A Tutorial is intended to be cross-disciplinary in nature and to give non-specialists a brief overview of the subject matter. An Advanced Seminar is a more in-depth survey for those who already have a significant background in the topic. A Workshop is intended to be a more interactive learning session.
WORKSHOP 1: FULL-DAY
INCREASE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR FACILITATOR by Integrating the Skilled Facilitators Approach with the Power of Group Support Software
Roger Schwarz and Mark Adkins
A facilitator's main goal is to help a group increase effectiveness by improving its processes. Group Support Software (GSS) provides the potential to structure an ideal meeting where dozens of people talk all at once, and are heard, understood, and remembered. In The Skilled Facilitator Approach, the facilitator uses a set of core values, principles, and ground rules to guide effective group behavior and effective facilitator behavior. During the tutorial, the group will work with the participants to understand how the structure and capabilities of the GSS tools can be used with skilled facilitation techniques to increase a group’s effectiveness. Participants will learn how to structure sessions to be consistent with core values that create effective group and facilitator behavior.
This one-day workshop, is designed for the experienced GSS facilitator who wants to explore and learn how to integrate the software with an innovative facilitation technique, The Skilled Facilitator Approach. Developed by Roger Schwarz, the technique uses a set of core values, principles, and a systems approach to help groups create fundamental change.
Throughout the workshop, GSS will be integrated with The Skilled Facilitator Approach to increase a facilitator's ability to openly and constructively address difficult issues and develop highly effective groups. Participants will study The Skilled Facilitator Approach and learn to apply the principles with GSS technology to increase group effectiveness.
Participants will learn to:
Roger Schwarz is an organizational psychologist and president of Roger Schwarz & Associates.He teaches, consults, and writes about facilitation, managing change and conflict, and developing effective work groups, and is the author of various articles on facilitation and organizational change. Since 1980, Mr. Schwarz has served as facilitator and consultant to Fortune 500 companies, federal, state, and local government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Distinguished organizational development consultants, executives, and academics have called his book, The Skilled Facilitator: Practical Wisdom for Developing Effective Groups, "the standard reference on facilitation." Mr. Schwarz has developed a values-based systemic approach to facilitation that moves beyond meeting management and focuses on creating highly effective groups and organizations.
info@schwarzassociates.com
Mark Adkins is the Director of Research at the University of Arizona's Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. His areas of interest include small group interaction, group decision making, group support systems, group writing, organizational communication, and the impact of information technologies on human interactions. For 14 years Mark has been teaching and conducting research in the fields of Communication and Information Technology. Currently, he is working with the United States Navy Commander Third Fleet on an experiment on how joint operations, combining Navy, Army, Marine and Air Force units, will be organized, controlled and coordinated.
adkins@cmi.arizona.edu
TUTORIAL 2: FULL-DAY
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL - THEORY, APPLICATION, AND EVALUATION
Fredric C. Gey and Ray R. Larson
Morning: Introduction to Information Retrieval and Applications
Afternoon: Advanced Topics in Information Retrieval and Question Answering
This course is designed to provide a fast-paced introduction to Information Retrieval, text summarization, question answering, and other application areas for academic and industrial researchers whose background lies outside the Information Retrieval area. Attendees of this tutorial will obtain a basic understanding of the models upon which modern text retrieval software is based and how search engine performance is measured. The tutorial should be sufficient background as a starting point for further self-education.
Fredric Gey specializes in research of probabilistic techniques, and cross-language retrieval of Asian Languages. Dr. Gey has participated in the TREC conferences as well as the European Cross-language Evaluation Forum and the NTCIR Asian language Evaluation of the National Informatics Institute of Japan. He is coordinator of the English-Arabic cross language track of the TREC-2001 conference.
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/gey.html
Ray R. Larson is an Associate Professor at the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley. He is an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Information Systems. He is a research faculty associate on the UC Berkeley NSF Digital Library grant and currently holds an NSF international digital library grant working with partners in the United Kingdom. Dr. Larson is well known for his CHESHIRE information retrieval software that has been utilized in university library catalogs and as the basis for the ChaCha search engine.
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~ray
TUTORIAL 3: FULL-DAY
WORKFLOW AND PROCESS AUTOMATION IN THE AGE OF E-BUSINESS – Technical, Organizational and Educational Aspects
Edward A. Stohr, Michael zur Muehlen, and J. Leon Zhao
Workflow automation is a major application in industry because of the urgent need to reduce process costs, speed cycle times, provide flexible service, and integrate CRM, legacy and ERP systems. Surprisingly, computer scientists perform most of the research in this area. However, the automation of business processes is both a technical and a managerial issue. Given the emerging importance of this set of technologies, we believe that it is important for more information systems researchers to become involved in the study of workflow automation.
