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Collaboration support applications

20 一月, 2016 - 15:30

The visionaries, who imagined, funded and worked on the research that lead to today’s platforms and applications, understood that networked computers would allow for collaborative communities of common interest. For example, in 1968, J. C. R. Licklider, who was instrumental in conceiving of and funding time-sharing, personal computers and network research wrote:

What will on-line interactive communities be like? In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. 1 (Emphasis in the original).

The early time sharing systems allowed people to send messages and share files, but there was little if any software for explicit support of collaboration. Perhaps the first major application of collaboration support software was in decision support rooms where users sat at computers connected to a local area network and shared a common, projected screen. These group decision support systems (GDSS) are used primarily for group decision making and consensus building. They are equipped with software for brainstorming, outlining, voting, etc.

A GDSS room supported collaboration among people who were working at the same time (synchronously) and the same location. With the advent of the Internet as a platform, software was developed to support people working synchronously at different places, for example, software for chat, video conferencing, instant messaging, voice telephony, sharing the same screen views and editing documents. Today, distant colleagues can open a chat window, wiki document, telephone session, and shared workspace and work together for hours.

Virtual worlds like Second Life are also used for synchronous collaboration. 2The following shows a panel discussion in a virtual classroom 3 belonging to the Harvard University Berkman Center. 4 Each panelist and attendee designs an avatar, which they control and move around in the virtual space. We see the panelists’ avatars seated at the front of the room and those of the attendees are seated around them. There are also shared spaces like the “flipchart” to the right of the panel. Organizations are experimenting with meetings, press conferences, concerts, and other synchronous events in Second Life.

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Figure 7.16 A virtual classroom in Second Life 
 

We also have software that supports collaboration among people working at different times (asynchronously) and at different places. Examples here include e-mail, voice mail, listservers, online questionnaires, threaded discussions or forums, blogs, and wikis. There are a also a number of network-based suites of standard productivity tools – software for word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation. These have all of the advantages and disadvantages of other software as a service, but the documents they create are available online for sharing and co- authoring. In some cases, these suites may replace conventional desktop productivity tools; in others, they will complement them.

Collaboration support software has facilitated a trend toward increasing collaboration and distributed organizations, for example:

  • Business extranets allowing employees from multiple companies to work together (outsourcing)
  • Business intranets allowing employees from different locations within a firm to work together
  • Ad hoc organizations set up for a particular event or emergency like the Tour de France or a hurricane
  • Ad hoc organizations (perhaps within a company) set up to do a short-term particular project
  • Open source software communities
  • Cooperative industry organizations like the WiFi Alliance
  • Loosely-coupled interest group like those who have purchased a particular product or are thinking of doing so

It has also reduced the cost of employees telecommuting – working from home full or part time. Network-based software also facilitates the outsourcing of programming, graphic design, accounting, x-ray interpretation, and other information intensive work. Telecommuting and outsourcing require skilled management, but can result in significant savings for organizations and benefit to employees and society if done well.

Internet resources:

For a Web site devoted to GDSS, see http://www.dssresources.com/.

A brief discussion of the applications of group decision support is found at http://www.groupsystems.com/resources/custom/PDFs/Gartner-web_conferencing_amplifies_d_138101.pdf.

For a brief history of GDSS, see http://dssresources.com/history/dsshistory.html