Why learning departments should 'collaborate like crazy'

Writer Rama Ramaswami recently penned an article for Campus Technology about four ways to make the most out of virtual environments. Her points are worth a look, and one in particular deserves some more exploration. She recommended to "collaborate like crazy."

You're probably all too familiar with the budget cuts that have sliced through learning and training departments at life sciences companies in recent years. But as I've talked about before, learning is not a black hole that you throw money down. It's a crucial vehicle for transferring knowledge among organizational teams to drive innovation and execution.

New benchmark report compares 33 virtual environments

You might be surprised to learn that there are 33 virtual environments out there. The fact that there are shows this is a vibrant and competitive market, with technologies that can have many possible use cases.

But how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Well one researcher who's done that is Sami Ahma-aho from the Business, Innovation, Technology (BIT) Research Centre at Aalto University in Finland.

Life sciences executives, are you seeing this trend in your organization?

We've seen a common thread running through our conversations with life sciences executives over the past 90 days, and I wanted to blog about it to see if you are experiencing or observing the same thing. I'm thinking this could be an emerging trend that we as an industry need to be paying attention to.

Our team has continued to hear life sciences executives talk about how they are planning to shut down parts of their physical campuses, and set up virtual workplaces and remote working programs.

Executives have told us the primary reason driving their creation of virtual workplaces is their need to shrink their cost centers. Training facilities, for instance, are one of the largest cost centers we hear life sciences executives talk about.

Today we announced our partnership with Sify Software Limited

A few weeks ago I gave you a sneak peek into our new partnership with Sify Software Limited, one of the largest managed enterprise and consumer Internet services companies in India. Today we formally announced our agreement on the wire.

We'll be working together to meld ProtoSphere with Sify’s learning and instructional design and systems integration services. The result will be a virtual environment that life sciences companies can use to improve knowledge sharing, increase knowledge retention, and boost employee performance.

Here's our press release with more details on how we'll be working together and what it means for life sciences companies.

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ProtonMedia and Sify Sign Technology and Services Agreement

Partnership to deliver next-gen virtual learning and training solutions to global life sciences companies

LANSDALE, Pa.--(BUSINESSWIRE)--ProtonMedia and Sify Software Limited today announced a new technology and services agreement that will bring collaborative learning and training solutions to global life sciences companies and other such global organizations worldwide. Under the terms of the agreement, e-Learning Customers will now be able to meld ProtonMedia's virtual collaboration environment called ProtoSphere, with Sify's learning and instructional design and systems integration services to create a secure and virtual environment that will that help improve knowledge sharing, increase knowledge retention, and boost employee performance.

See the latest in virtual learning centers at The Society of Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers 2011 Conference

How would you like to experience first-hand how you can use a virtual immersive environment for life sciences training? Your opportunity to do so is coming up May 11 at The Society of Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers (SPBT) 2011 Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla.

That's when I'll be joining David Werboff, Director, eLearning solutions at Informa Training Partners, to present the Instructional Design Strategies in a Virtual World workshop. David has expertise in a broad range of development technologies, media, and delivery platforms, along with extensive experience in instructional design and quality-centered development processes.

The workshop will show life sciences trainers how they can use virtual immersive environments to hold instructor-led training sessions.

Benefits of this approach will also be brought to the fore, including cost and travel reductions, productivity increases, and improved knowledge sharing and knowledge retention. We'll analyze this approach in contrast to PowerPoint-based lecture and passive, non-interactive, push-down of content to learners online.

Web conferencing is a piece, not the whole pie

It's increasingly apparent that basic Web conferencing (from companies such as WebEx and GoToMeeting) is becoming a free commodity that isn't highly valued anymore as a standalone product.

I recently read about a new AMI-Partners report on eWeek that found more than 25 percent of small businesses in the U.S. would deploy unified communications integrated with SaaS offerings as paid services, if they were available from a single provider.

These companies are looking for not just a communications tool, but rather a communications and collaboration technology solution set. While this study looked at small businesses, we're seeing a similar trend happening among large companies and institutions as well.

In ProtonMedia's experience with life sciences companies, for instance, we're finding employees and physicians increasingly want to be able to choose how they communicate and collaborate. As I touched upon in the comment I left on the eWeek article, Web conferencing is just one of many ways they're looking to do this.

They also want to be able to share and collaboratively edit documents, voice chat, text chat, etc. -- all from one user interface. Providing this context to communications is the driver of the features and functionality we continue to bake into ProtoSphere.

