ROLE OF «electronic virtual enhanced research-engaged student teams» WEB PORTAL IN SOLUTION OF PROBLEM OF COLLABORATION INTERNATIONAL TEAMS INSIDE ONE RESEARCH PROJECT Alona Nadieieva

Study background Problem of collaboration between students inside one research team Collaborative web-portals as way to solve this problem Researchers in all disciplines expect to manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research. One of the most significant current discussions in this area is collaboration with colleagues inside the research team. It is increasingly difficult to ignore that participation of people from different countries inside the research team may cause some problems. The most significant of them is misunderstanding. Therefore understanding national countries cultures of all the people in a team is an important component in the climate system, and plays a key role in research behavior. The fact that participants are located in different time zones may give rise to another important problem such as the need to support both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Collaboration inside research team is an important component of the social climate system, and plays a key role in the progress of the research. The rapid progress on computer networks and pervasive computing has offered the base conditions for the establishment of a networked society where new forms of collaboration are being explored. In fact a large variety of collaborative networks have emerged during recent years as a result of the challenges faced by the business, social, and scientific worlds and enabled by the fast progress in the information and communication technologies. Consequently a lot of researchers started to discover this topic and to develop portals for support of widely distributed collaborative projects. However most developed project for team collaboration have only provided in a small number of facilities. Therefore people who work in allocated teams have to use several different tools for communication. As a result management of these projects becomes complicated.

Aim and objectives Adopting a lifecycle perspective, the overarching aim of this study is to critically explore the learning experience in international research field and develop a web-portal which may help in collaboration inside international research team. Related objectives are follows: To analyze previous experience and existing similar projects related to research collaboration. To extend most important kind of online collaboration. To develop a web-portal for online collaboration of international research teams, this will include most significant facilities. Adopting a lifecycle perspective, the overarching aim of this study is to critically explore the learning experience in international research field and develop a web-portal which may help in collaboration inside international research team. Related objectives are follows: To analyze previous experience and existing similar projects related to research collaboration. To extend most important kind of online collaboration. To develop a web-portal for online collaboration of international research teams, this will include most significant facilities.

Web-portal EVEREST EVEREST – it is a web-portal, of which the main goal is to help in collaboration between international teams who work in one research project. EVEREST – it is a web-portal, of which the main goal is to help in collaboration between international teams who work in one research project. It also can help the supervisor of a research project because he can control all tasks more easely. Another aim of this portal is store all information in one place.

Facilities of web-portal EVEREST List of colleagues Current students tasks Calendar Messages Wiki Document repository 2.2.1. Private messages Messages are a significant part of person-to-person communication. 2.2.2. Discussion board An important part of researching is reflecting on one’s researching of a concept or skill by discussion with one other. Antonelli and Sapino (2005) state that the importance of web discussion boards is growing with the interest of sharing knowledge and doubts with colleagues in a working/studying environment. The challenge is to organize the structure of discussion boards, to make the navigation easier, and to effectively extract relevant information. Message hierarchies in web discussion boards, manually organized by users participating into the discussion, might grow uncontrolled, thus making navigation more and more difficult for users. The goal of this paper is to develop a technique to organize messages in a message board, by automatically classifying and annotating pairs of postings to guide users through discussion segments relevant to their navigational goals. (Antonelli and Sapino 2005) 2.2.3. Wiki collaboration A wiki can be defined as a “ collaborative web space where anyone can add content and anyone can edit content that has already been published ” (Richardson 2006, 8). Wiki community members use the shared space to write, discuss, comment, edit, reflect, and evaluate, with the ultimate goal to complete a shared outcome (West and West 2009). 2.2.4. Document repository A document repository allows users to share their own documents. They also have access to documents uploaded by other users. In this way users can share their experience.

Summary The developed web portal EVEREST for international students who work in one research team suggest that in general they will have effective collaboration. The following conclusion can be drawn from the present study. 5.1. Concluding commentary This study set out to determine the most important facilities for collaboration web-portal. EVEREST was developed to determine the effect of using online collaboration in international research projects. In this investigation, the aim was to assess facilities in existing projects and develop own web-portal for online collaboration. Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this study, it is now possible state that online collaboration is very important and useful nowadays. The developed web portal EVEREST for international students who work in one research team suggest that in general they will have effective collaboration. The following conclusion can be drawn from the present study. 5.2. Implication for international research teams The evidence from this study suggests that students will have enough facilities for communication inside research team. The results of this research support the idea of developing useful web-portal for on-line collaboration inside international research team. 5.3. Implication for further research This research has thrown up many questions in need of further investigation. Further work needs to be done to establish whether exist other important facilities in on-line collaboration inside one international research team. Further experimental investigations are needed to estimate effectiveness of web-portal EVEREST using it in the real research project.

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