Universal Quadrant Model (UQM): Enhancing Usability of a Collaborative Cloud Tool for Sharing Best Practices Among Novice Users

Abstract

This paper proposes and simulates an innovative approach to hierarchical group management model, the Universal Quadrant Model (UQM); a recursive, nondeterministic and backtracking generic algorithm. The model is as a result of For Youth For Life (FYFL) cloud tool research that was tasked to identify a unique solution to a problem of identifying an easy to use, scalable, cost effective, and fault tolerant collaborative system or tool for members of communities of practice to share best practices in line with Computer Supportive Collaborative Work (CSCW) field. The research was conducted in 4 phases; Phase I dealt with requirements gathering, Phase II was prototyping the system, Phase III was testing and comprehensive evaluation and Phase IV was to solve the Group Management Problem. Phase I - III problems were deciphered following the software engineering principles solutions, however, we could not find a proper documented method for managing groups spread across a spatial locality i.e. 4-H members (study group) which then necessitated the design of UQM. We consider UQM a computational framework that manages self-purporting and emerging groups and provides a mechanism that limits fictitious accounts within an online community. It estimates the number of quadrants to represent spatial locality of groups relying on population density as its main input factor. UQM is designed to cope with issues of adaptability, scalability, effectiveness, and efficiency in managing groups within a community of practice and is used for moderating users, navigation, locating and distribution of resources within an online system. The model provides a user friendly and efficient method for moderating a high number of users within groups by automating group formation. It also addresses the membership anonymity problem, and perpetuates self-purporting and sustaining groups within a spatial locality i.e. (a community of practice group). In terms of performance compared to the initial non-recursive method of group creation and management, UQM is recursive, segmenting and self-managing with a O(nlog4n) run time. Therefore, implementing UQM presents highly significant run time theoretical gain compared to the initial solution’s O(n) performance.