The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of virtual peer-to-peer (P2P) workgroups as a platform for long-term collaboration in healthcare. Virtual peer-to-peer workgroups were developed and piloted by the Michigan Value Collaborative to increase knowledge and collaboration between providers across Michigan. The workgroups were designed to address barriers to change and long-term collaboration by allowing participants to share their improvement journey and provide feedback and ideas for improvement in a highly accessible platform. The pilot workgroups focused on heart failure readmission reduction initiatives as it is a much scrutinized metric and is penalized by public and private payers. Data on the workgroups were collected using pre and post-workgroup surveys filled out by participants. The results reveal that virtual peer-to- peer workgroups are effective in increasing knowledge and collaboration in the short term, but more study is required to judge their long term effectiveness in improving care at participating providers. Virtual peer-to-peer workgroups can serve as a foundation for increasing regional collaboration in healthcare as it is a very simple platform that does not require major financial or resource commitments.

This dissertation encompasses three articles concerning Sawyer's (2007) theory of group flow in the context of higher education, including a literature review, and two interpretive studies. In the literature review and in the first interpretive research article, the results of the research illuminated the applicability of themes of group flow in collaborative settings in higher education in themes of vision, ownership and contribution, and communication. The final article provides a description of the roles of student lead and professor in this environment and the unique ways that they may have encouraged those themes in the studio. The context for this study was the BYU Animation Studio, using video footage of students working in the computer lab, in their Daily meetings, and video interviews with students and professors in the program. The footage focused on one year of the senior project, with a core group of students coordinating efforts to create an animated short. Students involved in the senior film were mostly juniors and seniors coming from different academic departments, including Fine Arts, Engineering, and Computer Science. In the descriptive article, we gained further insights into the experience of group flow in a higher education setting. Several of the themes from the data resonated with the literature on group flow. Students working on the project had both project and people-oriented goals. They took initiative to solve problems and work through personal conflicts with group decisions, and made efforts to share their knowledge with other students. As group members communicated, they often validated and built off of others' ideas, putting the interests of the group above personal interests. In the same context, using the same methods, we were able to observe ways that student leads and teachers tried to enhance the group experience. Student leads and teachers made different contributions in that respect. Student leads contributed the actual project vision, breaking up the project into tasks for which students could volunteer and take initiative. Student leads also promoted friendship and communication within the group. Professors taught collaboration skills, and supported student initiatives. Professors also provided opportunities for students to collaborate across departments, while practicing collaboration between faculty members.

Multi-user computer-aided design (CAD) is an emerging technology that promises to facilitate collaboration, enhance product quality, and reduce product development lead times by allowing multiple engineers to work on the same design at the same time. The BYU site of the NSF Center for e-Design has developed advanced multi-user CAD prototypes that have demonstrated the feasibility and value of this technology. Despite the possibilities that this software opens up for enhanced collaboration, there are now a new variety of challenges and opportunities to understand and address. For multi-user CAD to be used effectively in a modern engineering environment, it is necessary to understand and address both human and technical collaboration challenges. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand and address these challenges. Two studies were performed to better understand the human side of engineering collaboration: (1) engineers from multiple companies were interviewed to assess the collaboration challenges they experience, and (2) players of the multi-player game Minecraft were surveyed and studied to understand how a multi-user environment affects design collaboration. Methods were also developed to address two important technical challenges in multi-user CAD: (1) a method for detecting undo conflicts, and (2) additional methods for administering data access. This research addresses some of the important human and technical collaboration challenges in multi-user CAD. It enhances our understanding of collaboration challenges in engineering industry and how multi-user CAD will help address some of those challenges. It also enhances our understanding of how a multi-user design environment will affect design collaboration. The method developed for detecting conflicts that occur during local undo in multi-user CAD can be used to block conflicts from occurring and provide the user with some information about the cause of the conflict so they can collaborate to resolve it. The methods developed for administering data access in multi-user CAD will help protect against unauthorized access to sensitive data.