Accordingly, the objectives of the Minitracks and workflow tutorials we conducted in the last few years were to introduce this area of research to a broader audience and to build a real community of interest at HICSS. This community of interest now includes people in both the Internet and Digital Economies and Software Tracks. In fact, we started a “theme” last year combining two Minitracks and propose to coordinate with a third mini – on Enterprise Application Integration - next year.
Schedule
| Time | Content | Presenter |
| 9:00-9:30 | Introduction and General Overview | Ted Stohr |
| 9:30-10:30 | Interorganizational Workflow – Technical Issues | J. Leon Zhao |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 11:00-12:00 | Organisational Issues of Workflow Management Applications | Michael zur Muehlen |
| 12:00-1:00 | Lunch Break | |
| 1:00-1:45 | Case Study and Demo I (Large-Scale Financial Institution) | Michael zur Muehlen |
| 1:45-2:30 | Case Study and Demo II (Trading Partner Networks) | Ted Stohr |
| 2:30-3:00 | Coffee Break | |
| 3:00-4:00 | Teaching Workflow Panel (Undergraduate/Graduate/Executive) | All |
We would like to dedicate the morning to a review of technical and organizational issues of workflow applications both inside enterprises as well as on a business-to-business-level. The afternoon will feature real world case studies and a system demonstration during the first half of the afternoon, as requested by the attendees of the earlier tutorials. The case studies are complemented by a panel session on educational aspects of workflow technology.
Since workflow management touches many different subjects, such as database management, business analysis, process modeling and application design, the proper positioning of workflow technology inside the Business Administration /Information Systems / Computer Science curriculum can be an opportunity as well as a challenge. We will present our experiences from three different universities and outline strategies for the development of workflow classes and case studies. Pointers to resources for teaching materials, demonstration systems and collaboration opportunities will enhance the value of the tutorial for attendees beyond the dates of the 35th HICSS conference.
Edward A. Stohr holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree from Melbourne University, Australia, and MBA and Ph.D. degrees in Information Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently on the faculty of the Stern School of Business, New York University. For the period 1984-95 he served as Chairman of the Information Systems Department. From 1995 through 1999, he was Director of the Center for Information Intensive Organizations at the Stern School. In 1992, Professor Stohr served as chairman of the executive board of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). He is on the editorial boards of several journals including the Journal of Information Systems Research, the International Journal of Decision Support Systems, and The Journal of Management Information Systems. Professor Stohr’s research focuses on the problems of developing computer systems to support work and decision making in organizations.
estohr@stern.nyu.edu (Stevens Institute of Technology)
Michael zur Muehlen received a Masters Degree in Information Systems from the University of Muenster in 1997. He is working as a lecturer and research assistant at the Department of Information Systems of the University of Muenster, Germany, in the fields of information modeling and workflow management. Mr. zur Muehlen has participated in numerous industrial BPR and workflow projects and has published several articles on the topics of meta modeling, process and workflow management. He and Dr. Yvonne L. Antonucci, Widener University (USA) have received the SAP University Alliance Curriculum Development Award for the establishment of an international curriculum teaching inter-organizational business processes between Germany and the USA. He is a member of the German Computer Society (GI), the Technical Committee of the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) and chairman of the WfMC working group “Resource Model”.
ismizu@wi.uni-muenster.de (Workflow Research, Inc.)
Dr. J. Leon Zhao is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, a MS degree in Agricultural Engineering from the College of Engineering, University of California, Davis, and a BS degree in Engineering from Beijing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization. Leon has taught in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the College of William and Mary, respectively. He has also worked as a Staff Scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California and as a Research Engineer for Honeywell Inc., Minneapolis.
His current research focuses on the development of database and workflow technologies and their applications in electronic commerce, knowledge management, and organizational process automation. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Communications of the ACM, Management Science, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, SIGMOD Record, Data Base, and Journal of Intelligent Information Systems. Dr. Zhao has served on the program committees in a number of international conferences including the International Conference on Information Systems, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, International Computer Sciences Conference, International Conference on Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce, International Workshop on Information Technology and Systems, and International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.
zhao@bpa.arizona.edu
TUTORIAL 4: MORNING
NEW MEDIA IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Stephanie Barish and Elizabeth Daley
In an interactive conversation, participants from the Multimedia Literacy Program will be discussing expanding notions of literacy and the impacts of this on discipline-based teaching and learning.
During the current communications revolution, the proliferation of computer-mediated and networked communication has resulted in the need for written and spoken languages to expand in terms of vocabulary and even beyond words. Words alone cannot meet and express all the new ideas and concepts, and elements of the reality of our times. As we absorb the visual, audio, and combined media into our daily lives, what will it mean to be truly literate and, by extension, educated in the 21st Century? And in what ways will this fit into, subvert, change, and even support the Ivory Tower?
