PhD Course in CSCW

Title:
PhD course on CSCW: Ethnography, Awareness, Coordination, Artifacts, & Standardization

Organizer(s):
Rasmus Eskild Jensen, Ph.D Student (raej@itu.dk), IT University of Copenhagen, Naja Holten Møller, Ph.D student (nhmo@itu.dk), IT University of Copenhagen

Lectures:
Pernille Bjørn, Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen
Kjeld Schmidt, Professor, Copenhagen Business School

Guest lectures:
Dave Randall, former lecture at Manchester University

Course deciption/Purpose of the course:
Five days of core background literature into the key theoretical areas of CSCW research. CSCW is the endeavor to investigate collaborative practices with the aim of designing collaborative technologies (Schmidt and Bannon, 1992). Collaboration consists of work and articulation work, where articulation work is all the extra activities involved when multiple participants are mutually engaged in collaborative practices. Researching collaborative work one key methodology in the European tradition is ethnography, and crucial discoveries of the essential elements of collaboration have been brought to life through this methodology. Therefore this course will use one day on the foundations for ethnography, and throughout the course we will read papers from this tradition. CSCW research has over time investigated the strategies by which collaborative actors handle the extra effort of articulation work. Key strategies are awareness, coordination, collection of artifacts, and standardization, thus we will use one day on each of these topics.

There are several CSCW researchers who have been part of creating the foundations for CSCW research and we are in the lucky position to have two of these as part of this course: Dave Randall, and Kjeld Schmidt.

Will you create your own webside? No

Date of the course:
Week 17: 23rd April-27th April 2012

Credits:
5 ECTS points; to achieve these point the student must prior to the course read all the required material (approx. 500 pages) and actively attend all five days of the course.

Available spaces:
15 Ph.D. students

Sign Up:
Each participant must submit a maximum two-page overview of your doctoral research that describes your research question, work in progress, and expected contributions. Please state how your research is relevant for CSCW and vice versa. Email to nhmo@itu.dk

Exam:
None. Students are evaluated on participation and PhD-students will get credit by active participation.

Plans and reading below:
Ethnography: Dave Randall, Pernille Bjørn, Kjeld Schmidt

Hughes, J., Sharrock, W., Rodden, T., OBrian, J., Rouncefield, M., and Calvey, D. "COMIC: Field Studies and CSCW," Lancaster University and Machester University, 1994.

Plowman, L., Rogers, Y., and Ramage, M. "What are Workplace Studies for?," University of Sussex, Lancaster, pp. 1-18.

Dourish, P. "Implications for design," in: Computer Human Interaction (CHI), ACM, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2006, pp. 541-550.

Forsythe, D. "It's just a matter of common sense: Ethnography as Invisible Work," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (8) 1999, pp 127-145.

Additional reading

Hughes, J., Randall, D., and Shapiro, D. "Faltering from ethnography to design," in: Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), ACM, 1992, pp. 115-122.

Awareness: Dave Randall, Kjeld Schmidt, Pernille Bjørn

Heath, C., and Luff, P. "Collaboration and Control: Crisis Management and Multimedia Technology in London Underground Line Control Rooms," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (1) 1992, pp 69-94.

Harper, R., Hughes, J., and Shapiro, D. "Working in harmony: An examination of computer technology in air traffic control,") 1989.

Schmidt, K. "The Problem with 'Awareness'," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (11) 2002, pp 285-298.

Cabitza, F., and Simone, C. ""...and do it the usual way": Fostering awareness of work conventions in document-mediated collarboration," in: ECSCW, Springer, Limerick, Ireland, 2007, pp. 119-138.

Dourish, P., and Bellotti, V. "Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces," in: Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), ACM, 1992, pp. 107-114.

Additional reading

Dourish, P., and Bly, S. "Portholes: Supporting awareness in a distributed work group," in: Computer Human Interaction (CHI), ACM, 1992, pp. 541-547.

Coordination: Kjeld Schmidt and Pernille Bjørn

Schmidt, K., and Simone, C. "Coordination Mechanisms: Towards a Conceptual Foundation of CSCW System Design," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (5) 1996, pp 155-200.

Gerson, E. M., and Star, S. L. "Analyzing Due Process in the Workplace," ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems (4:3), July 1986, pp 257-270.

Bowers, J., Button, G., and Sharrock, W. "Workflow from within and without: Technology and cooperative work on the print industry shopfloor," in: European conference on computer-supported cooperative work, Springer, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995, pp. 51-66.

Flores, F., Graves, M., Hartfield, B., and Winograd, T. "Computer Systems and the Design of Organizational Interaction," ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems (6:2), April 1988, pp 153-172.

Collection of artifacts: Kjeld Schmidt and Pernille Bjørn

Star, S. L., and Griesemer, J. "Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeleys museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39," Social Studies of Science (19) 1989, pp 387-420.

Lutters, W., and Ackerman, M. "Beyond boundary objects: Collaborative reuse in aircraft technical support," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (16) 2006, pp 341-372.

Bannon, L., and Kuutti, K. "Shifting perspectives on organizational memory: From storage to active remembering," in: Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS), IEEE, Hawaii, USA, 1996, pp. 156-167.

Schmidt, K., and Wagner, I. "Ordering systems: Coordinative practices in architectural design and planning," in: GROUP, ACM, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, 2003, pp. 274-283.

Standardization: Pernille Bjørn and Kjeld Schmidt

Berg, M. "On distribution, drift and the electronic medical record: Some tools for a sociology of the formal," in: European conference on computer supported cooperative work (ECSCW), Springer, 1997, pp. 141--156.

Suchman, L. "Do Categories Have Politics? The language/action perspective reconsidered," Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): An International Journal (2) 1994, pp 177-190.

Bowker, G. C., and Star, S. L. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002. (chapter 4: Classification, coding and coordination)

Bjørn, P., and Balka, E. "Health Care Categories have Politics too: Unpacking the Managerial Agendas of Electronic Triage Systems," ECSCW 2007: Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Springer, Limerick, Ireland, 2007, pp. 371-390.