System for supporting collaborative activity

A system for supporting collaboration among users in performing an arbitrary activity, the system comprising:

• a processor which has access to
• a representation of a model of the arbitrary activity, the model comprising one or more workspaces, each workspace including a plurality of workspace objects, the workspace objects including structural objects which structure the collaboration, resource objects which make resources available for the collaboration, and a resource template that defines a class of resource objects, the resource template defining types of information associated with the resource objects belonging to the class defined by the resource template by defining a number and types of elements associated with the resource template, and the workspace objects further comprising a knowledge board for providing the users access to the elements of one or more resource objects selected from the elements specified in the resource template and
• a representation of access permissions which specifies each user's access permissions for each workspace;
• and
• an interface to the system for the users, the interface being provided by the processor and the interface permitting each user to view and modify the workspace objects in a workspace as determined by the user's access permissions to the workspace.