In 1998, the University of Southern California’s Multimedia Literacy Program emerged from a single realization: if students graduate without being able to "read and write" in new and emerging media, they are not truly literate in the language of their own society.
By virtue of embracing today’s new and emerging media technology, the goal of this project is to build upon existing written literacy to embrace enhanced literacy — incorporating still and moving images, aural communication, and multimedia applications, as well as the written word. This paradigm with its shifting and expanding notion of literacy has the potential to change the future of education.
In October 1999, Stephanie Barish assumed the position of Director of the Multimedia Program at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for Communication. Previous accomplishments include her work as Producer and Creative Director at Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation since 1994.
Her previous accomplishments include producing and directing Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust, a comprehensive CD-ROM that interweaves the video testimony of four Holocaust survivors from the Shoah Foundation's archive into a broad historic and geographic context, designing and implementing the Shoah Foundation's acclaimed research interface and its award-winning web site. More recently, she worked with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York as Art Director for a permanent exhibition of computer-generated artworks, and with the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles as Project Director for the design of its new interactive learning center. She also supervised graphics-imaging and designed the titles for the 1998 Academy Award-winning documentary, The Last Days.
Her technical background is in feature-film animation and special effects. She earned two Masters degrees from the University of Southern California, in Film Production (MFA, Computer-Generated Imagery) and Social Science. She has been a lecturer at the University of Southern California on ethics and the study of women and men in society and at San Francisco State University on film theory.
HICSS-35 Plenary Speaker Elizabeth Monk Daley was appointed Dean of University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television in 1991. In October of l994 she was named as the first holder of Steven J. Ross/Time Warner Dean's Chair.
Dr. Daley also serves as Executive Director of the Annenberg Center for Communication established in l993 by a grant from Ambassador and Mrs. Walter Annenberg. The Center's activities focus on research and applications in the new communication media. As director she has overseen the development of a multimedia business incubator as well as a variety of research programs in new paradigms for communications. Research initiatives include models for interactive narrative and an extensive program in multimedia literacy.
Prior to joining USC, Dr. Daley served as executive director of Taper Media Enterprises, the film and television subsidiary of the Mark Taper Forum, and as producer for MGM/UA Television. Television credits include programming for network, cable and PBS.
Before producing in Los Angeles Dr. Daley was an independent television producer in Washington, D.C., and a member of the faculty of the School of Communications at American University. She has served as consultant to a variety of organizations, including the International Electronic Cinema Festival, Montreux/Tokyo; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Organization for Women; the Indo-U.S. Sub-commission on Arts and Education; the National Center for Economic Journalism; the National Institutes for Health; the American Association of University Women; the International Television Association; the Labor Institute of Public Affairs; and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She serves as a member of the boards of the Center for Governmental Studies and the Benton Foundation. Dr. Daley earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin and MA and BA degrees from Tulane University and Newcomb College.
TUTORIAL 5: MORNING
THINKLETS AND ACTIVE METHODS: Repeatable Processes for Predictable Success with Group Support Systems
Robert O. Briggs, Gert-Jan DeVreede and Jay Nunamaker
Group Support Systems (GSS) emerged as a rich, flexible toolbox for facilitators to help move a group toward a goal. Research shows that groups using GSS can be far more productive than teams using other means to accomplish their tasks. However, a facilitator may create significantly more value by creating and leaving behind a repeatable process for many groups to execute on their own. In this tutorial, we will explore ThinkLets and Active Methods, two useful concepts for creating leave-behind processes.
A ThinkLet is a small, repeatable process nugget that can be used to cause predictable, repeatable patterns of group interaction. An Active Method is a task-specific software application that uses GSS and other technologies to guide a group through a pre-defined process (made up of ThinkLets) to accomplish a specific mission critical task like strategic planning, internal audit, or requirements negotiation.
There are five flavors of ThinkLets, and you will gain experience with each:
|
Move from fewer ideas to more ideas Move from many ideas to a focus on the few worthy of more attention Move from less to more understanding of the relationships among ideas Move from less to more understanding of the value of ideas toward accomplishing a goal Move from less to more agreement on proposed courses of action. |
You will explore two Active Methods running on a new GSS platform, as we demonstrate how Active Methods can be constructed, and discuss some of their organizational, social, and economic implication.
