Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
5
ROTATOR Model: A Framework for Building
Collaborative Virtual Workspaces
Charles J. Lesko Jr, Christine R. Russell and Yolanda A. Hollingsworth
East Carolina University, East Carolina University, Middlesex College
USA
1. Introduction
The impacts of virtual world technologies are beginning to resonate on a global scale. The
recent developments and use of virtual world technologies in the form of virtual
workspaces has demonstrated distinct characteristics and outcomes that can be used to plan
and gauge levels of development and incorporation within a given business process
framework. In supporting business processes, virtual workspaces can provide collaborative
and immersive environments to better enable core business processes over a specified
period of time. Virtual workspaces are particularly valuable today because they can provide
workers with an online collaboration suite with varying levels of functionality that allow
groups of workers to communicate in a highly interactive, self-contained collaborative
workspace.
Recent uses of virtual workspaces have begun to identify some distinct characteristics and
outcomes related to their integration in live working environments. Collectively, these
characteristics and outcomes can be articulated through the identification of various
functional stages that businesses realize to establish and maintain a distinct level of virtual
world collaborative capability. However, to date there is no effective strategic model for
evaluating and planning implementation of virtual workspaces in a business setting. To
frame a discussion on implementation and planning processes for virtual workspaces the
authors are proposing a new systematic model in this paper. This proposed model provides
a staged breakdown outlining the characteristics and functionalities businesses can
currently expect to encounter when implementing virtual workspaces. This proposed model
is referred to herein as the ROTATOR Model.
In a broad sense, the concept of rotation involves having a clear central point that stays
fixed, in this case that fixed point is the process of virtual workplace collaborations and
like any palindrome it can be viewed from either end having movement from real to
virtual with varying degrees of reality and virtualization processes and capabilities
enmeshed in between.
This chapter presents the ROTATOR Model as a proposed framework for managing the
development and implementation of virtual workspaces. The purpose of the ROTATOR
model is to: (1) provide a pragmatic approach for describing various levels of virtual world
application used for implementing virtual workspaces; (2) assist in identifying what level of
