When a team works together on a collaborative grant proposal, each member will bring expertise and past experience in developing this complex text. Online collaborative tools can be used to support this effort, but it is important to understand how team members perceive the tools, the ways they can or should be used, and the impacts of using them. By adapting the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model to this context, we can consider perceived task and technology characteristics, performance impacts, and utilization. Trends can be analyzed regarding the perceived fit of specific online collaborative tools to support collaboration, productivity, and quality of writing. Two online unstructured collaboration tools were used in this mixed-methods study. Perceptions collected from faculty who had used one of the tools in the past to develop a collaborative proposal provided insight into how research teams utilized available resources for this work, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of using similar tools, and what aspects would benefit from further advancement. It was found that use of the tools is generally perceived to impact collaboration and productivity, but there were mixed perceptions whether quality of writing is also impacted. Users felt the tools required different strategies based on communication channels but afforded greater access to information. Users also felt that using the tools required active productivity management but contributed to efficiency gains. Lastly, users felt that the quality of writing might be impacted due to simultaneous activities and time savings, but also that the specific expertise of the team members significantly impacted quality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2020-1750 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Creators | Roney, Joshua |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- |
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