Remote Colleagues Research Articles

Distance Matters to Weak Ties

Workers tend to make inferences about one another's commitment and dedication to work depending on what cues are available to them, affecting worker relationships and collaboration outcomes. In this work, we investigate how remote work affects workers' perceptions of their colleagues with different levels of social connectivity, commonly referred to as strong ties and weak ties. When working remotely, workers' perceptions of weak ties may suffer due to the lack of in-person interaction. On the other hand, workers' inferences about their strong ties may also be impacted by losing richer communication cues, even though they had more connections with their strong ties than weak ties. This study explores how remote workers make inferences about engagement levels of and willingness to collaborate with weak ties compared to strong ties. We used a mixed-methods approach involving survey data, experience sampling, and in-depth interviews with 20 workers from different companies in Taiwan. Results showed that workers depended on one-on-one synchronous tools to infer the engagement level of strong ties but used group-based communication tools to infer the engagement level of weak ties. Interestingly, the absence of cues in remote workplaces exacerbated prior impressions formed in the physical office. Furthermore, remote work led workers to develop polarized perceptions of their respective ties. We discuss how characteristics of computer-mediated communication tools and interaction types interplay to affect workers' perceptions of remote colleagues and identify design opportunities for helping remote workers maintain awareness of weak ties.

Expectations of medical specialists about image-based teleconsultation - A qualitative study on acute burns in South Africa.

BackgroundImage-based teleconsultation between medical experts and healthcare staff at remote emergency centres can improve the diagnosis of conditions which are challenging to assess. One such condition is burns. Knowledge is scarce regarding how medical experts perceive the influence of such teleconsultation on their roles and relations to colleagues at point of care.MethodsIn this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 medical experts to explore their expectations of a newly developed App for burns diagnostics and care prior to its implementation. Purposive sampling included male and female physicians at different stages of their career, employed at different referral hospitals and all potential future tele-experts in remote teleconsultation using the App. Positioning theory was used to analyse the data.ResultsThe experts are already facing changes in their diagnostic practices due to the informal use of open access applications like WhatsApp. Additional changes are expected when the new App is launched. Four positions of medical experts were identified in situations of diagnostic advice, two related to patient flow–clinical specialist and gatekeeper–and two to point of care staff–educator and mentor. The experts move flexibly between the positions during diagnostic practices with remote colleagues. A new position in relation to previous research on medical roles–the mentor–came to light in this setting. The App is expected to have an important educational impact, streamline the diagnostic process, improve both triage and referrals and be a more secure option for remote diagnosis compared to current practices. Verbal communication is however expected to remain important for certain situations, in particular those related to the mentor position.ConclusionThe quality and security of referrals are expected to be improved through the App but the medical experts see less potential for conveying moral support via the App during remote consultations. Experts’ reflections on remote consultations highlight the embedded social and cultural dimensions of implementing new technology.

New Technologies: Real-time Telepathology Systems-Novel Cost-effective Tools for Real-time Consultation and Data Sharing.

Real-time telepathology for use in investigative and regulated preclinical toxicology studies is now feasible. Newly developed microscope-integrated telepathology systems enable geographically remote stakeholders to view the live histopathology slide as seen by the study pathologist within the microscope. Simultaneous online viewing and dialog between study pathologist and remote colleagues is an efficient and cost-effective means for consultation, pathology working groups, and peer review, facilitating good science and economic benefits by enabling more timely and informed clinical decisions.

Work Features to Support Stigmergic Coordination in Distributed Teams

When work products are shared via a computer system, members of distributed teams can see the work products produced by remote colleagues as easily as those from local colleagues. Drawing on coordi...

