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Context and Collaborative Work: A Context-Sensitive Intervention Approach for Collaboration in Dynamic Environment

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Context in Computing

Abstract

The context of complex design and engineering processes is characterized by dynamic requirements, like changing process goals or group constellations. To deal with these dynamics in a virtual environment, a context-sensitive collaboration support system needs to consider a changing context and provide virtual teams with the support they need. Such elastic collaboration support can range from a fixed process and tool configuration to an open collaboration environment that enables groups to interact in a self-organized way. In this chapter, research about a context-sensitive intervention approach is described that intends to support elastic collaboration in dynamic environments. Based on a review of existing theories on collaboration performance, the use of contextual process information to monitor group performance during collaboration is discussed. Thereby, a rule concept is introduced to derive interventions for elastic collaboration processes compared to existing approaches for context modeling in collaboration.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been partially supported by the FP7 EU Large-scale Integrating Project SMART VORTEX (Scalable Semantic Product Data Stream Management for Collaboration and Decision Making in Engineering) co-financed by the European Union. For more details, visit http://www.smartvortex.eu/.

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Correspondence to Stefan Werner Knoll .

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Knoll, S., Lukosch, S. (2014). Context and Collaborative Work: A Context-Sensitive Intervention Approach for Collaboration in Dynamic Environment. In: Brézillon, P., Gonzalez, A. (eds) Context in Computing. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1887-4_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1887-4_21

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