Collaborative Panel Administrator: A framework and implementation for expert panel lifecycle management

In this paper, we describe the Collaborative Panel Administrator, a collaboration framework designed to manage the lifecycle of virtual teams of domain experts working in collaborative gaming and modeling. A unique feature of the CPA is the way it is guided by sound experimental research design so that information collected from panelists can be vetted, and knowledge built from this information can be validated quantitatively. The framework is deployed as a J2EE application and provides extension points to integrate critical services needed to foster collaboration among panelists and analyze the information acquired from them. We examine in detail the CPA’s integration with a commercial collaboration platform.