Embedded Reference: Translocating Gestures in Video-Mediated Interaction

ABSTRACTAudiovisual technologies can enable informal communication akin to face-to-face interaction. However, they prove less successful when deployed to support work and organizational activities. This is, in part, due to the limited ways such technologies provide access to the materials, objects, documents, and the like that are critical for supporting work activities as they emerge and unfold. What is often neglected in these new technologies is a consideration of how objects are referred to, manipulated, and transformed within and through interactions between colleagues. In this article, we consider an advanced prototype system called t-Room that seeks to provide geographically dispersed participants with rich and varied access to physical and digital documents. This technology has been designed to support flexible collaborative activities with and around objects, as if remote participants and materials in their local environment were copresent within a common space. By undertaking quasi-naturalistic experiments in this prototype environment, we reveal that at times participants could unproblematically refer to detailed features of the environments and when there were difficulties, resolve them. We notice, however, that at other times participants had great difficulties in assessing the relationships among themselves, their remote colleagues, and objects in the environment, the very flexibility of the technology introducing instabilities into the sequential accomplishment of referential activities. By considering examples of this technology in use, we suggest that these limitations may reflect wider issues concerned with our understanding of how interactional activities are embedded within the local environment. Data in this paper are in English.

Providing Information on the Spot: Using Augmented Reality for Situational Awareness in the Security Domain

For operational units in the security domain that work together in teams, it is important to quickly and adequately exchange context-related information to ensure well-working collaboration. Currently, most information exchange is based on oral communication. This paper reports on different scenarios from the security domain in which augmented reality (AR) techniques are used to support such information exchange. The scenarios have been designed with a User Centred Design approach, in order to make the scenarios as realistic as possible. To support these scenarios, an AR system has been developed and evaluated in two rounds. In the first round, the usability and feasibility of the AR support has been evaluated with experts from different operational units in the security domain. The second evaluation round then focussed on the effect of AR on collaboration and situational awareness within the expert teams. With regard to the usability and feasibility of AR, the evaluation shows that the scenarios are well defined and the AR system can successfully support information exchange in teams operating in the security domain. The second evaluation round showed that AR can especially improve the situational awareness of remote colleagues not physically present at a scene.

Improving Remote Collaboration With Video Conferencing and Video Portals

The ability of employees to collaborate with remote colleagues is now essential for most large corporations and organizations. Decades of research have identified the conditions that must be present for remote collaboration to succeed. We present a set of studies of remote collaboration within a technology company (Google) that has not only met these conditions but gone beyond them by providing ubiquitous video conferencing (VC). We looked at how well remote collaboration can now work, whether travel is still required, and what impediments still remain. We found that several factors contributed to the success of remote collaboration. Visual real-time communication via VC is ubiquitous and easy to use, VC is integrated with calendar software, and most Google employees have laptops with VC capability. Collaborative tools such as Google Docs, e-mail, and instant messaging make working together, sharing information, and keeping in touch easy. Finally, there is a culture of trust and sharing within Google. We also found that initial face-to-face meetings remain crucial for enhancing subsequent remote interactions. There were two findings of particular interest. First, VC has completely replaced audio conferencing for internal company communications. Second, video portals (always-on video connections between two or more locations) have sprung up spontaneously throughout Google. We categorize their use into four different styles of interaction and describe how they can be effective not only in facilitating communication but also in providing presence and status information, helping to establish mutual trust and common ground, and preventing misunderstandings. Video portals reduce the behavioral costs of communication and for the first time allow tightly coupled remote work to succeed. Although there are some lingering problems in technology-mediated distributed meetings, a combination of a collaborative culture with appropriate infrastructure, software, and access to technology can radically narrow the gap between colocated and remote collaboration.

Facilitating contagion trust through tools in Global Systems Engineering teams

ContextIn Global Systems Engineering teams, researchers have found that trust can be transitive to some degree or imported (swift trust) under certain conditions. We argue that trust can be contagion and seeded by tools (spread from one individual to another through tools). ObjectiveWe sought to investigate the potential for using tools to support the development of trust in such teams and facilitate contagion trust. Specifically, we sought to investigate whether any existing tools support the development of trust in such teams and which information helps such development, whether the visualization of past collaborations would help developing trust, and what tools or features practitioners would wish for, if they had a magic wand. MethodWe interviewed 71 employees from five multinational organizations. We focused on gaining an understanding of the tools that are currently used to engender trust and the information needed to facilitate contagion, in which conditions visualizations of past collaborations are helpful, and what software tool features could help develop trust. Our analysis was guided by grounded theory. ResultsWe found evidence that supports the theory of contagion trust and tools can be used to initiate the development of trust. These tools include software tools, office technologies, or organizational structures. Practitioners’ needs were functional (e.g. audio channel with remote colleagues) and/or non-functional (e.g. can be adopted in sites with poor infrastructure). ConclusionOur study illustrates that tools can be used to facilitate contagion trust and provides three main contributions. First, our exploration of how existing tools are used provides a guide to effective practices in such teams. Second, the descriptions of features that can facilitate contagion trust provide useful design implications for future tools. Third, the identification of the kind of information that facilitates contagion trust provides an understanding of practitioners’ underlying needs that can be used to develop collaboration tools.

