Collaborative Communication Tools and Technologies

Collaborative Communication

Humans long for interconnectedness with other humans. Since the dawn of humankind efforts have been made to establish deep, long-lasting connections with other individuals, other groups of humans, and previous and future generations. Communication plays a critical role in bringing about a sense of interconnectedness. Human communication (from the Latin communicare, meaning to impart, share by giving and receiving, or make common) is the process of exchanging knowledge, experiences, skills, wants, perceptions, affective states, and attitudes among people through a common system of symbols, signs, visuals, or behaviors. Communication can be intentional or accidental, may exhibit linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and can involve accepted or unexpected signs.

Since communication is a process, certain conditions and steps need to occur in a relatively set order to allow for a successful exchange. Critical elements of the communication process include

• the sender or encoder, the one who initiates and conceptualizes the message to be sent;
• the medium, or the form taken by the message (e.g., in the form of an e-mail or in the form of a face-to-face exchange of words);
• [Page 126]the channel, which accounts for the delivery of the chosen medium (e.g., Internet or air);
• the receiver or decoder, the one in charge of extracting and decoding the meaning from the message and providing feedback to the sender;
• feedback, which determines if the receiver understands the meaning of the message and if the communication is successful;
• context, in which any communication act takes place (e.g., place, time, attitudes of sender and receiver, and cultural differences); and
• noise or interference, anything that prevents the message from being correctly received, interpreted, and responded to.

In sum, human communication is interpersonal and purposeful. Because it takes place between two or more people, communication is collaborative in nature.

Collaboration is the process of working together in a specific pursuit to create value. To initiate and decode a message is an example of a collaborative pursuit. Collaboration involves more than distributing tasks among team members and assembling a final product based on the different parts created individually. Collaboration requires interconnectedness, development of trust, consensus building, and respect. Communication is essential to collaboration in that collaboration recognizes the fundamental reciprocity between interpersonal communication and human relationships. Collaborative communication requires participants to establish a goal or set of objectives that everyone agrees with, a display of mutual respect and understanding, the development of trust, and acceptance of differing viewpoints. Tools and technologies enable and support collaborative communication.

Tools and Technologies

There are many tools and technologies that allow for and support collaborative communication. The term tool means a device created to perform or facilitate a manual or mechanical task. For instance, a learning tool supports the delivery of content knowledge to others. Tools and technologies that support collaborative communication include website platforms that allow for broader dissemination of information; file sharing (documents, calendars, etc.), which reduces reliance on e-mail; and screen-sharing applications that enable simultaneous views of Internet-based products.

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