and needlessly time consuming. By implementing wireless technology in combination with advanced software allowing the virtual collaboration of parties widely separated by geographical distance the Navy can establish a \"virtual technical presence\" onboard aircraft carriers wherever they may be in the world. This thesis will describe how the fusion of wearable computing, augmented reality, intelligent agents coupled with CoABS, and a modern collaborative software application can revolutionize Naval aviation maintenance as we know it. The technology is there - it only remains for the Navy to leverage it and take advantage of the significant returns that it will provide. The implementation of this technology will allow maintainers onboard deployed aircraft carriers to consult in an augmented virtual environment with technical assets on the shore. These shore-based assets will then be able to \"walk\" deployed personnel through complicated repair procedures in a matter of minutes or hours as opposed to the previous need to wait for days for the technician to arrive. This is a bold and innovative new concept that will allow commands at sea to increase their levels of combat readiness and allow them the ability to respond to ever changing mission needs. Turn around times for the repair of critical parts and assemblies will be reduced and readiness levels elevated. The ultimate goal of any command is mission accomplishment. This system will aid commands in achieving that all important goal.

This article presents the early findings of an experimental design to see if students perform better when taking collaborative notes in small groups as compared to students who use traditional notes. Students are increasingly bringing electronic devices into social science classrooms. Few instructors have attempted robustly and systematically to implement this technology to facilitate student learning. This study examines the efficacy of using technology to improve student note-taking. Cloud-based collaborative software makes it possible for the first time to break down the most basic walls that separate students during the process of taking and encoding notes. Collaborative note participants used Google Drive under direction of an instructor to assess performance differences. Strong evidence is found that such groups improve grades and related learning outcomes.

The GLEON Research And PRAGMA Lake Expedition -- GRAPLE -- is a collaborative effort between computer science and lake ecology researchers. It aims to improve our understanding and predictive capacity of the threats to the water quality of our freshwater resources, including climate change. This paper presents GRAPLEr, a distributed computing system used to address the modeling needs of GRAPLE researchers. GRAPLEr integrates and applies overlay virtual network, high-throughput computing, and Web service technologies in a novel way. First, its user-level IP-over-P2P (IPOP) overlay network allows compute and storage resources distributed across independently-administered institutions (including private and public clouds) to be aggregated into a common virtual network, despite the presence of firewalls and network address translators. Second, resources aggregated by the IPOP virtual network run unmodified high-throughput computing middleware (HTCondor) to enable large numbers of model simulations to be executed concurrently across the distributed computing resources. Third, a Web service interface allows end users to submit job requests to the system using client libraries that integrate with the R statistical computing environment. The paper presents the GRAPLEr architecture, describes its implementation and reports on its performance for batches of General Lake Model (GLM) simulations across three cloud infrastructures (University of Florida, CloudLab, and Microsoft Azure).

This paper presents some fundamental collective choice theory for information system designers, particularly those working in the field of computer-supported cooperative work. This paper is focused on a presentation of Arrow's Possibility and Impossibility theorems which form the fundamental boundary on the efficacy of collective choice: voting and selection procedures. It restates the conditions that Arrow placed on collective choice functions in more rigorous second-order logic, which could be used as a set of test conditions for implementations, and a useful probabilistic result for analyzing votes on issue pairs. It also describes some simple collective choice functions. There is also some discussion of how enterprises should approach putting their resources under collective control: giving an outline of a superstructure of performative agents to carry out this function and what distributing processing technology would be needed.