The end game is a way to communicate and collaborate around a unified learning experience. For instance, KOL activities, knowledge transfer, scientific data exchange, e-Learning, compliancy, and onboarding, as well as R&D collaboration. In these situations, we let users capitalize on multiple data feeds and content in a visual environment that fosters social engagement around the topics of interest.

But more than that, we help them separate the signal from the noise. It's one thing to provide people with access to lots of data. It's another thing to provide an environment where they're able to focus on the data that matters to them and make informed decisions as a result.

Writer Nathan Eddy cites some other examples of this trend in his article, and provides some analysis of what it means for companies. Click over to eWeek to read more. Thanks for the coverage, Nathan.

Life sciences compliance training gains a new dimension

Many of our life sciences customers use ProtoSphere for KOL sessions and other learning and training activities. They also often use Kaplan EduNeering's ComplianceWire learning management system for compliance training.

One request they brought to us was to provide a way to track the attendance and progress of physicians who were participating in KOL sessions in ProtoSphere. They wanted to be able to confirm that physicians reviewed certain materials and were certified in particular procedures.

At the same time, they wanted to augment their ComplianceWire courseware with the ability to seamlessly share, discuss, and collaborate on their course materials and learnings in ProtoSphere.

We began working with Kaplan EduNeering to develop a way to integrate our technologies, and marry secure compliance training with live, virtual collaboration. Our goal was to develop a virtual workplace that lets life sciences companies collaborate across every stage of their product life cycle, while meeting compliancy standards.

I'm excited to tell you our solution is now available. We've combined Kaplan EduNeering's ComplianceWire with ProtoSphere to create a new way for life sciences organizations to meet regulatory and compliance regulations.

You can now schedule, launch, and track ProtoSphere virtual meetings, conferences, and other learning sessions using ComplianceWire. In addition, you can access, share, and collaborate on ComplianceWire courseware, SOPs, other materials in ProtoSphere.

Together, the technologies give companies a secure way to add live, virtual collaboration and learning events to their online compliance training curricula, improving colleague interaction and knowledge transfer without the costs and time of travel.

We issued a press release announcing the integration with more details on how you can use ProtoSphere together with ComplianceWire. If you have any questions, would like to learn more, or want to see a demo, feel free to ping us.

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ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere Now Integrated with Kaplan EduNeering’s ComplianceWire

Joint solution helps life sciences companies foster product life cycle collaboration within research, development, production, marketing, and customer engagement

LANSDALE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ProtonMedia and Kaplan EduNeering have integrated their technologies to create a new way for life sciences organizations to meet regulatory and compliance regulations. The companies have combined ProtonMedia’s ProtoSphere virtual immersive environment with Kaplan EduNeering’s ComplianceWire learning management system. With this integration, companies can now schedule, launch, and track ProtoSphere virtual meetings, conferences, and other learning sessions from ComplianceWire. In addition, companies can access, share, and collaborate on ComplianceWire courseware, SOPs, other materials in ProtoSphere. The result gives companies a secure way to add live, virtual collaboration and learning events to their online compliance training curricula, improving colleague interaction and knowledge transfer without the costs and time of travel.

E-learning's biggest mistake

In this weekend's New York Times, author and professor Randall Stross wrote an article raising two concerns he sees facing education. First, that he and his fellow professors will be out a job if education is boiled down to the bare essentials of an automated program that a computer can run like an MP3 file.

Stross's larger point is that we need to keep human instructors involved in online courses, stating that fully automated courseware cannot do what real live instructors can do. "Those relationships -- with humans in the flesh -- help students to persevere. Online courses are notorious for high dropout rates."

I'd like to take Randall's argument one step further. The problem I see with fully automated courseware is that it far too often takes content out of context. When you take content out of a classroom or other learning setting, you take it out of the context in which it's intended to be learned.

When a student needs help understanding a concept, for instance, they usually seek out their teacher and talk to them. That's how knowledge is traditionally transferred. It happens within the context of the situation or problem.

This concept extends to business. Here's how.

E-learning's costly error

If you want to learn how to do something related to your job, you probably seek out a coworker that's done it before, and ask them about it. However, in business, our efforts to learn fall flat when we try to transfer knowledge or collaborate using only a document management system (such as SharePoint or Documentum). This is because we are taking content out of context.

Knowledge sharing and collaboration are not simply a knowledge repository. They are processes that require a place where you bring up documents from knowledge repositories, and instructors, SMEs, KOLs, etc. bring context to that content.