INTERDISCIPLINARY MANAGEMENT OF PATIENTS WITH DENTAL PATHOLOGY USING THE METHOD OF TELEMEDICINE: CASE REPORT

Our duty, as doctors, is to offer to our patients the best possible solutions at the moment. However, there are moments when we are ready and willing to offer the best, but because of the circumstances, we are unable to do that. This paper describes the possibility of effectuating consultation with our remote colleagues. The process has been termed teleconsultation and it has been made possible by the advent and development of new information and telecommunication technologies. The paper describes three of our cases which could best demonstrate the operation of the process of telemedicine in routine dentistry practice. Telemedicine consultation in the field of management of patients with dental pathologies is a rapid, effective, and reliable method of resolving therapeutic doubts and confirmation of management decisions.

Tool to facilitate appropriate interaction in global software development

Distributed software development is a new working philosophy that the software industry is currently facing. Organisations may benefit from the situations that this shift has created, although they must also confront new challenges related to them. In this study, the authors focused on the lack of timely adequate opportunities for informal interaction, which has been identified as an important issue to overcome coordination, communication and trust limitations. The authors attempted to confront this problem through obtaining information from the personal activities of remote colleagues. In this respect, the authors propose introducing and defining collaborative working spheres (CWS) because the authors argue that CWS permit the identification of opportunities for interaction at appropriate moments. This concept is illustrated with the design of CWS-instant messaging (IM), an extended IM tool that supports the CWS concept. This tool was tested by 16 distributed software development (DSD) workers during an initial scenario-based evaluation. The results show favourable evidence towards both the perceived usefulness and ease of use of CWS-IM.

The international zoo community and computer-mediated communication

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a fast and efficient way to exchange information with remote colleagues. Personal computers, with modems and telephone lines, can be used to send and receive messages, to access library catalogues and to trace details and locations of publications. Co-operation and collaboration between professionals in the international zoo community could ensure the success of many conservation initiatives and the use of CMC will facilitate this process.

Two years' experience with Web-based teleconsulting in dermatology

A non-commercial teledermatology network based on store-and-forward operation was established in April 2002. The aim was to create an easy-to-use platform for teleconsultation services, where physicians could seek diagnostic advice in dermatology from a pool of expert consultants and where they could present and discuss challenging dermatology cases with special emphasis on diagnosis and therapy. An online moderated discussion forum was added in October 2003. During the first two years, 348 health-care professionals from 45 countries registered to use the Website. A total of 783 requests for consultations were answered; 285 requests concerned pigmented skin lesions, 440 requests were from the whole range of clinical dermatology and 58 requests were about non-melanoma skin cancer. Of a total of 133 requests analysed, 80 (60%) were answered within one day, 47 (35%) within one week, five (4%) within two weeks and one (1%) consultation was answered in more than two weeks. Our experience with a discretionary, non-commercial, multilingual Website for open-access teleconsulting in dermatology appears to be successful. The Website represents an example of user-generated content, together with active interaction between users, who can present and discuss cases with remote colleagues.

O Brother, Where are Thou?

Communities of practice are highly situated and, yet, networks of practice supposedly connect them. Assuming the situated dimension of work and identity in communities of practice, how may dispersed agents be connected, and how may the features of communities of practice be extended from the local to the network level? This article proposes that the use of intranets contributes to the interconnections of local communities and to the emergence of a network of practice. It draws on two case studies in which members of local communities used an intranet system to establish communications with remote colleagues in ways that did not merely reproduce their immediate context. The use of the intranet contributed to the mutual reinforcement of local communities, and of the overall network, and to growing complementarities among colleagues at different levels. Conceptually, in a relational perspective, the use of the intranet extended the situatedness of practice.

