Published
November 14, 2012
Keywords
- research experiences,
- collaborative research,
- interdisciplinary research team,
- online forum,
- academic discourse,
- connectivity,
- community of practice,
- collaborative learning,
- social writing
...More
Less
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2005-2018 Journal of Research Practice (ISSN 1712 851X) and the authors
The copyright of the material published in the Journal of Research Practice (JRP) is held primarily by the respective author(s). By agreeing to publish their work in JRP, they permit the journal (JRP) to electronically reproduce and disseminate their work over the Internet, including measures to ensure continued availability of the work, should the journal ever be discontinued for any reason. However, the authors retain all rights over their articles, including self-archival, reproduction, commercial use, etc. After the authors, the copyright passes over to JRP, unless transferred by the authors to any other designated person or entity.
Readers are welcome to use these material with due acknowledgment to the source, as indicated in the suggested citation for each article. The readers can also print and make copies of JRP articles for the purpose of education, learning, and review. However, the articles cannot be used for any commercial purpose without the consent of the respective author(s).
Archival agencies, libraries, publishers, and other agencies associated with academic/scholarly publishing are welcome to contact the Editors to discuss any specific proposals they may have. If the proposal involves a commercial interest, they would be expected to share a part of their benefit with JRP.
Abstract
In this article we study how members of an interdisciplinary research team use an online forum for communicating about their research project. We use the concepts of "community of practice" and "connectivity" to consider the online interaction within a wider question of how people from different academic traditions "do" interdisciplinarity. The online forum for this Grey and Pleasant Land project did not take off as hoped, even after a series of interventions and amendments, and we consider what the barriers were and how they might be overcome. Barriers to involvement included participants' expectations of interaction and collaboration--expectation that real interaction happens elsewhere, tensions between academic discourse and forum talk norms, unfamiliarity with the technology, and different conceptions of appropriate academic discussion. We suggest that common academic practice does not prepare us well for creating interdisciplinary research communities through online collaboration tools, whereas such tools are our best bet currently for including geographically dispersed members in collaborative projects. Therefore, careful planning and competence building would be necessary if such tools are to be used in collaborative research. Suggested interventions, based on our experience, include providing a more focused forum, making technical support easily available, and setting up particular tasks or items to debate, within a preset, synchronous timeframe, focusing on issues relevant to the project at that time.