Collaboraties

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Collaboratories

Aired October 17 and 18, 1998

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This is Internet On The Air. I'm Joan Silvi. Using the Internet to predict the weather...and save big on travel bills. Details in a moment.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

To most of us, using the Internet as an office without walls is still more of a concept than a reality. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to guess that a field like space physics is leading the way in creating a work environment in which people can perform research, interact with colleagues, and share data without regard to geography.

Space physicists use data gathered from satellites and observation stations in remote corners of the earth to predict changes in the atmosphere. Not so long ago, scientists did this work by traveling to places such as Greenland, where they would spend days huddled in trailers.

Today, radar images and statistics from more than 20 observation stations are transmitted over the Internet. Within an hour, these data can be compared to the predictions made by computer simulations -- a process that used to take weeks. Scientists add to their understanding by discussing their findings over chat windows, electronic whiteboards and other interactive tools.

Tom Finholt is a core researcher with the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory, or UARC. He says using the Internet to track atmospheric change allows people from different backgrounds to observe the same data - and that can produce new ideas. Interest in saving costs on travel has triggered several similar projects in fields such as medicine, business and education.

Finholt says there is no one formula for creating effective virtual work environments. But the key challenges are usually not technological...they remain the familiar issues of getting support at the highest levels of an organization...and establishing trust among those working together on the project.

To listen to an interview with Tom Finholt and to see the results of his group's atmospheric research, visit our Web site at www.iota.org. For Internet On The Air, I'm Joan Silvi.

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Related Links

For further information, try these Web sites:

Check out the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory (UARC) Web site.
You can look in on its October 19-21 campaign by visiting the outreach page.

The Medical Collaboratory Testbed, a project at the University of Michigan is researching collaborative imaging tools to support remote healthcare.

A group at the University of Michigan is also researching how technology can be used in designing new ways of organizing work at the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW).

"When researchers work with their colleagues on the Net, they may generate more ideas. But some aspects of collaboration -- such as trust -- are hard to develop electronically."
To learn more about how scientists use technology to collaborate at a distance, check out The Virtues (and Vices) of Virtual Colleagues by Nancy Ross-Flanigan in the March 1998 issue of Technology Review.

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The Interview

Use the RealAudio Player to listen in as IOTA talks with Tom Finholt, Director of the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory.

This IOTA interview took place in September 1998.

How does UARC compare to other online collaborative activities in the sciences?

I think UARC describes a Blue sky, 10 years beyond the present approach. What would you do if you had unlimited or very high network bandwidth and you wanted to support a full range of collaborative behavior? Not just co-editing or co-viewing of Powerpoint presentations, but really how would you facilitate engagement across a sustained scientific collaboration."

What are more typical examples of how scientists collaborate over the Web?

And more typical examples of how scientists use collaborative tools online?

What attributes of the space physics community made it particularly suitable for a cutting edge collaboratory?

"In space physics they at more of a crossroads and part of the dilemma in the community is a transition from a one investigator, one instrument model to a global perspective and one that moves from observation to prediction. And that puts a particular emphasis on the capacity to share data, visualize data in common, work with other people and keep track of what other people are doing in a way that probably wasn't important in the past. So it may be that that community and the capacity of the Internet coincided perfectly for something like UARC to take off."

How have collaboratory models worked within other scientific disciplines?

How has high bandwidth been useful to UARC and what are some of the challenges as you look ahead?

How are businesses using collaborative technology?

"Businesses talk about it as virtual co-location or the capacity to be both big and small. To give worldwide scope but within that worldwide scope to allow people to interact with each other as if they were located at the same facility."

How successful do you think they have been so far?

The experience so far has suggested that the principle domain is in the area of professional work. And it is principally seen as a vehicle for reducing travel expenses."

Please direct questions or comments to iota.webmaster@umich.edu.

Last Updated October 5, 1998