Collaboration Forums- Presentation and Sharing

The factor of collaboration within a workplace is beneficial for both the employees and business in that the interactions result in sharing ideas, thinking, negotiating, and operating towards succeeding through design of a project or mission.

Technology has evolved work tasks and connections in providing positions both locally and remote. Remote positions involve employees being geographically dispersed in locations and time zones. Collaboration forums help bring all employees together despite limitations of locations and time. These forums provide features of video conferences, telephone communications, file sharing, virtual presentation boards, and cloud-sharing work spaces.

There is also opportunity for the collaboration room to be structured with a presenter towards a viewing audience. There are special features such as synchronized slide control between the presenter and participants for slide changing, scrolling, zooming, cursor positioning, and playback for embedded video/audio links. Also a feature for online annotation to allow the presenter to write using a pen function within the slide presentation to record notes during collaboration meetings. Participants can also implement screen or document sharing during meetings. Platforms like WebELS provide these features to be utilized in higher education classrooms with virtual presentation sharing boards. (Berena, Chunwijitra, Okada, & Ueno, 2013). These platforms can also be utilized in corporate facilities when presenting new curriculum, trainings, or company wide-policies.

“Coming together is a beginning. Staying together is progress. And working together is success.”- Henry Ford

Resource Links to Collaboration Forums for Global-Wide Connections

The work place may provide an in-network collaboration forum for employees. However, in terms of connections outside of the business, there is free software offered to make connections. This is even beneficial when collaborating with professionals in the same career field or in online educational courses. With each resource provided below, is a brief summary of the options.

1) Monday.com- This team management tool helps teams manage and execute projects and also tracks the progress through graphic organizers and charts. This forum provides management with contacts, calendars, documents, and tasks. There is a free trial, but to upgrade features there is a payment plan.

2) Airtable- This collaboration platform provides spreadsheets, databases, and ways to input data results from stakeholders in an organized, grid interface. There is also a survey feature for both team members and stakeholders the data is shared with. Airtable is free to utilize for teams of any size and the site also offers paid plans with additional features, storage and support.

3) Clinked- This software works similarly to project management software and permits global-wide access. It allows business employees to work with clients in designated work spaces with equal access to progress towards completions of projects. There are chat features and archives of changes in any projects or work done within the work space. This improves cooperation with the clients and boosts morale for businesses.

*Also referenced on the Collaboration Purpose Page (Zoom, WebEx, and SharePoint)

These links also provide overview to features & videos of free online Collaboration forums:

* https://www.timecamp.com/blog/2018/08/10-best-free-collaboration-software/

* https://www.techradar.com/best/best-online-collaboration-tools

*https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-online-collaboration-software

References

Berena, A. J., Chunwijitra, S., Okada, H., & Ueno, H. (2013). Shared virtual presentation board

for e-meeting in higher education on the WebELS platform. Human-Centric Computing

and Information Sciences, 3(1), 1-17.

doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1186/2192-1962-3-6