Why face-to-face meetings are here to stay

Sure we're advocates of virtual meetings. But we're not foolish enough to think a day will come -- soon or ever -- when face-to-face meetings go away. That's just not going to happen. And the reasons are simple.

They are absolutely the best way to build relationships and a sense of community, create and mold a culture, foster team spirit, motivate and recognize workers, and drive that overall deep connection at the core of our being.

We work our best when we're connected, in sync, and supporting one another's efforts. But those face-to-face work sessions we rely upon are coming at significantly increasing costs.

Therein lies the challenge statement. How do we remain connected, leverage those relationships, grow productivity (individual and collective), increase collaboration, and sustain the overall interactive goodness in a cost-conscious environment?

These opposing forces -- cost reductions and increasing collaboration -- place a premium on sustainability, a best practice designed to reinforce, protect, preserve, and expand upon the value gained by every in-person meeting.

Having face-to-face meetings without a sustainability plan is wasteful, leading to fleeting knowledge, transient understanding, countless repetition and do-overs, vanishing returns, and lost value. And that's where a virtual collaboration platform comes to the fore.

Highly interactive virtual meetings are an effective means of mastering initiatives launched in face-to-face meetings, such as new materials, approaches, and skills. They allow each participant to maintain and even expand the sense of connection, camaraderie, comprehension, interaction, and contribution, while delivering sustainability.

How? Virtual meetings enable us to communicate and collaborate in ways that enhance what we do in person. Take two examples of typical meetings held in a virtual immersive environment.

1) In advance of a face-to-face meeting, virtual meeting(s) effectively build anticipation, interest, preparation, and excitement.

2) After a face-to-face meeting, forming virtual team and special-purposed subject matter rooms, coupled with 24/7 persistence of content, provides a place to reinforce, practice, and continue skills development, as well as openly discuss and share ideas.

Given today's constant pressures to reduce costs, more face-to-face meetings are just not a valid option. Reducing the number and/or duration of face-to-face meetings creates risk to overall effectiveness, and is an equally invalid option.

The truth is, in-person and virtual meetings both have their own merits and advantages. Perhaps that's why so many companies are integrating virtual meetings with their in-person meetings. Some tasks are better accomplished in person. Others are more effectively sustained and achieved virtually.

Merging both in a cohesive strategy can bring synergistic value. Each type of meeting can increase the effectiveness of the other.

Face-to-face meetings are more effective when the pre and post activities surrounding it directly support and sustain the messages and materials discussed.

Virtual meetings benefit from the relationships and initial sense of connection built during face-to-face encounters. A virtual environment's 24/7 accessibility and persistence of content bring a level of convenience and ease to planned and serendipitous meetings that, even with unlimited funding and travel privileges, cannot be achieved with in-person meetings.

In today's competitive and cost-sensitive world, moving forward with a single meeting methodology limits the value and advantages that can be achieved compared to a well-thought-out strategy combining and leveraging both face-to-face and virtual sessions.

How to make virtual speaker programs work

Speaker programs are down 30 percent or more at most pharma companies.

Like many aspects of life sciences today, speaker programs are being cut due to budgetary constraints and the tightening regulatory landscape.

I read a recent article by Bill Cooney in PharmaExec that highlighted this trend, reporting that speaker program activity is down 30 percent or more at most pharmaceutical companies.

Many of the figures and trends that Bill reports align with what we're seeing among the life sciences companies we work with. Travel and logistics costs for remote speaker events are a major area of spend that companies are taking a big ax to.

Access to subject matter experts for in-person events is also becoming increasingly difficult due to new regulations that curtail potential for conflicts of interest between doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

For instance, states such as Massachusetts and Vermont ban medical device companies from giving physicians most gifts, including compensation for their travel, lodging, and meals. And if the pending Physician Payment Sunshine Act (PPSA) is passed, it would require medical product companies in all states to report physician payments and gifts worth more than $10.

These factors are driving some life sciences companies to hold speaker programs virtually. It can significantly reduce or eliminate travel costs, and it can be inherently compliant with transfer of value regulations, such as compensation for meals.

In his article, Bill discusses some ways for making virtual speaker programs work. He highlights the importance of sharing content that addresses evidence-based medicine and other clinical topics, and having strong sales force support.

I agree with Bill's advice. We're seeing similar takeaways among the life sciences companies we're working with. I'd encourage you to flip over to Bill's article for his details on these points.

