Collaborating Alone: The Role of Technology Infrastructure in Scientific Problem-Solving Practices

Nandini Sharma; Jeffrey W. Treem; Megan Kenny Feister

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Sociotechnical Systems in Practice
Tagged Division: Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES)
Page Count: 25
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43223
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43223
Download Count: 233

Paper Authors

biography

Nandini Sharma The University of Texas at Austin

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Nandini is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at UT Austin. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and motivated by her formal engineering education in Computer Science (B.E., Punjab Engineering College, India), Information Science (MSIS, School of Information, UT Austin) and a decade of professional experience as a software and usability engineer in the software industry. Her research explores how technology design and development processes are intertwined with organizing and work. Overall, her work draws from practice theory, demands mixed-methods analyses, and straddles interdisciplinary domains such as Human-Computer Interaction, and Science and Technology Studies.

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Jeffrey W. Treem University of Texas at Austin

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Jeffrey W. Treem is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. His research examines the relationship between technology use and social perceptions of expertise, primarily in organizational contexts. Specifically, this work explores how the material affordances of communication technologies affect attributions of knowledge.

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Megan Kenny Feister CSUCI

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Megan Kenny Feister is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Communication at California State University Channel Islands.

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Abstract

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.

Citation
Format

Sharma, N., & Treem, J. W., & Kenny Feister, M. (2023, June), Collaborating Alone: The Role of Technology Infrastructure in Scientific Problem-Solving Practices Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43223

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Research on collaboration technologies often focuses on the design and use of technologies created specifically for collaboration purposes (Olson &amp;amp; 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. 
AU  - Nandini Sharma
AU  - Jeffrey W. Treem
AU  - Megan Kenny Feister
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Collaborating Alone: The Role of Technology Infrastructure in Scientific Problem-Solving Practices
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/43223
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--43223
ER  -