Robert O. Briggs is a product manager of GroupSystems.com. He investigates the use of technology to improve group productivity as a Research Fellow in the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. His work includes theoretical modeling of group productivity to support the design, development, use and evaluation of new technologies developed at the Center. Recent work examines the use of Group Support Systems in the classroom to support cross-disciplinary problem-based learning. Dr. Briggs holds a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Arizona, and received his MBA and BS in information systems, as well as BS in art history from San Diego State University.
bbriggs@cmi.arizona.edu
Gert-Jan De Vreede is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Technology, Policy, and Management of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the same university. He is responsible for the Group Support Systems research program at his school. His research interests include the application of collaborative technologies to facilitate organizational design activities, and the adoption and diffusion of GSS in both Western environments as well as developing countries. His articles have appeared in various journals, including Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Decision Systems, Journal of Creativity and Innovation Management, Holland Management Review, DataBase, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Journal of Simulation Practice and Theory.
gertjanv@tbm.tudelft.nl
Jay F. Nunamaker is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, Communication and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. Dr. Nunamaker’s research interests include collaborative systems and computer-aided support of systems analysis and design.
jnunamaker@CMI.arizona.edu
TUTORIAL 6: MORNING
MULTIPLE MODELS OF TEACHING AND COLLABORATION IN AN ASYNCHRONOUS ENVIRONMENT
Doug Vogel, Jim Levin, Sandra Levin, and Melissa Kelly
This tutorial will cover the following areas of teaching and collaborating online: Online Program Management, Online Course Development, Different Media used to Deliver Online Courses, and Collaboration in an Online Course Environment. The presenters will provide handouts. Several different types of collaboration and technologies are used to deliver online courses represented by the presenters from three departments at two universities. The workshop will be divided into three segments.
Jim Levin is a Professor of Educational Psychology, and a Faculty Affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on finding ways to improve problem solving through collaborative interaction through networks and to help people learn to be better problem solvers by providing powerful distributed learning environments. He has developed several innovative models of learning, including the concept of teleapprenticeships. He has recently been studying "teaching teleapprenticeships", instructional frameworks that allow education students to learn within the context of remote K-12 classrooms. He has been exploring ways to use advanced technologies to improve education, locally, nationally, and internationally.
j-levin@uiuc.edu
Sandra Levin is the program coordinator and an instructor for the Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform Master of Education Program (CTER OnLine) in the College of Education at the University of Illinois. She manages the day-to-day program activities and supervises the CTER program evaluation, student admissions, course development and technical support. Sandra currently teaches two courses in the online program. For the past three years, she has presented at national conferences and published a number of papers on teaching and learning in an online environment.
slevin@uiuc.edu
Melissa Kelly is an instructional designer in the Anderson Lab with the College of Engineering's Online Initiative at the University of Illinois. She works with faculty to assist them in choosing the technologies appropriate to their graduate online engineering courses. She also trains the faculty and their teaching assistants how to use the course management systems and how they will be integrated into their online courses. Melissa also works with the faculty on developing the best ways to convert their on-campus courses to an online format. She has also worked with community college faculty in Illinois teaching them how to use many of the same technologies in their online courses.
ml-kelly@uiuc.edu
TUTORIAL 7: MORNING
WIRELESS APPLICATION PROGRAMMING WITH JAVA
Qusay H. Mahmoud
Knowledge of the Java programming language is required. The tutorial will help participants understand the different technologies that can be used to develop wireless applications for hand-held devices. Participants will acquire knowledge about wireless programming techniques in general and Java programming for mobile devices in particular, and how/when to use them.
Most Internet technologies are designed for desktop and large computers running on reliable networks with relatively high bandwidth. Hand-held wireless devices, on the other hand, have a more constrained computing environment. They tend to have less memory, less powerful CPUs, different input devices, and smaller displays. The Wireless Application Protocol (or WAP), that is a specification developed by the WAP Forum, takes advantage of the several data-handling approaches already in use. Developing wireless applications using WAP technologies is similar to developing web pages with a markup language because it is browser based. Another approach to developing wireless applications is to use the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP).
With either WAP or MIDP, the Java programming language plays an important role. In WAP, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSPs) can be used to generate Wireless Markup Language (WML) pages dynamically, and in MIDP, applications (also called MIDlets) are written in Java.
The list of major topics to be covered includes:
Qusay H. Mahmoud provides Java consulting and training services. He has published dozens of articles on the Java programming language, including the MIDP and Palm programming articles for Sun Microsystems Java Developer Connection. He moderates the Device Programming and Java in the Enterprise forums for ITWorld.com. Qusay is the author of Distributed Programming with Java (Manning Publications, 1999).
qmahmoud@cs.sfu.ca
TUTORIAL 8: MORNING
SPEECH-ENABLED INFORMATION SYSTEMS: The Next Frontier
Alexander Hars
This tutorial will provide an overview of natural language processing technologies, including speech recognition and generation, conversational interfaces, interactive voice response systems, voice user interfaces, translation, and standards including VoiceXML. It will assess these technologies, provide live and recorded demonstrations and discuss business applications as well as research issues.
