The Electronic Information Exchange System II (EIES2) is a second generation computer-mediated communications system developed at The New Jersey Institute of Technology, Center for Information Age Technology (CIAT) and Computerize Conferencing and Communications Center ( CCCC)with support from the New Jersey Office of Telecommunications and Information Services (OTIS), the Commission on Science and Technology, the National Science Foundation, and partnerships with AT&T Information Systems, Computer Sciences Corporation, Jutland Institute of Technology in Denmark, Annenberg/CPB, and the Sloan Foundation. EIES2 has been under development since 1985. It has evolved to provide an easy to use learner interface plus advanced features to satisfy both the first time member and the most advanced members.

EIES2 provides a comprehensive environment for electronic mail and computerized conferencing. The self organizing properties of the communications database help members cope with large amounts of on-line information. Conferencing coupled with a hierarchical item response stucture organize communications into discussions and sub-discussions. Keywords and associations link items across different discussions. Personal keywords help members organize their communications. Members may drop any discussion or sub-discussion that does not interest them to minimize information overload. Members maintain ownership and control of their communications-- they can modify or delete items even after they have been sent, and receive replies to items entered anonymously. Friendly addressing allows members and conferences to be addresses by nickname, number, initials or any part, or combination of parts of the name. The global search capability allows members to find items anywhere on the system. Members can specify search criteria in advance for items of particular interest to them, these "filters" catch items as they are entered in the system and alert members to new items that are of particular interest to them. The on-line "forms" facility supports semi-structured messages for on-line data collection. Activities within EIES2 integrate application support with communications. EIES2 tracks not only what is read and unread, but also what is done and undone. Activities help stucture on-line group activities such as the "virtual classroom", group decision support, automated facilities to support the office, the project, the library, etc. EIES2 provides extensive support for micro-computer users and can be accessed by virtually any type of terminal or PC. A simple menu system with consistant screen layouts provides extensive on-line help for new users. Commands and answer-aheads provide direct access to the full EIES2 capabilities for the advanced user. A new graphical, hyper-media interface, is available using the world wide web HTML clients such as Mosaic from NCSA.

The distributed architecture and support of modern standards will allow EIES2 to support a virtually limitless member community. To date, EIES2 nodes have been installed at NJIT, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and the Jutland Institute of Technology, University of the virgin Islands, Oklahoma State, Oregon EdNet, FUNDESCO, and the Oslo Business School. EIES2 has been run on equipment from Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, IBM and AT&T. Currently, EIES2 operates under the UNIX operating system networking over TCP/IP networks. EIES2 networking facilities have also been demonstrated over ISO, UUCP, and simple asyncronous line networks. There are plans to support VMS, AIX, MS-DOS and other operating environments.

The CCCC at NJIT has been researching group communications via computers via controlled experimentation and hundreds of group trials involving thousands of members for the past 17 years. EIES2 represents a set of tools for continued research at NJIT into computer-mediated communications. Current research includes the development and study of GDSS tools, extensions to the virtual classroom (TM), and the design of group Hypermedia systems.

EIES2 provides it's own distributed Smalltalk environment using ISO standard remote operations to support the development and study of future system for computer supported cooperative work. It provides an integrated Abstact Syntax Notation 1 (ASN.1) compiler to support the current and future application layer standards.

EIES2 is currently in use at NJIT for project coodination and electronic class room applications. For more information contact the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center ( CCCC) at NJIT, King Blvd., Newark, NJ 07102, telephone (201) 596-EIES.

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