The Pilot Collaboratory is a collaborative project between the DBTAC - Southeast ADA Center, BBI, and Cotelco to explore the impact of a Computer Mediated Communication-based Collaboratory between leadership networks of state and local partners for eight states in the southeast region of the United States that provide training, technical assistance and information on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The Pilot Collaboratory which runs from March through to August will entail the development of a suite of collaboration tools that will support the initiative and comprising of both synchronous and asynchronous applications that use cross-platform, low-bandwidth, and open source software to the greatest extent possible.
While the specific instantiation of this collaboration infrastructure is intended to be dynamic, and evolving through iterative evaluation, the initial technical infrastructure includes;
1) This Content Management System (CMS) to facilitate the people-to-resources component of the collaboratory as a data repository for all the digital artifacts that will be generated by the project (e.g. data sets, drafts of manuscripts, proposals, planning documents, schedules, contact lists, recordings of sessions, photos, working space for teams, and shared calendars).
2) Presence Awareness and Listervs to facilitate people-to-people interaction through easy and regular communication between individual network affiliates and small project teams.
3) Web-conferencing Application to facilitate both people-to-people and people-to facilities with high levels of geographically distributed collaboration creating a rich-media, web-based environment for synchronous communication and collaboration.
The Collaboratory is currently at the intial stage of its introduction and will be using a web-based survey to collect a baseline data on some of the leadership networks.