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Computer Supported Collaborative Work

Course Activities and Schedule

Week 1: Introduction and email case studies

1. Introduce yourself.
2. Read the Whittaker and Sidner paper on "email overload".
3. Be supportive! Go to the Email forum in the Discussion Board and read the email case studies. Also read your classmates' contributions as they come online and give comments if you have them.
4. Discuss the reading. Share your problems or solutions to the ever-present challenges of email management.
5. DEMO. Make your own account with Yahoo and check out Yahoogroups. Familiarizing yourself with these features may also be helpful in addressing the case studies.

Week 2: Asynchronous communication for education

1. Post at least two discussion notes about the readings for this week.
2. DEMO. Meet online using [instant messaging client of choice].

Week 3: Synchronous communication and trust development via CMC

1. Participate in a synchronous discussion of the Fractured School District case study. You will be assigned to a group based on your technology choice from last week. Your group will meet online using either TAPPED-IN or Jabber.
2. Post a transcript of your group's conversation in the Discussion area.
3. Comment on another group's chat transcript.
4. DEMO. Meet online in TAPPED-IN.

Week 4: Trust and project-based e-Learning

1. Redesign the Jarvenpaa collaboration with tools you've learned about in this course. Think about both the technology and social structures of this collaboration.
2. Comment on the reading.
3. DEMO. Try out TIMBUKTU's document sharing features.

Week 5: Collaboration with information

1. Write and post an outline describing a new collaboratory. Arrange a meeting to discuss your ideas.
2. Task: Analyze a groupware situation.

Week 6: Design your own collaboratory

1. Arrange and hold on online meeting with one or two classmates to discuss your collaboratory ideas.

Course Readings

Bos, N.D., Olson, J.S., Gergle, D., Olson, G.M., & Wright, Z. (2002). Effects of four computer-mediated channels on trust development. In Proceedings of CHI 2002. New York: ACM Press. [online] http://crew.umich.edu/technical_reports.htm

Finholt, T.A., & Olson, G.M. (1997). From laboratories to collaboratories: A new organizational form for scientific collaboration (PDF file). Psychological Science, 8, 1-9.

Hewitt, J. (1997). Beyond threaded discourse. Paper presented at WebNet 97. [online] http://csile.oise.utoronto.ca/abstracts/XXThreadedDiscourse.html

Hsi, S., & Hoadley, C. (1997). Productive discussion in science: gender equity through electronic discourse. Journal of Science Education and Technology 6 (1), 23-36.

Jarvenpaa, S.L., & Leidner, D.E. (1998). Communication and trust in global virtual teams. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications 3 (4). http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue4/jarvenpaa.html

Malone, T.W. (1983). How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems. ACM Transactions on office information systems 1 (1), 99-112.

Olson, G.M., & Olson, J.S. (2001). Distance Matters. Human Computer Interaction, 15, 139-179.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1997). Schools as knowledge-building organizations. http://csile.oise.utoronto.ca/abstracts/ciar-understanding.html

Whittaker, S., & Sidner, C. (1996). Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email. In Proceedings of Computer-Human Interaction. New York: ACM Press.

Zheng, J., Veinott, E., Bos, N.D., Olson, J.S., & Olson, G.M. (2002). Trust without touch: Jumpstarting long-distance trust with initial social activities. In Proceedings of CHI 2002. New York: ACM Press. [online] http://crew.umich.edu/technical_reports.htm

Course Software

Yahoogroups www.yahoogroups.com This class uses Yahoogroups as a group email list and as an archive. This free online service also has a chatroom, which we may use for an online demo session.

[Instant messaging tool of choice—AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft messenger, Yahoo messenger, Jabber instant messaging.]

TAPPED-IN www.tappedin.org is an online professional development community. TAPPED-IN hosts many online events for teachers, and also allows individuals and groups to set up collaboration spaces.

TIMBUKTU www.netopia.com/software/products/tb2/ A real-time screen and application sharing program. You can download and install a free demo of Timbuktu.

SRI International | The Concord Consortium | Stanford University | University of California Berkeley | Vanderbilt University
© 1997-2008 Center for Innovative Learning Technology. All rights reserved.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation