How Online Collaboration is Changing Scholarship

It was refreshing to attend a web communications conference where the moderator of the first panel discussion wasn't someone like me: a member of generation X or Y with an English degree who can passionately argue on behalf of his favorite Twitter client, but can't program a lick. In this case, it was the decorated computer scientist Bill Wulf. 

Bill Wulf

Wulf was a perfect choice to introduce Georgetown University's Crowd and the Cloud Symposium, hosted by my former graduate program in Communication, Culture & Technology. He wrote his first computer program in 1959, received the first Computer Science Ph.D. ever awarded at the University of Virginia in 1968, and, as he said, "had a seat on the 50 yard line watching the technology revolution." Given his vantage point, it's no surprise that he has a unique perspective on the merits of cloud-enabled professional collaboration. 

Wulf shared a personal example of how online collaboration has positively changed the way his daughter, Karin, works. Karin Wulf is a distinguished professor in her own right. She is currently an Associate Professor of History and American Studies at William & Mary where she researches, teaches, and writes about early America. For several years, she was exclusively researching women in colonial Philadelphia over the span of a decade. This highly specialized research is commonplace in the academic world, and the internet has changed not only the research, but "the sociology of how people do humanistic scholarship."

Wulf identified two key changes in the way Karin, and those like her, conduct research:

1) Research can be a year-round activity. 15 years ago, specialized research required travel. Researchers had to access materials only available in libraries and collections near the geographical center of their subject matter, and conduct experiments in real (as opposed to virtual) environments. For professors, this meant research could be conducted during summer breaks or sabbaticals, but rarely during the academic year. The growing number of resources available online and sophisticated simulation technology has reduced the need to travel, and has enabled professors to conduct research in all seasons.

2) Specialized research is no longer a solitary pursuit. The social web has enabled the handful of people who study the same, niche topic to find each other, form working groups, and ultimately produce better work.

This second point reminded me of some work I did with The Nature Conservancy in their efforts to support knowledge-sharing among conservation practitioners. I was struck, but I suppose not surprised, by the reluctance of some conservationists to collaborate with peers from other environmental organizations. If I were studying the effects of an oil spill on Gulf Coast marine life, I would want to know who else is working on this same issue, where they are focusing their efforts, and what conclusions they are drawing. And if I were trying to clean up the mess, I would certainly want to know how and why other organizations' strategies had failed in the past so I wouldn't repeat their mistakes. I suppose that many researchers and organizations want to protect their intellectual capital, take credit for successes, and de-emphasize failures.

Perhaps the reluctance of some researchers to collaborate is not simply based on a desire to defend their turf, but also a reflection of the infancy of current collaboration technologies. As Bill Wulf wrote in a 1996 journal article on "Collaboratories:"

"Is it possible to electronically create a suitable sense of place that permits and enhances the successful cooperation of dispersed individuals toward common goals? How can we support communication that permits human cooperation even when the evolutionary social mechanisms that depend on proximity are absent? The silent language of body motion and spatial position are central to human communications and social control; can this richness of human interaction be provided?"

I think the answer is yes, but we certainly have room for improvement. What say you?