Research Overview

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Research Overview

• Michael Bieber
• Information Systems Department
• College of Computing Sciences
• New Jersey Institute of Technology
• bieber_at_njit.edu
• http//www-ec.njit.edu

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Research Overview

• Dynamic Hypermedia Engine
• Digital Library Service Integration
• Relationship Analysis
• Educational Research Collaborative Examination
• Virtual Communities

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Dynamic Hypermedia Engine

• Automatically add links and other hypermedia
  services to applications
• comments
• guided tours
• structural search (based on links and
  relationships instead of keywords)
• others...
• Buzzword compatible
• Java, Servlets, RMI, XML, XHTML, RDF, etc.

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Dynamic Hypermedia Engine

• Links generated based on application structure,
  not search or lexical analysis
• You cannot do a search on the display text
  127,322.12 to find related information
• But you can find relationships for the element
  Sales1997

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Looking for Collaboration

• Applications to integrate with DHE
• Field study sites

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Research Overview

• Dynamic Hypermedia Engine
• Digital Library Service Integration
• Relationship Analysis
• Educational Research Collaborative Examination
• Virtual Communities

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DSLI Architecture
Integration linking related documents

• Digital Library Multimedia Document Services

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DSLI Architecture
Integration Discussing a document

• Digital Library Multimedia Document Services
• Asynchronous Discussion Tools(Groupware)

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DSLI Architecture

• Digital Library Multimedia Document Services
• Asynchronous Discussion Tools Hypermedia
  Services
• Processes/Workflows Decision Analysis
  Support
• Conceptual Knowledge Structures
• Others...

All Integrated through the Dynamic Hypermedia
Engine
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Looking for Collaboration

• Digital library services to integrate into this
  infrastructure
• Collections to integrate, so they can use the
  various digital library services

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Research Overview

• Dynamic Hypermedia Engine
• Digital Library Service Integration
• Relationship Analysis
• Educational Research Collaborative Examination
• Virtual Communities

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Relationship Analysis (RA)

• Motivation What to link?
• RA a systematic analysis methodology based on
  relationships
• RA provides analysts with a deeper understanding
  of a system or information domain
• The relationships discovered can be implemented
  as links (automatically by DHE)

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Relationship Taxonomy
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Relationship Taxonomy
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RA Sample Analysis Questions(replace item by
vendor)

• Activity Relationships
• Who uses this item, and how?
• What are this items inputs and outputs what
  does it produce?
• What is required to use this item?
• Who is involved with this item?
• Intentional Relationships (meaning/opinions)
• Which goals, issues and arguments involve this
  item?
• What are the policies, positions or statements on
  this item?
• What comments and opinions have been expressed
  about this item?
• What are the constraints, limitations, priorities
  and options for this item?
• What rationale exists for this item?

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Vendor Relationships(possible links resulting
from an RA analysis)

• Vendor details (address, contact, customer
  service, Web site)
• Reliability (on-time, complete orders, quality,
  service)
• Vendor agreements discounts
• Who else has used this vendor
• Purchasing history with this vendor(mine,
  others)
• All application screens with this vendor
• All documents concerning this vendor
• Annotations/comments on this vendor
• Policies regarding this vendor
• Rationale for using this vendor in the past

• What people typically buy from this vendor
• Which vendors generally give better deals than
  this one
• Alternatives to this vendor
• Social considerations regarding this vendor
• Vendors parent company and subsidiaries
• Vendors partnerships and agreements with other
  companies
• Instructions how to choose a vendor how to
  evaluate a vendor

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Looking for Collaboration

• Domains/Complex Systems to analyze using
  Relationship Analysis
• Field study sites

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Research Overview

• Dynamic Hypermedia Engine
• Digital Library Service Integration
• Relationship Analysis
• Educational Research Collaborative Examination
• Virtual Communities

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Collaborative Examinations
Jia Shen, NJIT Starr Roxanne Hiltz, NJIT Kung-E
Cheng, Rutgers University Yooncheong Cho,
Rutgers University Michael Bieber, NJIT
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Collaborative Exam

• 1. Why?
• To reduce the instructors own work load
• To test a new method of conducting exams
• 2. A form of collaborative learning
• Previous research is limited

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Exam Procedures

• Traditional exam
• 3-hour, in-class, 3-4 essay questions, 6 pages of
  notes
• Collaborative exam
• Students compose questions
• Students select questions (eliminated in spring
  00)
• Students answer selected questions
• Students grade questions
• Ph.d. intermediate grading
• Professor assigns final grade and handles
  disputes

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Issues

• Need to see behind anonymity
• Grading guidelines and grade inflation
• Consistent grading
• Trade-offs for students
• - drawn-out process vs. concentrated
• - access to everything vs. limited access to
  notes
• - we couldnt justify the process to the students
  fully
• Trade-offs for professors
• - limited but harder grading vs. easier grading
• - drawn-out process vs. concentrated
• - much more administration

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Looking for Collaboration

• Other courses that would like to use a similar
  approach, or which we can contrast to our
  collaborative examinations

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Research Overview

• Dynamic Hypermedia Engine
• Digital Library Service Integration
• Relationship Analysis
• Educational Research Collaborative Examination
• Virtual Communities

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Knowledge Sharing and Learningin Virtual
Communities

• Michael Bieber1 Ricki Goldman1
• Roxanne Hiltz1 Il Im1
• Ravi Paul1 Jenny Preece2 Ron Rice3
• Ted Stohr4 Murray Turoff1
• 1New Jersey Institute of Technology 3Rutgers
  University (SCILS)
• 2University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  4Stevens Technical University

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Motivation

• Why do people participate in virtual communities?
• to attract customers/clients
• for amusement
• to socialize find comfort (medical communities)
• to network, build contacts
• to improve what you do (job, personal)
• find information/solve problems/learn from others
• gt collaboration, knowledge-sharing and learning
  underlies most of these directly or indirectly
• Research Question How best to support this?

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Goal

• Increasing
• peoples effectiveness
• by helping them
• share knowledge and learn
• through virtual communities

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Example Tasks (of individuals)for an academic
research community

• learning about the community domain
• learning about relevant people in the community
• teaching a course
• finding materials on a research topic
• mentoring members in research or learning
• developing software using community research
• developing/selling software to serve community

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Example Community Tasks of an academic research
community

• running a conference
• conducting elections
• writing newsletter / submitting to the newsletter
• making the budget
• proposing running a task force
• recruiting new society members

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Approach

• Concept Building regarding knowledge and learning
  within virtual communities
• Study testbed communities
• Prototype tools
• Prototype procedures
• Evaluate
• virtual communities
• learning and effectiveness
• the prototype tools and procedures

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Community Knowledge Resides in...

• documents (published papers, reports, photos,
  videos, lesson plans, syllabi, etc.)
• discussions
• decisions
• conceptual models

• formal educational modules
• workflows/processes
• peoples expertise
• links/relationships among all these

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CommunityServices Architecture

• Digital Library Multimedia Document Services
• Asynchronous Discussion Tools Hypermedia
  Services
• Processes/Workflows Decision Analysis
  Support
• Conceptual Knowledge Structures
• Others...

All Integrated through the Dynamic Hypermedia
Engine
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Evaluation

• focus on individual-level and community-level
• Pilots and assessment on actual communities
• Action Research work actively with participants
• Propositions/hypotheses and measures
• Formative Evaluation to assess/improve tools
  (requirements analysis, usability testing)
• Summative Evaluation to assess usage, impacts,
  satisfaction(direct observation, interviews,
  surveys, usage profiles)

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Looking for Collaboration

• Looking for testbed communities