2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Research on collaboration technologies often focuses on the design and use of technologies created specifically for collaboration purposes (Olson & Olson, 2012; Flores et al., 1988; Winograd, 1987). For example, group decision support systems, knowledge management systems, Email, video conferencing etc., are functionally collaborative tools for work teams and otherwise. In investigating the organizational and social consequences of such tools and infrastructure, literature focuses on how their functionality affords or challenges collaboration amongst team members (Leonardi, 2011; Leonardi, 2009). However, technologies such as scientific equipment, data analysis and simulation tools, and other software environments required to support scientific work are not seen from the perspective of collaboration technologies.
Our research study on three interdisciplinary STEM labs suggests that the scientific ecosystem of technologies consists of tools that are designed with different intentions and for very different purposes. But they are assembled in an ecosystem that supports common scientific inquiries local and situated in nature. This ecosystem of diverse technologies is a site of intensive collaboration amongst lab members. Our data demonstrates that when any technology piece of this ecosystem broke down or did not work as expected, lab members sought each other’s help in brainstorming and interpreting the meaning of those failures. This collaboration was not predetermined or anticipated and was emergent in their day-to-day problem solving and learning practices. Such emergent collaboration challenges our existing understanding of collaborative work environments.
For example, members of these labs did not perceive their work as collaborative. Even though working with this ecosystem of technologies was standardized and supported by the lab as an organization, issues they faced working with those technologies was often considered a personal challenge by team members; especially because their understanding of their day-to-day work was developed through their personal research agendas. This paper argues that this conflict between how they perceived the collaborative nature of their work and how they actually collaborated is facilitated by the technologies they used and shaped lab members’ expectations of each other. Looking at the emergent and situated nature of such collaboration provides an opportunity to study a) the collaboration dynamics of teams when they are not influenced by design features of a specific collaboration technology, b) the temporality of collaborative work that gets fractured and distributed over time when lab members interleaved their collaborative work sessions with alone time where they brainstorm individually, and c) how different people perceived collaborative sessions differently owing to their existing technical knowledge of the tools they use.