2008-05-27: AGU Spring, Collaboration Tools

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Title: 2008-05-27:_AGU_Spring%2C_Collaboration_Tools Date: 2008/5/27 Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL Report Formats: PPT | [No Screencast] [No Word] | [No PDF]

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Meeting Section : IN41A

[edit] Enabling Tools and Methods for International, Inter-disciplinary and Educational Collaboration

E. M. Robinson, K. Hoijarvi, S. Falke, E. Fialowski, M. Kieffer, R. B. Husar
CAPITA, Washington University, Campus Box 1124, One Brookings Dr. St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

In the past, collaboration has taken place in tightly-knit workgroups where the members had direct connections to each other. Such collaborations were confined to small workgroups and person-to-person communication. Recent developments, particularly through the Internet, foster the development of virtual workgroups and virtual organizations in which collaboration can take place over a much larger scale, where direct communication is augmented by extended resource-sharing across disciplinary, national and personal boundaries. One reason is that the internet allows individuals to share their artifacts. This is manifested by the explosive growth of web-based social software like media-sharing services, blogs and wikis. Consequently, connections are established indirectly through common artifacts and through similarity in 'profiles.'

This user-generated web content explosion, virtual workgroups tend to exhibit much more dynamic, 'just-in-time' behavior including quick formation, maturation and dissolution. Collaboration in virtual workgroups has strongly influenced the interaction of inter-national, inter-disciplinary, as well as educational activities. In this paper we present an array of enabling tools and methods that incorporate the new technologies including web services, software mashups, tag-based structuring and searching, and wikis for collaborative writing and content organization. These tools and methods will be illustrated through use cases that were developed for applications in air quality decision-support, research and education.

Large monolithic, 'do-it-all' software tools are giving way to web service modules, combined through service chaining. Application software can now be created using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). In the air quality community, data providers and users are distributed in space and time creating barriers for data access. By exposing the data on the internet the space, time barriers are lessened. The federated data system, DataFed, developed at Washington University, accesses data from autonomous, distributed providers. Through data ‘wrappers’, DataFed provides uniform and standards-based access services to heterogeneous, distributed data. Service orientation not only lowers the entry resistance for service providers, but it also allows the creation of user-defined applications and/or mashups. For example, Google Earth's open API allowed many groups to mash their content with Google Earth.

Ad hoc tagging gives a rich description of the internet resources, but it has the disadvantage of providing a fuzzy schema. The semantic uniformity of the internet resources can be improved by controlled tagging which apply a consistent namespace and tag combinations to diverse objects. One example of this is the photo-sharing web application Flickr. Just like data, by exposing photos through the internet those can be reused in ways unknown and unanticipated by the provider. For air quality application, Flickr allowed a rich collection of images of forest fire smoke, wind blown dust and haze events to be tagged with controlled tags and used in for evaluating subtle features of the events.

Wikis, originally used just for collaboratively writing and discuss documents, are now also a social software workflow managers. In air quality data, wikis provides the means to collaboratively create rich metadata. Wikis become a virtual meeting place to discuss ideas before a workshop of conference, display tagged internet resources, and collaboratively work on documents. Wikis are also useful in the classroom. For instance in class projects, the wiki displays harvested resources, maintains collaborative documents and discussions and is the organizational memory for the project.

[edit] Meeting Details

MEETING CONFIRMATION:

Abstract Reference Number: 692 Abstract Title: Enabling Tools and Methods for International, Inter-disciplinary and Educational Collaboration Paper Number: IN41A-02 Presentation Type: Oral presentation

Presentation Date: 05/29/08 Location: Fort Lauderdale Convention Center: Room 223 Starting Time: 08:50

Time allotted: 20 minutes

[edit] Outline/Notes

From Cyberinfrastructure and Univ. Policy meeting

• Cyberinfrastructure is human-centered, designed from the bottom up for the knowledge needs of user communities. Its greatest value is in its use – i.e., context-specific design and integration rather than the component data, instruments, bandwidth, and other particular resources (all of which may be shared with other users). While cyberinfrastructure commonly supports research, it can also support downstream applications and processes, collaborative software development, or electronic commerce.

• The internet has amplified, diversified, and extended collaboration and the movement of knowledge and know-how in and out of the university. It has accelerated innovation, favoring outsourcing over vertical integration, multiparty over bilateral collaborations, and complex parallel interaction relative to linear, serial processes.

Collaboration tools are necessary to:

1. Capture what you do and share artifacts increases value of work by reuse - not necessarily in anticipated ways.
   1. Networks become mechanism for knowledge/info capture.
2. Continue working asynchronously outside of the classroom, meetings,...

Developing an Architecture of Participation Paper Extending Anderson, Annand and Wark’s [17] definition of ‘educational social software’, social software could be said to be networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn and work together while retaining individual control over their time, space, presence, activity and relationship.

Stages of support/connection:

• Be aware of each other/activities ( open - know what's going on) bottom-up or Fringe aggregation
• Share Resources
• Coordinated activities

Collaboration occurs while people independently act in their own self-interest, but by doing so in the open space the network benefits. Technology allows people to collaborate who don't know each other.

Present array of tools/methods for enhancing collaboration through better connectivity at software and humanware layers. Social Media are online applications (both software/humanware) that aim to facilitate interaction, collaboration and the sharing of content. web 1.0 to web 2.0 shift.

In order to connect, need standards:

1. Web services - Software
2. Web Apps distributed, but allow tagging
3. Controlled Vocabulary (tag-based structuring) - humanware equivalent of standard access services
   1. Enables users to organize digital material in their own way, rather than a pre-existing format. It advances and personalizes online searching. Digital age has encouraged alternatives to organizing info in hierarchical systems (Pew)
   2. Promote syndication/federation - each piece still maintains its control, tag is just additional metadata that can be added by third party
   3. allows re-presentation, re-publishing, aggregating by the user
   4. provides coherent interface

Platforms to connect:

1. Mashups - software (KML(data/meta), RDF, RSS)
2. Wiki (Workflow platform to capture/continue) - humanware
   1. Components of wiki: Write, publish, edit. Collection of web pages, every page is editable/discussable/moveable
   2. Outsource memory: wiki is a way to remember interactions in a way that is easy to organize (link, backlink, tag, search and recombine)
   3. Opens up to include people not anticipated

Use cases: How do tools used in each use case depend on the nature of the community. What worked? What didn't? How would I change the tools provided to better assist the community?

1. Education: EECE 449/549 - introduce idea of workspace for groups, add context, collaboratively collect resources and produce a product
2. Research:
   1. Barcelona GEOSS Demo - multiple groups contributed to datasets being accessible through WCS standards, once standard applied other services could be used, wiki workspace created
   2. Exceptional Event - GA/FL Fires (workspace, kml mashup, ...)
   3. DataSpaces - Datasets are WCS compatible, standard metadata captured through structured tags (semantic mediawiki), harvested metadata like articles, presentations,... are tagged with control tags; additional context can be given through wiki ...
   4. Quicker formed, purpose oriented groups (data summit, GEOSS AIP CFP)

Making Air quality research “re-useful” — Organize/open research and data sets for reuse Aggregate/integrate and provide context Collaboration Tools and Technologies