Group collaboration

As the networks mature, it is increasingly obvious that they are not merely a vehicle for conveying endless amounts of information to the desktop, but can provide an effective platform for working with colleagues, irrespective of location. The use of the WWW for collaboration is currently the focus of much interest and development and many interesting new tools are appearing which make online collaborative projects a realistic, if not attractive, option for distributed work-groups. You can use the Internet for many collaborative activities such as holding meetings, ongoing discussions, working on documents, and a range of other tasks.

Holding meetings

Meetings with other network users using facilities such as videoconferencing are no longer a futuristic dream, especially for users on high-speed connections in the academic and research communities. And for quality communication, there is nothing quite like interactive dialogue with a person you can see and hear, even considering the benefits and convenience of tools like e-mail. Meetings using network videoconferencing and audioconferencing enable network users to have the immediacy of face-to-face meeting. This includes the experience of real personalities, with the potential benefits of seeing spontaneous reactions, sorting out problems on the spot, getting instant feedback on ideas, not to mention savings on travel costs.

Videoconferencing and audioconferencing are powerful facilities when they work well, but not all network users have the benefit of the high speed connections required. They may instead need to look at systems for the interactive exchange of plain-text messages such as Chat. Chat is also commonly included in collaboration software. It may not be as glamorous as tools such as phone and videoconferencing tools, but it does have the advantage of being an economical user of network resources and is therefore accessible to people on low-speed connections.

Discussion forums

Collaborating with others usually means ongoing discussions which ebb and flow depending on what's happening in the workgroup. Internet discussion forums provide an ideal vehicle for this type of activity. Messages can be posted to the discussion as the need arises and an archive of the discussion is usually available, enabling the group to refer back to previous messages. The software to access such forums is generally easily accessed, installed, and used.

The net excels in providing such facilities for group discussion. Mailing lists and Usenet News have a well established role here (see the discussion under Communicating). There are many Web conferencing systems to choose from too. With these, a Web browser is used to read text messages in a forum and to add messages to the forum. Conferencing systems are organised by subject with individual conferences devoted to a particular subject. The discussion might then be further divided by discussions on particular topics, referred to as threads.

Collaboration tools commonly include some sort of discussion forum facility and may provide an option of setting up private conferences.

Working on documents

Using collaboration tools, workgroups can jointly edit common documents interactively. For instance, using a whiteboard facility, they might create a project outline for the group, each one contributing points related to their own activities. As it is amended, the display is updated on each participant's computer. When the document is complete, each person can save it for future reference. Alternatively workgroups may need to work on existing documents, for instance spreadsheets or word-processed documents, making use of application-sharing or document-sharing tools. Another option might be to have the document available on the Web and to use an annotation facility to add comments. Collaboration tools provide many possibilities for co-operative work on documents.

Flexible working

These activities:

holding meetings
discussion forums
working on documents

can be combined with each other and very often, application software will do this for you. Collaboration suites of programs offer a range of tools in the one bundle providing convenient selection of the particular combination which is useful in the circumstances. In a videoconference a workgroup might achieve results which would otherwise be out of reach without outlaying much time and money. As they talk, they can view and work on associated documents and graphics, revising and updating a document in response to comments and suggestions. In an education situation, a video lecture might be supplemented with complementary graphics or text, e.g. a manipulable 3-D graphical model, or a slide with expandable bullet-points. Students may be able to use audio to ask questions. If video or audio-conferencing are not available or give only poor quality definition, an alternative such as combining Chat with document-sharing may suffice. Many additional functions may be available such as document transfer, annotation of Web documents, group Web browsing, etc. The important thing is to analyse your own requirements, then look for tools which might provide what you need. (Almost) anything is possible!

Further information in the Guide to Network Resource Tools

In the User Overview:

Communicating

About the tools:

Collaboration tools
Real-time multimedia communication (videoconferencing and audioconferencing)
Web conferencing
Internet Relay Chat

gnrt@terena.nl September 1997