Collaboratory

A collaboratory, as defined by William Wulf in 1989, is a “center without walls, in which the nation’s researchers can perform their research without regard to physical location, interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing information in digital libraries” (Wulf, 1989). Bly (1998) refines the definition to “a system which combines the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tool-oriented computing and communication systems to support scientific collaboration” (Bly, 1998, p. 31). Rosenberg (1991) considers a collaboratory as being an experimental and empirical research environment in which scientists work and communicate with each other to design systems, participate in collaborative science, and conduct experiments to evaluate and improve systems. A simplified form of these definitions would describe the collaboratory as being an environment where participants make use of computing and communication technologies to access shared instruments and data, as well as to communicate with others.…

A collaboratory, as defined by William Wulf in 1989, is a “center without walls, in which the nation’s researchers can perform their research without regard to physical location, interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing information in digital libraries” (Wulf, 1989). Bly (1998) refines the definition to “a system which combines the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tool-oriented computing and communication systems to support scientific collaboration” (Bly, 1998, p. 31). Rosenberg (1991) considers a collaboratory as being an experimental and empirical research environment in which scientists work and communicate with each other to design systems, participate in collaborative science, and conduct experiments to evaluate and improve systems. A simplified form of these definitions would describe the collaboratory as being an environment where participants make use of computing and communication technologies to access shared instruments and data, as well as to communicate with others. However, a wide-ranging definition is provided by Cogburn (2003) who states that “a collaboratory is more than an elaborate collection of information and communications technologies; it is a new networked organizational form that also includes social processes; collaboration techniques; formal and informal communication; and agreement on norms, principles, values, and rules” (Cogburn, 2003, p. 86). This concept has a lot in common with the notions of Interlock research, Information Routing Group and Interlock diagrams introduced in 1984. ==Other meaning== The word “collaboratory” is also used to describe an open space, creative process where a group of people work together to generate solutions to complex problems. This meaning of the word originates from the visioning work of a large group of people – including scholars, artists, consultant, students, activists, and other professionals – who worked together on the 50+20 initiative aiming at transforming management education. In this context, by fusing two elements, “collaboration” and “laboratory”, the word “collaboratory” suggests the construction of a space where people explore collaborative innovations. It is, as defined by Dr. Katrin Muff, “an open space for all stakeholders where action learning and action research join forces, and students, educators, and researchers work with members of all facets of society to address current dilemmas.” The concept of the collaboratory as a creative group process and its application are further developed in the book “The Collaboratory: A co-creative stakeholder engagement process for solving complex problems”. Examples of collaboratory events are provided on the website of the Collaboratory community as well as by Business School Lausanne- a Swiss business school that has adopted the collaboratory method to harness collective intelligence. ===The evolution of the collaboratory=== As stated in Chapter 4 of the 50+20 "Management Education for the World" book, "the term collaboratory was first introduced in the late 1980s to address problems of geographic separation in large research projects related to travel time and cost, difficulties in keeping contact with other scientists, control of experimental apparatus, distribution of information, and the large number of participants. In their first decade of use, collaboratories were seen as complex and expensive information and communication technology (ICT) solutions supporting 15 to 200 users per project, with budgets ranging from 0.5 to 10 million USD. At that time, collaboratories were designed from an ICT perspective to serve the interests of the scientific community with tool-oriented computing requirements, creating an environment that enabled systems design and participation in collaborative science and experiments. The introduction of a user-centered approach provided a first evolutionary step in the design philosophy of the collaboratory, allowing rapid prototyping and development circles. Over the past decade the concept of the collaboratory expanded beyond that of an elaborate ICT solution, evolving into a “new networked organizational form that also includes social processes, collaboration techniques, formal and informal communication, and agreement on norms, principles, values, and rules”. The collaboratory shifted from being a tool-centric to a data-centric approach, enabling data sharing beyond a common repository for storing and retrieving shared data sets. These developments have led to the evolution of the collaboratory towards a globally distributed knowledge work that produces intangible goods and services capable of being both developed and distributed around the world using traditional ICT networks. Initially, the collaboratory was used in scientific research projects with variable degrees of success. In recent years, collaboratory models have been applied to areas beyond scientific research and the national context. The wide acceptance of collaborative technologies in many parts of the world opens promising opportunities for international cooperation in critical areas where societal stakeholders are unable to work out solutions in isolation, providing a platform for large