Mike Eisenberg Dean and Professor

1. Mike EisenbergDean and Professor The Information School University of Washington

2. Mike Eisenberg Perspectives on Virtual Collaboration January 24, 2002

3. Outline • Uses for Virtual Collaboration • Barriers – Challenges - Issues • R&D Agenda 2002

4. Purpose

5. Purpose

6. Purpose • To facilitate human interaction • To boost individual and group performance • Effectiveness • Efficiency • To add value by connecting people to people

8. Uses • Connections • Information sharing • Information gathering • Information use • Cooperative work • Education

9. Challenge Transition from: • traditional teaching of individuals in a highly social setting to: • adding the social setting to an already individualized process.

10. Challenge “… The litmus test for developing technologies will be how well they meet that challenge.” -- Bill Gibbons, Syracuse University email message 8/11/97

11. Related Issues • Affective responses as they relate to time and space • It’s more than just communication; it’s also about information

12. Space & Time The social and psychological dimensions: • Nature of the connection in time • Feeling regarding space • Locus of control • Richness of the media experience

13. Email/Mail Lists

14. Email/Mail Lists Asynchronous Feeling of being “connected;” beginning of sense of community Locus of control: email – individual; mail lists – can be external (moderator) Media richness - limited

15. Video Conferencing

16. Video Conferencing • Synchronous • Feeling regarding space = sense of distance • Locus of control: shared • Rich medium

17. Chat

18. Chat • Synchronous • Feeling regarding space – sense of immediacy and connected • Locus of control: shared, but cumbersome • Medium not very rich

19. Graphic Chat

20. Graphic Chat • Synchronous • Feeling regarding space – immediacy, togetherness • Locus of control: shared, but still cumbersome • Rich medium

21. Video Broadcast

22. Video Broadcast • Synchronous • Feeling regarding space – broadcast, mass-media • Locus of control: one-way • Medium can be very rich

23. Challenge To put it all together: • synchronous and interactivity of video conferencing • feeling of space immediacy and togetherness of graphic chat • sense of community of mail lists • shared locus of control of video and chat • the medium richness of video

24. Other Challenge It’s more than just communications

25. Other Challenge It’s also about information It’s more than just communications

26. Information Issues • Human Information Behavior in Collaborative Situations • purpose and need, problems (overload) • uses and sharing • search and retrieval • Information Management • coping with information overload • representation and organization • storage and retrieval

27. Agenda 2002 • Study the affective - the emotional, psychological and social dimensions. • Develop systems that create sense of togetherness, not distance, in space and time. • Recognize and study the information side: uses, problems, behavior, management.

28. And Beyond… Change: • Be prepared to break out of thinking in terms of existing systems (media, structure, format).

29. Thanks for listening!

30. Thanks for listening!