| Author | Mishra, Udayan |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.ICT-09-15 |
| Subject(s) | Electronic mail systems
|
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Information and Communication Technologies, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no. ICT-09-15 |
| Abstract | The importance of ‘communication’ in various aspects of computer supported collaborative work has been greatly acknowledged in today’s world of Internet. The use of computer-mediated-communication has been growing ever since we started with email. It is realized that no matter how much informal or the unstructured nature an email possesses, it is still the most used, first and effective means of communication. Researchers have found that email still remains to be the first place where the collaboration emerges, and also it acts as a tool to carry out other activities for personal information management. With the advancement of Internet and the World Wide Web, different collaborative web-based systems came into existence. They provided a new approach to sharing resources on the web. While email used to share resources by taking a copy of resource into each of the user’s computing device, the applications like content management systems and digital library made it possible to put a single copy of a document in a single server which can be accessed by anyone having a network connections to the server. This very nature of these applications made them very formal in nature in comparison with email, but also enforced the user in the setting up of the systems which a normal user found a task to be a little tedious. In this research, we took a case of collaborative document writing process, and tried to analyze the same in different directions. Firstly, we identified and analyzed different challenges and requirements for a collaborative writing process based on both activities and technology. Then fourteen important requirements for collaborative writing process were derived and were discussed. Also the process workflow model of a content management system was discussed, and major activities in a collaborative writing process were produced. We demonstrated that each of the activity ensured at least one of the requirements of the collaborative writing process. Then six important guidelines for system design were introduced which were also ensured by the requirement of collaborative writing process. Considering the importance of communication in the collaborative writing process, we proposed a conceptual framework for the workflow of collaborative writing including a CMS and email system as our common platform. Finally the activities of the conceptual framework were evaluated against each of the guideline of the collaborative writing process, and it was found that a successful collaborative writing application can be built following the conceptual framework and the guidelines for the system design. |
| Year | 2009 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. ICT-09-15 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Information and Communications Technologies (DICT) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Information and Communication Technology (ICT) |
| Chairperson(s) | Janecek, Paul; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Vatcharaporn Esichaikul;Kovalainen, Mikko; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Government of Finland;Asian Institute of Technology Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2009 |