One collaboration that I’ve had is trying to plan the recruitment of an organization that I’m a part of. The executive board consists of 7 people and we frequently face problems, due to being a small, still-growing-in-campus-presence group. These problems occur often as a result of being remote during a lot of the recruitment action items. However, I believe that perhaps the interaction we have isn’t the source of the problems, but rather commitment to the organization (which is a separate issue).
As the recruitment chair, I try to divvy out tasks for each member to complete for recruitment that pertains to their position on the board. However, I often find that my requests are untouched. I believe that if I asked my group to do some of these tasks when we were “together” or perhaps during our face-to-face meetings, they would actually get done, and get done quicker. Kiesler and Cummings mentioned that the mere presence of others increases involvement, urgency of proximate task, and contribution to the group.
The only way technology could help this is if it could facilitate a same-time meeting, but not necessarily a face-to-face meeting, as I believe that can take too much time and planning. Something that I have in mind is Google docs. Most people use it only to write projects together, but I think something similar could be used to have remote meetings. It’s not always necessary to see someone’s face, but it’s still nice to know they’re there. Perhaps a Google-doc type of technology, in which you could still notice everyone’s presence, contributions, and perhaps see and hear what people are saying and writing, would help get some of the recruitment tasks done. One prominent reason is that I believe people don’t feel guilty if they don’t respond to an email or can always lie and say they saw it too late. Being in the same work forum somehow through technology