Face-to-Face vs Online Collaboration
How is collaborating face-to-face different from collaborating online?
In attempting to answer this question, it’s easy to make generalizations. You can’t develop trust online. You can’t develop meaningful relationships online.
The problem is that actual experience contradicts these generalizations. Trusting, meaningful relationships are possible online. Online collaboration can be just as effective as face-to-face, and at times, moreso. Well, if this is the case, then what’s the value of face-to-face collaboration? Why do we need it, especially in a down economy when the cost of convening starts seeming like a luxury?
I’ve put together a 10-minute slidecast that explores these questions and articulates the real differences between online and face-to-face collaboration. (Hit the play button to watch.)
Elaborating on the Nuances
I had two intentions in creating this presentation. First, I wanted to counter some of the myths about online collaboration. Second, I wanted to articulate a framework for how to think about these different modes of interaction. That framework boils down to three points:
Artifacts are critical for effective collaboration. We use them all the time in face-to-face collaboration, and they usually work the same way face-to-face as they do online. For example, the best online brainstorming tools apply the same principles as the best face-to-face brainstorming processes using a whiteboard or Post-Its. Online collaboration is unique in that every interaction results in an artifact. That doesn’t make it inherently better, as the default artifact isn’t necessarily the best. But, this property leads to the second point, which is that…
Online enables scale. Because you’re working in a medium that is inherently replicable and shareable and where geographical limitations do not apply, you can potentially reach a much larger audience. The key word is potential. Actually attaining scale online is a huge challenge, and how you frame that goal is critical. Size, for example, may not be as important as diversity.
Face-to-face buys you attention. You cannot guarantee people’s presence (in the metaphysical sense) online, and that makes it hard to tackle certain types of problems. Getting that level of focused attention is possible, but the cost of doing it online is higher. This is the most important point, and understanding the nuances of it determines whether or not your collaborative strategy will be effective.
This slidecast is a good example of all three things. If I had given this talk without the aid of the slides, it may have been hard to visualize certain things such as the Tic-Tac-Toe exercise. This would have held true if this talk were delivered face-to-face as well. The slides as artifacts made a critical difference in communicating the ideas.
Because it’s recorded and available online, it allowed me to make it available widely and get feedback from a variety of sources, some of them unexpected, all of them appreciated. I heard back from about ten people and got detailed feedback from three. If this were face-to-face, I would have incurred additional costs in the time and resources required to arrange meetings, deliver the presentation, and listen to the feedback. Since it’s online, the only additional cost is the cost of listening, which I will gladly pay.
Attention is the tricky factor. Because it’s available anytime, the ten people who gave me feedback were able to watch the slidecast on their own schedule. Because of the nature of their feedback, I can be fairly certain they paid attention while watching it.
According to my statistics, in the three days it’s been online, the slidecast has been viewed almost 200 times. However, how many of those people were paying close attention? Of those who were, how can I get their attention long enough to get their feedback?
If I were delivering this presentation to a room with 200 people, I could be fairly certain that I had their attention. Or, I could use various tricks to get their attention, and I would have instant feedback as to whether those tricks worked. The effort required to accomplish a similar effect online is much, much higher, and the results are less certain. If it were critical for me to get a known group of 200 people to watch, pay attention to this presentation, and give me feedback afterward, in the end, the cost of gathering those people in a room might actually be lower than delivering this presentation online. Figuring out whether or not that’s the case is the hard part.
Finally, I don’t want to understate the important, emotional benefits of face-to-face interaction, the power of being in another person’s presence, the power of touch. Ultimately, that’s what being human is all about. However, the impact of that physical presence in the context of collaborative processes is often overstated. Hopefully, my slidecast helped demonstrate this.
The perfect collaborative strategy for solving really hard, really big problems ideally leverages face-to-face and online interactions. This framework offers clues on when to leverage which mediums.
4 Responses to “Face-to-Face vs Online Collaboration”
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How about f2f online interactions?
I just did some one-on-one skype video chats with co-workers and found myself intently watching their eyes bounce around as we talked about things. it was like a whole separate channel of communication
There’s a ton of promise with video, although even there, you have to be careful. There was a study done in the early 80s to see what medium was most effective for catching lies: face-to-face, video, or voice? Can you guess how it turned out?
Most people would probably guess that face-to-face was most effective, followed by video, then voice. Actually, voice was more effective than face-to-face, and video was least effective.
That study is almost 30 years old. I don’t know whether there are new ones. Factors such as screen resolution and positioning might be important. And of course, the focus of that study was the ability to guess when the other person was lying. It didn’t address the ability to bond or measure other emotions in those mediums.
The bottom line? Be careful about your assumptions.
Checking the academic research databases here at the university, it appears that catching lies is still a difficult problem even when you try to use fMRI brain scans!
What modality is most effective for communicating depends on the task. Recent studies indicate that most collaboration proceeds equally well via an audio link as with a face-to-face meeting (video or a visual connection with others does not help when the focus is on some artifact), but negotiation — particularly in relation to tasks where someone’s feelings or body language signals matter — is improved by video.
Synchronous and asynchronous are apparently both improved by discussion — so watching or listening with a peer and sharing reflections is better than experiencing it alone.
Learners prefer to be challenged to think — where they have to provide an actual response — rather than have a one-way, talking head presentation. And they like the control of having an index into content.
In other words, the research results suggest that slidecasts should work as a viable and effective alternative to videos in most cases.
Here was one blog post about a side-by-side trial: http://artoflearning.in/ict-slidecast-vs-movie/
The potential for scaling with online interaction is huge, and mostly unexplored at least by the non-profit/foundation world. Some big potentials include (in addition to the larger audiences and low cost of reaching them):
* the ability to build networks of sharing and exchange that reach whole new worlds and thus force us out of narrow ways of thinking and acting; on Twitter, for example, I am following people all over the world, and am now in ongoing conversations with many of them on a wide range of topics. New ideas are flowing and spreading in a way I have never experienced before.
* the capacity to work with this diverse network on many projects simultaneously, coordinating and sharing what we learn through social media. This produces cascades of breakthroughs around the world.