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Online Collaboration Course 1.0
1. Online Collaboration Course Practical ways of working together online "In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."- Charles Darwin Jason Reed
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5. Collaboration Overview Two heads are better than one “ In any case, we are all off to Cyberspace whether we like it or not. The best we can to is to proceed with faith and try to enjoy the ride.” John Perry Barlow 1991 “Leaving the physical world behind”
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14. Working Collaboratively Lennon and McCartney, Pratt & Whitney, Morecambe and Wise, Churchill and Roosevelt, you and ? Collaboration ol*lab`o*ra"tion n. The act of working together; united labor. Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
22. Being Collaborative Moving from open plan to open mind “ .....it continues to offer the promise that humans can quit spending so much of the world's treasure travelling to physical proximity to other humans when they can assemble instead their far more portable minds.” John Perry Barlow circa 1991 cofounder of Electronic Frontiers Foundation
28. Collaborative Meeting Getting our heads together “ The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ” Carl Jung Psychologist
34. Next Steps Putting the plan into action “ Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.” “ It is always the start that requires the greatest effort” James Cash Penney - American Businessman
Basic introduction about the place where the training will take place. Get delegates to introduce their selves, possibly use name cards Manage Expectations Explore delegates personal objectives, why are they on the course? Possible write these up on a flipchart or whiteboard. Explain course objectives and then take some time to check in with delegates to ensure their objectives will be covered or if not clarify why they won’t
Explain how the course is going to work that it is very practical that they will be developing a better understanding of how they collaborate right now and then develop a plan for moving forward. Explain the wide variety of tools out there and the importance of using tools that work and do what they want. Lots of tools do lots of things it can be quite confusing. Explain why you have picked the tools that you are going to use. I suggest: https://www.blogger.com/ - Blog tool http://www.mindmeister.com/ - online mind mapping http://www.box.net/ - Different Time working sharing files and adding comments http://www.yuuguu.com/home - Instant Messaging and Screen Sharing
Timings will be refined based on delivery experiences
Allow time for people to read the quotes, the importance of collaboration should help to link this course to prior learning. John Perry Barlow is a co-founder of Electronic Frontiers Foundation http://www.eff.org/
April 1 st G20 Meltdown Story – personal story - I travelled to London UK 2009 and had a meeting cancelled on me due to the fact that a number of people where protesting in London that day and particularly in the finance district. The reason for the protests was that the G20 were meeting in London. The economic recession was a major protest point with the bankers being targeted. Another key area of protest was the bankers and large pay outs given to bankers who had failed. What was the impact. A lot of people didn’t travel to London that day for fear of violence or because the transport was disrupted. I tried to meet with an alternate contact but they had mostly closed their offices for the two days and so couldn’t meet. The finance district was eerily quiet when I got off the tube hardly anyone on the streets. At the office I went to blinds were shut and people dressed down. This is a personal story which you may want to substitute for your own. It does highlight some key drivers to change the way we work to take advantage of technology available. Currently people are generally still ill-equipped to work as part of the organisation from home. Some people might have the network connections to work alone from home but very few collaborate with others as part of the team from their home office. The economic benefits highlight two interesting (albeit contentious) possibilities by using online collaboration technology: you might be able to open up new geographical market and engage with new employees or suppliers from different geography
Generally work is changing, starting from hunter gatherer – agriculture – industry – service the shift is away from physical work. And even in physical work sectors increasing automation means that knowledge work abounds there with records being kept etc…. Especially in the western world as we need to remain competitive and are priced out of commodity based goods and services
I would suggest working through the model step by step the start point is the beginning of our collaboration the physical world then: The invention and acceptance of the telephone allowing remote meetings to occur to some extent web conference I use as a label to include not just the possibility of video conferencing (which started as being available through the phone) but also the ability to share documents and collaborate in a fuller sense. Instant Messaging (IM) gives a sense of being together with others Finally working is how we get our own knowledge work done in a way that we can share with others, this could be using e-mail, possibly sending around our documents with routing slips or track changes, at the top end using collaborative tools that can be accessed at a different time. (Might be worth mentioning the different terms asynchronous which I replace with the phrase Different Time and synchronous which I replace with the phrase Real Time. These seem a bit more obvious to remember) Regardless of the technology or lack of technology we use we are all collaborating around these 3 areas. I like to make the point that using technology you are still doing real work not something magical that is different and of course if the technology becomes disruptive to working together then it needs to be reviewed. It is important to address the question of security here, ask the delegates what they think. It is really about address the concern and recommending they only use recommended tools ask their IT team for policies. There are no 100% guarantees. The big challenge is actually changing the habit of the way we work. We are all so used to working the way we always have done
In order to develop a plan to change we need to know where we are now. Check their prior knowledge of blogs, emphasise the importance here (and at all points in the course) isn’t knowing the technology inside out but actually using it. The Blogging tool is just as a way to reflect and practice using n online tool. Explain the purpose, let people know it is public, so they can edit their thoughts and also realise they are benefiting others Do the demonstration going to the course group blog you have created (e.g. http://onlinecollaborationcoursegroupX.blogspot.com/ where X is the next available number)
Let the delegates onto the blog assist them to get on and engage with them as necessary so that they can reflect and write down their current experience on the group blog. This doesn’t need to be too prescriptive as it is all about them being able to reflect and raise their own awareness of their current collaborative work
Facilitate a general discussion about their observations about the content they have created and also how the blogging experience felt. Then move on to a question to ask how what they do now and online collaboration might be different. Again it is important to let them raise their awareness not look for right or wrong answers
Create Mind Map Encourage delegates to add to benefits & risks throughout course. You could at the first break add the mind map in to the group blog or as a gadget simply post a url link so that they can easily update it
Add to benefits throughout course
Allow time for people to read the quotes, the importance of collaboration should help to link this course to prior learning. Put up on screen during break.
