Using social technologies to support interdisciplinary collaboration: the experience of the xDelia project

Gill Clough, Gráinne Conole & Eileen Scanlon

Overview• Characteristics of new social and participatory media

• The xDelia project

• Interdisciplinary collaboration: challenges and opportunities

• Fostering and supporting interdisciplinarity

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xDelia – 3-year EU Project• It’s goal:

– To use bio-sensors and serious games to identify & address the effects of emotional regulation on financial decision making

– Target audience private investors

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Evaluation

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Challenges and Opportunities• Interdisciplinary consortium

– CIMNE, Spain (Project Management)– OU Business School, UK (Traders and Investors)– Saxo Bank, Denmark (Traders and Investors)– Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Sweden (Serious Games)– Erasmus University, The Netherlands (Cognitive Psychology)– Forschungszentrum Informatik, Germany (Bio-sensors)– OU Institute of Educational Technology, UK (Evaluation)

• Challenge: – to collaborate together effectively to achieve a common goal

• Opportunity: – learn from each other and conduct top quality interdisciplinary research

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F2F Collaborations• Workshops to share knowledge and

create games prototypes

• Meetings to brainstorm ideas

Collaborative Technologies• Wiki

– secure wiki not ideal collaborative tool

• SVN – secure document repository

• Videoconferencing software

• Google Wave

• Google Docs

• Dropbox

• Cloudworks

• Email

Social Technologies forSynchronous Collaboration• Skype for audio

• Google Wave for synchronous brainstorming, sharing links and collating ideas

• Wave copied to Google docs for asynchronouscollaboration to produce finished proposal

• Proposal downloadedto word and submittedvia conference website

Interdisciplinarity• 18 interviews with key TEL researchers

• Interviews and observations with xDelia partners

• Research questions– What is the nature of interdisciplinarity in TEL research?– What theories and methodologies are used?– What are the challenges to working in an interdisciplinary fashion?– How are technologies being used to support interdisciplinary work?– What are the benefits of interdisciplinary research?– What strategies can be used to promote interdisciplinarity?

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1. Technologies and users continually co-evolve.

2. TEL is an interdisciplinary field.

3. TEL researchers use a range of technologies to support research.

4. Social media are changing the way researchers work and collaborate.

5. Technologies provide the potential to break down disciplinary boundaries.

6. Many benefits to interdisciplinary working.

7. Interdisciplinary research is challenging.

8. Interdisciplinarity offers new theoretical insights and methodological innovations.

9. Current structures are barriers to interdisciplinarity.

10. Interdisciplinarity is essential for TEL research. 13

Conclusion• Evaluation of xDelia has given us rich insights into an

interdisciplinary project in action

• Better understanding of the challenges and strategies for promoting interdisciplinary collaboration

• The importance of choosing the right technologies for collaboration

• Effective use of technologies has proved crucial, alongside face-to-face communication

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References• Clough, Gill; Conole, Gráinne and Scanlon, Eileen (2010). Using participatory

evaluation to support collaboration in an interdisciplinary context. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networked Learning 2010, 3-4 May, 2010, Aalborg, Denmark.

• Clough, Gill; Conole, Gráinne and Scanlon, Eileen (2009). Behavioural finance and immersive games: a pan-European framework for design and evaluation. In: Same places, different spaces - Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009, 6-9 December 2009, Auckland, New Zealand

• Conole, Grainne and Alevizou, Panagiota (2010). A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. HEA Academy, York, UK.

• Conole, Grainne; Scanlon, Eileen; Mundin, Paul and Farrow, Robert (2010). Interdisciplinary Research: Findings from the TEL Research Programme. TEL Programme.

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Gill Clough g.m.clough@open.ac.ukGráinne Conole g.c.conole@open.ac.uk Institute of Educational TechnologyThe Open UniversityWalton HallMilton KeynesMK7 6AAwww.open.ac.uk