VREs and the Potential for
New Forms of Collaboration
Annamaria Carusi and Marina Jirotka
QuickTi me™ and a
T IFF (LZW ) decompressor
are needed to see t his pict ure.
Why VREs?
 Longitudinal study of VREs, in particular JISC
 Oxford e-Social Science Project
 Ethical, legal, and institutional dynamics of esciences
 Embedded in larger context of virtual
organisations and virtual communities
 Focussing on the opportunities for collaboration
afforded by VREs
Collaborative work
 Collaboration is a major area of research CSCW, groupware, distributed systems
 Work place studies, awareness, public vs
private, presence, seamless movement between
the real and digital environments
 Collaboration and research activities / practices
Methodology
 JISC VRE programme as case study
 Emerging vision of VREs from the research
community themselves
 Interviews
 Extensive document review
 Attendance of workshops
 Ethnographic field work
 Focus groups and workshops
 Analysis
Our focus
 Potential for new collaborations in research
 Relation between a mode of collaboration and typical
research activities
 Epistemic practices
 Overlapping features across VREs
 Four features that participants are responding to
positively and that have the potential to re-shape
research
Four features
 Collaborations formed around new:
objects of research
mappings of objects of research
mappings of interactions
ways of producing, undertaking or performing
Objects of research
 Niches of data
 Previously excluded
 Not part of the canon
 Fragile or illegible texts
 Canon shapes a discipline
 Authoritative, standard-setting list or group of
texts or documents
Challenging the canon
 Transformative moments in a discipline occur when the
canon is contested (eg feminism, post-colonialism)
 History of Political Discourse VRE
 Marginal texts (unauthorised editions or translations;
pamphlets)
 Excluded and marginalised texts and documents made
available through digitalisation
 Re-shapes a research area in a profound way
 Accessibilty plus the set of relations created around
them – in particular teaching relationships
Shaking up interpretive
paradigms
 Fragile or illegible texts
 Previously geographically dispersed fragments brought
together to partially re-construct the document; yet to
embody in digital form some of the physical properties
that are so important to deciphering their meaning (eg
smell, touch)
 Implications for collaboration
 Inter-disciplinary collaboration between researchers and
computer scientists (making visible and legible)
 Questioning of ways of conducting interpretation in each
discipline
Mappings of objects of research
 Access to resources and mapping of the entities
or processes that are being studied
 Representational or organisational role
 Silchester Roman Town
 Connects on-site data gathering from the excavation
site with collaborative research domains
 With ‘picture’ the relevant part of the excavation site
Collaborative Research Domains
Silchester: A VRE for Archaeology
Collaborative Research Domains
Silchester: A VRE for Archaeology
Collaborative Research Domains
Silchester: A VRE for Archaeology
Mapping and knowing
 Real spatial disposition of excavation site
 Mapping a physical entity
 Knowledge management as well as
representational role
 Organisation and disposition of the map
on the screen are not neutral
Mapping interactions
 Meetings
 Tools and technologies to facilitate meetings
 Access Grid with enhancements
 MeMeTiC
 Screen Streamer (participants can share computer
screens)
 Compendium: concept mapping tool
Self-reflectiveness
 Recording and replay: making ephemeral events persistent or
durable
 Operating on the events: organising and mapping them
 Semantic web tool for search and find disparate content relating to
events such as teaching events and conferences: IUGO
 Collaborative processes plus ability to analyse and monitor
 Self-reflectiveness is intertwined in the process of the interaction
 Neutrality of the mode of mapping or formative with respect to the
way in which the event is remembered or understood.
‘Doing’ research
 Producing, undertaking and performing
 Physical interactions with objects within real
environments in sciences and in the arts
 Performative processes
 Multi-sensory
 Co-presence with objects
 CSAGE - Access Grid with ‘semi-immersive
stereoscopic facilities to create an increased
level of ‘presence’ within the AG environment’;
 Facial reconstruction and performance
Co-defining in action
 There is not a pre-defined capability sought;
technology and performance are co-define
 Feeling of embodied co-location and copresence
 Transfer from performance to other contexts
 Facilitates a more naturalistic experience
 Naturalism vs artifice
Conclusions
 As technologies for research emerge, some
research activities are enabled and enhanced,
some will be changed and some will recede in
the background
 Re-shaping of research landscape opens some
spaces, closes others
 Re-shaping is not value neutral