The purpose of this project is to study the social dynamics of collaboration. The project investigated the development of transactive memory systems and social capital in communities of collaboration using empirical social network analysis. Longitudinal data were collected from student groups working on term projects.

During the past several decades, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in group collaboration, both in organizational and educational contexts. Work that was once performed by individuals is now performed by multi-disciplinary groups, because of the recognized benefits associated with collaboration, such as increased productivity and creativity. Conversely, working in groups can be complicated because groups can create difficulties in work coordination. Accentuated by geographic distribution, collaboration via computer-mediated communication (CMC) can be even more challenging.

To deal with these challenges, researching the building of communities to facilitate collaborative learning and work has become crucial for both educational and organizational scholars (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998; Gay and Hembrooke 2004). For educational research, building learning communities is important because learning is no longer considered an individual activity of knowledge acquisition, but rather a collective process of active participation (Barab, Kling et al. 2004). For organizational research, building communities is also crucial because it influences an organization’s chance of survival. Furthermore, community-building encourages the development of a sense of belonging. Such emotional attachment is instrumental for work collaboration because people who feel they belong tend to experience higher morale, motivation and work satisfaction (Scott 1998).
The major objective of our research, therefore, is to investigate the social dynamics that drive collaboration and community-building in work groups.

So far we have conducted two case studies on group collaboration using data collected from two classes. Both classes asked students to finish a group term project. We tracked social interactions and expertise retrieval activities of over 20 student groups throughout a semester using surveys. Information collected from the surveys was then used as the input information for a software program to facilitate expertise seeking.
Results from the study have been presented at three different conferences. Two of them have appeared in conference proceedings, and one received a top paper award from the largest conference in my field.

We shared the findings from our study with the instructors of the two classes we studied to help them improve the design of course assignments.

collaboration