Learning Collaboration at BIMTECH: Collaboration Technologies

Learning Collaboration at BIMTECH: Collaboration Technologies: Ninth Class: IBM - Google - Microsoft Collaboration Platforms IBM, Microsoft and Google are three major players in the field of Coll...

Collaboration Technologies

Ninth Class: IBM - Google - Microsoft Collaboration Platforms

IBM, Microsoft and Google are three major players in the field of Collaboration Technologies. They offer complete end-to-end collaboration technology solutions. Each company has a very different history and market strengths. While studying the subject of collaboration Technologies, the comparison of these 3 companies and their products/solutions provides some very interesting perspectives.

IBM is more than 100 years old Technology leader and even today the largest technology company in the world (more than US$100 billion in revenue). It dominates Hardware, Software as well as Services business. IBM pioneered collaboration by connecting computers to computers by dedicated connections. Thereafter the technologies have grown exponentially and IBM has kept pace with the technology and offered products at each level of technology growth. Lotus Notes is main collaboration product but there is a complete suit of products that integrates with each another.

Microsoft had identified the power of collaboration and the role of  PC technology. A book by Bill Gates, titled "Business at speed of thought", describes Microsoft's vision of DNS (Digital Nervous System). Microsoft entered PC world with it's single user PC Operating system but soon moved on to offering multi user operating systems and all related administrative and management tools. Microsoft Ofice, MSProject and various other products are now available in multi user versions enabling collaboration. Share Point is a product that enables integration all other Microsoft products to enable collaboration and integration of all products from Microsoft.

Google is the most recent entrant among all these three giants. Google has acquired it's leadership role in Internet world. Cloud based, email, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Calendars alkong with a host of web2.0 and open sourse applications have creatde huge market niche .

Eleventh Class: Team Collaboration Technologies

Prof Eugene Rueben will discuss the technologies available for collaboration between virtual team members. Skype became known for it's VoIP solutions, providing long distance telephone services over the Internet. Webex was introduced as a tool to organize Conference meetings for team members who are separated at long distances. Teamviewer is a product to help share screens and provide remote control of desktop.

As these products have matured they provide more functionality and overlap their offerings.

Ninth Class: IBM - Google - Microsoft Collaboration Platforms

IBM, Microsoft and Google are three major players in the field of Collaboration Technologies. They offer complete end-to-end collaboration technology solutions. Each company has a very different history and market strengths. While studying the subject of collaboration Technologies, the comparison of these 3 companies and their products/solutions provides some very interesting perspectives.

IBM is more than 100 years old Technology leader and even today the largest technology company in the world (more than US$100 billion in revenue). It dominates Hardware, Software as well as Services business. IBM pioneered collaboration by connecting computers to computers by dedicated connections. Thereafter the technologies have grown exponentially and IBM has kept pace with the technology and offered products at each level of technology growth. Lotus Notes is main collaboration product but there is a complete suit of products that integrates with each another.

Microsoft had identified the power of collaboration and the role of  PC technology. A book by Bill Gates, titled "Business at speed of thought", describes Microsoft's vision of DNS (Digital Nervous System). Microsoft entered PC world with it's single user PC Operating system but soon moved on to offering multi user operating systems and all related administrative and management tools. Microsoft Ofice, MSProject and various other products are now available in multi user versions enabling collaboration. Share Point is a product that enables integration all other Microsoft products to enable collaboration and integration of all products from Microsoft.

Google is the most recent entrant among all these three giants. Google has acquired it's leadership role in Internet world. Cloud based, email, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Calendars alkong with a host of web2.0 and open sourse applications have creatde huge market niche .

Course Assessment

The Collaboration Technology course offered to 1st trimester students is primarily a Practical Laboratory course.  The learning objective is to help students gain hands on practical knowledge of using modern collaboration technology tools for execution of a real collaborative project.

