This chapter analyzes why computers and telecommunications have not created computcr-mediated work environments for collaboration that are as successful as physically shared environments. Our goals are, first, to identify the mechanisms by which proxin~ity makes cnl-laboration easier, concentrating on the way it facilitates interpersollal interaction and aware-ness; and second, to evaluate how current computer-mediated communication technologies provide or fail to provide the key benefits of proximity. We use a decompositional frame-work that examines how visibility, copresence, mobility, cotemporalitv and other affordances of media affect the important collaborative tasks of initiating conversation, establishing common ground, and maintaining awareness of potentially relevant changcs in the collabo-rative environment. Increasingly, collaborating with other people is as likely to take place over distance or time as it is face-to-face. An abundance of new communication technologies has been dcvcloped to mediate remote collaboration: e-mail, bulletin boards, instant messaging, document sharing, videoconferencing, awareness services, and others. Yet collaboration at a distance remains substantially harder to accomplish than

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We review the literature on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and on software development, distributed work and teams more generally to develop a theoretical model to explain the performance of FLOSS teams. The proposed model is based on Hackman’s [34] model of effectiveness of work teams, with coordination theory [52] and collective mind [79] to extend Hackman’s model by elaborating team practices relevant to effectiveness in software development. We propose a set of propositions to guide further research.

We present a study of the effects of instant messaging (IM) on individuals ’ management of work across multiple collaborative projects. Groups of four participants completed four web design tasks. Each participant worked on two tasks, each task with a different partner who was either co-located or remote, connected via IM. In one condition, each participant had one co-located and one remote partner. In a second condition, both partners were remote. We examined communication, division of labor, and task performance as a function of condition. The results indicated that nearly all participants divided their time unequally between projects, but less unequally in the remote/remote condition. In the co-located/remote condition, participants favored the task with the co-located partner. The results show that the effects of IM differ depending on people’s multiple tasks are distributed across space. We propose a new IM interface that promotes awareness of multiple collaborators on multiple tasks.

One of the most important roles played by technology is connecting people and mediating their communication with one another. Building technology that mediates conversation presents a number of challenging research and design questions. Apart from the fundamental issue of what exactly gets mediated, two of the more crucial questions are how the person being mediated interacts with the mediating layer and how the receiving person experiences the mediation. This thesis is concerned with both of these questions and proposes a theoretical framework of mediated conversation by means of automated avatars. This new approach relies on a model of face-to-face conversation, and derives an architecture for implementing these features through automation. First the thesis describes the process of face-to-face conversation and what nonverbal behaviors contribute to its success. It then presents a theoretical framework that explains how a text message can be automatically analyzed in terms of its communicative function based on discourse context, and how behaviors, shown to support those same functions in face-toface conversation, can then be automatically performed by a graphical avatar in synchrony with the message delivery. An architecture, Spark, built on this framework demonstrates the approach in an actual

Scientific collaborations are increasingly being conducted at a distance, despite the many factors that make collaboration at a distance difficult. We focus on the discipline of cognitive science because it is both young and highly interdisciplinary, thus potentially increasing both the rewards and difficulties of collaboration at a distance. Using questionnaire data from practicing cognitive scientists, we examined the impact of distance on who is likely to collaborate, the success of the collaboration, and the process of collaboration. There were few differences between those collaborating at a distance and locally. Surprisingly, collaborations at a distance were more successful than collaborations conducted locally. Distant collaborations depended crucially on frequent face-to-face contact. We conclude with a discussion of how these results change our understanding of collaboration in general and, in particular, of collaboration at a distance. 528 Modern scientific collaborations frequently are carried out by researchers who are geographically distributed, in part because necessary resources for the research are often distributed geographically, and in part because scientific collaborations continue after collaborators change academic or research institutions. In this chapter, we examine the nature

Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences- 2004 This research examined the question of whether perceptions of media as inferior to face to face are socially or technologically determined. It takes advantage of a recently developed asynchronous videoconferencing system to compare the perceptions and outcomes of group projects done in a multi-cue asynchronous media to those of face to face groups. Participants engaged in collaboration over 5 weeks to develop group oral reports. Measures of social presence, conversational involvement, perceived effectiveness, and ratings of group project quality were compared between communication conditions. Results showed significant differences favoring face-to-face communication for several perceptual variables, but not for perceived or actual effectiveness. Results are discussed with respect to their pertinence for several theories, and for their illumination of some historical theoretical and measurement biases in computer-mediated communication research.

Increasingly organizations are utilizing geographically distributed teams to accomplish their goals. To a great extent this new way of working has been made possible by electronic communication technology. Yet even while managers are leveraging electronic communication technology to gain access to new knowledge and to enable new team configurations, they are concerned about the knowledge acquisition of distributed team members who interact primarily via electronic communication. The objective of this study is to deepen our understanding of the relationship of electronic communication technology use and team configuration with knowledge access in distributed teams. We do so by examining the communication networks of individuals in distributed teams, and the relationship of team configuration on those networks. We extend prior work on social networks and propose that individuals in distributed teams have two distinct communication networks that influence knowledge access: face-to-face and electronic networks. We find that these two networks differentially influence an individual’s level of knowledge access from team members. In addition, we find that the relationship of each of these networks with knowledge access level is influenced by how the team is physically configured and the size of the team. These findings suggest that achieving higher knowledge access levels in distributed teams is more complex than just increasing electronic and face-to-face communication. Rather it involves understanding how communication patterns, communication mode and team configuration interact to influence the level of knowledge access for each individual in the team. Arling Subramani Working Paper January 2006 1

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We are grateful to FacilityEast members and Hardware Inc. Facility managers for allowing us access to their worklives and workspaces. This work has been funded by National Science Foundation grant number IIS-0085725. Please do not cite or distribute without authors ’ permission.