End-user controlled group formation and access rights management in a shared workspace system

ABSTRACT

Group formation and access rights management become crucial issues when shared workspaces are used to support flexible, emerging group work. End-Users should be able to form groups and adapt access rights for changing groups and workspaces. Current shared workspace systems do not support this sufficiently. Our approach combines a room metaphor-based shared workspace with the key-metaphor for facilitating both, end-user controlled flexible group formation and access rights management. An evaluation of this approach during four month of use has indicated that end-users can form groups and manage the access rights of their shared spaces.

REFERENCES

• 1: Appelt, W., Mambrey, P.: Experiences with the BSCW Shared Workspace System as the Backbone of a Virtual Learning Environment for Students, Proc. of ED-MEDIA99, bscw.gmd.de/Papers/EDMEDIA99/, 1999.
• 2: Adrian Bullock , Steve Benford, An access control framework for multi-user collaborative environments, Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, p.140-149, November 14-17, 1999, Phoenix, Arizona, United States [doi>10.1145/320297.320313]
• 3: Prasun Dewan , Honghai Shen, Controlling access in multiuser interfaces, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.5 n.1, p.34-62, March 1998 [doi>10.1145/274444.274446]
• 4: Prasun Dewan , HongHai Shen, Flexible meta access-control for collaborative applications, Proceedings of the 1998 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.247-256, November 14-18, 1998, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/289444.289499]
• 5: Clarence A. Ellis , Simon J. Gibbs , Gail Rein, Groupware: some issues and experiences, Communications of the ACM, v.34 n.1, p.39-58, Jan. 1991 [doi>10.1145/99977.99987]
• 6: Greenberg, S., Roseman, M.: Using a Room Metaphor to Ease Transitions in Groupware, in Ackermann, M., Pipek, V., Wulf, V. (Eds.): "Beyond Knowledge Management: Sharing Expertise", MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2002.
• 7: Jörg M. Haake , Till Schümmer , Anja Haake , Mohamed Bourimi , Britta Landgraf, Supporting Flexible Collaborative Distance Learning in the CURE Platform, Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'04) - Track 1, p.10003.1, January 05-08, 2004
• 8: Haake, J. M., Schümmer, T., Haake, A., Bourimi, M., Landgraf, B.: Two-level tailoring support for CSCL. In Proceedings of CRIWG'2003: Groupware: Design, Implementation, and Use, pp. 74--82. Springer: Heidelberg.
• 9: Hess, E.: Yib's Guide to Mooing: Getting the Most from Virtual Communities on the Internet, Trafford Publishing, http://yibco.com/ygm/ygm/, 2003.
• 10: Butler W. Lampson, Protection, ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, v.8 n.1, p.18-24, January 1974 [doi>10.1145/775265.775268]
• 11: Leuf, B., Cunningham, W.: The Wiki Way. Addison Wessley, Longman, 2001.
• 12: Hans-Rüdiger Pfister , Christian Schuckmann , Jennifer Beck-Wilson , Martin Wessner, The Metaphor of Virtual Rooms in the Cooperative Learning Environment CLear, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Cooperative Buildings, Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture, p.107-113, February 01, 1998
• 13: Mark Roseman , Saul Greenberg, TeamRooms: network places for collaboration, Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.325-333, November 16-20, 1996, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/240080.240319]
• 14: Ravi Sandhu , Pierangela Samarati, Authentication, access control, and audit, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.28 n.1, p.241-243, March 1996 [doi>10.1145/234313.234412]
• 15: Ravi Sandhu, Rationale for the RBAC96 family of access control models, Proceedings of the first ACM Workshop on Role-based access control, p.9-es, November 30-December 02, 1995, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/270152.270167]
• 16: Gunnar Stevens , Volker Wulf, A new dimension in access control: studying maintenance engineering across organizational boundaries, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587106]
• 17: HongHai Shen , Prasun Dewan, Access control for collaborative environments, Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, p.51-58, November 01-04, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/143457.143461]
• 18: Stiemerling, O., Wulf, V.: Beyond 'Yes or No' - Extending Access Control in Groupware with Awareness and Negotiation; In Group Decision and Negotiation; Vol. 9, 2000, pp. 221--235.
• 19: Martin Wessner , Hans-Rüdiger Pfister, Group formation in computer-supported collaborative learning, Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, September 30-October 03, 2001, Boulder, Colorado, USA [doi>10.1145/500286.500293]
• 20: Wu, M., Hwang,T., Access Control with Single-Key-Lock, in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-10, No. 2, March 1984, pp. 185--191.
• 21: Volker Wulf, Handling Conflicts in Groupware: Concepts and Experiences made in the POLITeam-Project, Proceedings of the IFIP TC13 Interantional Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, p.485-492, July 14-18, 1997
• 22: Wulf, V.,Stiemerling, O., Pfeifer, A.: Tailoring Groupware for Different Scopes of Validity. Behaviour & Information Technology, 18(3), 1999, pp. 199--212.
• 23: W. Wulf , E. Cohen , W. Corwin , A. Jones , R. Levin , C. Pierson , F. Pollack, HYDRA: the kernel of a multiprocessor operating system, Communications of the ACM, v.17 n.6, p.337-345, June 1974 [doi>10.1145/355616.364017]
• 24: Yang, F., Han, P., Shen, R., Kraemer, B.J., Fan, X.: Cooperative Learning in Self-organizing E-Learner Communities Based on a Multi-Agents Mechanism, In: 1 AI 2003, (LNAI), 2003, pp. 490--500.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Groupware

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education
          Subjects: Collaborative learning

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
CSCL, CURE, access control, access rights management, group formation, groupware, shared workspaces