Data Collaboration Working Group

Collaboration means to work with one another, to cooperate towards common goals, to participate. Collaborate, in our emerging multimedia environment, additionally means to share a virtual workspace. Classrooms might need to share browser windows, presentation notes or slides, whiteboards, and various other static materials between each other. Engineering and science research projects could use static documents to prepare proposals and reports. But true collaboration, in both the classroom and between researchers, requires shared videos, visualizations, and animations. Teaching engineering concepts requires animation. Medical diagnosis and teaching is significantly enhanced through real-time visualization of physical systems. Modeling and simulation of complex systems require real time animations and replay of archived data or video. Evan Rosen in his book "Personal Video Conferencing" has coined the term "collabication", which represents the merged skills that the media (video, application sharing, and document conferencing) require. All of these terms and definitions apply to our environment, that of higher education.

Collaboration is nothing new to the academic environment. Data Collaboration must be viewed as both an extension of traditional collaboration, as we know it, and as the next phase of technology. David Wallace of Loughborough University makes an excellent observation that "the rate of learning must be greater than the rate of change" when evaluating a new mode of teaching and learning. Therefore careful planning and evaluation must be done before we commit broad deployment of data collaboration across the academic environment. Cavalier placement of immature or incomplete data collaboration could spell doom to what might be the next major tool in this new era of education.

The goals and ongoing work of this group include:

º Data collaboration needs analysis in higher education

º Analysis of T.120 and other standards

º Data collaboration tool discovery

º Review and testing of viable tools

º Bibliography of related books, papers, and web site

For more information, contact Mary Trauner. More detailed information is available on the Data Collaboration sister site.