emerging technologies that drive online collaborations - #smsociety15 work in progress presentation

Emerging Technologies that

Drive Online Collaboration

Presented by:

Rebecca J. Hogue (@rjhogue)

Jeffrey M. Keefer (@JeffreyKeefer)

@rjhogue @jeffreykeefer #rhizo15


Necessary selfie


Purpose

We will describe how an institutionally, culturally, geographically, and philosophically diverse group of people, many of whom never met offline (physically in-person), came together to collaboratively create conference presentations and write academic papers.

• This study focuses on the technology that supports our collaborations


Scope of Study

The study began with an attempt at mapping of collaborations between each of the authors.

Collaborative technologies (e.g., Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Email, and Twitter) were then used to further explore the technologies that enabled or disabled our collaborations.

Not all attempts at using technologies were successful = Dissonance!

This collaboration itself became a collaborative lens included in the study.

Collaboration Matrix


Collaboration Name/Person NameRebecca

Maha

Keith AK

Sarah

Jeffrey Ron Len

Paper (WIP): Writing as a swarm: How Google Docs are enabling new forms of collaborative writing Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesPaper: What Is It Like to Learn and Participate in Rhizomatic MOOCs? A Collaborative Autoethnography of #rhizo14

Sent for review Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes

How the Community Became More Than the Curriculum: Participant Experiences in #rhizo14

Sent for review Yes Yes No No Yes No No No

Paper (Hybrid Pedagogy): Writing the Unreadable Untext: a Collaborative Autoethnography of #rhizo14 Published Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No NoConference Presentation (#et4online): #rhizo14 Collaborative Autoethnography - challenges and joyes of unwriting the untext Presented Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No NoConference Presentation (Alt-C): A herd of freely associating, autonomous cats: how a Facebook group helped turn a bunch of cMOOC participants into a learning community Accepted Yes Yes No No Yes No No YesConference Presentation (WIP - SMSociety): Emerging Technologies that drive online collaboration Presented Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes YesConference Presentation (WIP - dLRN): Pioneering alternate forms of collaboration: Technologies that support and sideline #rhizomatic learning Accepted Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yesinterview with Dave Cormier for JPD (published) Published No Yes No No Yes No No NoConfessions of a MOOC swarm - lived experience in a variety of MOOCs (EMOOCS 2016) Started Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes


Google Docs

Our current work-in-progress focuses on Google Docs, which is a central component in our academic collaborations


Methodology

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a research strategy that treats everything in the natural and social world as continuously generated effects of the networked connections in which they exist.

ANT is useful to examine the multiplicity of ties within networks and attempt to make sense of the “difficult ambivalences, messy objects, multiple overlapping worlds and apparent contradictions that are embedded in so many educational issues” (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010).

We use ANT to dissect and describing how different technologies influenced our collaborations and our community.

Story of a Google Doc – A Semi-Fictional Narrative

1.AK writes a blog post that speaks to Rebecca.

2.On her Mac, Rebecca creates a Google Doc, adds some text to contextualize the idea, and includes the text from AK's blog post.

3.Len jumps in with his thoughts onhow this might be presented.



4.Maha, using her phone while commuting to/from work, adds her thoughts to the conversation.

The mobile app doesn't show the comments in the same way - they are not part of the document but rather an interruption in the flow of it.




5.Sarah tries to use her tablet to access the doc but it hides comments till one is clicked on, which makes it no good for swarm writing where the comments are important.



6. Jeffrey at times misses strands as alerts or notifications are inconsistent, creating a discussion on notifications in the margins.

This is just a brief overview of the complex interactions.


Swarm Writing – A Collaborative Process

• It has been called "rhizomatic collaborative writing" (Hamon et al, 2015).

• Involves multiple authors collaborating and working together, like a Swarm, on creating a single document.

• Multiple writers in different countries and timezones, using this method while working on tasks that have not been readily defined in the literature, benefit most from free, cloud-based tools.

• While collaborative (like a wiki), it is messy, and thus allows for (invites?) unexpected bouts of creativity and shifts in direction.


Collaboration and Cooperation- Different modes of working together

Collaboration is often elicited and expected, though it can be challenging when cooperation is a goal without a clear road map or strategy.

This often leads to Divide and Conquer:

I will write this section . . .. . . and you write that one . . .

. . . and who does the rest?!

Swarm writing promotes a blurring of boundaries, with cooperation coming as part of a group, rather than a pile of individual authors.


Enablers- Check your Ego at the Door

… allows our words to be re-written many times, such that we can identify facets of the ideas in the text, but the words no longer belong to an individual ...

... they belong to the swarm!


Leadership and Authorship Order• Different leaders for different projects

• Leaders role is to ‘herd the cats’ and also ensure that all voices that want to contribute have a chance to

• After the leader, there is no authorship precedence – we talk about who needs to be where on the author order

• Crossing disciplines, authorship order means something different (e.g. last author in sciences is a prestigious position that goes to the leader of the lab)


Challenges- Costs

Costs vary by collaborator - especially with international collaborations and unaffiliated / unfunded collaborators

Philosophical differences among authors over willingness to pay for collaboration tools


Challenges- Bandwidth

• For the most part, Google Docs performs well in low bandwidth situations

• Other tools, especially those with video, are challenging to some co-authors – serving to silence rather than enable collaborations

• In addition, not everyone is setup for (or comfortable with) voice / video communication


Challenges- Language

• We are all strong English speakers / writers.

• We are aware of how Google Docs (asynchronous and written medium) helps to enable English as a foreign language speakers.

• “We feel the enthusiasm for audiovisual synchronicity often comes without sufficient discernment, and without deliberative consideration” (Bali & Meier, 2014).

This is an area we will be exploring further …


Challenges- Navigating new processes and spaces

• We are collaborating in different ways

• External forces (conference deadlines)

• Messiness of swarm interfacing with individual needs/requirements

• Pragmatic issues (need for presentation to be in PPT on a stick – not in Prezi)


What’s Next?

Tools:• Email

• Google Hangouts

• Twitter

• Facebook Messenger

• Doodle

• Prezi

Processes:• Language requirements

• Transitions (from swarm writing to presenting)

• Transitions (from swarm writing to article submission)


Discussion

1.Have you ever experienced this phenomenon that we have termed "Swarm Writing?”

2.What benefits or challenges do you envision?

3.How is your version of swarm writing different from what we have described?

4.What next steps can you consider for us to continue to develop this work?


Contact Us

Twitter #rhizo15 - ask for the swarm!

ANT Project collaborators:

• Rebecca J. Hogue

• Jeffrey M. Keefer

• Keith Hamon

• Apostolos Koutropoulos

• Maha Bali

• Lenandlar Singh

• Sarah Honeychurch

• Ron Leunissen

emerging technologies that drive online collaborations - #smsociety15 work in progress presentation

Education

rjhogue jeffrey

collaborative technologies

google docs

online collaboration

collaboration matrix

collaborative lens

google hangouts

emerging technologies