Hey All!

A couple of the other undergrads and I just got back from a data analysis workshop. If you were there (or would have liked to have been) you can access my notes via Google docs here.

Last week I continued transcribing interviews and began to analyze them. The importance of trust resonates through the interviews and this trust tends to be fostered by two factors: collaborator expertise and collaborator commitment. Technology appears to impede two other important collaborative components that participants identified: spontaneous interaction and the ability to see the project’s “big picture.” It’s not surprising that one of the biggest themes is the importance of face-to-face interaction, especially during the beginning stages on a project.

I’ve also continued to update and improve the spreadsheets containing the survey data we have from four surveys conducted over two collaborator retreats.

I was bummed that I couldn’t make our “column B” activity on Thursday. While walking home on Thursday I realized that the rather abstract moniker we’ve given our lab excursions supports an observation Wegner makes in his chapter on transactive memory. Wegner describes the transactive encoding of group information, writing that “whatever label is applied first, perhaps arbitrarily, becomes the catchword for the item…individuals are more inclined to remember items as discussed than items as perceived.”