In this paper we propose to add to collaborative writing environments, such as wikis, what we call "semantic awareness", an approach to extending social awareness tools by adding a semantically informed layer that can communicate meaning (eg. themes, interests, patterns, etc.) that are associated with each user in a group or network. Specifically, we describe an approach to providing semantic awareness to support collaborative writing, and describe functionalities, based on text-mining techniques, that support new visualizations of a shared document and its co-authors
contributions. These functionalities go beyond quantitative analysis of co-author participation and provide feedback informed by the pattern of ideas, and topic areas originating with each author.
Finally, we developed and evaluated “Glosser”, a tool that applies these concepts in the form of a web application that implements some of the semantic awareness techniques described herein,
towards the purpose of supporting academic essay writing.
Authors: Rafael A. Calvo, Jorge Villalón, Dorian Peters and Stephen T. O’Rourke
Event: SF08: Speed Papers