Global
Online Collaboration
Fosters Universal Balance of Empowerment
Diane
Howard, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2004
World Association of Online Education
E-technologies
can provide limitless access to information and productive opportunities. Communication in
Cyberspace, the dimension provided by a
global network of connected computers, provides
potential enrichment and positive empowerment
for people all over the world. The virtual world facilitates highly efficient sharing
of information, knowledge, and expertise. It
provides virtual mobility in interactive discussions, collaborations, and projects across
national borders and time zones around the globe. Most obstacles specific to real mobility
are absent in Cyberspace.
Through virtual mobility collaborations become more efficient, time-saving, and
cost-effective. Information and communication content can n be transferred quickly
and easily into different cultural contexts in a global setting. New computer-mediated,
distance communication technologies do not replace older forms of onsite or distance
communication, but add to, enhance, expand, and balance communication possibilities and
options around the world (Levy, 1998).
The
fact is that people in many countries are rapidly using modern technological information
and communication skills. Around the globe, people are involved in Internet communication.
People around the world are participating in various kinds of
e-communities, due in part to the informality and free access of Internet e-groups.
Virtual learning communities and the contents related to them are constantly developing
and expanding.
Cyber communities are creating new and various cultures facilitated by emerging technological possibilities and norms. We need to pay attention to specific, concrete guidance as to how to communicate effectively via Web sites, e-mail, e-discussion groups, e-communities, message boards, audio conferences, and voice mail. Further, we must address effective
e-teaching,
videoconferencing, videostreaming, Webcasting, e-job
hunting, and e-publishing. As we learn
and master effective cyber communication skills, we can be enhanced personally and
professionally, not diminished or displaced, by modern communication technology.
Pierre Levy (1998) contends
that communication in the virtual world can cultivate collective intelligence, which can encourage the development of intelligent
communities. He states that sharing of
information, knowledge, and expertise in e-communities can promote a kind of dynamic, collective intelligence, which can affect all
spheres of our lives. He contends that the virtual world can foster positive connections,
cooperation, bonds, and civil interactions. In
e-groups or communities, which are flexible, democratic, reciprocal, respectful, and
civil, this collective intelligence can be
continually enhanced and enhancing (Levy, 1998).
Researchers in science, education, business, and industry are pooling their
collective intelligence, knowledge, and data in collaboratories. These are virtual centers in
which people in different locations work together in real time, as if they were all in the
same place. Science, education, commerce, and
industry have become increasingly global. Collaboration, which is efficient, maximizing,
and time-saving among distance researchers in these fields, has become more critical.
As distance
technology has become more efficient and cost-effective, distance collaboration has become
more common. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health have
encouraged grant recipients to form collaboratories.
These scholarly, virtual groups are cybersteps
beyond distance sharing of asynchronous data when researchers individually take what they
want from online databases. Collaboratories
enable researchers at distant locations to interact, hold lab meetings, and work with data
in real time (Buyya, 2001).
In
the various forms of e-groups or e-communities participants are free to communicate ideas
without the limits related to the physical body, i.e. appearance, gender, race, ethnicity,
and status symbols. Levy (1998) suggests further that they are free to participate in
virtual community and to add to the collective
intelligence.
In Cyberspace
each of us is a potential transmitter and receiver in a space that is qualitatively differentiated
constructed by
its participants, and explorable. Here we no
longer encounter people exclusively by their name, geographical location, or social rank, but in the context of centers of
interest, within a shared landscape of
meaning and knowledge
Cyberspace provides large and geographically dispersed groups
with instruments for cooperatively constructing a shared context
communication now
involves participants in a form of interaction
This dynamic
collective context
serves as an agent of collective intelligence, a kind of living bond
Cyberspace
promotes connections.
Best-selling author, Howard Rheingold
(2000), argues that the technology,
which makes virtual communities possible, has potential to empower ordinary citizens at a
relatively small cost. He suggests cyber technology can potentially provide lay citizens,
as well as professionals, with leverage and power, which is intellectual, social,
commercial, and political. He further insists that civil and informed people must
understand the leverage cyber technology provides. They must learn to use it wisely and
constructively, as it can not fulfill its positive potential by itself. We must appreciate, respect, nurture, and foster positive
and meaningful relationships in our visceral and virtual lives. We must learn to
skillfully empower each other and to effectively create constructive communities
that wisely use their leverage and power.
References
Buyya, R. <rajkumar@csse.monash.edu.au> (2001,
July). Making Cyberspace collaboration succeed.
< tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
(2001, July).
Howard,
D. (2000). Autobiographical
writing and performing: An introductory, contemporary guide to process and research in
speech performance.
Howard,
D. (2002). Enhanced
by Technology, Not Diminished:
A
Practical Guide to Effective, Distance Communication,
Levy, P. (1998). Becoming virtual: Reality in the
digital age. (R.B. Bononno, Trans.)
Contact Dr. Howard
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