A clinical and educational telemedicine link between Bulgaria and Greece.

During its transition to a market economy, Bulgaria benefited from foreign aid provided by Greece. One of the projects was the clinical and educational telemedicine link between the Medical University of Varna in Bulgaria and the Faculty of Medicine of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. This began in 1997. In terms of the educational activities, the Bulgarian side of the network supports: an electronic classroom equipped with personal workstations, multimedia projectors and videoconference facilities; electronic design and publishing activities; Web hosting and mail server activities; and satellite communications. Communications are via ISDN. The main clinical experience has been remote consultations in immunology. This experience (admittedly limited) demonstrates that telemedicine can be used to provide assistance to remote colleagues. In addition, the use of telemedicine can greatly improve the quality of care available to travellers and migrant workers in cases where the patient cannot communicate with the attending physician because of a language barrier.

Dealing with mobility

The rapid and accelerating move towards use of mobile technologies has increasingly provided people and organizations with the ability to work away from the office and on the move. The new ways of working afforded by these technologies are often characterized in terms of access to information and people anytime, anywhere. This article presents a study of mobile workers that highlights different facets ofaccessto remote people and information, and different facets ofanytime, anywhere. Four key factors in mobile work are identified: the role of planning, working in "dead time," accessing remote technological and informational resources, and monitoring the activities of remote colleagues. By reflecting on these issues, we can better understand the role of technology and artifacts in mobile work and identify the opportunities for the development of appropriate technological solutions to support mobile workers.

The value of video in work at a distance: Addition or distraction?

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment aimed at exploring the importance of person versus task space in supporting work at a distance through Multimedia Desktop Systems (MDSs). Person space refers to the ability to see and hear remote colleagues while task space refers to the ability to share work-related artifacts. A 2×2×4 mixed factorial experimental design was used (n=72) in which video quality (broad band vs narrow band) was varied for the display of remote colleagues, group size (point-to-point vs point-to-multipoint), and task. Surprisingly, subjects not only rated the poor quality video conditions more highly than good quality video conditions, but they also completed their tasks faster. These findings are explained in terms of a distraction effect imposed by the display of remote colleagues. This has practical implications for the design of MDSs.

Chapter 21 TeleMedicine and internet EMG

Publisher Summary This chapter describes internet electromyography (EMG) associated within telemedicine. Medicine is being revolutionized every day by the Internet, both for practitioners—who communicate with each other and update their knowledge—and for patients who obtain information and network through it. The development of general medical sites was quickly followed by neuroscience sites and eventually by exclusive neurophysiology EMG sites. Clinical neurophysiology (CN) lends itself well to various aspects of TeleMedicine (TM). Summaries of EEG, EMG and evoked potential findings are often presented as graphs or pictures, which are well suited for digital transmission. Clinical neurophysiology (CN) lends itself well to various aspects of TM. The laboratory also has contacts with other EMG laboratories in the world using identical recording equipment. E-mail, net meeting, authoring web pages, video conferencing, video chatting, digital literature, and databases for the neurophysiologist are all part and parcel of telemedicine. Positive aspects of transmission of biosignals are time saving; remote colleagues may obtain immediate consultations, improved quality, on call possibilities for EEG and easy international collaboration. Combination of biosignal and picture transmission is used for discussion of specific cases, participation in morning case reviews, educational purposes, business meetings, and faster CN service.

NotMeeting

This study reports on a three month field trial of Microsoft NetMeeting by geographically distributed software engineers in a Fortune 500 telecommunications organization. Participants were selected based on their need to collaborate with remote colleagues. After an initial orientation, participants were encouraged to use NetMeeting, whenever possible, to perform regular work tasks. Participants were interviewed halfway through the trial and at the conclusion of the trial to gauge level of use and attitudes toward NetMeeting. Results indicated low NetMeeting use but moderate satisfaction. The findings also illuminated difficulties in the introduction of collaboration tools in an authentic work setting and the adaptation of tools under conditions of everyday use.