Virtual Collaboration

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Virtual Collaboration

• Gerard P. Learmonth Sr., Ph.D.
• Broadband Network Services Incorporated

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Virtual collaboration

• Virtual collaboration refers a group, or team,
  of individuals working together to a achieve an
  agreed upon outcome or goal.
• In particular, group members are
• interdependent in their tasks,
• share responsibility for success,
• are geographically dispersed, and
• use technology to mediate communication.

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Virtual collaboration

• The desired outcome might be
• simply achieving a shared understanding,
• evaluating of a set of proposals,
• developing a future strategy,
• choosing a specific decision,
• formulating an action plan,

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Virtual collaboration

• Technology mediated communication typically takes
  the form of
• audio conferencing,
• videoconferencing, or
• Computer-based support in the form of
• e-mail and list servers,
• instant messaging and chat rooms, and/or
• document (content) management systems.

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Virtual collaboration

• For our discussion this morning, we use a more
  comprehensive view of virtual collaboration.
• We will look at where and how technology can be
  used most effectively to enhance collaborative
  effort including group member participation and
  satisfaction.

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Collaboration the human element

• Group or team performance, with or without
  technology support, is a function of individual
  motivation and individual performance.
• Motivation is the willingness of the individual
  to contribute his or her effort to the group
  task.
• Individual performance refers to the degree to
  which an individual exerts his or her maximal
  effort toward the group task.

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Collaboration the human element

• Both motivation and performance are influenced by
  the nature and size of perceived rewards accruing
  to the individual.
• There is a perception that collaborative groups
  are inherently superior to the efforts of
  individuals. However, human nature often lays
  lie to this perception.

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Collaboration the human element

• Social facilitation is the tendency for the mere
  presence of others to cause an improvement in an
  individuals performance not necessarily
  through collective, collaborative effort but
  through its antithesis competition.
• Social impairment, on the other hand, is the
  tendency for a decline in individual performance
  as a result of working with others on some task.

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Groupware

• The collection of technologies devoted to the
  support of collaborative work has been called
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
• Coordination technology
• Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)
• Electronic meeting room systems
• or simply groupware.

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Groupware

• computer-based systems that support groups of
  people engaged in a common task (or goal) and
  that provide an interface to a shared
  environment.
• The value of groupware tools must be measured
  with respect to how well they enhance group
  performance.

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Groupware

• Common task varieties
• Review structured environment
• Information sharing, consensus-building
• Diagnosis semi-structured environment
• Problem/opportunity identification, alternative
  generation, negotiation support
• Exploration unstructured environment
• Strategic planning, crisis management

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Groupware elements

• Dimensions of a shared environment
• Time
• Synchronous / asynchronous
• Space
• Face-to-face / remote (virtual)
• Medium
• audio / video / text
• tools

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Evolution of groupware

• In its earliest incarnation, groupware was
  equated with simple e-mail information
  technology in support of collaboration through
  simple message exchange.
• Lotus Notes added the ability to archive
  messages into organized databases with
  synchronization and search and retrieval it
  pioneered the electronic capture of tacit
  knowledge.

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Evolution of groupware

• In reality, messaging products such as Lotus
  Notes supported individual group members through
  asynchronous communication and knowledge sharing.
• The question arose as to whether this, or similar
  groupware products, adequately addressed the
  issues of social facilitation and social
  impairment free-riding.

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Collaborative environments
A taxonomy of technology supported,
collaborative environments
Place
Same Different
Desktop conferencing audio, visual, Web
Electronic meeting room
Same Different
Time
Virtual team spaces
e-mail, list servers
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Electronic Meeting Rooms

• The Electronic Meeting Room embodies features
  that enhance the outcomes of collaborative work
  while overcoming some of the issues of individual
  motivation and performance.
• Anonymity
• Concurrency
• Self-documenting meetings
• Increased participant satisfaction

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Electronic Meeting Rooms

• Among the early efforts were
• The ICL POD
• VisionQuest a tool underwritten and promoted by
  the Marriott Corporation
• EDS Capture Lab
• GroupSystems University of Arizona / Ventana
  Corporation / GroupSystems, Inc. (aka IBM
  TeamFocus)

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Electronic Meeting Rooms
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Electronic Meeting Rooms
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Electronic Meeting Rooms

• Using an Electronic Meeting Room to support
  virtual collaboration
• is primarily based on face-to-face, facilitated
  interaction
• but also allows remote participants to join via
  Web, and audio/ visual conference call
• hierarchy and dominant personalities are
  diffused
• and, adherence to a pre-planned agenda keeps the
  meeting focused on the goal of the effort and
  virtually assures a conclusion.

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Electronic Meeting Rooms
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Sampling of tools

• Agenda ? Group outliner
• Electronic brainstorming ? Opinion meter
• Categorizing ? Survey
• Alternative analysis ? Briefcase
• Voting
• Topic commenter

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Conclusion

• Virtual collaboration technology-mediated,
  computer-supported group work offers a
  significant improvement in group process,
  participant satisfaction, and outcome quality.
• As with any activity involving humans, care must
  be taken to understand and ameliorate those
  factors which would otherwise inhibit success.