WETICE

Call for Participation

Workshop on Evaluating Collaborative Enterprises

June 10-12, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Workshop Chairs:

Elaine M. Raybourn Julian Newman

Sandia National Laboratories, USA Caledonian University, UK

Effective collaboration involves people, communication, and the co-creation of meaning through information sharing that may be synchronous and/or asynchronous. Researchers and practioners need tools to measure the incremental progress towards developing useful collaborative groupware systems, as well as methods to evaluate the impact of specific technologies on the effectiveness of human to human, or human to machine collaboration. We believe developing effective evaluation methodologies will facilitate progress in designing and deploying Web-based collaborative technologies. The primary goal of this workshop is to provide a forum, in which researchers and practitioners can share tools and evaluation methodologies of collaborative enterprises, lessons learned from deployment of collaborative technologies in organizations or educational institutions, and ideas for directions the area of evaluation must move toward in order to facilitate the progress of distributed collaboration. Ultimately, there needs to be a framework or taxonomy that can answer:

Which approaches are best for evaluating different types of collaborative systems? Can these be categorized?
In the design cycle of collaborative software development, when are particular evaluation approaches effective and when are they not? Can a spectrum be developed?
What combination of methods and techniques for gathering metrics are most effective for the situation under evaluation?
Which evaluation approaches, methods and techniques address collaboration process and product effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction?
Which metrics address product and process effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of the collaborative enterprise under study?
What evaluation tools and mechanisms are best for generating specific metrics?

Topics that contribute to this framework may include:

Benchmark collaboration scenarios and associated evaluation measures for groupware system design and development,
Adaptation of single-user software development and evaluation techniques to groupware evaluation,
Groupware design principles or heuristics for use in groupware evaluation. Analysis of group characteristics (organizational, behavioral, and technical) and corresponding groupware characteristics,
Collaboration evaluation methods and tools that use design ethnography,
Case studies evaluating collaborative enterprises,
Methods and tools for lowering the cost of evaluating collaborative enterprises,
And Methods and tools for effective field study evaluation.

This workshop is an excellent opportunity to bring together people who are addressing the unique and challenging needs of collaborative enterprise evaluation. We welcome delegates from all aspects of industry and academia. Previous WETICE workshops have attracted delegates from areas such as computer science, information science, artificial intelligence, communication, psychology, sociology, education, human factors, usability, systems engineering, and library sciences.

Submissions Technical Papers:

Authors of technical papers should submit an original paper (not submitted or published elsewhere) in portable document format (pdf) format by email to j.newman@gcal.ac.uk. Submissions should include the title of the paper, the name and affiliation of each author, a 150-word abstract, and no more than eight keywords. Submissions should not exceed 3000 words in length (including figure equivalents). The name, position, address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence must be included.

Submissions Poster papers or Demonstrations:

The Evaluating Collaborative Enterprises workshop committee invites poster papers or demonstrations of new and exciting research work, work-in-progress and demonstrations related to the workshop themes. Authors of poster papers should submit an extended abstract by email to j.newman@gcal.ac.uk. Submissions should include the title of the paper the name and affiliation of each author, a 150-word abstract, and no more than four keywords. Submissions should not exceed 1500 words in length. The name, position, address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the author responsible for correspondence must be included.

A selection of accepted papers will be published in the workshop post-proceedings.

Papers accepted for publication in the proceedings are limited to six pages (approximately 2000-2500 words) in IEEE format (two columns, single-spaced, 10pt Times) for technical papers and two pages for poster papers. Authors are strongly encouraged to adhere to this format also when submitting papers to the workshop. Detailed information on the IEEE format (together with some templates) is available at http://www.computer.org/cspress/instruct.htm.

Submission Panel proposals:

Send six copies of panel proposals, or by email, to emraybo@sandia.gov. Include a title, a 150-word scope statement, proposed session chair, panelists and their affiliations, the organizer's affiliation, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address.

Please send all inquiries regarding this workshop to the Workshop Co-chairs. For inquiries regarding WET ICE in general, contact wetice@cerc.wvu.edu or call (U.S.)

+1-304-293-7226.

Important Dates

Full papers due to individual workshops-April 12, 2002

Notification to authors- May 8, 2002

Final papers for Post-proceedings - May 22, 2002

Advance registration deadline- May 22, 2002

Final workshop reports by Workshop Chairs- June 28, 2002 (after the workshop)

Workshop Dates- June 10-12, 2002