Asynchronous Messaging!!

To complete a task with contribution from each member, a team needs more than just face-to-face meetings or real time chatting. There needs to be communication where the people involved do not need to be available at the same time and in the same place, that is, non simultaneous. Asynchronous messaging aids this concept with uses of email, fax, weblog and electronic bulletin boards.

“E-mail communication initially mimicked aspects of the memo genre”, with the emergence of the internet, and still using the same principles. (Yates et al, 2008)
Collaborative writing and editing needs tools that will allow copies of documentation to be sent to each team member and therefore can be edited to make multiple versions. The best option for this is email in that the members can save the copies of each document, edit it in their own time and send it to the others.
Email allows copies to be sent to many at the same time, even offering CC and BCC so others can view the emails. There is forwarding and also we can save sent items to keep a copy of what the individual created themselves. Management of documentation is easy with folders and filters.

“…As e-mail captures an increasing share of an organization’s total communication volume, individuals progressively appropriate their e-mail client as a habitat in which they spend most of their work day.” (Ducheneaut, 2001)

It is used very often as a group information management tool to organize information between members. Not only is it used for document exchange, it is also a means for organizing and scheduling meetings. Email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird, have calendar features that coordinate with that. They help to coordinate emails much more efficiently and allow the receiver to be notified instantly if they have received an email. These clients can also allow the user to work offline with the email documents.

There is also web-mail such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. These are email services that are primarily used via internet browser. This allows the user to see their email on any computer as opposed to the email clients.

“…E-mail is now a central medium for document exchange” (Ducheneaut, 2001)

The traditional fax machine consists of a scanner, a modem and a printer. It transmits information to the receiving fax machine through a phone line and then prints out the copy on paper. (Wikipedia, 2008)
Nowadays there is a more modern version of the facsimile- Internet fax. This reduces the cost dramatically. No phone line, no need for an actual fax machine, no ink or paper, just hardcopy of the document transferred.
This form of collaboration and communication only allows for documentation transfer, and a heading. There is not much versatility and extra features to this form of communication like email.
Discussion boards or electronic forums are used extensively in universities and companies. There have been multiple studies that test the effectiveness of using this medium in the light of education purposes. (Mock, 2001)(Yates et al, 2008) (Ellison and Wu, 2008)

These allow threaded discussion and are for users only. These allow for an easy and straightforward way of communicating at different times and places.
The user needs to sign in to website to see the new posts, not personally sent to the individual like emails.

A very popular and new emergence in the Internet world is weblog (blog for short). Not only is it used by individuals to post anything they would like on the internet but also used as a medium for constant communication on a specific topic/task.
“The features of a weblog include instant publishing of text or graphics to the Web without the user’s need for sophisticated programming knowledge, and mechanisms with which people may provide comments or feedback to each weblog post.”(Chuang, 2008)
Multiple academic papers have studied and written about weblogs other than Chuang (Ellison and Wu, 2008) (Yates et al, 2008)

Blogs allow hyperlinks to others’ blogs and other internet sites therefore allowing a direct connection to other contacts. This is the only asynchronous medium mentioned here that can also be public.

The problem of synchronization is dissolved as the members can decide when and where they will process the information. Therefore asynchronous mediums such as email, fax, discussion forums and weblogs are just as useful and efficient as any other collaborative medium.

References

JoAnne Yates, Wanda J Orlikowski, Anne Jackson. (2008). The Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media. MIT Sloan Management Review, v.49 n.2, p.63-69. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database.

Nicolas Ducheneaut ,Victoria Bellotti. (Sept./Oct. 2001). E-mail as habitat: an exploration of embedded personal information management. Interactions, v.8 n.5, p.30-38. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/382899.383305

Nicole B Ellison, Yuehua Wu. (2008). Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, v.17 n.1, p.99-122. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from Academic Research Library database.

Hsueh-Hua Chuang (2008) Perspectives and issues of the creation for weblog-based electronic portfolios in teacher education.British Journal of Educational Technology, v.39 n.1, p.170–174. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library

Kenrick Mock. (December, 2001).The use of internet tools to supplement communication in the classroom. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v.17 n.2, p.14–21. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library.

Wikipedia.com, (2008). Internet Fax. Wikpedia, the free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_fax. Retrieved March 26, 2008.