Communication deficiencies within interdisciplinary teams are known to reduce the effectiveness of those teams by causing erroneous behaviors (Alvarez & Coiera, 2006; Reader, Flin, & Cuthbertson, 2007). Also, many design defects have been attributed to communication breakdowns across disciplines (Chen & Lin, 2004). As the number of interdisciplinary teams in industry grows in order to adapt to dynamic business environments of the twenty-first century, providing an appropriate environment to improve interdisciplinary team effectiveness is critical for many organizations. In spite of its importance, little is known about what kind of environments support interdisciplinary team interactions. There were three objectives of this dissertation: 1) to investigate the influence of physical environment on the effectiveness of interdisciplinary engineering design teams, 2) to investigate the influence of interaction strategy design support on the effectiveness of interdisciplinary engineering design teams, 3) to construct behavioral indicators of successful interdisciplinary teamwork to design testing and design guidelines for interdisciplinary team collaboration spaces. To achieve these goals, the study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1, the researcher conducted a direct observation of industry teams operating in the novel design space, the Kiva, at a design-consulting firm based in Pittsburgh, PA. The observation data provided 1) a list of significant participant behaviors to be examined and 2) interaction strategy design support (ISDS) procedures to be used during phase 2. Phase 2 was a laboratory-based 2x2 experimental study with physical room condition (Kiva vs. conference room) and interaction strategy design support (present vs. absent) as independent variables. The dependent variables were categorized as team process and output that measured team effectiveness. Overall, a significant interaction effect between the physical conditions and interaction strategy design support was found from all dependent measurements except for product evaluation. A significant main effect of physical conditions and interaction strategy support were found to a lesser extent. Based on the findings, testing methodology guidelines and design guidelines were developed. / Ph. D.

The study examined students’ perceptions of Facebook, Twitter and blogs as tools for learning in a classroom environment. The population of the research was of 109 students from a 4-year college located in the southern region of the US. The results showed that most of the students were undecided in their perception of Facebook, Twitter and blogs as learning tools. The findings also showed that most of the participants were undecided in perception that Facebook, Twitter and blogs were viewed as sources of learning distraction. The findings equally indicated that significant number (about half of the population) of the participants disagreed that they felt intimidated using blogs to enhance learning while a third of the population was undecided. The results of the study did reveal that statistically significant differences existed among students in their perception of Twitter based on ethnicity. Hispanic and African American students perceived that using Twitter in the learning environment helped them to engage in collaborative learning. In addition, the findings showed African American respondents perceived that tweeting was also perceived as a distraction unlike other ethnic groups. The findings equally indicated that African American students perceived that Twitter was used as a tool to share life experiences unlike other ethnic groups represented in this study. The results equally revealed that female students actively participated in discussion forums more than their male counterparts did. The findings showed that Hispanic and African American students believed that using tweeting in the learning environment helped them to learn from one another. Whites and Native Americans did not share similar opinions. The results also revealed that African Americans and Hispanic Americans perceived that using Facebook during instruction enhanced collaboration among learners. In addition, the findings revealed that African American respondents perceived that tweets were helpful to them in sharing ideas as they complete assignments. However, White Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans did not have a similar view. The conclusion drawn from this study was that students enjoyed using social media tools for personal and entertainment purposes however; they did not enjoy using the tools for educational purposes. The general conclusion was that students were undecided in their perception of Facebook, Twitter and blogs as learning tools as well as perceived sources of distraction and intimidation.

Collaborative engineering assumes a common understanding of the domain. To make joint decisions the engineers must have a common language to start from. Standards such as STEP may be used to communicate engineering data but to speak about information integration and interoperability there must be ways to expose and share concepts as well. By defining the concepts in a reference data library it is possible to extend the generic information models with a more precise definition of the content being exchanged. However, since concepts are depending on the context (the business) they have to be identified and defined. Thus, to reach this level of integration we must take a broader approach to information modelling incorporating product realization concepts into our modelling effort. This thesis presents a new reference model for manufacturing applications. It shows how the business may be modelled to identify the product realization concepts and how to foster a shared understanding of the information being exchanged using available technology. The reference model has been used and verified when developing the PIL application; a kind of engineering process support system for machine procurement, but may also be used in a wider sense when developing the next generation of model driven solutions. / QC 20101118