Alexander Hars is Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Dr. Hars is the author of more than 40 scientific articles and serves on the editorial board of two scientific journals. His current research interests are collaborative, Internet based knowledge management systems, enterprise modeling and the application of natural language processing to business and development processes. He is the founder of an innovative multilingual Internet based scientific knowledge infrastructure, the IS Cybrarium (http://cybrarium.usc.edu). He obtained his doctorate degree from the Institute of Information Systems (IWi) in Germany, which is headed by Prof. Dr. A.-W. Scheer. Dr. Hars was the initiator of the research project CODE (Computer-Supported Enterprise Wide Data Engineering) which was funded by the European Union and involved five industrial and research partners in three European countries over three years.
hars@usc.edu
WORKSHOP 9: MORNING
NONLINEAR DYNAMICS IN WORLD POLITICS
Mai Nguyen and William Mills
This session will address the issue of how to model nonlinear human dynamics as related to global politics. Crises of political instability (government collapse, ethnic conflict, anti-government violence) tend to result from underlying stress (e.g., resource competition - over water in Palestine, job competition between ethnic groups in Kalimantan, stress from loss of export markets for Chiapas farmers, or stress from environmental degradation and emergent diseases). Although crises cannot be predicted, the dynamics of the underlying stresses that create an environment conducive to crisis are amenable to analysis via computer modeling.
The workshop is designed to bring Academics and Government together in a forum that will promote a lasting dialogue on how to spend research funds effectively to demonstrate the value of this line of research. We will address such questions as:
HICSS has done an excellent job of setting the stage for looking at how complexity science can inform our understanding of world politics. It brings together system thinkers from a wide variety of professional fields and represents a natural place for social scientists and computer scientists to communicate about how to apply nonlinear systems thinking to world politics.
Mai Nguyen is Research Scientist at CIA specializing in the application of new methods in support of political and economic analysts. She has focused on complex adaptive systems, especially synthetic economies and resource competition modeling, in recent years. Ms. Nguyen has her MS in computer science.
mai@ucia.gov
William Mills is Research Scientist at CIA specializing in network analysis and nonlinear political modeling. Dr. Mills' Ph.D. is in political science. Recent publications include A Scenario for Decline in America (Futurist, 1996) and Working Smarter: Computers as Stimulants for Human Creativity (Social Science Computer Review, 1994).
billdm@ucia.gov
WORKSHOP 10: AFTERNOON
SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING WORKSHOP
Kim Campbell
This workshop will enable participants to make a critical analysis of the quality of research in terms of its presentation. They will become familiar with the argument structure, organization, style, and mechanics of scholarly papers, and will be able to improve the presentation of research in a paper that is destined for submission to a high quality scholarly journal. Each participant is asked to bring a draft research paper and to provide Information for Authors for the target journal to which their paper will be submitted. Enrollment limited to 15.
Kim Sydow Campbell is currently Associate Professor, Culver College of Commerce & Business Administration, University of Alabama. Previous teaching experience has included the School of Logistics and Acquisition Management, Air Force Institute of Technology, and Assistant Professor of English, Auburn University. She has taught numerous communication, management, technical writing, and information design courses on the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has directed theses on information design/risk communication and information design/human-computer interaction. Dr. Campbell is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE's Transactions on Professional Communication, which won a 2000 APEX Award of Publication Excellence; she also has been the Science Editor, for the School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University.
kcampbel@cba.ua.edu
TUTORIAL 11: AFTERNOON
TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTED LEARNING
Jay F. Nunamaker and Robert O. Briggs
This tutorial will focus on the process of creating a technology-supported learning infrastructure within an organization. Technology for learning takes many forms, ranging from one-way video broadcasts to web-based tutorials to computer-based instruction to fully-interactive on-line virtual learning environments with two way audio-video, 3D virtual spaces, shared digital objects, and a host of collaborative services. When deployed appropriately, technology can enhance and speed the learning process.
Even the simplest technologies can provide people with rich, engaging experiences that provide meaningful contexts within which learners can frame their learning. However, technology alone is not sufficient. An organization may only become self-sustaining with learning technology by dealing directly with a host of economic, social, political, economic, and cognitive issues. In this tutorial you will hear first hand about these issues from people who are energetically engaged in creating large-scale technology-supported learning infrastructures. You’ll hear the war stories, the victories, and the heartbreaking failures. They will discuss lessons learned the hard way, best practices, and guidelines. They will also explore the unanswered research questions that still must be addressed by the technology-supported learning academic community.
Jay F. Nunamaker is Regents and Soldwedel Professor of MIS, Computer Science, Communication and Director of the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. Dr. Nunamaker’s research interests include collaborative systems and computer-aided support of systems analysis and design.
jnunamaker@CMI.arizona.edu
Robert O. Briggs is a product manager of GroupSystems.com. He investigates the use of technology to improve group productivity as a Research Fellow in the Center for the Management of Information at the University of Arizona. His work includes theoretical modeling of group productivity to support the design, development, use and evaluation of new technologies developed at the Center. Recent work examines the use of Group Support Systems in the classroom to support cross-disciplinary problem-based learning. Dr. Briggs holds a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Arizona, and received his MBA and BS in information systems, as well as BS in art history from San Diego State University.
bbriggs@cmi.arizona.edu
TUTORIAL 12: AFTERNOON
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING OF COLLABORATIVE WEB APPLICATIONS
Ivan Marsic
This tutorial presents a design framework to support rapid development of collaborative applications across wired and wireless Web environments. The design takes into account that users increasingly employ widely disparate computing and communication capabilities. Seamless collaboration across heterogeneous computing environments requires integration of application software, adaptive network architectures for wired and wireless users, and careful design of human-computer interfaces.
