A Multifaceted Model of Communication in Cross-Institution Research Networks

Web-based applications have the potential to provide support for group communication and ongoing collaborative activities in geographically dispersed organisations and communities of practice. In the academic environment, the concept of e-research, as with e-business, e-government, e-health etc offers many opportunities for advancing cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary endeavours, particularly in Australia where huge distances separate people and resources. Stimulating, and managing, collaborative research is always a challenge but is much more so when the research is conducted across heterogeneous networks of researchers. in diverse contexts. connected via information and communications technology (ICT).

Information Systems is a multidisciplinary field of study which includes such topics. Decades of research in the field has established that sustained benefits of enterprise ICT are only realised through its deployment in holistic socio-technical systems where the technology is integrated with work and social practices. The same is true of the use of ICT in research enterprises, so that there is a need to learn how e-research technologies can be best used so that there is maximum value generation for working researchers and their organisations.

This presentation will describe the results of extensive research into network-enabled community activity, which has lead to the development a multifaceted model of such activity. The concept of tool mediation from Activity Theory, based on Vygotskian psychology, underpins this model where communication can be viewed as both a tool and an activity. The model incorporates the need for face-to-face as well as online interaction and communication in the purposeful activity of a dispersed community. The influence of Activity Theory is seen in the dialectic relationships between many components in the model. These dialectics include: the social and the technical, the learning and the doing, co-operation and competition, subjective and objective perspectives, as well as needs of the individual and the collective.

While the research leading to the development of this model has involved the study of many diverse communities and groups, the researchers are aware that they are themselves an archetypal instance of the object of their study. The cross-institutional group has collaborated closely since 2000 on projects funded by the Australian Research Council. Therefore an introspective application of the model to the research group itself would seem an eminently suitable presentation for this workshop.