The project studies the impact of network relations and communication techologies on group collaboration.

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 multipdisciplinary 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, building communities to facilitate collaborative learning and work has become a crucial area of research 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 is to investigate the social dynamics that drive collaboration and community-building in work groups. The research aims at furthering our understanding of the impact of community development on the collaborative work process in both co-located and distributed communities, with either the same or different cultural backgrounds.
Social network data have been collected from students enrolled in a senior level distance learning class cotaught by Cornell and Syracuse university professors. The network data were collected four times throughout an academic year. To date, over a dozen papers and reports have been written based on the data collected for this project. Among them, I lead-authored two. One of them has just been published in the first issue of the Information Society (2006). The second one was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4).

The main purpose of the project is to further our understanding of group collaboration in distributed teams, and how the development of social capital and usage of communication technologies can facilitate this process.

social capital and communication technologies

• Geri Gay (Communication)
• Anthony R. Ingraffea (Computer Science)