I will give an overview of my research and present a 5-year research program focusing on activity awareness and knowledge sharing in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). I will first present two studies on activity awareness with pairs performing a collaborative editing project and then two studies with teams performing an emergency management planning task on maps. Many failures in CSCW systems are attributed to inadequate support for the collaborators’ awareness. In the studies of awareness I draw on prior fieldwork and model typical awareness problems in a controlled lab setting. I compare pairs working in two functionally equivalent CSCW systems, Bridge and Groove. I focus on how workers’ awareness can be measured empirically and characterized theoretically. The findings show that many events remain unnoticed in current systems. The results also suggest that awareness should be construed and measured as a process and careful consideration is needed for person variables such as metacognition. I discuss differences between the two systems and implications for design. I present a theoretical articulation of the concept of activity awareness in sub-processes. A basic sub-process of activity awareness in teamwork is common ground building. The second part of the research program focuses on this process. I present two studies on common ground building in teams making complex group decisions. Three-person groups collaborate on an emergency planning task using geographic maps. In the first study the teams use a paper prototype and work face-to-face around a tabletop. I present the changes in common ground and some design requirements elicited from this study. I give an overview of the software prototype that was developed. I describe the results of a second study, a comparable distributed experiment where the teams use the software prototype but perform the same task. Finally, I compare the results and explore implications for system design and common ground theory. ©2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Cloud Computing Support for Massively Social Gaming – Alexandru Iosup, Delft University of Technology CloudStudio: Collaborative, Cloud-Based Software Development – Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich Cloud TV – Karin Breitman, PUC-Rio

Locating and obtaining context sensitive information in a mobile environment has always been a challenge. This is especially true for pervasive computing environments where in addition to limited computing and battery resources, mobile devices cannot always rely on the help of a proxy-based wired infrastructure. Rather, a collaboration among peer mobile entities is required. It allows entities to obtain data that may be otherwise inaccessible due to nature of the environment and to reduce their computation cost by reusing answers generated by other peers. We introduce the problem of data interaction among peers in ad-hoc networks and propose a collaboration query processing protocol based on the principles of Contract Nets. Once an entity identifies information it needs via the help of user's profiles, our protocol enables the device to locate data sources and obtain data matching its specific query requiring one or more data sources. We show the effectiveness of our technique through performance evaluation of entities querying for data while moving in a city-like environment.

I will give an overview of my research and present a 5-year research program focusing on activity awareness and knowledge sharing in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). I will first present two studies on activity awareness with pairs performing a collaborative editing project and then two studies with teams performing an emergency management planning task on maps. Many failures in CSCW systems are attributed to inadequate support for the collaborators’ awareness. In the studies of awareness I draw on prior fieldwork and model typical awareness problems in a controlled lab setting. I compare pairs working in two functionally equivalent CSCW systems, Bridge and Groove. I focus on how workers’ awareness can be measured empirically and characterized theoretically. The findings show that many events remain unnoticed in current systems. The results also suggest that awareness should be construed and measured as a process and careful consideration is needed for person variables such as metacognition. I discuss differences between the two systems and implications for design. I present a theoretical articulation of the concept of activity awareness in sub-processes. A basic sub-process of activity awareness in teamwork is common ground building. The second part of the research program focuses on this process. I present two studies on common ground building in teams making complex group decisions. Three-person groups collaborate on an emergency planning task using geographic maps. In the first study the teams use a paper prototype and work face-to-face around a tabletop. I present the changes in common ground and some design requirements elicited from this study. I give an overview of the software prototype that was developed. I describe the results of a second study, a comparable distributed experiment where the teams use the software prototype but perform the same task. Finally, I compare the results and explore implications for system design and common ground theory. ©2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Knowledge management in general tries to organize and make available important know-how, whenever and where ever is needed. Today, organizations rely on decision-makers to produce "mission critical" decisions that am based on inputs from multiple domains. The ideal decision-maker has a profound understanding of specific domains that influence the decision-making process coupled with the experience that allows them to act quickly and decisively on the information. In addition, learning companies benefit by not repeating costly mistakes, and by reducing time-to-market in Research & Development projects. Group-decision making tools can help companies make better decisions by capturing the knowledge from groups of experts. Furthermore, companies that capture their customers preferences can improve their customer service, which translates to larger profits. Therefore collaborative computing provides a common communication space, improves sharing of knowledge, provides a mechanism for real-time feedback on the tasks being performed, helps to optimize processes, and results in a centralized knowledge warehouse. This paper presents the research directions. of a project which seeks to augment an advanced collaborative web-based environment called Postdoc, with workflow capabilities. Postdoc is a "government-off-the-shelf" document management software developed at NASA-Ames Research Center (ARC).

