Assignment Eight - Collocation (Katie Dreier)

I had my weekly group meeting yesterday for a project I am working on in another class. This week one of our group members had to join the meeting remotely from home. This was the first time that this meeting had a hybrid configuration as some of us were in the same place but at least one person was not. The three group members in Mann library were looking at one computer screen and our distantly located member had her own computer (let’s call her Sarah); she was connected to us through a video chat and we shared documents using googledocs and basecamp.

Referring to the bos et al. paper, our situation resembled all three of the paper’s hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that “individuals collocated together will interact more with fellow collocators, and form an in-group” (bos 432). This was definitely true. According to the paper, “shared location provides a natural basis for the development of strong subgroup identities because such clusters of people typically enjoy more interaction and share more information” (bos 430). We inherently formed an ‘in-group’ among the group members who were together in the library. Although our fourth member was present through video on the screen, she wasn’t part of all our discussions or actions. It seems we adopted the common tendency to “neglect the out-group” (bos 430) by not including her in every step of our workflow.

Sarah responded to our in-group by forming her own in-group. According to the second hypothesis, this was her “response to exclusion from the collocator in-group” (bos 433). It seems that since she was not in close proximity that Sarah started on her own set of tasks. She would respond to ‘us’ when specifically called upon but otherwise Sarah worked on her own part of the project while the rest of us met. This mutual action allowed all of us to be as productive as possible considering the circumstances.

Bos also hypothesized that “individuals collocated together will outperform isolates because of their advantage in coordination and membership in the collocator in-group” (bos 434). While we were all as productive as possible, it is true the collocated group was more productive as a whole than Sarah. This is because “working in close proximity to others promotes rapid exchange of information and enhanced productivity” (bos 430). Although Sarah could have participated in our conversations, it was easier for her, through video, to merely listen from a distance, interjecting only when called upon. It became clear that she would have been a more vital addition to the group had she been collocated with us.

To improve the experience I would place emphasis on the tasks that were well-supported as opposed to those that were harder to do with Sarah not being collocated. It was easier to look at and edit a googledoc together than it was to have a full conversation. Not everyone fit into the camera’s view and so it was harder to make eye contact and speak with Sarah. If my group had to meet like this again I would make sure that our agenda included tasks that could be supported by googledocs and less supported by video since we seem to have had more trouble with this feature.