We're also seeing a few other best practices emerging among our customers in this arena that I thought would be great to share. Here are some things they've told us have contributed to making their virtual speaker programs work:

Use a platform that supports high interactivity and engagement. You could say I'm biased because I am with a technology vendor. However, I'm mentioning this point not to plug our product, but because it's something we've heard from many of our customers. The technology decision is crucial to successful virtual speaker programs. Our customers have found it's important to use a technology that's not too complicated, and that provides a high level of interactivity and engagement. This helps foster adoption of the platform, and enables them to meet their objectives of improved knowledge sharing and knowledge retention.

Hold internal sales meetings in the platform. One of the best ways to teach your sales force how to use the new technology is to hold internal meetings in the same platform you're holding outbound KOL and SME activities. This helps the sales team become very familiar with the tool for their own training and internal communications, so they are knowledgeable of the platform when they use it with their customers.

Integrate virtual activities into a holistic events program. We're seeing our customers build integrated events programs comprised of both virtual and in-person events, depending on their business need and the task at hand. For instance, some are finding their virtual environment works well for quick product updates and other more frequent touches. From a time and cost perspective, it's a no-brainer to get 12, 15, or 20 people together in a virtual space for an interactive training update or survey, as opposed to making plans to fly them to a remote location, coordinating their schedules, booking flights/hotels, etc.

Bring organizational knowledge into the environment. Our customers are integrating content, most notably SharePoint resources, into their virtual environment. SharePoint is becoming the standard for document management in life sciences, if it hasn't already. Sharing and collaborating on these resources is a crucial part of KOL and SME programs, making it an imperative to have them available in their virtual workplace.

Measure results and make adjustments. Our customers are showing a high level of interest in surveying to understand what worked and what didn't with their virtual speaker program approaches. We're seeing more customers use the polling function in ProtoSphere, which can be customized with a series of questions to gather information on user experience and feedback. This information is crucial to improving their virtual speaker programs.

These are the some of the common pieces of feedback we're hearing from our customers. If you've participated in a virtual speaker program, what have you found to work and not work? Anything you'd recommend?

New white paper: Life sciences training scenarios in virtual immersive environments

We've put together a new white paper for life sciences trainers to help them better understand how they can use virtual immersive environments to provide more effective training programs to their organization in less time and for less cost.

"How Virtual Immersive Environments (VIEs) Address Learning Challenges in Life Sciences" is packed with specific, detailed scenarios of how trainers can use VIEs to hold key opinion leader meetings, conduct scientific poster sessions, share clinical study research, and more.

It's penned by Brian Miller, Learning Strategy and Technology Consultant for Learning Mind. Brian has worked in the corporate learning and development industry for 17 years, nine of which he spent in pharmaceuticals. He's held a range of roles through his career, including trainer, instructional designer, e-learning developer, project manager, senior-level learning manager, and strategic consultant.

Through the scenarios he paints in his white paper, Brian underscores how virtual immersive environments can help trainers improve knowledge sharing, knowledge retention, and real-time collaboration. It's worth a read for anyone interested in gaining a grasp of the benefits virtual immersive environments can bring to not only life sciences companies, but many other enterprises as well.

You can download it for free now. And if you have questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.

ProViWo research update: the transcript

Earlier this week we posted our latest podcast with Dr. Petra Bosch, a professor at Aalto University who is studying the use of professional virtual worlds with her colleague, Dr. Anu Sivunen. The first phase of their research project, "ProViWo," is now complete, and we learned about what they studied and their findings. If you'd rather read through our interview, here's the complete transcript, proofed for clarity.

Virtual worlds' challenges and benefits found in ProViWo phase one research

Back in March, we interviewed Dr. Petra Bosch-Sijtsema about her new research project, which is studying how virtual worlds can be used for professional collaboration, and whether virtual worlds can enhance productivity in globally distributed teams. It's aptly dubbed Professional Collaboration and Productivity in Virtual Worlds (ProViWo).

At the time, Dr. Bosch and her colleague, Dr. Anu Sivunen, were in the midst of the initial phase of their research, looking at how companies in the U.S., Asia, and Europe were using virtual worlds for business.

That phase is now complete. All told, they interviewed 44 professionals at companies using virtual worlds, including those in the high-tech, energy, pharmaceutical, and medical industries. They focused their interviews on the challenges and benefits of virtual worlds adoption, and unearthed some interesting discoveries which Dr. Bosch was kind enough to share with us in a podcast.

