About Us

The Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab focuses on the study of collaboration and informal learning in teams and communities, emphasizing how information technology can motivate, energize, enhance, or otherwise support collaboration and learning.

The research objective of the lab is to design and investigate architectures and systems to integrate synchronous and asynchronous activity, to develop and study new applications and user interface techniques for collaborative software, and to evaluate and understand the consequences for people and their communities as they learn and apply new information technologies.

Some current focus areas:

• Open source collaborative software infrastructure
• Community-based initiatives as a framework for sustainable control of technology
• Case repositories as resources for learning and design

In the News

• IST Grad Student Researches Usability Support for Open-Source Projects (November 28, 2007)
• IST Researchers Receive NSF Grant to Study Creativity (October 31, 2007)
• IST Researchers Receive NSF Grant to Design Collaborative, Problem-Based Case Studies (October 24, 2007)
• Center for HCI at Penn State University and Noldus IT (The Netherlands) team up in research on computer-supported collaborative work. IST News Release; Noldus Press release;
• Risks of electronic voting machines Centre Daily Times, June 5, 2006
  • Also, appeared as Electronic voting requires paper records Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, June 9, 2006
  • Also, appeared as ??? Harrisburg Patriot-News, June 18, 2006
  • Interview on WHYL's "Voice for Working Families"; play mp3
• IT Currculum Planning in Japan
• Penn State Harrisburg College Colloquia on April 5, "The Underground Railroad Community Information System: Understanding Effective Use as a Design and Development Parameter"
• Hometown concerns aired on Web site, Pottsville Republican & Herald (Shawn A. Hessinger, Tamaqua Bureau Chief)
• Pennsylvania's Underground Railroad Network: Bringing History Alive with Collaborative Technologies brown bag event (poster PDF, 577KB)
  • Underground Railroad comes alive with collaborative technology
  • Collaborative Technologies to Help Bring History Alive
• Regional symposium on homeland security
• New NSF grant to develop collaboratory services for CiteSeer
• Nonprofits to learn how to make most of Internet, Centre Daily Times, August 3, 2005
• Patriot News (Harrisburg) Spotlights IST Project on Pennsylvania Underground Railroad-2/15/05
• US Army IST Students publish book on CoP lessons learned, CompanyCommand: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession
• New Yorker profiles IST Students work on US Army CompanyCommand CoP, New Yorker Magazine, Jan 17, 2005
• Student poll finds Web influence gains, Centre Daily Times, December 13, 2004
• Shared Awareness Key to Successful Computer-Supported Collaboration (CSCW 2004 talk)
• Doug Gordin of IBM Research will visit on November 12 and give a talk
• P.S. U Vote begins online election poll
  • IST News Release
• Doug Schuler seminar: "The Co-Evolution of Civic Intelligence and Community Networks" (poster PDF, 770KB) based on the paper Community Networks and the Evolution of Civic Intelligence
• IST students developing Web site profiling Underground Railroad
• IST Students to Preserve History of the Pennsylvania Underground Railroad
  • also in Converge
  • also in Civil War Interactive
• Declining civic engagement: New times, new tools (Centre Daily Times, Aug 30, 2004)
• P.S. U Vote
  • Students build P.S. U Vote site
  • Web project targets student voters
  • Non-partisan group aims to get students to the polls this November
• Virtual High (appeared in Higher Learning Magazine July/August 2004 pp. 17)
• Rosson Will Study Non-Programmers As Part of Six-University NSF Grant
• School District Partnership May Yield Online Courses
• SCASD Partnership May Yield Online Courses
• IST Doctoral Student Helps Provide Life-Saving Advice to Army Officers in Iraq