La capacité à se localiser est d’une importance cruciale pour la navigation des robots. Cette importance a permis le développement de plusieurs techniques de localisation de grande précision. Notre contribution consiste à proposer un passage de la technique de localisation visuelle inertielle du cas individuel, au cas multi collaboratif. Ce travail a pour objectif d’aboutir à une localisation collaborative aussi rapide, robuste et précise que la technique individuelle de départ. Notre approche se base sur le filtrage en couplage serré Multi State Constraint Kalman Filter (MSCKF) pour la fusion de données. Les caractéristiques de ce filtrage sont d’abord étudiées dans le cas individuel pour tester la robustesse et la précision dans différentes conditions et avec différents modèles d’observation. Les résultats de cette étude nous ont orienté vers la structure la mieux adaptée à une augmentation au cas de localisation collaborative. L’algorithme collaboratif proposé, est basé sur un processus hiérarchique en trois étapes. Une localisation collaborative est initialisée sur la base des mesures relatives de distances Ultra Large Bande (ULB). Une localisation collaborative améliorée se base ensuite sur le chevauchement des images en utilisant un modèle de mesure adapté, et une structure de fusion de données qui absorbe l’excédent en temps de calcul provoqué par le traitement collaboratif. Enfin, pour augmenter la précision, une extraction des contraintes de structure environnement, suivie d’une intégration à l’aide d’une troncature dans le filtre sont proposées. / Localization is of crucial importance for robots navigation. This importance has allowed the emergence of several precise localization techniques. Our contribution consists of proposing a transition from an individual inertial visual localization technique to the multi-robots collaborative localization case. This work aims to achieve a collaborative localization as fast, robust and accurate as the individual starting technique. We adopt a tightly coupled MSCKF (Multi State Constraint Kalman Filter) approach to achieve the data fusion. The characteristics of this data fusion are first studied in the individual case to test the robustness and the precision under different conditions and with different observation models. The results of this study directed us towards the best structure adapted to an augmentation to the collaborative localization case. The proposed collaborative algorithm is a hierarchical process of three stages. A collaborative localization is initialized based on the relative distance measurements using Ultra-Wide Band (ULB) sensors. Then, a collaborative localization based on images overlapping using a suitable measurement model, and a data fusion structure that absorbs the computation time excess caused by the collaboration is achieved. Finally, to increase precision, an extraction of the environment constraints, followed by an integration using a truncation in the filter are proposed.

This study examined the factors that influence a local government’s decision to engage in regional collaborations. Analysis of 7 local government managers and eleven elected officials revealed that the decision to engage in regional collaboration was influenced by external factors, organizational factors, and internal motivations. Elected officials and local government managers identified a disaster occurrence, fiscal stress, outside agencies, jurisdictional benefit, and communication as key factors. Further, this research highlights the importance of the role of the elected official in intergovernmental arrangements, the role of the local government manager as the policy entrepreneur, and the influence of shared norms and values.

Aujourd’hui, le processus de conception de produits fait face à une mondialisation des marchés, conduit par des équipes géographiquement distribuées. Ces équipes sont ainsi amenées à travailler ensemble afin de concevoir ces produits nouveaux. Les activités de conception ont donc évolué au fil du temps pour pouvoir constamment répondre aux nouvelles contraintes industrielles, de la même manière que les processus de fabrication se sont adaptés aux marchés. Ainsi, afin de faciliter les phases de travail en commun, de nouvelles stratégies de gestion de la collaboration, notamment à travers de nouveaux systèmes d’information, sont mises en place. Ces systèmes d’information sont nombreux et prennent différentes formes, ce qui rend souvent difficiles la sélection et le pilotage de ces derniers. Or, pour les équipes projet, la gestion de ces nouveaux outils informatiques fait partie intégrante des éléments clés du processus de conception de produits. Ainsi, dans le cadre de nos travaux, nous nous focalisons sur l’aide au pilotage de l’ingénierie collaborative en mode projet pour la conception et le développement de produits matériels techniques. Notre objectif est d’aider le chef projet à mieux gérer son projet en utilisant au moment adéquat l’outil d’aide à la collaboration le plus adapté. Dans nos travaux, nous avons souligné la nécessité d’utiliser un indicateur quantitatif de pilotage de la conception collaborative. Cet indicateur apporte ainsi une approche complémentaire de l’évaluation de la pertinence de la collaboration en cours, en prenant en compte son impact sur l’évolution du projet. Le calcul de cet indicateur s’appuie sur une métrique spécifique et concerne l’évolution de la complétude de la donnée CAO. De plus, nous avons montré que ce nouvel indicateur peut être intégré à une approche organisationnelle de type PLM afin de faciliter le stockage des données et le calcul de la complétude, cette dernière étant liée aux outils utilisés et aux jalons projet. / Today, product design process is facing a market globalization led by distributed teams. Moreover, the international market context in which the companies evolves, leads them to work in large multi-disciplinary collaborative teams using in collaborative practices. In this context, product design process is led by the integration and optimization of stakeholders’ collaboration. Thus, to facilitate collaboration steps, new management strategies are defined and new information systems can be used. These information systems are numerous and take various forms, leading to difficulties for companies to select one of them and manage them. However, to the design teams, the management and the choice of those are key elements of the product design process.Toward this ends, in the present thesis, we focalize our research on the topic of collaborative design project management. Our objective is to assist the project leader to better manage her or his product design project using optimal collaborative tool all along the design project. We have underlined the necessity to use quantitative and non-intrusive indicator during the management of collaborative design phases in order to subjective evaluation. The tracking of this indicator is performed in parallel to the existing approaches of the evaluation of the suitability of the collaboration. It defines the impact of the collaboration steps on the design project evolution. The computation of this indicator is based on a precise metric which details the completeness of the CAD model based on the used collaborative tools and the project milestones. Moreover, we have showed that this new indicator can be integrated to an organizational approach, as a PLM, to facilitate data storage and completeness computation.