The constructivist theory indicates that knowledge is not something finished and complete. However, the individuals must construct it through the interaction with the physical and social environment. The Active Learning is a methodology designed to support the constructivism through the involvement of students in their learning process, allowing them to make analysis, synthesis and evaluations, therefore developing their thinking and reasoning abilities. The technology supports active learning through Classroom Response Systems (CRSs), which usually use clickers devices to allow students to submit answers to a questionnaire proposed by the teacher. However, these systems have some drawbacks, for example not considering the students' individualities, personal characteristics and needs. In this way, this study describes the creation of the LSQuiz, a CRS that implements a collaborative process that allows teachers to propose questions to students, who may choose to solve them individually or ask colleagues to help solve them. The LSQuiz applies concepts related to ubiquitous computing, such as context awareness and the analysis of the interactions among students to determine which student is the most suitable at a given moment to provide help. The system validation indicates wide acceptance by students, who consider the possibility of classroom collaboration an important element to support their learning process. The experiment indicates that adopting a CRS associated with ubiquitous computing features is a valid and effective way to promote active learning. [For the complete proceedings, see ED557311.]

The constructivist theory indicates that knowledge is not something finished and complete. However, the individuals must construct it through the interaction with the physical and social environment. The Active Learning is a methodology designed to support the constructivism through the involvement of students in their learning process, allowing them to make analysis, synthesis and evaluations, therefore developing their thinking and reasoning abilities. The technology supports active learning through Classroom Response Systems (CRSs), which usually use clickers devices to allow students to submit answers to a questionnaire proposed by the teacher. However, these systems have some drawbacks, for example not considering the students' individualities, personal characteristics and needs. In this way, this study describes the creation of the LSQuiz, a CRS that implements a collaborative process that allows teachers to propose questions to students, who may choose to solve them individually or ask colleagues to help solve them. The LSQuiz applies concepts related to ubiquitous computing, such as context awareness and the analysis of the interactions among students to determine which student is the most suitable at a given moment to provide help. The system validation indicates wide acceptance by students, who consider the possibility of classroom collaboration an important element to support their learning process. The experiment indicates that adopting a CRS associated with ubiquitous computing features is a valid and effective way to promote active learning. [For the complete proceedings, see ED557311.]

The constructivist theory indicates that knowledge is not something finished and complete. However, the individuals must construct it through the interaction with the physical and social environment. The Active Learning is a methodology designed to support the constructivism through the involvement of students in their learning process, allowing them to make analysis, synthesis and evaluations, therefore developing their thinking and reasoning abilities. The technology supports active learning through Classroom Response Systems (CRSs), which usually use clickers devices to allow students to submit answers to a questionnaire proposed by the teacher. However, these systems have some drawbacks, for example not considering the students' individualities, personal characteristics and needs. In this way, this study describes the creation of the LSQuiz, a CRS that implements a collaborative process that allows teachers to propose questions to students, who may choose to solve them individually or ask colleagues to help solve them. The LSQuiz applies concepts related to ubiquitous computing, such as context awareness and the analysis of the interactions among students to determine which student is the most suitable at a given moment to provide help. The system validation indicates wide acceptance by students, who consider the possibility of classroom collaboration an important element to support their learning process. The experiment indicates that adopting a CRS associated with ubiquitous computing features is a valid and effective way to promote active learning. [For the complete proceedings, see ED557311.]

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm that provides computing, storage, and networking resources within the edge of the mobile Radio Access Network (RAN). MEC servers are deployed on generic computing platform within the RAN and allow for delay-sensitive and context-aware applications to be executed in close proximity to the end users. This approach alleviates the backhaul and core network and is crucial for enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth, and agile mobile services. This article envisages a real-time, context-aware collaboration framework that lies at the edge of the RAN, constituted of MEC servers and mobile devices, and that amalgamates the heterogeneous resources at the edge. Specifically, we introduce and study three strong use cases ranging from mobile-edge orchestration, collaborative caching and processing and multi-layer interference cancellation. We demonstrate the promising benefits of these approaches in facilitating the evolution to 5G networks. Finally, we discuss the key technical challenges and open-research issues that need to be addressed in order to make an efficient integration of MEC into 5G ecosystem.

