The call for papers is also available for download in PDF and simple text format.
2nd International Workshop on
Adaptive Collaboration Support
in conjunction with UMAP2010
The increasing availability of computing and communication facilities in our environment, along with the resulting ease with which tasks previously undertaken individually can now be shared through such facilities, have given rise to new paradigms of collaboration that permeate many facets of human activity. Collaborative learning, co-operative knowledge discovery and maintenance, group recommendation, social software supporting professional, personal and even recreational needs, are only a few examples of new forms of collaboration enabled and fostered by recent technological advances. As these progressively become established and widely used, the question naturally arises: can we support the related collaboration activities and how?
This workshop is the second in a series to examine the question "How can adaptation be of benefit in modeling and supporting collaboration processes?" The first workshop in the series was held in conjunction with the AH2008 conference (ACS2008), and several related workshops have been organized in recent years - the "Competitive Challenge on Adapting Activities Modeled by CSCL Scripts"; the workshop on "Scripted vs. Free CS Collaboration: alternatives and paths for adaptable and flexible CS scripted collaboration"; the workshop on "Adaptive Systems for Collaborative Learning"
Thematic Area and Goals
One might think that the accumulated knowledge and experience on user modeling and adaptation would more than suffice in addressing the new challenges that arise when one attempts to provide adaptive support for collaboration. But is this really the case? Traditional adaptive systems (with their origins in adaptive user interfaces in the 80s) and intelligent support systems (such as intelligent tutoring systems) have been almost exclusively concerned with adapting to the individual user. The more recent strand of research on adaptive hypermedia systems has sometimes addressed groups of people (e.g., groups of learners), and there has even research "dedicated" to groups of users, such as group recommender systems. Most often, however, such research has looked at the users' utilization of content, and ways of modifying such content for the benefit of the whole, rather than modeling, monitoring, and supporting the groups' activities themselves. These and other shortcomings of past research render adaptive support for collaboration a timely topic of discussion and work.
The ACS-2010 workshop will center on the question "How can adaptation be of benefit in modeling and supporting collaboration processes?". Irrespectively of the application domains in which collaboration is examined and the provision of adaptive support is attempted, the main questions remain the same:
- How can groups (of various sizes, levels of connectivity, goals, etc.) and their activities (all the way from free-form to fully-structured) be modeled?
- How can we monitor, analyze and interpret the interconnected activities of individuals, as well the behavior of groups as wholes, to establish the need of, and appropriate ways for intervention?
- What types of intervention are possible, and what are their potential effects? How can we best support group formation, scaffolding, communication, organization, joint artifact creation, etc.?
The workshop will strive to address the above questions from the perspectives of theoretical issues, methodological approaches, practical techniques, formal representations, supporting design-time, run-time and analysis-time tools, etc. The issue of adaptively managing and supporting collaborative activity can be approached from different but complementary perspectives and may be of interest for researchers of various backgrounds (Adaptive Hypermedia, User Modeling, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Intelligent Agents, Group Recommender Systems, Computer Supported Collaborative Work, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, Social Software, etc.) Consequently, the focus of the workshop is broad and contributions that approach the problems and questions from different perspectives are explicitly encouraged.
The aims of this workshop are twofold: Firstly, to bring together interested researchers and practitioners from the different communities in a setting which facilitates the dissemination of knowledge in the field, providing useful insights on state-of-the-art research. Secondly, to identify and outline issues that need to be addressed, along with future directions. The second session of the workshop will explicitly work towards a roadmap for adaptive collaboration support in the form of a preliminary research agenda that sketches open issues and promising approaches to tackle them.
Workshop format
The workshop will follow a format that facilitates goal-oriented group discussions (among the workshop participants) in addition to the standard paper presentations. The workshop will have two general sessions (to be held in succession), as outlined below.
The first session will be organized around the general research themes discussed earlier, i.e., submissions are to be evaluated in regard to their relevance to / contribution towards the themes, and the discussion during the workshop will be structured around the themes. Participants of the workshop are expected to share their experiences and discuss the advantages and drawbacks of approaches and positions presented. In case of a high number of relevant submissions the organizers will consider the option of accepting some of the contributions as poster presentations, a format that worked very well in previous workshops and that allows to dedicate more time to topic oriented discussions.
A second session will then be explicitly dedicated to the identification and discussion of current issues and future directions in this emerging field. Collection of questions at the beginning of the workshop, group work, and interactive creation of an on-line mind-map, will be employed to foster and facilitate discussions. As already stated, the goal of this second session will be to arrive at an outline of a research agenda for the field.
Solicited Contributions
The workshop will solicit short and long papers, describing case studies, theoretical work, position statements, etc. Contributions will be reviewed by the workshop's programme committee, with an anticipated three reviews per submission. The papers to be presented will be selected on the basis of the quality of the work described therein, the quality of the papers themselves, their relevance to the workshop's main themes, and their potential to foster fruitful discussions during the workshop. Depending on the number of submissions, selected contributions may be invited for presentation as posters, to be discussed in a free-form session that will kick off the workshop's discussion session.
Important Dates
April 12th 2010: Submission of papers (Extended deadline)
May 3rd 2010: Notification of authors
May 24th 2010: Delivery of camera-ready copy
June 20th 2010: Workshop day (the workshop takes place in the morning); the conference lasts from the 20th to 24th of June 2010.