multidisciplinary teams to work on complex global challenges. The emergence of open-source technology transformed the collaboratory into its next evolution. The term open-source was adopted by a group of people in the free software movement in Palo Alto in 1998 in reaction to the source code release of the Netscape Navigator browser. Beyond providing a pragmatic methodology for free distribution and access to an end product's design and implementation details, open-source represents a paradigm shift in the philosophy of collaboration. The collaboratory has proven to be a viable solution for the creation of a virtual organization. Increasingly, however, there is a need to expand this virtual space into the real world. We propose another paradigm shift, moving the collaboratory beyond its existing ICT framework to a methodology of collaboration beyond the tool- and data-centric approaches, and towards an issue-centered approach that is transdisciplinary in nature." ==Design philosophy== Finholt (1995), based on the case studies of the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC) and the Medical Collaboratory, establishes a design philosophy: a collaboratory project must be dedicated to a user-centered design (UCD) approach. This means a commitment to develop software in programming environments that allow rapid prototyping, rapid development cycles (Finholt, 1995). A consequence of the user-centered design in the collaboratory is that the system developers must be able to distinguish when a particular system or modification has positive impact on users’ work practices. An important part of obtaining this understanding is producing an accurate picture of how work is done prior to the introduction of technology. Finholt (1995) explains that behavioral scientists had the task of understanding the actual work settings for which new information technologies were developed. The goal of a user-centered design effort was to inject those observations back into the design process to provide a baseline for evaluating future changes and to illuminate productive directions for prototype development (Finholt, 1995). A similar viewpoint is expressed by Cogburn (2003) who relates the collaboratory to a globally distributed knowledge work, stating that human-computer interaction (HCI) and user-centered design (UCD) principles are critical for organizations to take advantage of the opportunities of globalization and the emergence of an Information society. He (Cogburn, 2003) refers to distributed knowledge work as being a set of “economic activities that produce intangible goods and services […], capable of being both developed and distributed around the world using the global information and communication networks” (Cogburn, 2003, p. 81). Through the use of these global information and communications networks, organizations are able to take part in globally disarticulated production, which means they can locate their research and development facilities almost anywhere in the world, and engineers can collaborate across time zones, institutions and national boundaries. ==Footnotes== ==References== Berry, B., Byrd, A., & Wieder, A. (2013). Teacherpreneurs: Innovative teachers who lead but don't leave. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bly, S. (1998). Special section on collaboratories, Interactions, 5(3), 31, New York: ACM Press. Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, J., Yew, J., Yerkie, J., Dahl, E. and Olson, G. (2007), From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12: 652–672. Chin, G., Jr., & Lansing, C. S. (2004). Capturing and supporting contexts for scientific data sharing via the biological sciences collaboratory, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work, 409-418, New York: ACM Press. Cogburn, D. L. (2003). HCI in the so-called developing world: what's in it for everyone, Interactions, 10(2), 80-87, New York: ACM Press. Cosley, D., Frankowsky, D., Kiesler, S., Terveen, L., & Riedl, J. (2005). How oversight improves member-maintained communities, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 11-20. Finholt, T. A. (1995). Evaluation of electronic work: research on collaboratories at the University of Michigan, ACM SIGOIS Bulletin, 16(2), 49–51. Finholt, T.A. Collaboratories. (2002). In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (pp. 74–107), 36. Washington, D.C.: American Society for Information Science. Finholt, T.A., & Olson, G.M. (1997). From laboratories to collaboratories: A new organizational form for scientific collaboration. Psychological Science, 8, 28-36. Henline, P. (1998). Eight collaboratory summaries, Interactions, 5(3), 66–72, New York: ACM Press. Olson, G.M. (2004). Collaboratories. In W.S. Bainbridge (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing. Olson, G.M., Teasley, S., Bietz, M. J., & Cogburn, D. L. (2002). Collaboratories to support distributed science: the example of international HIV/AIDS research, Proceedings of the 2002 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on enablement through technology, 44–51. Olson, G.M., Zimmerman, A., & Bos, N. (Eds.) (2008). Scientific collaboration on the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pancerella, C.M., Rahn, L. A., Yang, C. L. (1999). The diesel combustion collaboratory: combustion researchers collaborating over the internet, Proceedings of the 1999 ACM/IEEE conference on supercomputing, New York: ACM Press. Rosenberg, L. C. (1991). Update on National Science Foundation funding of the “collaboratory”, Communications of the ACM, 34(12), 83, New York: ACM Press. Sonnenwald, D.H. (2003). Expectations for a scientific collaboratory: A case study, Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work, 68–74, New York: ACM Press. Sonnenwald, D.H., Whitton, M.C., & Maglaughlin, K.L. (2003). Scientific collaboratories: evaluating their potential, Interactions, 10(4), 9–10, New York: ACM Press. Wulf, W. (1989, March). The national collaboratory. In Towards a national collaboratory. Unpublished report of a National Science Foundation invitational workshop, Rockefeller University, New York. Wulf, W. (1993) The collaboratory opportunity. Science, 261, 854-855.

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