Abstract: Software engineering involves people collaborating to develop better software. Collaboration is challenging, especially across time zones and without face-to-face meetings. We therefore use collaboration tools all along the product life cycle to let us work together, stay together, and achieve results together. This article summarizes experiences and trends chosen from recent IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (IGSCE) conferences.

Abstract: Deploying state-of-the-art technologies is vital and inevitable in assistive healthcare to cope with emerging services such as remote monitoring, collaborative consultation, and electronic health record. Grid computing has succeeded somewhat in enabling the sharing of resources across organizations but has not been deployed widely due to its complex implementation and interface. Cloud computing overcomes this aspect by allowing simple and easy user access, coping with users’ dynamic and elastic demands, providing metered usage for its resources and hence is increasingly being adopted by individual users as well as enterprise users. The Cloud may just be the right technology for healthcare infrastructure. However, several serious issues concerning security, data protection and ownership, quality of services, and mobility need to be resolved before Cloud computing can be widely adopted.. This paper proposes Mobile Cloud for Assistive Healthcare (MoCAsH) as an infrastructure for assistive healthcare. Besides inheriting the advantages of Cloud computing, MoCAsH embraces important concepts of mobile sensing, active sensor records, and collaborative planning by deploying intelligent mobile agents, context-aware middleware, and collaborative protocol for efficient resource sharing and planning. MoCAsH addresses security and privacy issues by deploying selective and federated P2P Cloud to protect data, preserve data ownership and strengthen aspects of security. It also addresses various quality-of-service issues concerning critical responses and energy consumption.

Abstract: We describe an interactive table designed for supporting face-to-face collaborative learning. The table, Reflect, addresses the issue of unbalanced participation during group discussions. By displaying on its surface, a shared visualization of member participation, Reflect, is meant to encourage participants to avoid the extremes of over and underparticipation. We report on a user study that validates some of our hypotheses on the effect the table would have on its users. Namely, we show that Reflect leads to more balanced collaboration, but only under certain conditions. We also show different effects the table has on over and underparticipators.

Abstract: In this paper we describe a novel Model-View-Controller based architecture, Centralized Control, that introduces collaboration in single-users applications. The architecture is able to add collaboration with no need to modify the source code of the original single-user application, and providing also the capability to introduce group semantics into the new, collaborative application that is obtained. The architecture is shown in practice, by introducing CollabXMind, a collaborative mind map tool, that is based on a well-known single-user tool, XMind.

Abstract: Collaborative recommender systems use various types of information to help customers find products of personalized interest. To increase the usefulness of collaborative recommender systems in certain circumstances, it could be desirable to merge recommender system databases between companies, thus expanding the data pool. This can lead to privacy disclosure hazards during the merging process. This paper addresses how to avoid privacy disclosure in collaborative recommender systems by comparing with major cryptology approaches and constructing a more efficient privacy-preserving collaborative recommender system based on the scalar product protocol.

Abstract: Support for explicit collaboration in information-seeking activities is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for search systems. Several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same information-seeking goals to work together. Many issues for these collaborative information-seeking (CIS) environments remain understudied. The authors identified awareness as one of these issues in CIS, and they presented a user study that involved 42 pairs of participants, who worked in collaboration over 2 sessions with 3 instances of the authors' CIS system for exploratory search. They showed that while having awareness of personal actions and history is important for exploratory search tasks spanning multiple sessions, support for group awareness is even more significant for effective collaboration. In addition, they showed that support for such group awareness can be provided without compromising usability or introducing additional load on the users. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Abstract: Without infinite resources, software development teams must prioritize security fortification efforts to prevent the most damaging attacks. The Protection Poker "game" is a collaborative means for guiding this prioritization and has the potential to improve software security practices and team software security knowledge.

Abstract: The formation of a system of systems from a collection of interdependent systems does so in response to a collaborative mechanism. The nature of the constituent systems that compose the system of systems is a paradox by which they maintain an autonomous behavior and yet join the collective in collaboration. A social function can describe the system of systems mechanism that considers the value of collaborative relationships, and stresses preferences for action rather than an independent action of the individual systems. The constituent systems of the system of systems balance the risk of belonging with that of autonomy. This decision dichotomy is an example of typical decision makers that must balance cost and risk against achieving goals in a satisficing environment. A process beginning with a global goal serves to construct a multicriteria decision process creating the set of alternatives representing choices forming a collective social function that binds the system of systems. A case study demonstrates a simple application of independent autonomous systems collaborating to affect a holistic response with positive results.

