Week 5: Collaborative tools for research and clinical practice

We hope you’ve been enjoying the 11½ Things so far. This is the penultimate week, but don't worry if you are behind, the blog won't suddenly disappear at the end of the six weeks, you can always catch up in your own time. Over the last few weeks we’ve been exploring tools to share website bookmarks, citations, presentations, documents and other files online. This week we’re going to focus on tools that not only allow you to share, but allow you to collaborate on a piece of work.

Wikis

Wikis are the most obvious example of a Web 2.0 tool that allows people to collaborate on a piece of work. The word 'wiki' comes from a Hawaian word meaning 'fast'. A wiki is a webpage that can be edited by anyone or a defined set of people from within the Web browser, no other editing tools are required. As it's all stored online and they often allow you to upload documents and other files, they can be a useful tool for groups collaborating on a piece of work.

The best known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, where anyone can go in and add or amend an entry and anyone can see the entries you have made. The lack of editorial control can make the information in Wikipedia unreliable so they have editorial guidance in place to try to ensure the quality of the entries and you can look back to see what changes have been made to a page. For some pages editorial control is restricted to registered users or even particular individuals. If you are setting up your own wiki you can usually set it to allow only certain people to access it and/or edit it.

Wiki software is available to download to your PC or you can use an online wiki tool. Freely available online wiki tools include WikiSpaces (which offers free spaces for higher education), WetPaint and PBWorks. There are lots more examples out there. You might like to explore WikiMatrix, which is a site that compares wiki sites.

Did you know?
UCL has its own wiki service and Library Services has a number of wikis set up, available to library users or which can only be viewed or edited by Library Services staff, or a select group of library staff.

Why might researchers, academics and clinicians want to use wikis?

• As with sharing social media tools, wikis can be used to share and disseminate ideas or reach a wider audience, to engage with the public, to invite comments and feedback. 
• To invite other people to contribute their knowledge on a topic – ‘crowdsourcing’.
• For open peer review of articles.
• To invite updates for systematic reviews.
• To provide online collaborative portals of data, information or other resources in a particular field which may be used as reference sources.
• For sharing and developing educational materials.
• As a forum for debate and discussion, and a place to keep a record of discussions.
• To facilitate group work on projects by their students, increase student engagement or have students read and review the work of their peers.

Want to know more about wikis as a medium for publishing? Read this article on wikis as a publishing platform in medicine. 

Google docs

Google docs is an example of an Office 2.0 tool. Office 2.0 refers to online applications that allow you to create documents, spreadsheets etc. Instead of using software installed on your individual computer you are using software that is hosted in a remote ‘cloud’. This means you don’t need to be on your own computer to access your files, you just need a computer with an Internet connection. You also don’t need to worry about software upgrades and because everything is available over the Internet it facilitates sharing and collaboration. The downsides can be that these applications currently have limited functionality compared to Microsoft Office, for example, and you are dependent on a decent Internet connection to access your files.

Google Docs allows you to share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings online. You can create them from scratch in Google Docs or upload them and amend them in Google Docs. This can be really useful for people who work in different departments or even different institutions who are collaborating on a piece of work and need to work on documents together.

Other office 2.0 alternatives include Think Free Office and  Zoho Office Suite.

Thing 9: See if you can find any examples of wikis that might be of use to our user groups: academics, researchers, students or clinicians. You could try searching Google, searching the websites of HE institutions, or searching the literature for articles about good examples, or finding them any other way you can. If you find other good ways to identify wiki examples, why not share this information on your blog?

Thing 10: This week, instead of (or as well as if you wish!) sharing a useful resource via your blog you are asked to share it via a wiki. You should have received an email on Friday 29 July inviting you to join the 11½ Things wiki. Follow the instructions in the email and then on the front page of the wiki to become a member of the wiki and contribute an example to the pages on the wiki.

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Optional extras

Optional ‘Thing’: Have a go at creating a document in Google Docs and sharing it with a colleague or a fellow 11½ Things participant.

Scheduling meetings or events

Researchers often work in groups and may wish to arrange meetings, decide on deadlines or inform each other about conferences or other relevant events. Clinicians may have similar requirements if working together, for example to discuss a particular case or work on an audit or guideline. We are all used to using the Oracle calendar system (soon to be replaced with the Outlook calendar as part of Live@UCL) to help with all of these things, but how would we do it with a group that included members from another institution, for example? Social media tools are there to help us again. Here are some examples you might like to explore, although there are many others out there:

• Google calendar: As with many Google products, probably the lead player in this area. Lets you share your calendar with anyone, and invite people to events in your calendar.
• Doodle: A free tool for scheduling events between a group of people. It works by creating a poll which is sent out to the people you want to meet with by email. They then respond to the poll so you can select the most popular date and time.
• Meet-o-matic: Another free meeting scheduler that uses a simple web-form and emails people to ask them to select a preferred date and time.
• tungle.me: Another scheduling application that can sync with your online calendar, eg. Outlook or Google Calendar.

Did you know? Virtual Research Environments
The development of online tools such as those we've been exploring has initiated various projects to create Virtual Research Environments (VREs), a set of online tools and resources designed specifically to support the research process. They allow collaboration amongst researchers as well as ways of managing and manipulating data. In the UK, JISC is funding various projects to support the development of VREs.

Next week is the last week, and we'll be having some fun with images and audiovisual tools!