Chamber of Ideas 2.0 : a virtual collaborative system for organizational and group workflows of postgraduate students, academic staff, and support staff at the University of St Andrews
Abstract
The Chamber of Ideas is a virtual collaborative system designed to enhance the research
experience for postgraduate students and academic staff at research universities, and to
improve daily workflow efficiencies between researchers and support staff. It builds upon
past literature and system development within the fields of e-Science and Computer-
Supported Cooperative Work.
Research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and digital, all
trends which have contributed to increased levels of collaboration between researchers.
This shift toward greater collaboration has been incentivized by host research institutions,
public funding bodies, and private sponsors. It has been largely enabled by the presence
and rapid growth of the World Wide Web. As a platform, the World Wide Web provides
a communication infrastructure capable of linking all researchers from all disciplines
from all research institutions across the globe. Yet, a widely-adopted, federated, and
ubiquitous Web-based service does not presently exist to satisfy the evolving
collaborative workflow needs of today’s researchers. This thesis focuses on the
University of St Andrews as a local case-study to present a technical blueprint and project
roadmap for the design and introduction of a new system that can fill this niche.
Requirements were elicited from university stakeholders regarding organizational
workflows for knowledge transfer, research funding, researcher communication with
support units, and interdisciplinary research between schools. Primary institutional
stakeholders include the Knowledge Transfer Centre, St Leonard's College, Postgraduate
Society, and Vice-Principal for Enterprise & Engagement.
A prototype was designed and engineered to support user research management, research
group coordination, and team project management, incorporating unique sets of
collaborative tools for user, group, and work object system perspectives. The thesis
proposes a new theoretical framework for Large-Scale Complex Research Institutions
inspired by LSCIT System and ULS System literature, and introduces concepts of
institutional genealogy and social research data for system preservation and curation.
Type
Thesis, MPhil Master of Philosophy
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