The first part of the tutorial reviews the tools (Java Beans and Extensible Markup Language•XML) used in developing software for collaboration over the heterogeneous Web. The second part presents the design of an example system for collaboration in online virtual environments, a design based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We will highlight ways to use the Web as a development platform, and discuss its suitability for implementing collaborative applications.
Finally, we discuss the lessons learned about the design tradeoffs between generality, flexibility and scalability vs. performance and compactness. At the end, the participants will be aware of the issues to consider in creating collaborative applications for heterogeneous Web, and will be able to use Web technologies to develop such applications.
Ivan Marsic is the Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers University. Dr. Marsic is the chief architect of the DISCIPLE system, an advanced groupware system that enables teams, consisting of individuals with specific roles, to collaboratively access, manipulate, analyze, and evaluate multimedia data using networked information systems having disparate computer and communication capabilities. He has authored over 70 journal and conference papers and 3 book chapters. His current research interests include groupware, mobile computing, computer networks, and human-computer interfaces.
marsic@ece.rutgers.edu
TUTORIAL 13: AFTERNOON
BUILDING A VIRTUAL, WIRELESS CLASSROOM: Learning without Limits
Joe Valacich and Len Jessup
The purpose of the tutorial is to describe the creation and assessment of the Virtual Wireless Classroom. Working closely with industry partners Connexion, Paccar, Microsoft, and Accenture, we created a wireless infrastructure that allowed students to participate in virtual classes anytime, anywhere, on any platform, with or without a wired connection to the Internet.
Based on the experiences gained in this project, this tutorial will examine the following topics:
Joseph S. Valacich is Marian E. Smith Presidential Endowed Chair and George and Carolyn Hubman Distinguished Professor in MIS, joined the faculty at Washington State University in 1996. He received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 1989. He has conducted numerous corporate training and executive development programs for organizations, including: AT&T, Dow Chemical, EDS, Exxon, FedEx, General Motors, and Xerox. His research interests include Technology Mediated Collaboration and Distance Education with prior work appearing in publications such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal, Communications of the ACM, Decision Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Journal of Management Information Systems.
jsv@wsu.edu
Leonard M. Jessup is Philip L. Kays Distinguished Professor of MIS and is the Assistant Director for the School of Accounting, Information Systems, and Business Law at Washington State University. Professor Jessup received his BA in Information and Communication Studies in 1983 and his MBA in 1985, from California State University, Chico, where he was voted Outstanding MBA Student. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 1989. Dr. Valacich and Dr. Jessup co-edited the book, Group Support Systems: New Perspectives, for Macmillan Publishing Company, and co-authored the book, Information Systems Foundations, for Prentice Hall. With his wife, Joy L. Egbert, Dr. Jessup won Zenith Data System's annual Masters of Innovation award.
ljessup@cbe.wsu.edu
TUTORIAL 14: AFTERNOON
EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE (XML)
Heidi J. C. Ellis and Rubén A. Mendoza
The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is being widely hailed as the next quantum-leap development in the world of e-business. Our eXtensible Markup Language (XML) tutorial illustrates the basics of creating XML applications, end-user interfaces, and back-end reports. Through the creation of an XML file, a Data Type Definition (DTD) document, a corresponding XML Schema, and an eXtensible Style Sheet (XSL) file, the participant will learn how to apply the basic concepts of XML to transaction-based e-business. In support of the XML file, participants will create Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) stylesheet, a Document Type Definition (DTD) document, and an XML Schema associated with the invoice.
The tutorial is based on the Visa/MasterCard Hotel, Rental Car, and Air Travel invoicing application, and was developed with their explicit permission for academic purposes. It is currently in use in the Computer and Information Sciences Department and in the Lally School of Management & Technology of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hartford Department.
Heidi J. C. Ellis is an Associate Professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hartford Department. Dr. Ellis is a graduate of the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut. She is active in teaching and training in the area of software engineering and her research interests include distributed object technology, web technologies and software engineering education.
