Supporting group awareness in collaborative design
Different from multi-user database management systems, CSCW systems must support group awareness explicitly, namely that participants should perceive the presence of each other during the process of cooperation, which is essential to effective collaboration. The authors firstly analyze and compare several means of supporting sensibility, then investigate the model of collaborative design and suggest achieving group awareness by product data which forms the foundation of a relationship among designers. The information model and the shared workspace organization of CECAD (Collaborative Environment for Computer-Aided Design, a prototype system developed by the authors) are presented and its group awareness supporting mechanism is described in succession.
Although school choice programs are common, we know little about the underlying decision-making processes. In this study, we randomly assigned 900 junior high schools in Ghana, a country with universal secondary school choice, to 1 of 3 treatment arms: (1) information to students, (2) information to students and guardians, and (3) control group. We observe changes in beliefs, behaviors, and the decision maker's identity through a survey of guardians. Our intervention increased the likelihood that guardians were involved with and informed about the school selection process. Moreover, specifically targeting guardians led to significantly larger changes for most outcomes.