Accessibility of Online Chat Programs

This article will evaluate the accessibility of three types of popular synchronous communication tools: IRC, Web-based chats and instant messengers.

WebAIM (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Accessibility>Online

Behind the Cameras: 10 Non-Instructional Issues to Consider When Coordinating a Distance Education Program with Other Institutions

When she learned that I would be teaching a course in her department, the department secretary made a mailbox for me and made sure that I received a copy of every memo and announcement distributed to the rest of the faculty. Other part-time faculty appreciated this service, so it became a part of the secretary's standard operating procedures. But I never received the mail because the mailbox was in Crookston, Minnesota and I taught the course by instructional television (ITV) from St. Paul, Minnesota, approximately 350 miles away.

Carliner, Saul. Saul Carliner Studio (2003). Articles>Education>Online>Collaboration

Building and Managing Virtual Teams

Chris Nagele’s run Wildbit, creators of hosted Subversion app Beanstalk, for 8 years virtually. He lives in Philadelphia and his team is all over the world. So, he knows a few things about virtual teams and shares them in this article.

Nagele, Chris. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Management>Collaboration>Online

The Challenges of Remote Collaboration

Open source development works because of remote collaboration; developers working together despite physical distance. With mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships, in-house developers are struggling with the same issues open source developers have addressed. Mark Murphy explains some of the challenges of remote collaboration.

Murphy, Mark. O'Reilly and Associates (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Collaboration Via Desktop Videoconferencing: Implications for Technical Communication  

From our case studies of technical communication college students collaborating via desktop videoconferencing (DTV) with high school students, we learned that DTV requires that collaborators manage a great deal more than text on a computer screen. Collaborators reliant on viewing computers as conveyors of text alone must learn new strategies for connecting interpersonally with people viewed on screen. Collaborators must macro-manage technology while they micro-manage dialogue about writing.

Duin, Ann Hill, Linda A. Jorn and Lisa Mason. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration>TC>Online

Communicating Effectively in Intercultural Virtual Teams

Organizations with virtual teams have invested vast resources in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce, offering cultural diversity training and providing the technology that makes the functioning of these teams possible. To ignore the opportunities and the potential pitfalls of these teams would minimize this investment.

Oetzel, John and Martina H. Myers. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Online

CoverWeb? Adding Multiple Authorship to Multi-Linearity  

This multi-vocality and multiple authorship allows an enactment of some of the collaboratory promise of hypertext while web publishing allows decentralized publication. Finally, the CoverWeb allows Kairos to deliver texts appropriate to many tiers of readers. This issue's CoverWeb on educational MOOs includes basic introductions to MOOing linked to discussions of the pedagogical possibilities of virtual spaces linked to problems of administering MOOspaces. We have tried to cover a spectrum of possible interests as well as familiarity to MOOs in education and this layering simply wouldn't be possible in print.

Salvo, Michael J. Kairos (1996). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Democracy, Deliberation and Design: The Case of Online Discussion Forums    

Within democratic theory, the deliberative variant has assumed pre-eminence. It represents for many the ideal of democracy, and in pursuit of this ideal, online discussion forums have been proposed as solutions to the practical limits to mass deliberation. Critics have pointed to evidence which suggests that online discussion has tended to undermine deliberation. This article argues that this claim, which generates a stand-off between the two camps, misses a key issue: the role played by design in facilitating or thwarting deliberation. It argues that political choices are made both about the format and operation of the online discussion, and that this affects the possibility of deliberation. Evidence for the impact of design (and the choices behind it) is drawn from analysis of European Union and UK discussion forums. This evidence suggests that we should view deliberation as dependent on design and choice, rather than a predetermined product of the technology.

Wright, Scott and John Street. New Media and Society (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Online

The End of E-Mail

It's supposed to make life easier, but e-mail has become a big pain. Enter the wiki, new software that could change the way you communicate.

Dahl, Darren. Inc. Magazine (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Email

The Enterprise Information Portal and eBusiness  

The rapid advance of the Internet, groupware, relational databases and search engines allows knowledge workers to come together and share ideas and information as never before.

KMworld (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Online

From Sea to Shining Sea…Bi-Coastal Teaming  

This presentation addresses the issues that technical communicators face when team members are in different geographic locations. Issues such as communication, team building, project management and planning, and successful practices that help teams succeed without regard to their physical locations will be discussed. The management of distributed teams, what obstacles managers face, including labor and employment laws, cost-of-living relative to salaries in varied locations, and how to conduct performance appraisals when managers and employees work thousands of miles apart will also be explored, along with employee perspectives and issues of change and collaboration.

STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Hot Politics: The Changing Places of Political Participation in the Age of the Internet  

Among the many complexities of power, economics, interests, personality, passions, social interaction, ideology, culture, and religion that keep politics both more and less than rational deliberation are those that arise from the dynamics of literate interchange, the historical formation of forums, and the generic shaping of utterances within those forums. Recent research on genre and discursive systems, along with situated cognition and action, suggests that the character of the local activity space is extremely important for what happens, what people think and learn, and what social consequences emerge. While the shape of politics to emerge in the cyber world is still somewhat obscure, by considering the forums of political interchange that are emerging on the internet, how they draw on previous forums and genres of political interchange, and the pressures that seem to be encouraging the heightening of certain elements within those genres, we may gain a first reading of some choices in front of us.

Bazerman, Charles. UCSB (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Politics

"I Sent You the File as Plain Text!" And Other Lies

Procedures for how to send a file as RTF or plain text in the body of an email.

