Transcript Virtual Collaboration - American University in Bulgaria

Virtual Collaboration
Rebecca Frost Davis
AMICAL Conference
May 28, 2008
Agenda
• Introductions (9:00)
• Defining terms
• Collaboration and Culture (10:15)
– Social presence and survey tools
• Project Management (13:00)
– Collaborative Documents and Project Management tools
• Technology (14:45)
– Live communication tools
• Conclusion
Introductions
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Name
Institution
Title / role
Preferred mode of communication
Interest and Experience in virtual collaboration
Defining Terms
• Virtual Collaboration
– What does this term mean?
– Give examples.
Realms of Virtual Collaboration
• Business
– Distributed teams
– Communities of practice
– Organizational theory
• Higher Education
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NSF Virtual Organizations; Cyberinfrastructure
Consortia
Research collaboration
Grant collaboration
• Online communities
Characteristics of Virtual
Collaboration
• Sharing of something
• Geographically dispersed
• Cuts across existing boundaries of institutions,
disciplines, departments, etc.
• Technology-enhanced
• Synchronous and asynchronous
• Dynamic / emergent
Illustrating Virtual Collaboration
Planning 2008 AMICAL Conference
What are the benefits?
• Sunoikisis
– Community
– Pooling expertise
– Improved academic offerings
– Stimulus to change pedagogy
– See Sunoikisis Evaluation report
What are the benefits?
• National Science Foundation
– An Enabler of System-Level Science
– Facilitator of Access
– Enhancer of problem-solving processes
– Key to Competitiveness
What are the benefits?
• NITLE
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Advance liberal education
Share resources and infrastructure
Build community
Share expertise
Compete with larger institutions
Improve opportunities for faculty and students
Get grant money
Why Virtual?
• Distance
• Costs
– Time
– Money
– Carbon footprint
• Culture
Experience Virtual Collaboration
An Exercise
Challenges to Collaboration?
• What are the challenges to virtual collaboration?
• Three types
– Cultural or Social
– Project management
– Technology
Challenges: Cultural & Social
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Proving expertise to other collaborators
Equal access
Commitment to common goal
Willingness to
– Accept new technologies
– Work Virtually
– Work together
• Language, terms, vocabulary
• Priorities
Motivation
• Motivation
– Rewards
– Benefits
– Fears
http://www.despair.com
Challenges: Project Management
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Being Productive
Inefficiency—using time well
Organization
Clear goals
Scheduling
Resources
Geographic and time differences
Monitoring progress
Challenges: Technology
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Technology discomfort
Distraction by technology
Technology barriers, e.g., low bandwidth
Training users
Availability, access and cost
Time consuming
Collaboration and Culture
Social Science
How Collaboration Happens
• Social science approach
– Emergent organizations
– Trust: dynamic; affective vs. cognitive; role of
cultural differences
– Transactive Memory Systems: knowing who knows
what and putting them in the right role
– Legitimate peripheral participation
Emergent organizations
• Self-organizing, e.g., disaster response
• Challenges
– Interoperability
– Reconciling different goals
– Shifting composition
• Privacy and security
• Authority
• Establishing trust
How well does this model work?
• Think about your virtual collaboration
• Which of these issues are relevant for you?
Building trust
• Dynamic (proved in action)
• Cognitive (based on knowledge and logic)
• Affective (based on emotion and social
relations)
• Shared identity
– May have conflicts with established organizational
identity
– Shared goals
Working in Teams
• Transactive Memory: knowing who knows what
in a group
– Leads to efficient action
• How do you build transactive memory?
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Assumptions?
Interactions
Surveys
Legitimate peripheral participation (lurking)
Cultural Difference
• Geert Hofstede™ Cultural Dimensions:
http://www.geert-hofstede.com/
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Power Distance Index
Individualism
Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance Index
Long-Term Orientation
Technology Tools
Finding times and places for
interaction
Social Presence
• Twitter: twitter.com
– http://del.icio.us/rebeccadavis/twitter
– Twitter in plain English
– Twittervision
• Facebook
– social networking
– www.facebook.com
• Virtual Worlds
Surveys, polls and schedules
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SurveyMonkey: http://www.surveymonkey.com
Doodle: http://www.doodle.ch/main.html
Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com/
Google Calendar
Asynchronous Communication
• Email
• Discussion boards / threaded discussion
– http://moodle.nitle.org/course/view.php?id=122
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Snail Mail
Allocating Space & Time
• What work is best to do with my real-world immediate
presence?
• What work is best to do without my real-world
immediate presence?
• How can my students connect with this work when I'm
not with them between classes so they can continue
their projects?
• How can this work then be connected back to the
classroom process?
– Trent Batson, "Paper-Based Materials Distorted Ways of
Learning," Campus Technology, 5/21/2008,
http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=62916
Meta-Collaborators
• Someone who will keep the collaboration
moving
• Attention to social aspects
• Project management
• Who is that person for you?
Project Management
Organization
Project Management
Vocabulary
• NITLE Research wiki on Project Management
– Bryan Alexander, NITLE Director of Research
• Project Manager
• Project plan or project charter
– “A Real Charge for Faculty Service”
• Responsibility Matrix
• Project Context
– Two Cultures: A Social History of the Distributed
Library Initiative at MIT
Project Management Software
• What does a Project Manager look for in an
application?
• Support for
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documentation
visualization
communication
collaboration
PM Software Types
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PMware
Repurposed office productivity tools
Blogs
Wikis
Multipurpose tools
– Course Management Systems: Moodle
– Google suite
• Digital Repository: DSpace
Practice
• Use tool to produce responsibility matrix
– http://www.quest-pipelines.com/newsletterv6/0105_E.htm
Technology Tools and Practices
Practical Collaboration
Live communication
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Telephone
Multipoint Interactive Videoconferencing (MIV)
Skype
IM / chat
– Whiteboards
Live Communication
• MIV vs. Face to Face
Some Tools to Help
• Choosing Tools
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Goal/function of tool
Ease of use
Comfort-level of users
Cost
Sustainability
Accessibility / availability
Tools Matrix
Practice
• Choose your tools and explain why using MIV,
Google Docs or Moodle
• Make your project charter
– the participants, background, institutional context,
charge, scope statement, assumptions, constraints,
deliverables, communication plan, budget, and
timeline
Best Practices
• Thinking ahead
– Common vocabulary
– Cultural issues
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Project management rules
Designing collaboration in from the beginning
Collaboration champions
Use face-to-face wisely