Abstract: Much work is presently ongoing in collaborative software engineering research. This work is beginning to make serious inroads into our ability to more effectively practice collaborative software engineering, with best practices, processes, tools, metrics, and other techniques becoming available for day-to-day use. However, we have not yet reached the point where the practice of collaborative software engineering is routine, without surprises, and generally as optimal as possible. This chapter summarizes the main findings of this book, draws some conclusions on these findings and looks at the prospects for software engineers in dealing with the challenges of collaborative software development. The chapter ends with prospects for collaborative software engineering.

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) concept promises a world of networked and interconnected devices that provides relevant content to users. Recommender systems can find relevant content for users in IoT environments, offering a user-adapted personalized experience. Collaboration-based recommenders in IoT environments rely on user-to-object, space-time interaction patterns. This extension of that idea takes into account user location and interaction time to recommend scattered, pervasive context-embedded networked objects. The authors compare their proposed system to memory-based collaborative methods in which user similarity is based on the ratings of previously rated items. Their proof-of-concept implementation was used in a real-world scenario involving 15 students interacting with 75 objects at Carlos III University of Madrid.

Abstract: The paper introduces and proposes a hybrid approach to computer supported collaborative learning. The approach suggests a combined use of the open source systems Moodle and OpenSim through the Sloodle module, in order to facilitate the fruitful execution of the collaborative learning techniques Jigsaw and Fishbowl, and examines their online transferability. In the concluding section, it is surmised that the successful combination of specific approaches and systems can surpass particular shortcomings inherent in their isolated use.

Abstract: We study the online micro-blog sentiment detection problem, which aims to determine whether a micro-blog post expresses emotions. This problem is challenging because a micro-blog post is very short and individuals have distinct ways of expressing emotions. A single classification model trained on the entire corpus may fail to capture characteristics unique to each user. On the other hand, a personalized model for each user may be inaccurate due to the scarcity of training data, especially at the very beginning where users have just posted a few entries. To overcome these challenges, we propose learning a global model over all micro-bloggers, which is then leveraged to continuously refine the individual models through a collaborative online learning way. We evaluate our algorithm on a real-life micro-blog dataset collected from the popular micro-blog site – Twitter. Results show that our algorithm is effective and efficient for timely sentiment detection in real micro-blogging applications.

Abstract: Understanding the role of student demographics in the online learning environment can assist institutions to make decisions regarding online programs. These decisions go beyond the initial question of whether to invest in online programs or whether to increase or decrease online course availability. This article discusses the relationship between student demographics and success in online learning environments as it relates to academic performance and the possession of self-regulated learning characteristics. Understanding the role of student demographics in the online learning environment also would help institutions understand what resources need to be allocated toward support of online learning programs in the form of online advising and technical support for students, course development support for faculty, and investing in learning-management software or collaboration software.

Abstract: Progress in analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) has been hindered by obstructions to hardware innovation and by software incompatibility. In this paper, we announce and outline the Open AUC Project. The goals of the Open AUC Project are to stimulate AUC innovation by improving instrumentation, detectors, acquisition and analysis software, and collaborative tools. These improvements are needed for the next generation of AUC-based research. The Open AUC Project combines on-going work from several different groups. A new base instrument is described, one that is designed from the ground up to be an analytical ultracentrifuge. This machine offers an open architecture, hardware standards, and application programming interfaces for detector developers. All software will use the GNU Public License to assure that intellectual property is available in open source format. The Open AUC strategy facilitates collaborations, encourages sharing, and eliminates the chronic impediments that have plagued AUC innovation for the last 20 years. This ultracentrifuge will be equipped with multiple and interchangeable optical tracks so that state-of-the-art electronics and improved detectors will be available for a variety of optical systems. The instrument will be complemented by a new rotor, enhanced data acquisition and analysis software, as well as collaboration software. Described here are the instrument, the modular software components, and a standardized database that will encourage and ease integration of data analysis and interpretation software.

