Collaborative Distance

Abstract

This paper introduces the topic of “Collaborative Distance” within Distributed Collaboration as being an introduction to this Special Issue on Collaborative Working Environments1 (CWE). In this paper, the authors discuss various related concepts, identified during an extensive literature review, on both proximity and distance in distributed collaboration. Then, a Collaborative Distance Framework (CDF) is proposed in deriving its four dimensions and related factors from the existing body of knowledge. The following section discusses the interest of such a CDF and introduces the articles published in this special issue. The concluding section discusses the articles’ contributions, limitations and future work as well as recommendations for future research in this area.

Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments

“…As argued by Agarwal (2007), there are various challenges to knowledge sharing while so-called cultural distance becomes highly important in a context where people deal within online social environments. The finding is in line with the studies of Noll et al (2010) and Pallot et al (2010) that deal with collaboration across distance. However, the current literature has been very limited in studies that could inform the domain regarding how strong those cultural barriers are perceived across nations, within educator and learner communities that adopt these social OER environments.…”

“…A particular barrier towards cultural distance that was found in the literature was related to knowledge sharing and collaboration (Noll et al, 2010;Pallot et al, 2010). This barrier was related to language component of cultural distance, as well as the perceived difference of the home and host context.…”

“…As elaborated by Agarwal et al (2007), knowledge-sharing activities of teachers and learners can be highly influenced by culture. Similarly, Noll et al (2010) and Pallot et al (2010) evidenced that culture and language distance are two of the strongest barriers in distributed collaboration, and this sets the focus for our study.…”

“…This barrier was related to language component of cultural distance, as well as the perceived difference of the home and host context. As a common language is one of the greatest challenges for organizing distributed work (Noll et al, 2010;Pallot et al, 2010), we focused on this in our context. In our setting, teachers and learners are connected within an international community.…”

“…The first item for our survey was therefore: "Language is the key". I only want to contribute to online communication/collaboration when my own native language is used (based on Noll et al (2010) and Pallot et al (2010)). …”