This article is from Frontiers in Neuroinformatics , volume 8 . Abstract The Canadian Brain Imaging Research Platform (CBRAIN) is a web-based collaborative research platform developed in response to the challenges raised by data-heavy, compute-intensive neuroimaging research. CBRAIN offers transparent access to remote data sources, distributed computing sites, and an array of processing and visualization tools within a controlled, secure environment. Its web interface is accessible through any modern browser and uses graphical interface idioms to reduce the technical expertise required to perform large-scale computational analyses. CBRAIN's flexible meta-scheduling has allowed the incorporation of a wide range of heterogeneous computing sites, currently including nine national research High Performance Computing (HPC) centers in Canada, one in Korea, one in Germany, and several local research servers. CBRAIN leverages remote computing cycles and facilitates resource-interoperability in a transparent manner for the end-user. Compared with typical grid solutions available, our architecture was designed to be easily extendable and deployed on existing remote computing sites with no tool modification, administrative intervention, or special software/hardware configuration. As October 2013, CBRAIN serves over 200 users spread across 53 cities in 17 countries. The platform is built as a generic framework that can accept data and analysis tools from any discipline. However, its current focus is primarily on neuroimaging research and studies of neurological diseases such as Autism, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, Multiple Sclerosis as well as on normal brain structure and development. This technical report presents the CBRAIN Platform, its current deployment and usage and future direction.

This article is from Frontiers in Neuroinformatics , volume 8 . Abstract The Canadian Brain Imaging Research Platform (CBRAIN) is a web-based collaborative research platform developed in response to the challenges raised by data-heavy, compute-intensive neuroimaging research. CBRAIN offers transparent access to remote data sources, distributed computing sites, and an array of processing and visualization tools within a controlled, secure environment. Its web interface is accessible through any modern browser and uses graphical interface idioms to reduce the technical expertise required to perform large-scale computational analyses. CBRAIN's flexible meta-scheduling has allowed the incorporation of a wide range of heterogeneous computing sites, currently including nine national research High Performance Computing (HPC) centers in Canada, one in Korea, one in Germany, and several local research servers. CBRAIN leverages remote computing cycles and facilitates resource-interoperability in a transparent manner for the end-user. Compared with typical grid solutions available, our architecture was designed to be easily extendable and deployed on existing remote computing sites with no tool modification, administrative intervention, or special software/hardware configuration. As October 2013, CBRAIN serves over 200 users spread across 53 cities in 17 countries. The platform is built as a generic framework that can accept data and analysis tools from any discipline. However, its current focus is primarily on neuroimaging research and studies of neurological diseases such as Autism, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, Multiple Sclerosis as well as on normal brain structure and development. This technical report presents the CBRAIN Platform, its current deployment and usage and future direction.

Beyond cognitive competence, other abilities are relevant to labor market nowadays, including critical thinking, self confidence, teamwork and communication. It is then important to introduce in the learning process practices that contribute to both the acquirement of knowledge and the development of soft skills. A prominent answer to this challenge is the use of the collaborative learning, where students work together to solve a problem or complete a task. In this paper, we present three strategies to implement collaborative testing in class. We also evaluate the application of such strategies in a computing course in order to provide evidences of their effectiveness compared to traditional tests. We found that collaborative testing contributed not only to improve students' performance in tests, but have a positive impact on perceived learning and students' satisfaction. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600498.]

Technology plays a crucial role in facilitating collaboration within the scientific community. Cloud-computing applications, such as Google Drive, can be used to model such collaboration and support inquiry within the secondary science classroom. Little is known about pre-service teachers' beliefs related to the envisioned use of collaborative, cloud-based technologies. These beliefs may influence future integration. This study finds several first-order barriers, such as perceptions that these tools would take too much time to use. Second-order barriers include perceptions that this technology would not promote face-to-face collaboration skills, would create classroom management challenges, and beliefs that the technology does not help students understand the nature of science. Suggestions for mitigating these barriers within preservice education technology courses are discussed.

