This research examines a collaborative solution to a common problem, that of providing help to distributed users. The Answer Garden 2 system provides a secondgeneration architecture for organizational and community memory applications. After describing the need for Answer Garden 2’s functionality, we describe the architecture of the system and two underlying systems, the Cafe ConstructionKit and Collaborative Refinery. We also present detailed descriptions of the collaborative help and collaborative refining facilities in the Answer Garden 2 system.

Abstract. Building common ontologies, setting up measurement programs, and conducting interviews are valid techniques to start eliciting knowledge and experience for later reuse. However, they appear too expensive and too resource-demanding in many industrial environments. This paper presents a light-weight approach to capturing important reusable material, including experiences. The LIDs approach includes defined process steps and templates to create reusable material for different kinds of users. It has emerged pragmatically from our long-standing process improvement work with different business units. 1

Design is a ubiquitous activity. People can be creative in any sphere of life pursuing design activities. For the last decade, we have been engaged in the development of domain-oriented design environments to enhance individual creativity in a variety of different design domains. Based on the fact that the individual human mind is limited, extensions to our earlier approaches are presented, describing conceptual frameworks and innovative systems in support of social creativity. The conceptual framework is grounded in distributed cognition, organizational learning, and organizational memories. Derived from this conceptual framework, requirements for computational environments supporting social creativity are described, including the necessity for open systems; the seeding, evolutionary growth and reseeding model; and new conceptualizations of the World Wide Web. Specific system components and applications illustrate the implications of these assumptions and requirements...

Open source software provides an example not only of a viable software development methodology, but also a model for collaborative construction of artifacts. Open source communities exemplify principles that are important in collaborative learning environments. This paper explores how open source efforts can be used as inspiration for the creation of collaborative learning experiences in a university course. Concrete public deliverables and use of collaborative technology help students explore ill-defined projects that are personally meaningful. This paper provides a description of open source principles, their role in designing collaborative learning experiences, the application of these principles in a university course, and the findings based on analysis of course projects and collaborative technology.

In order to understand organizational memory, it is important to understand how things become adopted as memory resources in organizations. In this paper, we describe the genesis and use of an artifact that became a memory resource for a wide range of activities. We discuss how the creation and use of the rush cheat sheet (RCS) and its associated representations at Dallas Ft. Worth TRACON brought together information and expert knowledge across organizational boundaries. Multiorganizational information became synthesized in a composite that could be used as a resource by the contributing organizations, acting as a boundary object. However, it is multiple representations of the same data that enable it to be so used. Using distributed cognition theory, we examined the conditions under which data transforms from an internal resource to a boundary object; speculating about domain generalization.