Scenario 3: Collaboration You are working on a project that is examining highway and road safety for older adults.

A collaborative group including individuals representing public health (injury prevention) and transportation (traffic engineers) is working to develop guidelines for safer roadways. Over a sixmonth period, the advisory group is tasked with the development of these guidelines. 1. What functionality could technology offer to address the situation presented in the scenario? The individuals who are working on the project need an easy way to share their thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, and resources of information with the other group members. Because of personal time constrains or schedules the capability of an asynchronous characteristic of a tool make it attractive, whereas at the same time they can keep a track of any addition, modification, and comments on the development of the guidelines. Moreover, a tool that does not require any specific training or software is very attractive because no time for training or money is needed. The capability of making comments on a wiki page and including links, documents, or pictures facilitate a comprehensive way of creating a document that needs several data and resources to be reviewed for the final decisions. 2. What specific solution was selected to address the situation presented in the scenario? I suggest wiki as the tool for this scenario. 3. Why was the solution selected? Wiki is an easy and inexpensive tool, no specific training is needed and all group members can provide their input and create a live document for the guidelines that they have to create. 4. What are the Pro's and Con's of using this solution? Pros: Wiki is: Inexpensive Easy to be used without any specific training.

All persons involved in a project can: Cons: Internet access is needed. However, for such collaboration Internet use is required because everyone should review the guidelines document for consensus. The only alternative way could be face-to-face communication or long conference calls, to discuss details, arguments etc. Work whenever they have time Comment on others work without the risk of some of the comments overviewed unintentionally Create several drafts that are easily reviewed without the need of circulating them to everyone Keep a track of all the changes made by the group

Each person has to make his/her contribution and comments on the wiki page document distinct, so the author of each comment and contribution to the document is recognizable by the others. A way that could resolve this problem is by different font color use The wiki page can become very crowded from all different contributions, edits, and comments. However, there are ways to overcome that by creating specific pages for each step of the process of creating a document