Rubén A. Mendoza is an Assistant Professor at the Lally School of Management & Technology of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Hartford Department. Mr. Mendoza is a graduate of the University of Michigan Business School and the University of Michigan School of Information. He teaches Information Systems, and his interests include electronic business technologies, enterprise application integration, and information pricing strategies.
mendozar@rh.edu, http://www.rh.edu/~mendozar
TUTORIAL 15: AFTERNOON
SETTING UP YOUR OWN E-COMMERCE SITE: STEP BY STEP
Veljko Milutinovic, M. Mihanovic, Z, Horvat, D. Dingarac, and S. Stefanovic
This tutorial covers the techniques that enable creation of e-commerce sites (electronic shops). The introductory part lists the prerequisites that have to be satisfied before an attempt is made to create a new electronic shop on the Internet. After that, a step by step procedure is shown for creation of (a) small-size e-shop (using Yahoo! Store), (b) medium-size e-shop (using ecBuilder), and (c) large-size shop (using Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition). Finally, the essence of the SSL is explained, as well as the essence of e-MBA. If time permits, the most resent research efforts in the field will be explained, with examples and case studies, from industry and academia (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc).
Veljko Milutinovic has been responsible for a number of successful commercial products and scientific prototypes as a designer, architect, or project leader); for example: the world's first 200MHz RISC microprocessor for DARPA (in 80s), the world's fastest I/O pump for personal computers (PCs) in cooperation with Encore, a clone of Intel i860 in cooperation with Unisys Tokyo, and a number of innovations related to the multimedia PC of NCR (all in 90's). Most recently Dr. Milutinovic his research has included infrastructure for e-business on the Internet, where he combines his expertise in hardware, software, and business administration. He is on the advisory boards of TechnologyConnect from Boston, Massachusetts (www.technologyconnect.com) and BioPop from Charlotte, North Carolina. As a consultant he has worked for several large high tech companies.
On the faculty of the University of Belgrade, Dr. Milutinovic also taught at Purdue University for more than a decade, and has delivered invited lectures at Dartmouth College, Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. Dr. Milutinovic is a prolific writer and author with over 20 books with major US publishers, more than 50 papers in IEEE journals and about 100 journal papers in total. He has been a Guest Editor for Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Computer, and IEEE Concurrency. One of his books was the best seller of all times for the IEEE CS Press, and three of his forewords were written by Nobel Laureates.
Working with Dr. Milutinovic are Mr. Mihanovic and Mr. Horvat, senior software designers and project leaders at FinSoft in Belgrade; Mr. Digarac and Mr. Stevanovic, graduate students and project leaders at the University in Belgrade.
WORKSHOP 16: AFTERNOON
MOBILE DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Intelligent Decision Support and Mobile Commerce
Dr. Christer Carlsson
It is intuitively appealing to build products and services for the mobile commerce domain with advanced, intelligent information technology. This domain requires fast planning, problem solving and decision-making. Support should be available at the moment of decision-making, in an appropriate form and with the best possible substance. Intelligent information technology appears to answer the call for flexibility, adding value and bundling, which are some of the key success factors for building viable m-commerce products and services.
Intelligent information technology includes a variety of technologies, ranging from machine intelligence, through artificial neural nets, genetic algorithms and case-based reasoning to soft computing. Dr. Christer Carlsson will present an overview of these technologies and their mobile commerce applications.
The session leader is Professor Christer Carlsson, Director of the Institute of Advanced Management Systems Research, a professor of management science at Abo Akademi University, a member of the Steering Committee of EUNITE an EU/IST Network of Excellence, and chairman of the BISC-SIG on Soft Decision Analysis. He is the author of 3 books, editor or co-editor of 5 special issues of international journals and 12 books, and has published more than 200 papers.
M-Reporting For Real-Time Performance Management
Dr. Dave King
In today's business environment successful enterprises are those that have integrated strategic and operational plans, focus those plans on a key set of critical success factors, and rapidly report performance against those plans. In the past, rapid reporting was measured in weeks and days. Today, it’s measured in real-time. As John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, has indicated the success of his company rests on his managers' abilities to "spot problems and opportunities at any time."
Over the past few years, the Web has played a major role in rapidly delivering performance measurement data to the desktops of executives, managers and analysts. Of course, knowledge workers such as these aren't desktop bound. Speedy access isn't just any time, it’s also any place on any device. In this presentation, Dr. King examines techniques and technologies for delivering real-time performance measurement based on data residing in Web warehouses to mobile and wireless devices. As the paper will illustrate, new XML standards such as XBRL and XML for Analysis are a key to any time, anywhere and any device delivery.
The session leader is Dr. Dave King, Comshare's Sr. Vice President of Product Development and Chief Technology Officer. He has worked in the field of information technology for over 30 years, focusing on the application of advanced technologies to managerial and decision support. He has published over 50 articles and books in the area of decision support and business intelligence, co-authored a best selling textbook on e-commerce, is a frequent speaker at conferences, seminars and tradeshows, and has served as an editor for a variety of professional and trade journals.
