Question List for the Remote Expert

 

  1. What do you think are the most critical aspects of electronic applications to promote collaborations and education?

    2. Well that’s why we do experiments – critical is impact on applications. Are they cheaper and/or better?

    [The question is posed by Ellen Youniss who is interested in the successful uses of collaborative technologies for students and teachers at the K-12 level. Ellen is an on-line student from the University of Illinois at Chicago.]

     

  2. How do you solve the problem of real-time voice/video transmission during the development of collaborative applications for education and training?

    3. You develop codecs that have tradeoff in perceived quality, encoding time, decoding time, interactivity, network bandwidth needed

    [The question is posed by Junfang Zhang who is interested in knowing the impact of collaborative technologies that support real-time video transmission on smaller colleges and universities once these technologies become stable and popular. Junfang is an on-site student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.]

     

  3. To what extent do you think the usage of tools (like Habanero, for instance) could significantly replace interactive area like marketing or sales?

    4. You mean "help" not replace? One needs a mix of synchronous and asynchronous support. Tools (like Habanero) can make cheaper and/or better

    [The question is posed by Malini Nagarajan who is interested in knowing about collaborative tools in the field of communication. Malini is an on-site student in the College of Communications.]

     

  4. What does the widespread use of collaborative technologies mean for management, and how do they change the structure of organizations?

    5. Main thing is to know they are possible and build into plans eg University Presidents should know University teaching will b revolutionized

    [The question is posed by Donna Wilson who is interested in knowing the effect of collaborative tools on the structure of organizations. Donna is an on-line student from the University of Michigan.]

     

  5. Based on your knowledge on collaborative applications for education and training, do you think that collaborative programs will soon replace conventional methods of communicating (i.e., the telephone)? If so what amendments do you see occurring, if any, that will make collaborative programs as easy to the everyday user as dialing a phone number?

    6. Well soon is in eye of beholder. Main issue is deployment of networks with necessary quality of service. Obviously we need to make software better and more user friendly/robust

    [The question is posed by Simeon Viltz who is interested in collaborative technologies for education and training. Simeon is an on-site student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.]

     

  6. Are there any other categories of (organizations, private individuals, etc.) who are using Tango and for what kinds of purposes?

    7. Currently only used with education and HPCC community

    [The question is posed by Jennie Starr who is interested in knowing to what extent collaborative tools are utilized by small organizations, such as non-profit groups and small businesses. Jennie is an on line student from Chicago enrolled in the University of Illinois Library Education Experimental Program.]

     

  7. How does one start developing a tool like Tango?

    8. Well it started as the software for command and control but we realized it could be used in other ways. Typically development is an erratic process

    [The question is posed by Jill Gengler who is fascinated by the processes of development. Jill is an on-site student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.]

     

  8. What efforts are being made to increase the spontaneity of instructors to show up to class and lecture, instead of spending a lot of time and effort in preparing on-line materials?

    9. Well distance education needs fewer instructors to teach and uses shared instructional material. Thus all the professors who don’t need to teach can be mentors instead. The Curricula will need more people than a conventional lecture to prepare but it should be possible to reduce ratio of preparation hours to number of students. Also preparation will involve different mix of people from conventional lecture. Thus you need "multimedia" experts/ artists etc. as well as curriculum designers/experts

    [The question is posed by Eric Larson who is concerned about the time and effort needed by teachers to prepare educational materials for on-line environments ahead of time. Eric is an on-site student in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.]

     

  9. Will the emerging synchronous collaborative tools follow the same pattern of distribution as asynchronous collaborative tools?

    10. Well The Internet moves in waves. People suddenly adopt technologies. The situation could be driven by Internet phones / Interactive TV (which has similar quality of service needs), Distance education or just socializing!

    [The question is posed by Stevan Brasal who is interested in how electronic tools become accepted by the mainstream society. Stevan is an on-site student in the College of Commerce and Business Administration.]

     

  10. Does the NPAC Parallel Oracle 7 Database Server support filtering (according to a database query) of an incoming spool of "live" newsgroup messages?

    11. Yes but we haven’t continued development of this

    [The question is posed by Peter Newman who is interested in setting up a database filtering system for his dissertation. Peter is an on-site student in the College of Communications.]

     

  11. How does the concept of co-perceptualization and collective intelligence co-exist with individual contributions?

    12. Well this was meant to be a nifty novel idea and always a single mind will have more coherence than multiple minds. However we wished to emphasize the opportunity that exists to turn asynchronous web into an enriched collective wisdom

    [The question is posed by Ana Boa-Ventura who is interested in the concept of co-perceptualization as defined in the paper on "Internet Groupware Technologies - Past, Present and Future" (please see http://trurl.npac.syr.edu/tango/Documentation/Papers/BIS/bis.html). Ana is an on-site student in the College of Education.]

     

  12. How long do you think it will take for the technological infrastructure of higher education to reach the K-12 school system at a level making collaborative applications feasible?

    13. Well we have enough functionality now – we need bold leaders to deploy and test

    [The question is posed by Michael Pennisi who is interested in the use and practice of collaborative tools in K-12 classrooms. Michael is an on-site student in the College of Education.]

     

  13. Will the speed of Tango allow for collaborative work to occur with real-time, face-to-face interactions, and what do you expect the productivity level of collaborative participants in Tango to be?

Yes – productivity is application dependent. Some applications of Tango are "doing old stuff at a distance". Others are novel. Productivity in novel cases isn’t easy to measure

[The question is posed by Jerry Lewis who is interested in tools that support collaborative work. Jerry is an on line student from Chicago enrolled in the University of Illinois Library Education Experimental Program.]