This study examined the dynamics of an inter-organizational national disaster management organization (NDO) in the Caribbean. It sought to provide a better understanding of network structure, functions, and member relations, which provided a foundation for understanding member roles and leadership styles. This dissertation's primary research question was: How do members participate in the national disaster management network in the Caribbean? In personal interviews, network members identified the NDO as a semi-open network system, incorporating both hierarchical and collaborative characteristics. This analysis argued the network constitutes a dynamic system that shifts its governance structure to adapt to circumstances confronted during the disaster management cycle. This study also found network structure affects member positions and those views reciprocally affect how the NDO is organized. One participant clearly claimed a central network position and served as "network broker," while several other members formed two high density groups within the NDO. Network members played a range of formal and informal roles in the collaboration, including coach and coordinator. The central NDO member played several primary roles: fundraiser, change agent, manager, and informer. This analysis also suggested leadership styles shaped the network's hybrid governance structure: some members employed a directive or delegative style, while others relied upon a participatory approach. This mix of styles underscored the importance of shared leadership in a disaster context. The Saint Lucia government has endeavored to engage citizens in disaster management planning through an extensive NDO committee structure. This study yielded insights into that decentralized decision-making structure and process. The NDO, as a public policy network, has served as a "new governance" form of government action. At the national level, non-governmental organizations have used the structure to work to frame disaster management issues, while citizens active at the grassroots levels have participated in the nation's disaster preparedness and response planning processes. This new governance mechanism may be deemed participatory but not yet representative democracy. Overall, however, Saint Lucia's networked and engaged approach to disaster response and mitigation has encouraged deeper mutual awareness of shared challenges among government units, participating third sector organizations, for-profit entities, and the nation's citizens. / Ph. D.

This thesis documents the design and implementation of an augmented reality (AR) application that could be extended to support group brainstorming tasks remotely. Additionally, it chronicles our investigation into the helpfulness of traditional collaborative cues in this novel application of augmented reality. We implemented IdeaSpace, an interactive application that emulates an affinity diagramming environment on an AR headset. In our application, users can organize and manipulate virtual sticky notes around a central virtual board. We performed a user study, with each session requiring users to perform an affinity diagramming clustering task with and without common collaborative cues. Our results indicate that the presence or absence of cues has little effect on this task, or that other factors played a larger role than cue condition, such as learning effects. Our results also show that our application's usability could be improved. We conclude this document with a discussion of our results and the design implications that may arise from them. / Master of Science / Our project was aimed at creating an app for modern augmented reality headsets that could help people perform group brainstorming sessions remotely from each other. We were also interested in finding out the benefits or downsides of some of the design decisions that recent research in remote augmented reality recommends, such as lines showing where a user is focusing and visualizations for a user's head and hands. In our app, which we dubbed IdeaSpace, users were faced with a virtual corkboard and a number of virtual sticky notes, similar to what they might expect in a traditional brainstorming session. We ran three-person study sessions comparing design techniques recommended by literature to an absence of such techniques and did not find they helped much in our task. We also found that our application was not as usable as we had hoped and could be improved in future iterations. We conclude our paper discussing what our results might mean and what can be learned for the future.