Hit play below to catch our most recent interview with Dr. Bosch, where we learn about how her first research phase went, what she and Dr. Sivunen found, and what's next for the project.



They're working on publishing their initial findings in research journals, and we'll let you know when that becomes available. We'll be continuing to follow their progress, so keep your eyes on our blog for the latest on ProViWo.

Enterprises seeking to add the human factor back to training

One of the things that has been coming out of some recent customer conversations I've been a part of is how to leverage employees' "tribal knowledge." This is a fancy way of describing their experience and history at the organization. How can we share that with new, younger employees?

For example, I was talking to a customer who has been told explicitly by the younger crowd that they often learn more from their older, more experienced colleagues through live classroom training sessions, compared to taking e-learning courses by themselves.

They're finding in-person teaching is a more effective way to share, gain, and retain knowledge than the individualized, more "self-taught" approaches that you get from e-learning programs.

Our customer's concern is that the industry's transition to solo e-learning-style training will hamper knowledge transfer overall. Some of the risks they see include resistance to change; elimination of most of the social contact and interactions; lack of direct mentoring, coaching, and leadership; and increased sense of remoteness and disconnect.

About 10 years ago, we saw the pendulum swing from a focus on classroom-based instruction, to a focus on e-learning-based instruction. This removed live, human interaction (or human factor, as we've referred to it on our blog). Now customers are asking us how they can get that back.

Meanwhile, they have tightly managed travel and venue budgets, and/or their training facilities have been recently shut down or turned into cubicle farms.

It's clear that trainers are seeking to put the human factor back into training and add socialization to the classroom, while putting a lid on travel costs. Effective knowledge transfer and knowledge retention simply can't happen without the human element.

Four things killing collaboration in the enterprise

If you have a knowledge-based position -- research and development, engineering, etc. -- you'd probably agree that collaboration is more important to your job than ever. Your assignments and projects require knowledge and resources from your colleagues. You can't work in a vacuum.

Yet, we continue to face barriers to collaborating and communicating across countries, states, cities, and heck, from one cubicle to another. Why?

Knowledge management blogger Luis Suarez points to these three reasons in a recent article.

• Recognizing individual performance vs. team/community performance
• Lack of long term vision
• Lack of education

They are valid responses, and I encourage you to swing over to his article to read them through. I won't recap them here.

But I'll add bullet #4. Collaboration has long been the Holy Grail of information technology. Yet IT vendors have not done a great job of delivering on the promise of collaborative tools. (By the way, I originally left this as a comment on the article, but I haven't seen it show up yet, so I thought I'd publish it as a blog post instead. My apologies if it shows up. Trust me, I'm not trying to duplicate content! ;-))

How many of us remember groupware in the '90s? It ended up costing organizations a ton of money, a ton of time, and never really delivered on the promise of empowering the collaborative workforce.

We have an opposite problem today. Thanks to the availability of a global network -- the Internet -- sharing information has become easier. A lot easier. But sharing isn't collaboration. It's just the first step on the road to real collaboration.

In the past few years, we've seen an explosion of tools that try to tackle the challenges of collaboration … everything from screen, app, and file sharing (think WebEx and such); app/data-sharing platforms like Google Apps, Google Docs, Zoho Office, etc.; huge "science experiments" like Google Wave (which few people find usable or comprehensible); and extremely narrow conversational tools like Yammer, that attempt a social spin on collaboration.

But again, the emphasis is on sharing of apps, data, and posts, as opposed to true collaboration that actually occurs in the real world. In the end, the application requirement remains unmet.

There doesn't seem to be a real clear-cut course or process or platform that really fosters collaboration. In the knowledge management space in particular, you could say the applications have historically been siloed, and under the auspices of the anointed KM experts who vet and control the flow of information. Not exactly collaborative.

I don't think the answer rests in any given application vertical, such as desktop apps or enterprise social networking or KM. Rather, I think we need new virtual collaborative environments within which businesses use these apps. Today the forefront of that type of thinking is occurring around telepresence, the 3-D Internet, and virtual business environments.

We're seeing real metrics that show teams going beyond sharing, to where they are accelerating collaborative decision-making, and making knowledge transfer as efficient as the real world. The end result is what Gartner defines as the "high-performance workplace."

Application requirement met, but not perfectly; at least, not yet. The challenge here remains connecting the sum total of organizational knowledge that's trapped in myriad legacy and contemporary platforms, from mainframes to SharePoint, and making it actionable in a unified way. We're certainly getting closer, but there remains work to be done, even for the most advanced systems.

