How Does Information Management Support Collaboration

Information Management Support for Collaboration and Decision Making Introduction When making a decision, it is extremely important to get as many perspectives of the decision as possible, and that is where a team comes in. Many projects and businesses today are based on the concept of collaboration in order to get the best decisions. Collaboration as defined by Dodgson (1994) is a process of two or more people working together on a particular activity to achieve a desired goal successfully. The vast majority of organizations employ the principle of collaboration in their work environment. They can also collaborate with partners from outside the organization's boundaries. A major factor which can be recognized as having a main effect

The previous aspects should be provided by information management in order to support collaboration effectively. Managers can arrange meetings, conferences and share documents between the organization's employees easily by using technologies such as Google Drive, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, and GroveSite. Technologies such as these have the ability to make the organization more flexible, and that will enhance the cooperation between the workmates to produce more (Beyerlein, Freedman, McGee, & Moran, 2002). For instance, members of a specific project can access the same essential data by using management information systems, even if they are working in different locations. Therefore, information management systems have increased the efficiency and effectiveness of people who are working together to reach

These features should cover all activities that a student in a typical classroom might experience such as asking questions, taking notes, and working in groups (Brindley, Blaschke, & Walti, 2009). An ideal collaboration system for online graduate education must have a knowledge forum which is considered as a database for a specific course. The forum should be divided into categorized sections, so students can post their problems in the appropriate ones. Thus, other students can reach these posts continuously to read, reply, and revise them in order to come up with possible solutions (Gabriel, 2004). Moreover, knowledge forums must have additional interface features that allow students to write their thoughts as annotations or build-on notes. An ideal collaboration system should also support video and audio conferencing to allow professors present lectures and students to participate and ask questions synchronously. Video and audio conferencing features help students who work in group projects to set their meetings remotely. Thus, the expense and time needed for travel is reduced. Video and audio conferencing features should be supported by recording and archiving tools, so students can review the lecture at any time later (Tulane University,