[Air-l] Collaborative Research in Intranets

Mary A. Ferguson mferguson at jou.ufl.edu
Sat Aug 11 08:59:43 PDT 2001


Charles:
 
I'm teaching a graduate course in internet research methods at the
university of florida this fall.  Would you be willing to share your
experience with my graduate students if we arranged an on-line
discussion?  
 
Mary Ann Ferguson,Ph.D.
mferguson at jou.ufl.edu <mailto:mferguson at jou.ufl.edu> 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Charles S Hendricksen 
	Sent: Fri 8/10/2001 8:05 PM 
	To: air-l at aoir.org 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [Air-l] Collaborative Research in Intranets
	
	

	Friends,
	
	    There must be a lot of distributed scientific research being
conducted on the WWW.  I've been working as a facilitator with research
teams for several years now using tools that I've developed and
appropriating existing software as needed by the research team.  The
tools do not interest me nearly as much as the behavior of the team,
especially when measured with the metric of participation.  The tools
are, of course inseperable from the environment, but so are issues like
funding, publication of products, and the research methodology.  By
methodology, I refer to how research is conducted rather than how data
is analysed.
	
	    Of particular interest to me is research with these
characteristics:
	1) long-term (over three years)
	2) large-scale (perhaps 7 to thirty researchers)
	3) dedicated to the thorough examination of a well-bounded issue
domain
	4) interdisciplinary
	5) fluid, distributed membership
	6) web-based
	   
	    The research efforts I've been advocating are driven by the
criticism of documents, to include essays, references, definitions,
models, papers, etc.  The use of asynchronous tools is preferred in
order to allow reflection and to blunt power structures.  Synchronous
activity is of course not to be denied!  However, such meetings need to
be documented (where are the minutes of your last meeting?)
	
	    I expect there are a few of you doing work on similar
projects, but that the WWW sites are protected from public viewing.  I
would like to share experiences with others as fortunate as myself
working with such exciting enterprises.
	
	
	           Charlie Hendricksen     veritas at u.washington.edu
	
	           "Information technology structures human
relationships."
	           "Models relate ideas."
	
	
	
	
	
	
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