Identifying the best approach for communication and collaboration to support multi-stakeholder ARC Linkage Project research outcomes: Professor Craig Langston
 

Vice-Chancellors’s Research Grant Scheme 2009/10 ($5,000)

 

The goal of this internal research project is to facilitate better communication and collaboration on large research projects involving multiple stakeholders. Using a live ARC Linkage Project, with a core group of a dozen collaborators located in several interstate locations, a complex problem with a range of issues to be explored, and a grant budget that negates the opportunity for physical travel, this project tests strategies comprising a web-based collaboration and document-sharing tool, group video-conferencing, and videophone technologies. The practicality of each approach is compared against traditional travel, email and voice communications. The findings will assist other Bond researchers to resolve similar collaboration problems in the future.

This project therefore reviews contemporary strategies to communicate and collaborate in a research context with minimal reliance on physical travel and face-to-face meetings. An action-research approach is adopted to merge this project with an existing ARC Linkage Project (led by CI Langston) with a common commencement date. The ARC Project involves a dozen researchers and partners, some based at Bond University in Queensland and others in embedded research environments in Melbourne and Geelong, Victoria. Due to funding restrictions, the team needs to find alternative ways to effectively communicate and share information than those afforded by traditional strategies such as telephone and email. Contemporary strategies comprise a combination of (1) web-based collaboration and document-sharing, (2) fixed-node video-conferencing, and (3) flexible-node videophone handsets.

The web-based tool (Cor.us) is designed to facilitate collaboration. It shifts the dominant paradigm of serial one-to-one communication to a multi-stakeholder collaboration and conversation. Essentially the web-based software will be made available for the different parties to use, and then evaluated to find out what worked most effectively. This web-based collaboration tool integrates a number of activities currently taking place into a simple format. In previous ARC projects it has been observed that there needs to be a means to address some critical issues impeding project effectiveness. Unfortunately this software platform was not well accepted nor used in the trial. There were issues with ease of use, as well as some technical problems with data disappearing. Engagement was discontinued after six months.

Fixed node video-conferencing meetings provide a means for researchers to come together and discuss key issues as a group, and to brainstorm ideas in a creative space. An ISDN video-conference was set up between Bond University and the University of Melbourne to enable a face-to-face team meeting. While there is a role for video conferencing, even using purpose-built facilities at both locations there were technical problems that dominated the meeting. The vision and sound quality were both poor. Due to the cost of an ISDN call, participants were under pressure to finish quickly and it was thus difficult to conduct activities involving discussion and brainstorming. Much of what was achieved could have been done via a standard teleconference. To compare this approach with online video conferencing, a meeting was conducted using the DimDim platform. Similar results were obtained, but there was the advantage that participants were all at different locations and documents and presentations were being used and shared live. While it was an interesting experiment, the team did not wish to use this interface on further occasions.

Four ACN videophones were purchased and posted to partner locations. These phones enable point-to-point (flexible node) conversations (and in the future, conference calls will be possible) simply by dialing a phone number. These were successfully used throughout the project, and their ability to be taken to different locations (including Singapore and India) was seen as effective. Some problems with picture quality and sound were experienced, and the initial set-up was problematic at Bond University due to firewall issues. But these were satisfactorily resolved.

At the end of the project a face-to-face meeting of all project collaborators was held at Bond University. Despite the ordeal of finding a suitable date when everyone could travel, none of the above technologies were considered as effective as actually being together in the same location. Nevertheless, not all participants did come due to some last minute urgent matters, and the cost for budget airfares from Melbourne and one night’s accommodation made this method the most expensive option.

The project is now complete. The conclusion of the study is that technological tools were generally problematic and did not fully engage participants, and the general consensus was that face-to-face discussions were more likely to lead to the generation of innovative ideas and teamwork. It is recommended that simple communication strategies be employed on an ad hoc basis, but for larger research teams physical collocation is superior. The future is likely to provide better solutions for online video-conferencing, and solutions such as Skype via camera-enabled iPad tablets may be, in the end, the most convenient way to keep in touch.