Tagged / collaboration

Using Facebook to collaborate

Guidance

facebookAs a social networking tool, Facebook provides an interface for groups of people to to meet one another, communicate, store details about each other, and publish information about themselves in the form of a profile.

Facebook can be used as an academic collaboration tool for:

  • identifying potential collaborators
  • posting photos and files to share with others and inviting others to comment on them
  • commenting on other people’s photos and files
  • engaging in one-to-one private conversations
  • engaging in many-to-many conversations
  • creating private and public spaces (groups) for themed discussions

Facebook has been set up to suggest to users links and people they may know or be interested in, based on their interests, common goals, friends, etc. It is these serendipitous connections that help Facebook bridge the gap from social networking tool to academic collaboration tool.

BU Research Group, FacebookBU has recently set up the BU Research Group as a private Facebook group. This is a closed group that only members of BU staff can join. As such this provides a collaborative e-working environment for BU staff to:

1. discuss research ideas safe in the knowledge that all discussions will only be visible by other group members, i.e. BU staff only
2. make contact with one another, to search for one another, to identify colleagues with particular skill sets, etc.

You can also use Facebook to set up your own private collaborative work space for themed discussions (for example to discuss ideas for a multidisciplinary bid) – you can select who to invite (this could be anyone, providing they have a Facebook account) and only those who are members of the group will be able to access the shared information.

Setting up a private group is really easy, you just need to:

  • log in to your account in Facebook
  • from your News Feed page, click on ‘Create Group’ on the left hand menu
  • a pop-up will open asking you to enter the name of the Group and to select from your friends list who should be invited to join the group
  • ensure the privacy is set to ‘closed’ to ensure that only those invited to be members of the group can access the information
  • Facebook will then send the invites and your private group space has been set up

A number of guides have been published about how researchers can use social networking tools to collaborate. The best two we are aware of are:

RIN logoSocial Media: A guide for researchers, published by the Research Information Network in February 2011

Collaboration Tools, published by Educause Learning Initiative in August 2008networking

Using Google Docs to collaborate on documents

Guidance

Google Docs logoGoogle Docs is an online tool that enables collaborators to work in a synchronous environment on a single document. Rather than passing a document between authors, Google Docs allows authors at different physical locations to work together on the same document in real time. Changes made to the document can be tracked and attributed.

So what does this actually mean? What does Google Docs do? There a is a rather nice explanation of this on the Google Docs Help site:

“Google Docs enables multiple people in different locations to collaborate simultaneously on the same doc from any computer with Internet access. For example, Alice and Meredith are working on a project together, and they need to write a document, keep track of their work in a spreadsheet, and create a presentation and a drawing to share with other people involved in the project. Alice lives in New York, and Meredith, in Los Angeles. When Alice makes changes to the document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing, Meredith can see them in real time and respond to them immediately. Both of them work on the same docs, so there’s no need to go back and forth, comparing and consolidating individual files.” (Source page)

Sounds fabulous! And with Google Docs you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. You can start a document in Office and then transfer it to Google Docs for collaborative editing. In addition, documents are saved to the cloud meaning that you can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection – no more faffing about with saving documents to pen drives or emailing documents!

Google Docs is free to sign up to; access is via a Google account.

You can keep up to date with enhancements to Google Docs via their blog.

If you’re already using Google Docs then let us know by commenting on this post!

Collaboration Tools for Academics – run a session in your School!

Guidance

Collaboration Tools for Academics (CTA) is one of the projects currently running at BU, sponsored by Prof Matthew Bennett. Steve Webster is the Business Analyst (EITS) working on the project and he has provided a project update. There is still the opportunity to run a fact finding workshop in your Research Centre, Academic Group and/or School so you can shape how collaboration tools are used and supported at BU in future.

The aim of the project is to facilitate collaborative working within and beyond BU and therefore raising the research-enterprise profile of the organisation. This will be achieved by making it easier for academic staff to work in a collaborative manner. In order to do this, the project will first identify what you currently do as a collaborative researcher and a member of academic staff and also identify where you feel the need for support in these activities.

There is an ongoing fact finding exercise that is trying to develop understanding in two areas. First there is an effort being made to understand people’s experience levels both in collaboration and in I.T. This is to ensure that all members of the community have their needs understood. Second there is an effort to understand the research activities that all members of the community are involved in.

Revised What Researchers Do - mind mapThis mind map (click on the image to make it larger) has been used to generate discussion in a series of workshops. If your research group would like to run a packaged version of this workshop please contact the business analyst Steve Webster who will be pleased to help you set things up.

The final aim of the project will be to make visible and available a set useful services that you can use in support of you collaborative work. The services that get put into this set are not yet agreed. The kinds of things that you might like to have easy access to could include: blogs, wikis, voice and video conferencing, shared social space, installing novel software, survey software, data analysis tools. But these are all just examples.  You still have an opportunity to get involved and contribute to shaping the future support offerings for researchers in BU and beyond.

Do you use collaboration tools to work with colleagues at the moment? If so let us know what works and what doesn’t work so well by commenting on this post!