Collaborative work and learning plays an important role in our global economy, which is increasingly based on knowledge production and fast innovation cycles. In a networked world such collaborative processes can only be executed through dedicated computer support. The Knowledge-based Virtual Collaborative Work Environments (CWE) research area investigates the design and development of next generation CWEs supporting research and advanced product-innovation oriented R&D activities within organizational and cross-organizational innovation processes. These processes are typically dealing with knowledge-intensive collaborative research, design, and engineering activities between and across various domains of expertise. Intended research results include design principles, design methods and IT-support for developing Knowledge-based Virtual CWEs, including an upper layer middleware platform and tools supporting the design, implementation, and use of such environments.
The research will be situated in two application areas: industrial design processes (e.g. in the automotive industry) and e-science based research. Both areas require interdisciplinary research, which by nature requires collaboration among engineers and scientists from different disciplines in order to solve complex problems or construct innovative solutions. Therefore, e-science-oriented CWEs, which aim at supporting the joint set-up, definition and execution of joint research processes, are under investigation in CWE. Today, these CWEs merely support the set-up of shared workspaces, allowing some access to shared data or experiments and communication within the team. However, methods and tools for effective development and use of CWEs for design and e-science are still missing.
In the CWE research area methods and infrastructure/tools will be developed that facilitates development and use of IT-supported CWEs for professional users, which support the collaboration between humans and research as well as innovative engineering processes performed in virtual teams. Such a CWE should also facilitate the collaboration of experts in their specific domains of expertise, turning them into a quasi virtual research or innovation team. Within the research area, the main focus of research work is therefore on creating the seamless support for the exchange of knowledge and information between these expert co-workers and their separated research and innovation workspaces, including their organization’s innovation resources (research publications, experimental data, project reports, product specifications and data, digital design artefacts, process descriptions, etc.).
To cope with all aspects of these research topics, the RA is supported and carried by scientists of 7 chairs of the University of Hagen. Thus, the interdisciplinary field of knowledge based virtual collaboration environments can be investigated from different perspectives, be it communication, content, media, information and knowledge representation, as well as remote collaboration, sharing of resources, security and enterprise law.
In the years 2002 until 2006 the research area has successfully acquired and performed many national and European projects with an average of more than 200 kEuro in third –party funding per year and a corresponding total of 5 successfully completed phd thesis projects that can be assigned to this research area.
Teaching