Computer Supported Cooperative Work
New Class for Fall 2002
LIS 450CW Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Fridays 1-4 (Location: Room 109 LIS Building)
This doctoral level seminar will explore research issues related to collaborative computing.
The focus will be mostly on issues of usability and acceptance of technologies into the work setting, and the design process to achieve that. This includes aspects of analysis, requirements specification, tailoring, usability, learnability, and their incorporation into applications development.
Issues to be covered include:
- synchronous and asynchronous,
- remote and co-located collaboration,
- workplace use of systems including workflow systems,
- computer supported collaborative learning
- home and leisure use of collaborative applications
- barriers to technology adoption and how to overcome them
- evaluation of collaborative systems
- ethnographic techniques to inform systems analysis and design
- interfaces to support human-human interaction
- ubiquitous computing
- mobile computing
- lightweight interactions
- roomware
- very large and very small displays
Process
Students will read and discuss research papers and will be expected produce a final term paper, in addition to smaller scale intermediate pieces of work. In-class exercises will involve rapid paper prototyping and testing and experimenting with existing software.
Students with sufficient programming skill will be expected to develop a small scale prototype, or adaptation of existing systems.
Students with less technical background will be expected to undertake an analysis project such as user testing or a workplace ethnography.
Students will be expected to work together in multidisciplinary design teams to explore the advantages and difficulties) of incorporating insights, analytic methods and theories from the social and cognitive sciences into the engineering pragmatics of the systems development process.
Class Webboard
Readings will chiefly be taken from the research literature, including conference proceedings accessible from the ACM Digital Library.
Examples include the proceedings of CSCW, DIS, CHI and UIST
Prerequisites
There are no
formal prerequisites for this class. However students will work in
multidisciplinary design teams and should have particular skills in one of the
following broad categories:
- Computer systems developments (e.g. rapid prototyping, user interface
design, software engineering)
- Cognitive psychology, usability testing, learning theory - how people
learn to use computer applications, classic problems, etc.
- Graphical user interface design
- Ethnographic techniques applied in the workplace or studying technology
use in everyday life
Registration
The seminar is open to doctoral students and also masters students with
permission of the instructor.
Masters students will need to demonstrate appropriate background in one of the areas outlined above.
Places in the seminar are limited to 20 in
order to ensure that we can have sufficient interaction for working in teams to
apply the concepts.
In order to ensure a balance of skills, admission to the
course will be managed by the instructor.
Please send an email including brief
details of your background, interests and relevant skills. A resume that you
already have to hand is perfectly acceptable. Just make sure it clearly notes
your programming and other skills as outlined above.
For more
details contact:
Prof. Michael Twidale twidale@uiuc.edu
Graduate
School of Library and Information Science
501 E. Daniel Street, Champaign IL
61820 USA
Office: 101 GSLIS Voice : 217.265.0510
Fax: 217.244.330
M.Twidale Home Page
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