Integrating awareness mechanisms in web-based argumentative collaboration support environments

2. Awareness In Argumentative Collaboration Support Environments

While awareness is critical in CSCW, it is a rather unexplored domain in the context of argumentative collaboration environments. Although many tools exist to support online discussion and deliberation, which range from simple discussion forums found on the Web to sophisticated and formal argumentation and decision support systems (Karacapilidis & Papadias, 2001), these do not consider awareness mechanisms as a focal point. Such mechanisms are usually considered as a complementary (i.e. not a core) functionality of solutions addressing collaboration needs. The majority of these tools provide only simple awareness mechanisms that include user presence indicators and information related to the source of individual resources (i.e. who admitted a resource and when).