I've pasted here the entire post from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/07/010703035755.htm
Making Cyberspace Collaboration Succeed
ANN ARBOR---As research, commerce and industry become increasingly global
endeavors, the need to collaborate effectively has never been greater. And
as the technology that allows collaboration over distance and time
improves, the "collaboratory"---a virtual center where people in different
locations work together as easily as if they were all in the same
place---is gaining appeal in science and education, as well as business and
industry. So much so that funding agencies such as National Science
Foundation and National Institutes of Health have taken note and are
encouraging grantees to form collaboratories.
But a host of challenges and issues must be dealt with if collaboratories
are to live up to their potential, researchers at the University of
Michigan and Northwestern University say. In an article in the June 29
issue of Science, Stephanie Teasley, a senior associate research scientist
in the U-M School of Information's Collaboratory for Research on Electronic
Work, and Northwestern University Prof. Steven Wolinsky report on some of
the benefits and opportunities collaboratories offer, as well as the
stumbling blocks associated with a distributed problem solving environment.
Teasley and Wolinsky are working together on an NIH-funded virtual Center
for AIDS Research (CFAR), through which scientists at four Midwestern
universities collaborate. Wolinsky, an AIDS researcher, directs the
project, and Teasley is coordinating and studying the group's use of
collaborative technology. In the Science paper, they identify several
important issues for collaboratory users---or potential users---to consider:
* Social and organizational readiness. "You have to have a group of people
that are at a point in their work when they really want to work with
someone who is not right next to them, and they've already resolved some of
the trust issues and boundary issues about data ownership and authoring
publication," says Teasley.
* Technological readiness. "This is user-centered technology. It should
follow function," notes Teasley. Her research group begins with a needs
assessment, and then prescribes voice, video and data communication
technology, troubleshooting everything before it gets to people's desks and
coordinating the technology at various sites. The software used in setting
up a collaboratory can be quite simple; with the CFAR group, "we used all
off-the-shelf technology and haven't had to custom write anything," says
Teasley. For other collaboratory projects, the software is built from the
ground up to meet researchers' specific needs. * Rewards and incentives for
technophiles In-house technological expertise can be a boon to any
collaboratory. But while a lab benefits from a technologically savvy
member, it is essential to find ways to recognize and reward the
contribution of researchers who have gotten off the mainstream track of
doing science to manage the technology that supports the science.
* Finding time. Once the technology is in place, another hurdle can be
fitting time for cyber-collaboration into already overloaded schedules. "A
lot of the richness and real value that people are finding in these
collaboratories is this opportunity for real-time interaction," says
Teasley. "That is real time though; you have to make time to go over the
data, and you've got to make time that coincides with your collaborator's
time." In addition, data can pile up more quickly when researchers work
together than when they labor alone, and that is a mixed blessing. "More
data is always great but it can be a headache," notes Teasley. "How do you
manage it? What form it will take? Where will it reside, and who will have
access to it?"
Once a lab has cleared the hurdles to getting a collaboratory going, the
rewards can be great and the applications broad. A cyberstep beyond
asynchronous data sharing, in which researchers just take what they want
from an online database and leave, the collaboratory allows researchers at
remote locations to interact with each other; hold lab meetings and
dynamically manipulate data, all in real time.
For example, a clinician who collected a tissue sample from one of his
patients can interact with a second clinician at another site who did a
microscopic analysis of the sample and with a pathologist who interprets
the sample. In some instances, collaborative technology simply allows
people to do better and faster something they already were doing. For
example, a group of the CFAR scientists developed a clinical protocol in an
hour and half, a process that previously took months to negotiate when done
asynchronously with e-mail, faxes and phone calls.
In other cases, innovation in scientific practice can also result. In a
collaboratory for upper atmospheric space scientists, computer modelers
work closely with instrument specialists. The collaboratory allows them to
run the model simulations just minutes before a radar reading is recorded.
The modelers get immediate feedback from the radar people on the accuracy
of their model, the radar specialists get feedback about where to direct
the instruments to capture the best data available. "The fact that those
two types of scientists are working together and publishing together
represents an innovation for that field," says Teasley.
"In short," says Teasley, "whether providing support for existing practice
to occur between geographically distributed colleagues or creating the
opportunity for distant colleagues to make innovations in their field,
collaboratories offer great promise for science, industry and education.
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