Collaborative Environments

From Horizon Project

Jump to: navigation, search


2009 Short List

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: One year or Less

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

[edit] Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

[edit] Critical Challenges

[edit] Key Trends

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

A growing emphasis on collaboration in education and in the workplace has led to the proliferation of collaborative environments, both in online spaces and in physical spaces that are designed to support teams working together. Online collaborative environments range from shared document editors like Google Docs (http://docs.google.com), to openly editable websites like wikis, to social networking sites that include profiles and communication tools to add a sense of connectedness and community along with tools for shared work. The Horizon Project’s research process occurs almost entirely through an online “home” that facilitates and captures all the work of the Advisory Board.

In the physical world, university and corporate campuses alike are adding carefully designed spaces intended to promote collaboration by providing comfortable, group-friendly areas equipped with the creature comforts and basic necessities of working in today’s world: clustered seating, coffee, electricity, and wireless Internet connectivity. Collaborative environments are even appearing in public spaces in downtown locations, airports, parks, and community centers – anywhere people might gather. Collaborative work in both online and physical environments is supported by technologies like cloud computing, ubiquitous wireless, mobile devices, virtual worlds, and social networking tools.

[edit] Relevance for Teaching, Learning & Creative Expression

  • Both physical and online collaborative environments support teamwork and give students the flexibility to work together at times and places of their own choosing.
  • Collaborative environments support colleagues who work together at a distance, making inter-institutional collaboration easier.
  • Students can create a “portfolio” site that automatically updates as new work is blogged, podcast, or posted to photo or video sharing sites.

[edit] Examples

- planning of education projects linked with the development of free content; - development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning; - work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs. - networking on funding proposals developed as free content

[edit] For Further Reading

  • Collaboration Tools
    http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/CollaborationTools/47200
    (Cyprien Lomas, Michael Burke, and Carrie Lee Page, EDUCAUSE Connect (White Paper), August 2008.) This white paper discusses collaboration tools used by students, ways that students already use them, and ways that faculty can leverage students’ familiarity with and use of collaboration tools to extend discourse beyond the classroom.
  • Collaborative Work Environments
    http://thinkofit.com/webconf/workspaces.htm
    (Maintained by David R. Woolley, updated September 2008.) This website includes reviews, articles, and links to services for online collaborative workspaces.

[edit] Share More Examples or Resources

If you have additional examples, please add them below:

  • Add an example here [LJ]
  • Add an example here [LJ]
  • Add an example here [LJ]
Retrieved from "http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Collaborative_Environments"
Personal tools