A Novel Method for Measuring, Visualizing, and Monitoring E-Collaboration

Abstract

With its roots in the 1960s, e-collaboration has dramatically evolved and expanded over the past decades and became a globally adopted practice of teamwork. On the other hand, despite the development of e-collaboration technologies, the lack of true collaboration remains one of the main reasons for teamwork failures. However, traditional approaches to improving collaboration due to time-consuming, complicated, and expensive procedures do not meet the modern setup's requirements. This paper presents a new fast, simple, and low-cost method to improve e-collaboration through active engagement measures by analyzing data logs. The authors designed and ran a feedback system to mirror the participants' engagement during a collaborative engineering design course. The results of two case studies, including nine teams, suggest meaningful positive impacts of the method. The presented approach is applicable in upgrading e-collaboration platforms and further investigation on improving web-based collaborative learning and teamwork through monitoring dashboards and feedback systems.