The difficulty faced by many research organisations is how it will create and manage a process by which its various collaborators feel valued and significant within a research community despite the geographical disconnection, and be able to engage effortlessly in advance collaborative research as if they were within the same geographical location.

Virtual Research Environments/OrganisationsRussell Butson – Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC)

I am interested in online collaborative environments, particularly intellectual environments designed to support academic practice (HEDC + eRAG)

Members each with their copies of documents, notes and evidence

Communication P2P- Phone- email- meetings

Poor groupsynchronization

Current Collaborative Practice

Deliverable/s

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Central storage of documents, notes, evidence and communication

P2P Communication is available via - Phone- email- meetings

High groupsynchronization

Emerging Collaborative Practice…the use of web services

Deliverable/s

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So… as researchers

What are we to centralise ?

What is it that we actually do ?

An Overview of a Virtual/Collaborative Research EnvironmentA review of USA & UK research/practice

What are we to centralise ?

Key elements to consider when virtualizing a research group/project.

Personal & Group identityEngagement – commitment - purpose

Knowledge Managementstorage and sharing of information – including sourced and created

Project ManagementReduced slippage – increased productivity – increased quality

Co-construction of KnowledgeIdea development, position papers, presentations, working documents and co-authored articles

The Key Elements

Group Research ProcessWhat is it that we do ?

• Wiki’s – These were only useful for ‘idea development’• Blogs – These did not work well with groups

• Groove – Only useful for single projects using Win OS• Collaber – Like Groove but allowed both Mac & Win OS

What we needed was a system that could aggregate new technologies into one environment

+That allow for multiple projects

+Was first and foremost people-centric

Initial exploration…Starting back in 2005

BeSTGRID – Virtual Research Environment Auckland University – Funded by Ministry of Research Science & Technology

VRE

VRE Project…1.Build a prototype environment

that can be developed on the fly

2.Work with a research groups to identify practices / processes

3.Support researchers to adopt new technologies / approaches

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CSAFE – Virtual Research Environment (VRE)