Abstract: With the popularity of e-learning, to construct a perfect e-learning environment has become a popular research topic in the field of modern distance education. Cloud computing is a new computing model which is based on the grid computing, it is the core technology of the next generation of network computing platform, especially in the field of education, cloud computing is the basic environment and platform of the future e-learning. It provides secure data storage, convenient internet services and strong computing power. This essay mainly focuses on the research of the application of cloud computing in E-learning environment. Taking the “Google collaborative platform” as a case study, one factor of E-learning environment construction-“the collaborative learning platform” has been built, and also the “collaborative learning” has been given detailed illustration.

Abstract: This paper proposes Computer Assisted Collaboration Engineering (CACE) and Process Support Systems (PSS) as a new approach to move beyond limitations of the current generation of group support systems (GSS) and other collaboration technologies in supporting recurring collaborative work practices. It argues the need for certain capabilities in CACE and PSS systems, and illustrates key concepts with examples from proof of concept systems. It summarizes early results with these systems in the field.

Abstract: Predicting people who other people may like has recently become an important task in many online social networks. Traditional collaborative filtering (CF) approaches are popular in recommender systems to effectively predict user preferences for items. One major problem in CF is computing similarity between users or items. Traditional CF methods often use heuristic methods to combine the ratings given to an item by similar users, which may not reflect the characteristics of the active user and can give unsatisfactory performance. In contrast to heuristic approaches we have developed CollabNet, a novel algorithm that uses gradient descent to learn the relative contributions of similar users or items to the ranking of recommendations produced by a recommender system, using weights to represent the contributions of similar users for each active user. We have applied CollabNet to the challenging problem of people to people recommendation in social networks, where people have a dual role as both "users" and "items", e.g., both initiating and receiving communications, to recommend other users to a given user, based on user similarity in terms of both taste (whom they like) and attractiveness (who likes them). Evaluation of CollabNet recommendations on datasets from a commercial online social network shows improved performance over standard CF.

Abstract: Wikis today are being used as a tool to conduct collaborative writing assignments in classrooms. However, typical Wikis do not adequately address the assessment of individual student contributions toward their groups or provide any automated group formation mechanism. To improve these aspects, we have designed and implemented ClassroomWiki - a web-based collaborative Wiki writing tool. For the students, ClassroomWiki provides a web interface for writing and revising their group's Wiki and a topic-based forum for discussing their ideas during collaboration. When the students collaborate, ClassroomWiki tracks all student activities and builds detailed student models that represent their contributions toward their groups. For the teacher, ClassroomWiki provides a multiagent framework that uses the student models to form student groups to improve the collaborative learning of students. To investigate the impact of ClassroomWiki, we have conducted a three-week-long collaborative Wiki writing assignment in a university-level history course. The results suggest that ClassroomWiki can 1) improve the collaborative learning outcome of the students by its group formation framework, 2) help the teacher better assess a student's contribution toward his or her group and avoid free riding, and 3) facilitate specific and precise teacher intervention with accurate and detailed tracking of student activities.

Abstract: Pocket Data Mining (PDM) is our new term describing collaborative mining of streaming data in mobile and distributed computing environments With sheer amounts of data streams are now available for subscription on our smart mobile phones, the potential of using this data for decision making using data stream mining techniques has now been achievable owing to the increasing power of these handheld devices Wireless communication among these devices using Bluetooth and WiFi technologies has opened the door wide for collaborative mining among the mobile devices within the same range that are running data mining techniques targeting the same application This paper proposes a new architecture that we have prototyped for realizing the significant applications in this area We have proposed using mobile software agents in this application for several reasons Most importantly the autonomic intelligent behaviour of the agent technology has been the driving force for using it in this application Other efficiency reasons are discussed in details in this paper Experimental results showing the feasibility of the proposed architecture are presented and discussed

Abstract: Efficient collaboration and task management is challenging in distributed, dynamically-formed organizations such as ad hoc disaster response teams. Ineffective collaboration may result in poor performance and loss of life. In this paper, we present Overseer, an open multi-agent system that leverages context information in a mobile setting to facilitate collaboration and task allocation. We describe our system architecture, deployment, evaluation metrics, challenges and proposed solutions. We also show how mobile context can be used to create dynamic role-based assignments to support collaboration and effective task management.

