Building and Using a Collaboratory: A Foundation for Supporting and Studying Group Collaborations

本研究由协调理论与协作技术特别倡议资助。这是那次比赛的11个获胜者之一。这项研究的中心焦点是实验观察进行真正合作工作的群体，并使用明确设计用于帮助他们完成任务的系统和通信媒体。预期的结果是扩展对人们如何协作以及如何设计增强协作活动的系统的理解。为此，该项目有五个相互依存的组成部分：1)观察和理解群体合作的社会和认知方面的理论基础；2)用于工作组使用的快速原型设计和重新配置应用环境的工具，以及支持多人交互的多媒体通信；3)协议分析工具，记录和研究个人和群体如何通过网络计算机环境相互作用；4)可供从事实际工作的小组使用的应用测试平台系统（通用的和特定领域的）；5)小组研究和实验来测试系统、社会和认知假设。

This research is funded under the Special Initiative on Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology. This is one of eleven winners under that competition. The central focus of this research is experimental observation of groups doing real collaborative work and using systems and communications media explicitly designed to aid in their tasks. Expected results are to expand understanding of how people collaborate and how to design systems that augment collaborative activities. To this end the project has five interdependent components: 1) a theoretical foundation for observing and understanding the social and cognitive aspects of group collaborations; 2) tools for rapid prototyping and reconfiguration of application environments for use by working groups, and multi- media communications to support multi-person interactions; 3) protocol analysis tools to record and study how individuals and groups interact through the networked computer environment; 4) application testbed systems (generic and domain specific) that can be used by groups engaged in real work; and 5) group studies and experiments to test systems, social and cognitive hypotheses.