Check their prior knowledge of workspaces and then talk about the main features. I recommend as a starting tool http://www.box.net/ . This does have some limits in terms of the free version when it comes to version updating – it doesn’t do it, people could use track changes in word as a reasonable simulation. If you review box.net you will find lots of great case studies and articles to develop your own understanding http://www.box.net/features
This diagram looks at the different factors of what we work on and builds the overall illustration that helps us to profile the differences in tools
Facilitate discussion of where people keep there work and how they facilitate the transfer of knowledge backwards and forwards
I would suggest using http://www.box.net/. This is a really simple tool to use to collaborate with people. It’s great because it focuses on file sharing as the centre point but does allow people to add comments or even create discussion items and new documents. From experience it is pretty reliable and works for most people straight away. I would suggest previously setting up an account (workspace) for the tutor. You will then just have to add a new folder during the demo and invite the delegates to the group folder. Each delegate will later set up their own folder during the exercise.
It is important to keep these areas private within the group so that each delegate can put together a meaningful personal plan Support the delegates throughout the exercise.
Use this time to encourage interaction with other people’s work. It may be worth planning this (e.g. delegate 1 invites delegate 2 and delegate 3 delegate 4 and delegate 4 delegate 1 and then it rotates)
Facilitate the discussion and then get more information added into the blog and mind map
Allow time for people to read the quotes, the importance of collaboration should help to link this course to prior learning. Put up on screen during break.
Check their prior knowledge of instant messaging and then talk about the main features. I recommend http://www.yuuguu.com/home as a starting tool . It is pretty good for connecting to other messaging tools even Skype. It also uses standard web ports so shouldn’t have problems with firewalls. The one challenge might be that proxy server settings need adding on to computers to make it work Summary of IM at http://www.yuuguu.com/features/instant-messaging It is also worth reading the experiences on http://onlinecollaborationconsultant.blogspot.com/ It is important to emphasise the differences IM brings, the easy access of it and low cost of the transaction. The not instant part is a little bit debatable. It is certainly less instant than a phone call and more instant than an e-mail. My own experience is that the need to respond to an IM is not so immediate and therefore it is less disruptive. It might be a good point to mention that it is important to build a shared understanding with your collaborators about how you will use it in terms of response times and establishing your own netiquette.
This diagram looks at the different factors of what we work on and builds the overall illustration that helps us to profile the differences in tools
http://www.yuuguu.com/
Use this time to encourage interaction with other people’s work. It is important at this point to ask the delegates not to talk to each other. Chat on it’s own is quite limiting but worth experiencing.
Facilitate the discussion Support delegates if they need it during the blog and mind map additions. With the personal plan the idea is that they add a new heading for Being and describe how they might link it in with their collaborators
Allow time for people to read the quotes, the importance of collaboration should help to link this course to prior learning. Put up on screen during break.
Check their prior knowledge of online meeting and then talk about the main features. I recommend http://www.yuuguu.com/ as a starting tool . What’s good is that screen sharing can be launched from the IM tool directly. It also uses standard web ports so shouldn’t have problems with firewalls. The one challenge might be that proxy server settings need adding on to computers to make it work Overall features of Yuuguu http://www.yuuguu.com/features/yuuguu-features It is also worth reading the experiences on http://onlinecollaborationconsultant.blogspot.com/ It is really important to emphasise the importance of voice, meeting just using chat is quiet limiting
This diagram looks at the different factors of what we work on and builds the overall illustration that helps us to profile the differences in tools
http://www.yuuguu.com/ Rather than doing a demonstration which would be pretty difficult for one person to do. It’s worth running through the steps outlined in the process, Agenda creating and sharing are good in practice. Sending a diary invite via email is useful and using a voice tool that is reliable is essential. In practice a lot of people use a separate conference call service rather than try to use something like Skype. Skype can generally be pretty effective. What if something goes wrong how much will it matter what is the back up plan?
This is quite a challenging exercise. People will be talking to each other for the voice element so people need to be next to their collaborator at the same time people need to have their screens angled away from each other so that they are really using the sharing tools.
Facilitate the discussion Support delegates if they need it during the blog and mind map additions. With the personal plan the idea is that they add a new heading for Meeting and they describe how they might use meeting tools with their collaborators
Facilitate the discussion Support delegates if they need it during the blog and mind map additions. With the personal plan the idea is that they add a new heading for Being and describe how they might link it in with their collaborators
This diagram looks at the different factors providing the overall illustration that helps us to profile the differences in tools Add to course group blog additional links when the course finishes
Add to course group blog additional links when the course finishes Use an evaluation method at the end of the course