La présente thèse porte sur la collaboration dans la conception d'un système dans un cadre Ingénierie Système (IS) et plus spécifiquement, nous nous sommes intéressés à la phase de définition des besoins du système ou processus d'Ingénierie des exigences, qui est la toute première phase dans l'Ingénierie Système. L'Ingénierie des Exigences est un processus assez complexe au cours duquel les exigences qu'un système doit satisfaire sont définies à partir de besoins provenant des différentes parties prenantes concernées de près ou de loin par la réalisation du système. Nous faisons la distinction entre le besoin qui est la perception qu'un utilisateur final a du système et l'exigence qui est la vision en termes techniques qu'un concepteur ou un développeur a du système. Le processus d'élicitation des besoins et de leur transformation en exigences techniques est un travail assez critique et demande l'implication de toutes les parties prenantes. Sur la base de ce constat, nous avons adopte une approche collaborative pour traiter la complexité de ce processus. Etant donne la nature du problème, nous avons distingue deux domaines de définition de nos travaux : l'Ingénierie des Exigences à travers l'Elicitation des Exigences et la Collaboration. Nous avons ainsi adopte une démarche dans laquelle nous faisons la distinction entre les problèmes d'Ingénierie et ceux de la collaboration. Nous proposons une méthodologie pour l'Elicitation Collaborative des exigences qui distingue deux types de processus : les processus d'Ingénierie des exigences et les processus de collaboration. Les processus de collaboration sont définis à l'aide de l'Ingénierie de la Collaboration en s'appuyant sur les taches d'Ingénierie identifiées aux travers de processus d'Ingénierie fournis par des normes, en l'occurrence la norme EIA-632. Des expérimentations de notre méthodologie ont été réalises avec des étudiants en utilisant l'outil ThinkTank de GroupSystems et un prototype de spécification c ollaborative des exigences appelé SPECJ que nous avons développé.

<p>This thesis is about collaborative activities in interactive spaces. These spaces are characterized by having shared, large displays in combination with private displays and software tools that facilitate a fluent sharing of information between people and their resources. The aim is to understand the collaborative activities in interactive spaces in terms of how team members are allowed to contribute to the overall work and what influence the physical qualities of space have on the collaboration. The research questions focus on the ways team members come to contribute to the work, how roles and functions are handled during collaboration, and how the physical qualities of the space influence the collaborative activities. To investigate these issues two empirical studies were conducted. The first study focused on two student teams that carried out conceptual design activities. The second study focused on geographically distributed meetings of an international research network. Data was mainly collected using video recordings, observations and questionnaires. The analyses are primarily based on detailed investigations of video recordings. The results showed in the first study that the large, touch-sensitive displays made it possible for the team members to interact and contribute to the work in several ways, which led to more equalized roles. In the second study the setting was more complex; the use of both video- and audio conferences made it difficult for the team members to overview the situation and to take part in the conversations, and their roles became more accentuated. It was further found that the physical- and the social space were intertwined: they appeared as spaces within spaces. The team members were also in a concrete sense constructing spaces within spaces: they created their own spaces in the common space and they often made transitions between shared and private, focal and peripheral work.</p>

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.