A Collaboration Evaluation Framework

This paper presents a conceptual framework and an associated evaluation methodology and metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of collaborative environments, which include physical, organizational, and behavioral as well as technological elements. The framework provides: 1) descriptive dimensions for characterizing the nature of a collaborative process, 2) evaluative metrics regarding how technology fits a collaborative process, and 3) prescriptive guidance on how new technology can be integrated with changes to organizational characteristics to improve the performance to cost ratio. The framework is being applied to research evaluating multi-intelligence collaborative environments.