Stieren, Carl. Simware (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Email

Identity and International Online Communication  

St.Amant discusses the tendency of online communication to obscure a person's identity and suggests ways people can ensure clear communication with individuals of other cultures.

St. Amant, Kirk R. Intercom (2001). Articles>Collaboration>International>Online

Information About Video Conferencing: What You Need To Know

Video conferencing is the technique of meeting in a group over a network employing video and audio transmission technology and equipment. Armed with information about video conferencing businessmen, technologists, scientists and government heads started to explore ways to bring the world closer together and enable meetings of many people located in different parts of the globe. Video conferencing is the process of being able to see and interact with a group of people located at any point of the world at the same time.

Shakir A. Ezine Articles (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Videoconferencing>Online

It's More Than E-Mail: An Overview Of Inter-Networking  

Although global computer networks have existed for many years, they have grown explosively only in the last few—particularly the one called the Internet. ARPANET, the forerunner of these network, was set up to aid communication between the government and people doing defense research in universities and industry. The network got a major boost in the late 1980s when the National Science Foundation created NSFNET, linking the five NSF supercomputer centers with networks at university campuses and the ARPANET. Continuing advances in reliability, speed, capacity, and ease of access have made the Internet an international medium for information exchange.

Hibbard, Jeffrey L. and Eric J. Ray. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Government

Learning to Use Virtual Team Collaboration to Solve Wicked Problems

The focus of this paper is the ELEARNING RESEARCH PROJECT (hereafter referred to as the EProject), a project to investigate how virtual teams collaborate to solve highly complex or wicked problems. The EProject designed, constructed, and assessed a Web-based collaborative learning environment to support virtual teams of intelligence analysts. The mission of these geo-distributed and cross-disciplinary teams is to learn to collaborate in order to integrate knowledge from diverse domains and thereby produce solutions for wicked problems.

Cupp, Stephanie, Joel Foreman, S. Gievska-Krliu, and Rachelle S. Heller. ACM Crossroads (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Less Than Metcalfe's Law

Metcalfe's Law basically tells us that as you connect n number of machines you get n squared in potential value. So, with 2 machines you get a value of 4. When you connect 10 machines, you get a value of 100. When you connect 200 machines, you get a value of 40,000. People like to apply this idea to the internet. In particular, people claim that the strength of the internet is a direct result of so many machines being connected. I think that this is bullshit.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Long-Distance Editing    

Check out seven tips that will help you and your team remain busy and useful when you have extra time or gaps between projects.

Crognale, Heather. Intercom (2008). Articles>Editing>Collaboration>Online

Long-Distance Teams: Facing the Challenges  

Offers advice for managers of long-distance teams on working across time zones, accommodating team members' cultural norms, easing the difficulties of language differences, and nurturing team spirit.

Legg, Kathy A. Intercom (2004). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Online

Making Connections: An Intercultural Virtual Team Project in Professional Communication    

This presentation reports on an intercultural virtual team project conducted by students in two management communication courses, one at the University of Delaware (USA) and one at McGill University (Canada). The goal of the partnership between the two classes was to enhance students' ability to collaborate across cultures using a variety of technologies for collaboration, a skill they need in order to succeed in the increasingly global and technologically mediated environment of work. Each team, which included students from both universities, compared communication practices in a company or type of business that exists both in the United States and in Canada. Their task was to analyze how the practices reflect and shape the particular environments in which the businesses operate. During the project they advanced and monitored their work through different technologies, including blogs, email, and a designated collaborative Web-based workspace, and they produced several genres of documents reporting their achievements. This presentation first analyzes the advantages, vulnerabilities, and faultlines of virtual intercultural teamwork as students experienced them. We then describe conditions that help teams overcome the risks of virtual work and assess how well we were able to create these conditions in the courses.

Andrews, Deborah C. and Dorreen Starke-Meyerring. IEEE PCS (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Case Studies

Managing a Documentation Project from Both Sides of the Atlantic  

Most of us struggle every day with keeping the lines of communication open between developers, subject matter experts (SMEs), customers, and writers. Sometimes you can circumvent these difficulties by simply walking upstairs or across the hall and chatting with the appropriate person. But what happens when it's not a staircase or hallway separating you but a very large ocean? The best way to keep an overseas project on track is to put together a writing team in the most convenient location; meet at least once with the development team; and set up your communication channels early.

Morgan, Sharon. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration>Online

Multilingual Knowledge Management Empowers Global eBusiness  

With the penetration of Internet technologies into global business operations, employees at every level are collaborating across multiple geographies.

Sargent, Benjamin B. ZDNet (2001). Articles>Knowledge Management>Collaboration>Online

Net Collaboration on the Cheap

Web conferencing without corporate support -- how to take advantage of ways the 'net can facilitate meetings in real life.

Shoemaker, Nancy. Carolina Communique (2008). Articles>Collaboration>Online

Online Collaboration: Distance Learning and Professional Forums Display Advantages and Disadvantages  

Online collaboration has become a major resource for students and professionals alike. Distance learning and other forms of online communication have become established norms for many schools and professional organizations. While online communication has countless benefits, several disadvantages exist and continue to emerge. This paper will explore the authors’ personal experiences as students and professionals, taking an in-depth look at online collaboration forums such as distance learning and professional collaborations as well as the advantages and disadvantages that each of these forums present.

House, Andrea L. and Holly N. Siegelman. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Online