Computer systems are intended to support and enhance the activities and tasks that people perform. Unfortunately, most computer systems have been developed with the view that the user performs activities and tasks in isolation. Realistically, people perform many activities and tasks in collaboration with others. The design of computer systems should reflect, support, and enhance the natural ways that people collaborate to accomplish work.
In designing and developing collaborative systems, we must consider how people communicate and work together to accomplish objectives. How does computer technology enhance or degrade people's abilities to collaborate? What are the social and organizational impacts? Collaboration is an important aspect of work activity and it should be studied, supported, and incorporated into the enabling technologies that computer science provides.
Because of its ability to connect users from around the world, the WWW provides a logical infrastructure from which collaborative work and activities may be spawned. We should take advantage of the WWW's immense reach, connectivity, and popularity to introduce computer-mediated collaborative technology and to facilitate collaborative work among the masses.
To talk coherently about collaboration on the WWW, we first need to define a few terms:
In a sense, any interaction over the WWW is a form of collaboration. In the general case where a WWW user locates and views a Web page, the collaboration is one where a WWW developer publishes Web pages for general consumption and a WWW user collects and assimilates the information for his/her personal benefit. This typical interaction, however, represents a very weak level of collaboration. The WWW publisher and reader do not directly communicate. They are not necessarily cognizant of each other nor do they necessarily share a common purpose or goal.
Our view of collaboration is one where multiple WWW users share common objectives and collectively work to accomplish those objectives. Participants of a collaboration are aware of each other and they directly communicate. Relationships among the participants are clearly elucidated. Each participant has a defined role that carries particular duties, tasks, and expectations.
In this chapter, we examine how users collaborate over the WWW. First, we examine the various kinds of computer-mediated communications mechanisms, shared artifact mechanisms, and collaboration frameworks that are required to support collaborative interaction. Next, we survey the WWW to identify various forms of collaboration in which WWW users participate. We seek to identify the kinds of collaborative activities and work that users perform over a computer network. Finally, we present and examine some of the underlying social and organizational issues associated with computer-supported collaboration.
Copyright © 1996 George Chin Jr., All Rights Reserved
George Chin Jr.
<chin@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Tue Dec 10 16:00:00 1996