Building collaborative problem-solving environments as Shared Places
Lukasz Beca · 2005
Shared Place technology allows construction of virtual places on the Web by merging collaborative tools with Web page content. It offers significant benefits to the collaborative problem-solving environments' developers and users. By its support for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration it facilitates the exchange of ideas among remote users. Extensive customization is possible; different places can be generated from the same set of components depending on user preferences, tasks to be performed and available resources. Moreover, it enables integration of problem-specific tools with virtual place content. The paper explains how these features are achieved in Shared Place using Internet technologies and standards. Also, the process of development of a collaborative component is presented with focus on the use of the Shared Place services. Finally, the construction process of a virtual place is described with emphasis on the customization of tools' behavior and on the integration of the collaborative components with Web resources.