Reexamining CIOs' priority on virtual collaboration

The video conferencing market grew 30 percent last year, as reported by Sramana Mitra in this recent Forbes article. As regular readers of this blog know, whenever I see news about telepresence, I feel compelled to respond. ;) I shared my views on this in a comment on the article. What do you think? Post your thoughts here, or better yet, over at the Forbes piece.

Collaboration Advantages of 3-D Virtual Immersive Environments, by Karl Kapp

You might have noticed the button on the side of our blog where you can download a new white paper by Karl Kapp. His piece, Collaboration Advantages of 3-D Virtual Immersive Environments, discusses global industry's increasing focus on collaboration.

He details the elements of successful collaboration, and how 3-D virtual immersive environments (VIEs) can help organizations share content, generate ideas, and solve problems across geographically dispersed teams. Karl's white paper covers the bases regarding the benefits of virtual immersive environments, and it's well-worth a read.

Also, feel free to share the white paper with others. But please, if you could, share the download link, rather than forwarding the white paper itself around. As you might already realize, we're trying to collect the e-mail addresses of those interested in this subject matter, so we can better understand the market for immersive environments and what's driving interest.

So without further ado, enjoy Karl's white paper!

KAPPTURED: Karl Kapp covers the benefits of VIEs

Tandberg's desktop video conferencing tool: Once telepresence, always telepresence

CAMERA READY? Many enterprise users say no

I don't really have an axe to grind with Tandberg. But it just seems every time I see news about Tandberg and the way it sells video, my alarm bells go off.

So with apologies and all due respect to the good folks at Tandberg, I really need to respond to their recent announcement.

The company released desktop telepresence solution, EX90 the other week. I have two main thoughts on it.

First off, it might be a step in the right direction as far as enterprise collaboration goes. Any tool that reduces costs and increases efficiency can be advantageous for enterprise users.

But it still doesn't solve the broad distribution and enterprise penetration issue surrounding telepresence. At the risk of being repetitive, there are a lot of reasons I don't see all employees in an organization using video every time they want to collaborate. Rather than rehash all my viewpoints, I'll refer you back to some of my previous posts on telepresence.

This also brings to mind an article written by Kishore S. Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at Accenture. He penned a piece for the company's Outlook journal last month, saying, "Now, a new medium, the videoconference, is rapidly emerging as an important way for executives to communicate with their employees, upper management and customers. By understanding the medium and mastering its dynamics, you can significantly improve your effectiveness as an executive."

Dr. Petra Bosch on her ProViWo research project, in her own words

Last week we posted our podcast interview with Dr. Petra Bosch about her latest research project, Professional Collaboration and Productivity in Virtual Worlds (ProViWo). If you're at work right now and unable to pipe sound from your speakers, or if you would rather read through the interview, you're in luck. We've had it transcribed. The transcript includes the complete interview between Dr. Bosch and our blogger Janelle, proofed for clarity.

ProViWo research project: How virtual worlds can be used for professional collaboration

Dr. Petra Bosch

Virtual worlds might traverse the globe, but I've found that they can still fit under a microscope. A virtual microscope, if you will. (What else would you expect anyway? ;-))

Dr. Petra Bosch-Sijtsema and her colleague, Dr. Anu Sivunen, are leading a new research project that studies how virtual worlds can be used for professional collaboration, and if virtual worlds can enhance productivity in globally distributed teams.

They've dubbed their project Professional Collaboration and Productivity in Virtual Worlds (ProViWo). Janelle talked to Dr. Bosch recently about it, and we wanted to share their conversation with you in a podcast.



The project is based out of Aalto University in Finland, where Dr. Bosch and Sivunen are researchers, and is being conducted in close corporation with Stanford University here in the U.S.

Dr. Anu Sivunen

Drs. Bosch and Sivunen began their study in fall 2009, so they're still in their initial research phase. Right now they're interviewing a spectrum of companies that are using virtual worlds.

Eventually, they'll explore managerial and user perspectives on virtual worlds at work, and the various collaboration and productivity possibilities. They aim to complete their project in 2012.

If you're interested in exploring virtual worlds for your company, if you've already deployed one, or if you just want to keep up with the latest industry research developments, I'd encourage you to take a listen to Janelle and Dr. Bosch's podcast.

We hope to follow Drs. Bosch and Sivunen throughout their project, so watch the blog for an update on their progress.