Technology plays a crucial role in facilitating collaboration within the scientific community. Cloud-computing applications, such as Google Drive, can be used to model such collaboration and support inquiry within the secondary science classroom. Little is known about pre-service teachers' beliefs related to the envisioned use of collaborative, cloud-based technologies. These beliefs may influence future integration. This study finds several first-order barriers, such as perceptions that these tools would take too much time to use. Second-order barriers include perceptions that this technology would not promote face-to-face collaboration skills, would create classroom management challenges, and beliefs that the technology does not help students understand the nature of science. Suggestions for mitigating these barriers within preservice education technology courses are discussed.

Recently, Mobile-Edge Computing (MEC) has arisen as an emerging paradigm that extends cloud-computing capabilities to the edge of the Radio Access Network (RAN) by deploying MEC servers right at the Base Stations (BSs). In this paper, we envision a collaborative joint caching and processing strategy for on-demand video streaming in MEC networks. Our design aims at enhancing the widely used Adaptive BitRate (ABR) streaming technology, where multiple bitrate versions of a video can be delivered so as to adapt to the heterogeneity of user capabilities and the varying of network connection bandwidth. The proposed strategy faces two main challenges: (i) not only the videos but their appropriate bitrate versions have to be effectively selected to store in the caches, and (ii) the transcoding relationships among different versions need to be taken into account to effectively utilize the processing capacity at the MEC servers. To this end, we formulate the collaborative joint caching and processing problem as an Integer Linear Program (ILP) that minimizes the backhaul network cost, subject to the cache storage and processing capacity constraints. Due to the NP-completeness of the problem and the impractical overheads of the existing offline approaches, we propose a novel online algorithm that makes cache placement and video scheduling decisions upon the arrival of each new request. Extensive simulations results demonstrate the significant performance improvement of the proposed strategy over traditional approaches in terms of cache hit ratio increase, backhaul traffic and initial access delay reduction.

In a time of budget cuts and limited funding, purchasing and installing the latest software on classroom computers can be prohibitive for schools. Many educators are unaware that a variety of free software options exist, and some of them do not actually require installing software on the user's computer. One such option is cloud computing. This popular technology trend has been gaining momentum over the last 4 years. Cloud computing is a computing technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows students and teachers to use applications without installing them on their computers and also allows access to saved files from any computer with an Internet connection. This technology involves much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth. It also enables a number of individuals to simultaneously work on a project--regardless of their location. The term cloud computing is used because the services and storage are provided over the Internet (or cloud). This article discusses examples of cloud computing offerings and the four major advantages to cloud computing. (Contains 5 figures.)

Despite significant proliferation of Internet services in recent years, technology for computer-supported cooperative work and groupware have not progressed at the same rate. A wider distribution of the work force motivates the need for networked multimedia and groupware at Internet scope and for larger groups of end-users. In particular, synchronous telecollaboration enables people in different geographic locations to bridge time and space by sharing and jointly manipulating multimedia information in realtime and at various levels of granularity. This aspect stands in contrast to legacy client-server applications such as Internet radio broadcast or video-on-demand, and to asynchronous, document-centric collaboration tools like email, instant messaging, or chat rooms. In this paper, we provide a framework for network-supported synchronous multimedia groupwork at Internet scope and for large user groups. Contributions entail an novel classification for such systems concerning scale and scope of interaction, a formal framework for Internet sessions and mediation of access to concurrently shared resources, a taxonomy of crucial elements in cooperative applications, and a discussion of a generic network coordination protocol to sustain live interaction among concurrently active user groups. The core ideas put forward in this paper are useful for the characterization and rapid prototyping of a new generation of collaborative applications.

This thesis addresses the need of Naval Aviation Maintenance to streamline and more effectively manage the process of technical consultation aboard deployed aircraft carriers. The current process involves the physical transportation of an appropriate technician to the carrier to perform required maintenance and/or repairs. In light of the technology currently available this process becomes obviously obsolete, overly costly and needlessly time consuming. By implementing wireless technology in combination with advanced software allowing the virtual collaboration of parties widely separated by geographical distance the Navy can establish a virUal technical presence onboard aircraft carriers wherever they may be in the world. This thesis will describe how the fusion of wearable computing, augmented reality, intelligent agents coupled with CoABS, and a modem collaborative software application can revolutionize Naval aviation maintenance as we know it. The technology is there - it only remains for the Navy to leverage it and take advantage of the significant returns that it will provide.