CW2001 Program - Computers and Writing

1:30 — 3:00 Session H.2
From Web Site to Collaboratory:
Authoring a Workspace
RB 105
Bertram Bruce, moderator
Bertram Bruce, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Melanie Huston,
Karen Lunsford
A “collaboratory” is a virtual environment that uses information
and communication technologies to mediate communication among
people who are separated across time and space, but share a common
task or belong to a defined group (see Dorneich, 1999). Proponents of
collaboratories (e.g., Johnson & Johnson, 1994) have argued that these
systems particularly support cooperative learning in distance-education
courses. Yet collaboratories are also being developed to facilitate
business–and university–sponsored research projects.
This forum’s speakers represent a large, interdisciplinary and
multi-institutional research group devoted to studying how scientists
develop and use new technologies to collaborate. Drawing upon this
research, we have been designing a collaboratory to support our own
group’s projects. Our collaboratory has been expanding to include not
only the PI’s of the project, but also graduate student researchers, and
soon, undergraduate assistants. We demonstrate the new technologies
we have tested, and discuss how we have woven them together to
develop a workspace that addresses our team members, external
viewers and contributors, and related virtual spaces. We expect to
raise questions about how authorship is defined, how the collaboratory
is positioned within/against traditional definitions of publication, and
how the collaborative media have established unexpected links among
our research and pedagogical communities.
Computers & Writing 2001
93