The field of writing studies has long inquired about how writers engage in individualized writing processes. As an extension of this inquiry, contemporary scholarship in writing studies began to study collaborative writing through the understanding of writing as a social act. Our understanding of writing processes and collaborative writing has expanded through studies of writing as it occurs in the academy, the workplace, and extracurricular settings. Still, to a large extent, inquiries about writing processes and collaborative writing activity centered on alphabetic texts and focused on writers. Rarely do studies engage"in addition to writers"artists and designers as authors in the collaborative writing process. Composing, as understood by scholars and teachers of writing, is changing due to technological shifts in media and yet, as a field, we have failed to question multimodal composing as an individual or collaborative process.<br />    To extend previous writing studies scholarship, this dissertation engages qualitative case study methodology to explore three unique multimodal collaborations of comics authors. As a visual rhetoric scholar with a personal focus on teaching students about composing in all media, I am drawn to asking questions about how arguments are composed using multimodal means. My personal and scholarly interest in comics led to inquiries about how comics are composed and initial research found that comics are often composed in collaboration, with writers and artists who with them carry multiple and varying literacies (alphabetic text, visual, spatial, etc.). Comics provide a rich subject of study to address this inquiry because of their inherently multimodal nature as a medium that incorporates both word and picture in diverse combinations and for a variety of rhetorical purposes. For this study, I have chosen to focus on comics texts that differ in terms of subject matter, genre, and collaborative makeup in order to examine multimodal collaborations and create distinct cases. Through three cases of multimodal collaboration"Understanding Rhetoric, the Cheo comics, and Brotherman: Dictator of Discipline"this study argues for a further complication of our field\'s understanding of writing processes and collaborative composing. / Ph. D.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the survey responses of participants of collaborative models of instruction in order to determine the existence of constructs determined through the literature to be effective aspects of collaborative models. Further, the purpose of this study was to examine the participants' perceptions of their own readiness to participate in their roles as collaborative educators and supervisors as prepared by their professional preparation programs. This mixed methods study used both quantitative methods to evaluate graduation data and qualitative methods to analyze open ended survey questions to describe experiences of teachers and administrators in three high schools in public schools in Virginia. Participating districts were chosen based on graduation data for school year 2009, in which participating schools were in the three districts with the highest graduation rates for students with at least a standard diploma. Teachers participating were a collaborative teaching pair from one school within each district chosen by the participating school's principal. Data were collected from open ended surveys from participants and graduation data from the Virginia Department of Education Website. Results are presented in descriptive form from participants and graduation data. / Ed. D.

The purpose of this study was to ascertain important information that was lacking about current school/business collaborative activities in the Commonwealth of Virginia and to compare those activities to the findings of a study conducted by Larkin C. Phillips of school/business collaborative activities during the 1990-91 school year. This study used the same survey questions that were used by Phillips and was designed to provide the following information: (a) Common characteristics of school divisions in Virginia that conducted collaborative activities during the 1998-99 school year as compared to the 1990-1991 school year,(b) The types of collaborative activities conducted in Virginia during the 1998-99 school years as compared to the 1990-1991 school year,(c) Current resources used to manage collaborative activities as compared to the 1990-91 school year, and(d) Types of businesses that participated in collaborative activities in 1998-99 as compared to the 1990-91 school year.A survey was sent to all superintendents of public school divisions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Superintendents from 99 school divisions, 76 percent of the school divisions in Virginia, returned the survey. The responses indicated that 72 percent of the responding divisions conducted school/business collaborative activities during the 1998-99 school year. This was an eight percent decrease from the 1990-1991 school year. Of the school divisions reporting no collaborative activity in this study 89 percent were located in rural areas. In contrast, more than 90 percent of the school divisions in cities and suburbs indicated collaborative activity with businesses. Small school divisions and less wealthy school divisions were less likely to conduct collaborative activities than were larger and wealthier school divisions.The most conducted collaborative activities in the typical Virginia school division at all grade levels were: providing career awareness activities; providing special awards for pupils, teachers or the school; donating or loaning equipment or materials; and sponsoring tutoring programs for pupils. As compared to the Phillips study, there were large increases in businesses providing tutoring at the elementary and middle/junior high school levels. And at the high school level there was a 22 percent increase in partners providing internships for students.During the 1998-1999 school year in Virginia the management of collaborative activities was most often managed totally at each participating school. The person most likely to initiate collaborative activity with business was the building principal.The most likely type of businesses involved in collaborative activities with school divisions was service, civic, manufacturing and retail. The mining industry was least likely to be involved in collaborative activities. / Ed. D.

Position location has become one of the more important tasks for improving communication and networking performance for future commercial wireless systems. It is also the enabling technology for many control and sensing applications envisioned by the wireless sensor networks (WSN). Despite its meaningfulness and many algorithms being developed in the past several years, position location in harsh propagation environments remains to be a challenging issue, due mainly to the lack of sufficient infrastructure support and the prominent phenomenon of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) signal propagation. Recently, adopting the concept of collaborative position location has attracted much research interest due to its potential in overcoming the abovementioned two difficulties. In this work, we approach collaborative position location from two different angles. Specifically, we investigate the optimal performance of collaborative position location, which serves as a theoretical performance benchmark. In addition, we developed a computationally efficient algorithm for collaborative position location and incorporated an effective NLOS mitigation method to improve its performance in NLOS-dense environments. Overall, our work provides insight into both theoretical and practical aspects of collaborative position location. / Ph. D.