Component-based collaborative virtual environment

Processes in knowledge intensive environments often emerge rather than following predefined steps, especially in collaborative virtual space. Such emergence can induce disconnected activities, which results in complex interaction structures that require ways to maintain awareness across the activities and to coordinate the activities to a common goal. We suggest that new ways are needed to both model emergent processes and support and manage them using information technologies. A metamodel using the abstracted construction components to create initial processes and to realize emergence in collaborative virtual environment, is proposed. A prototype system named "LiveNet" that implements these semantics as a foundation is outlined. The foundation provides the infrastructure for customizing interfaces for collaborative portals and some applications in teaching and extension to agent based workflows are also outlined.