Decisions are increasingly being made by teams rather than individuals. Globalization, network centricity, massive information availability and distributed knowledge are drivers for this evolution. The challenge in understanding the mechanics of team decision making is the lack of effective measurement tools. Collaboration and Knowledge Interoperability (CKI) investigates the metrics needed and the processes involved in how teams build actionable knowledge.
Metrics will be empirically validated through testbed-collected performance data using appropriate quick-response scenarios. End products will be methods, tools and agents for improved computer supported collaborative learning and extensible measures of team collaboration effectiveness, team synchronization and overall team performance.
Select CKI technology capabilities include:
EWALL - The electronic card wall is a web-based visual tool for brainstorming and problem solving. It provides a computational process for mental model construction and convergence. It will enable people quickly to view, collect, organize, and communicate large amounts of information and will facilitate collaboration in decentralized teams across organizational boundaries.
COMTC - Communication in Team Cognition, the application of communication analysis to measure shared understanding in distributed collaborative decision-making situations with the objective of assessing and predicting of team performance.
SLATE - Shared Lightweight Annotation Technology, which will develop a collaboration and communication system that can be used by geographically dispersed teams for maintaining shared situation awareness of dynamically changing situations and unfolding operations.