Abstract: With the wide use of online social networks (OSNs), the problem of data privacy has attracted much attention. Several approaches have been proposed to address this issue. One of privacy management approaches for OSN leverages a key management technique to enable a user to simply post encrypted contents so that only users who can satisfy the associate security policy can derive the key to access the data. However, the key management policies of existing schemes may grant access to unaurhorized users and cannot efficiently determine authorized users. In this paper, we propose a collaborative framework which enforces access control for OSN through an innovative key management focused on communities. This framework introduces a community key management based on a new group-oriented convergence cryptosystem, as well as provides an efficient privacy preservation needed in a private OSN. To prove the feasibility of our approach, we also discuss a proof-of-concept implementation of our framework. Experimental results show that our construction can achieve the identified design goals for OSNs with the acceptable performance.

Abstract: The I-Room is a virtual environment intended to support a range of collaborative activities, especially those that involve sense making, deliberation, and decision making. The I-Room case studies described in this paper all employ virtual worlds technology to provide this interaction space and show how this can be augmented with external knowledge-based and intelligent systems.

Abstract: This paper discusses the adoption of bottom- up social software tools in formal learning environments. This is believed to enhance the learning experience of today’s young generation characterized by being technology savvy and keen on social networking. As a first step towards this objective, the 3A interaction model that aims at aiding the design of personal and collaborative learning platforms is presented. It accounts for interaction paradigms widely used in Web 2.0 applications and builds on Distributed Cognition and Activity Theory while remaining at the right level of abstraction to be easily “translatable” into tangible applications supporting both formal and informal learning.

Abstract: Gossip-based Peer-to-Peer protocols proved to be very efficient for supporting dynamic and complex information exchange among distributed peers. They are useful for building and maintaining the network topology itself as well as to support a pervasive diffusion of the information injected into the network. This is very useful in a world where there is a growing need to access and be aware of many types of distributed resources like Internet pages, shared files, online products, news and information, finding ???exible, scalable and efficient mechanisms addressing this topic is a key issue, even with relevant social and economic aspects. In this paper, we propose the general architecture of a system that tries to exploit the collaborative exchange of information between peers in order to build a system able to gather similar users and spread useful suggestions among them.

Abstract: Most frameworks that categorize technology for collaborative software development look at only one aspect of coordination support. The Coordination Pyramid classifies technologies according to multiple coordination paradigms, offering a unified, complementary perspective and a structure for evaluating emerging technology.

Abstract: Mission planning for collaborative Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS:s) is a complex topic which involves trade-offs between the degree of centralization or decentralization required, the degree of abstraction in which plans are generated, and the degree to which such plans are distributed among participating UAS:s. In realistic environments such as those found in natural and man-made catastrophes where emergency services personnel are involved, a certain degree of centralization and abstraction is necessary in order for those in charge to understand and eventually sign off on potential plans. It is also quite often the case that unconstrained distribution of actions is inconsistent with the loosely coupled interactions and dependencies which arise between collaborating systems. In this article, we present a new planning algorithm for collaborative UAS:s based on combining ideas from forward chaining planning with partial-order planning leading to a new hybrid partial order forward-chaining (POFC) framework which meets the requirements on centralization, abstraction and distribution we find in realistic emergency services settings.

Abstract: Augmented Reality (AR) appears as a promising technology to improve students motivation and interest and support the learning and teaching process in educational contexts. We present the collaborative development of an AR application to support the teaching of the digestive and circulatory systems. We developed this system with the support of a private Spanish school. The main objective of the application is to show the student in primary school, in the most accurate way, digestive and circulatory systems. By other hand, we also develop our own AR library, HUMANAR, in order to ensure the integration of AR into our game engine and to overcome some drawbacks present in some public libraries. Moreover, our system provides several advantages over the traditional learning as books, videos or practice with animal organs.

Abstract: Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) such as military training programs, emergency preparedness simulations, and online games place strict requirements on network performance when participating users share the 3D virtual environment through their mobile devices in an ad hoc network. However, most support systems for existing CVEs are confined to a desktop setting, thus preventing collaboration while users are mobile. In this work, we propose and evaluate a Gnutella peer-to-peer network over mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) to support Mobile Collaborative Virtual Environment (MCVE) applications. Both architectures share some common features such as decentralization, self-reorganization, and self-healing. However, peer-to-peer networks and MANETs operate on different network layers, and thus, cause poor performance. To address this problem, we explore a novel cross-layer approach to improve the overall performance of CVEs over MANETs. The network layer should be aware of the user's physical position in the virtual environment (VE) in order to minimize network traffic and cope with a moderate workload between nodes. In this paper, we present a cross-layer approach model for collaborative virtual environment over MANET. We describe its implementation and evaluate its performance using NS2 simulator.