Key Findings

The key findings from the project included:

• The focus of the project was on identifying the kinds of processes that take place in successful e-collaborations and the kinds of technologies that are able to support these processes.
• Despite the differences between the culture and goals of e-collaborations in research and in teaching and learning discussed in the report, each of these collaborative practices can benefit from the other’s strong points, e.g., e-learning practitioners often being more open towards the adoption of new emerging ICT and Web 2.0 technologies than e-researchers, while e-researchers leading the way in terms of utilisation of the network capabilities in instrument sharing and data gathering, storing and sharing.
• Both e-research and e-learning collaborations could benefit from studying ways in which distributed communities that share a common interest or practice function in Cyberspace.
• Although the review highlights the complexity of the collaborative enterprise, in particular when it takes place remotely, there is a clear consensus in the literature that collaborative activity, both in research and in teaching and learning, holds significant benefits and will continue to grow.
• The literature suggests that in undertaking e-collaborations it is important to consider such parameters as the purpose of collaboration, field/s of study, participants, location, duration and scale.
• The processes and functions associated with collaborations can be roughly grouped into: coordination, administration, project management, leadership; production (creating new knowledge and understanding); content and data management; and communication and interaction.
• The environments and tools developed or selected for collaborations need to be able to support these processes and functions. This does not imply linear one-to-one tool function relationships, however, since one tool may be used in different ways to support a range of functions, and vice versa, one process or function may require the use of a number of individual tools.

Key Recommendations

The key recommendation and key outcome of the project was:

Development of an e-collaboration guide | Based on the results of this review, a questionnaire has been developed to gather data about collaborative projects and activities taking place in the New Zealand tertiary sector (see Appendix 2 of the report). This data will be used to fine-tune the development of an e-collaboration guide to assist teaching and research staff, as well as students participating in collaborative learning activities, in operationalising the core functions and activities that need to take place in the course of e-collaborations and choosing technologies to support them.