VTechWorks staff will be away for the winter holidays starting Tuesday, December 24, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, and will not be replying to requests during this time. Thank you for your patience, and happy holidays!

Browsing by Author "Isenhour, Philip L."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Computer-Supported Collaborative Production
    Howarth, Jonathan; Yost, Beth; Rosson, Mary Beth; Isenhour, Philip L.; Carroll, John M. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2006-03-01)
    This paper proposes the concept of collaborative production as a focus of concern within the general area of collaborative work. We position the concept with respect to McGrath's framework for small group dynamics and the more familiar collaboration processes of awareness, coordination, and communication (McGrath 1991). After reviewing research issues and computer-based support for these interacting aspects of collaboration, we turn to a discussion of implications for how to design improved support for collaborative production. We illustrate both the challenges of collaborative production and our design implications with a collaborative map-updating scenario drawn from the work domain of geographical information systems.
  • JavaBeans as a Framework for Collaborative Software
    Begole, James M.A.; Isenhour, Philip L.; Shaffer, Clifford A. (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1998-05-01)
    We describe the use of a popular component framework, JavaBeans, to facilitate developing collaborative software. We describe the class of collaboration-unaware components that can be effectively shared under this framework, and an extension that supports development of efficient collaboration-aware components.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Mobile Collaborative Virtual Environments: A Paradigm Shift from Desktop to Mobile Online Communities
    Farooq, Umer (Virginia Tech, 2002-12-13)
    There are myriad examples of virtual communities and environments available for collaborative activities. However, most of these environments are confined to the desktop and thus preclude collaboration while users are on the move. Through a scenario-based design process, this article establishes the importance of mobile collaborative environments that are readily accessible for users on mobile devices. The element of mobile accessibility for collaborative environments renders them ubiquitous—they can be used anywhere and at any time. A working prototype is then presented that has been developed to supplement an existing desktop-based online virtual community. The prototype illustrates a generic, extensible and platform-independent architecture for translating a desktop collaborative environment into a mobile system. Based on the prototype, we also foresee its application for users in fieldwork settings, particularly for learning and educational activities of teachers, students, and peers through collaboration in a distributed environment.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Sieve: A Java-Based Framework for Collaborative Component Composition
    Isenhour, Philip L. (Virginia Tech, 1998-02-11)
    This thesis investigates the design objectives for a collaborative workspace based on Sun Microsystems' Java programming language and JavaBeans component architecture. The feasibility of a collaborative component workspace based on these objectives is demonstrated by Sieve, a Javabased framework for collaborative applications. Sieve allows multiple users to collaboratively add, edit, and connect components on a shared two-dimensional workspace. Sieve introduces a technique that leverages standard JavaBeans mechanisms to support use of \collaboration-unaware" software components. With this technique, components need only conform to basic JavaBeans conventions in order to be shared across collaborating sessions { they need not be programmed specifically for collaboration. Sieve also allows component developers to provide custom mechanisms for sharing components. Sieve is extensible in other ways, allowing developers to introduce new mechanisms for creating, displaying, editing, and connecting components. Three collaborative applications built on this framework are presented: a visualization environment, a circuit simulation, and a set of tools for composing arbitrary software components. The visualization environment allows construction of dataflow networks from an extensible set of modules. Modules may read data from a variety of sources, filter and transform the data in various ways, and generate visualizations. The circuit simulation allows users to collaboratively construct and analyze simple direct-current circuits. Finally, the \BeanBox Emulation" application reproduces the basic component-linking functionality of Sun's BeanBox builder tool. With this application, users may collaboratively edit and link objects that conform to standard JavaBeans conventions.
  • Sluice: A Java-Based Framework for Collaborative Interactive Modular Visualization Environments
    Isenhour, Philip L.; Shaffer, Clifford A.; Begole, James M.A.; Nielsen, Jeff; Abrams, Marc (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1997-10-01)
    We present Sluice, a framework for constructing collaborative, interactive, modular visualization environments (CIMVEs) for use on the World Wide Web. Sluice supports using Java to build modules that create, manipulate, and generate visualizations of tables of data. Sluice provides necessary infrastructure for a CIMV, including interface specifications for methods that modules of the MVE must implement, event propagation to support interaction and dynamic updating, and mechanisms for efficiently supporting collaboration. Our fundamental description of data comes in the form of table which is filtered, extended, or otherwise manipulated to produce a new "view" of the data at each module. We use the observer/observable design pattern to support dynamic updating of visualizations downstream in the dataflow network. Sluice also supports on-the-fly manipulation of the dataflow network. Sluice uses functionality provided by the JavaBeans package to support introspection of modules. This allows CIMVE implementations to discover, query, and set the values of properties of modules at runtime. After describing the design rationale, capabilities, and implementation of Sluice, we then describe our prototype CIMVE named SIEVE.