Therefore, we will measure the students success in execution of such a project than measuring the theoretical understanding of the subject. How did you execute each step of the project execution and what is the quality of all deliverables produced in this project?

You will be provided quality standards. You will be expected to execute all your tasks to meet these standards. The quality will be measured primarily on 3 parameters - OnTime Delivery, Quality of Content and Quality of Presentation.

OnTime Delivery: Each task to be performed has a deadline associated. Any task completed on or before the deadline will get full 10 marks. Task completed after the deadline will loose 2 marks for each day of delay. Any task completed 6 or more days late will get zero marks.

Quality of Content: This will be based on joint recommendation of Teaching Assistants and Quality Analysts. What is expected in the content will be explained in class, lab sessions and you can always approach TAs and QAs for any clarification required.

Quality of Presentation: How you present your findings is equally important. The method of assessment will be same as Quality of Content.
The proposed final students grades will be based on the following criteria:

40% for the internal assessment at each stage of the project execution
60% for the final assessment of the quality of the book chapter you produce at the end of the project
The course will not have OLT as well as final examination.

Fifth Lab: Starting with the specialized team tasks

During last few weeks, you all have been doing same or similar tasks. Learning technologies, team assessment, Team Research etc. etc. But the real power of collaboration comes from each person doing some specialized tasks. Each team member specializes in one type of task and when we work together our joint efforts can produce much higher quality outcomes.

To start with in the Fifth Lab, each team is expected to come prepared with finalized Chapter Outline and assignment of one team member for each section of the outline. Team leaders should submit the online form for Chapter Outline well before arriving at the Lab session.

Assignment #16
Each team member will now create content for the section of the chapter that is allocated to him/her. Upto about 2 pages of content by each team member is quite adequate. You will get 45 minutes in the Lab to write these 2 pages of draft material for the section allocated to you. You should create a word document in your team's shared document folder. Your document should be shared with all your team members, so that they can review and make the necessary modifications to improve quality of your initial draft. This editing and refining these documents can continue through the week at your free time and place. Team Leader should decide if the document is ready to pass on to Author.

Assignment #17 for Authors
After all the section draft documents are received by Author, the control of the shared document is  transfered to the "Author" in the team. The Author will have the rights to edit the document, all other team members will only have "view" previledges. The authors will thoroughly edit the full chapter. Author will make all the necessary formatting changes, grammar and language corrections, improve readability etc. The Author will need to use full skills on Word Processing. Microsoft Word is recommended for use by the Authors. Follow the QA standards that will be released by the QA Team. Now you have a basic backbone of your product. 

Assignment #18A for Artists
Artists will identify the images and other graphics that will be required for the Chapter. We also need the design ideas for Book Cover. We need photographs of team members doing their group activities, which we can include in the book.


Assignment #18B for Other Team members
Now you clothe and add ornaments to your backbone. Create sections like "Learning Objectives", "References", "Diagrams", "Figures", "Illustrations", "Review Questions", "Bibliography" etc. etc. The content for all these add-ons will be created by team members and passed on to Authors to integrate it with the basic backbone of teh chapter.


Assignment #19 for Marketeers
While the rest of the team members are busy building the chapter, the Marketing people will refine the marketing messages that have been created for each category of prospects. Marketing people should create mail merge documents and mailing address lists to get ready for email campaign.

Assignment #20 for Team Leaders

Starting this week, Team Leaders will start submitting weekly project status report 

During this week, each specialist group will use some advanced features of technologies. Authors will require specialized Word Processing skills, Artists will use image processing, Marketeers will do mail merge etc. etc.

Eighth Class: Collab Tech Applications in Marketing Management

This is one of the chapters in our book. Many of you are wondering what will you cover in the chapter. In this class, you will see how a professional marketing management expert will address this topic.

Prof Dinesh Kumar is a marketing management expert and is using various collaboration technologies that you are learning like Blogs and Social networks. While learning this important topic, you will also get some idea of how this chapter can be structured as well as how other similar chapters can be developed.