The Virtual Collaboration Environment: New Media for Crisis Response
Abstract
This paper concerns the use of new media technologies, including virtual worlds and web 2.0, for on-line collaborative activities, and specifically for the provision of expert advice about the response to large-scale crises. Internet technologies in general offer rich possibilities for interactions involving remote experts; however, the diversity, novelty and power of these technologies are such that to introduce them into problem-solving episodes without first developing a model of the nature of those episodes and the type of collaborative support they require, risks confusing and discouraging users. After a brief discussion of the nature of distributed collaboration and the implications this has for any technical support, we describe a virtual collaboration environment that has been developed to foster task-focused communities and support them through specific problem-solving episodes, and present some of the results of evaluation experiments.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA544721
Entities
People
- Austin Tate
- Gerhard Wickler
- Jeffrey Hansberger
- Stephen Potter
Organizations
- United States Army Research Laboratory