Problem-Solving On The Run: A Mobile Internet Meeting Approach
Dr. Pak Yoong
One of the major issues faced by many business teams is finding enough opportunities to meet and solve business problems that require urgent attention. Team members who are ‘on the run’ most of the time further aggravate this dilemma. The following scenario illustrates this problem.
Your organization decides to introduce an ERP system and you have been told by your manager to write a RFP document. One of the more urgent tasks is to formulate a set of criteria to evaluate tenders from prospective vendors. You have been allocated a team of specialists from different business units to assist you. You have also been told that this set of criteria must be identified within 2 working days so that other sections of the RFP document can be written.
You have contacted your team members and found that you have only one opportunity to meet, for one hour, before the deadline. Most of your team members have prior commitments, some of which require them to be out of town. You have decided to use the short meeting to scope the nature of the task and plan a process for continuing problem-solving even though your team members are ‘on the run’ during most of the 2 days. How then do you engage team members in collaborative problem solving while they are ‘on the run’?
This presentation describes an action research program that examines how business teams may use WAP-enabled mobile devices to facilitate problem solving while team members are away from the office and unable to interact synchronously. Even though these mobile internet meeting approaches are still in its early stages of development, we have found that they do provide promising alternatives to business teams who cannot meet to solve business problems because team members are on the run.
The session leader is Dr. Pak Yoong is an associate professor and foundation director of the masters program in information systems at the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Pak's research, teaching, and consulting experience are in the facilitation of electronic meetings, telework, virtual teams, and human resource development in information technology environments. He has worked with many firms and is sought after for his innovative approach in assisting IT organisations and teams to deal with teamwork issues. His work has been published in such journals as Journal of Information Technology and People, Journal of Information Science, Journal of Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy and Journal of Systems and Information Technology.
Mobile Computing For Collaborative Decision Support
Dr. Jerry Wagner
Software tools with names like Electronic Meeting Systems, Group Decision Support Systems and Collaborative Decision Support Systems have been available in specially equipped meeting rooms with names like Group Decision Centers, Planning Centers, and War rooms. The economic and behavioral benefits of such systems have been extensively documented and proven. The tools however have not moved beyond the restriction of special facilities for special events and special people. When managers are “pulled” into these rooms for face-to-face facilitated electronic meetings, they are enthusiastic about promoting the benefits, but the life cycle of excitement is short lived. This is not a reflection upon the software, decision makers, or decision process facilitators. Until now we have not been able to take the same hardware and software technology out into everyday work life. The Internet was a major step forward but it still meant the need for a PC and usually that PC is restricted to a connection with a
telephone line. Now with handheld and wireless computing devices, the technology can be pushed out into the work life of decision makers with freedom of when and where they work.
This session will demonstrate prototype software on handheld devices including the iPAQ.
The session leader is Dr. Jerry Wagner an early leader in Decision Support systems including Group Decision Support Systems. He was head of the Operations Research Group, College of Engineering at the University of Texas prior to launching an entrepreneurial software career including Execucom Systems, Collaborative Technologies, Milagro Systems, and WebIQ. He has now moved to Omaha, Nebraska as Distinguished Research Fellow, Peter Kiewit Institute, College of Information Science and Technology, University of Nebraska, Omaha. He has started the University Center for Mobile Decision Support and continues as Chief Decision Scientist, Mobile Decisions Corp. headquartered in Omaha’s Scott Technology Transfer and Incubator Center.
WORKSHOP 17: MORNING
PERSISTENT CONVERSATION: PERSPECTIVES FROM RESEARCH AND DESIGN
Thomas Erickson and Susan Herring
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of our minitrack of the same name, this workshop is quite important for establishing common ground beforehand. The workshop is primarily intended for minitrack authors, although other participants are welcome provided they are willing to prepare for it as described below.
The particular aim of the minitrack and the workshop is to bring together researchers from diverse areas who analyze existing computer-mediated conversational practices and sites, with designers who propose, implement, or deploy new types of conversational systems. We hope that the work of each may inform the others, suggesting new questions, methods, perspectives, and design approaches.
The workshop will provide a background for the sessions and set the stage for a dialogue between researchers and designers that will continue during the minitrack. The minitrack co-chairs will select in advance a publicly accessible CMC site, which each author will be asked to analyze, critique, redesign, or otherwise examine, using their disciplinary tools and techniques before the workshop convenes. The workshop will include presentations and discussions of the participants' examinations of the site and its content.
Thomas Erickson is a Research Staff Member and an interaction designer and researcher at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in New York. He is interested in understanding how large groups of people interact via networks, and in designing systems that support deep, productive, coherent, network-mediated conversation.
Susan Herring is an Associate Professor of Information Science and Linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research applies language-focused methods of analysis to digital conversations in order to identify their recurrent properties and social effects. She is the editor of Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Benjamins, 1996) and Computer-Mediated Conversation (Oxford, forthcoming).