Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Supporting people working on distributed applications from remote locations.

Nature of Cooperative Interaction

• Focused partnerships
• Lecture or demo
• Conferences
• Structured work processes
• Electronic commerce
• Meeting and decision support
• Teledemocracy

Asynchronous Interaction

• Email
• Bulletin boards
• File transfer program
• CASE Tools
• Newsgroups
• Project schedulers
• List servers
• Virtual classrooms

Synchronous Distributed

• Group editing
• Shared spreadsheets
• Interactive games
• Chat
• Video conferencing

Face to Face

• Shared displays
• Audience response unit
• Text-submission
• Electronic meetings
• File sharing
• Electronic meetings
• Real-time voting
• Brainstorming

CSCW Questions

• How do people work together?
• How would improved communication make things better?
• How is privacy compromised or protected?
• Equity of equipment access?
• Acceptable levels of network performance?

Applying CSCW to Education

• Distance learning
• Virtual classrooms
• Classroom demos
• Group oriented lab exercises

Online Communities

• Telework
• Breakdown of status barriers
• Increased information flow without using "proper" channels
• Technology replacing inefficient human labor
• Knowledge engineering and expert systems
• Email information requests substitute for colleague's war stories at meetings
• Potential for loss of corporate memory with loss of move toward paperless transactions