I mentioned some of the features of Collaboration, or Teamwork, in my last post, so I’ll go into a little more detail in this one. This is the back-end of Collaboration, the work that goes on between the members of the creative team.

Centrality is in the server, not the group.

Because the Composica application sits on a central server, multiple people can be logged in and working on a single project at the same time. Working on the project really only requires a computer connected to the Internet, a login and password, and a web browser. So your group doesn’t even need to be in the same building, let alone the same country.

The Dashboard is group central and very interactive.

When you first log in to Composica, you’ll be logged on to your group or company Dashboard. Here you can see which other team members are logged in, your pending tasks, your available projects, recently edited documents, internal blog posts and comments, system news, your personal notes, outside links associated with your projects, and a tag cloud so you can find your projects by description.

The Chat Interface is your friend.

To chat with a team member, just click on the chat icon which is the little picture of a person with the cartoon bubble in the toolbar or the status bar. This feature functions just like an instant messaging window in any other application. You can even have group chats. If important things were said during the chat, you can save it and it will be listed on the Dashboard so that you can reference it again later.

Blog those big ideas of your project then watch them get shot down in the comments.

That’s a given, of course some ideas are going to get shot down. But there will be lots of opportunity to write positive comments about great ideas too. It’s the heart of collaborative work. Once you pick which project you are working on in the Dashboard, you can add blog posts and comments to the group blog that can be read by the individuals on the team through the Dashboard.

The Task Manager allows you to manage the project without being online 24/7.

Tasks can be assigned to the project as a whole, or a document within the project. They can be sorted with tags and by team member. This allows the Developer to assign tasks and deadlines and point out specific work that needs to be done. Multiple tasks can be assigned to a document, so if there are multiple members working on the page, then there can be multiple task sheets. Team members can also comment on tasks to add more details and keep the group informed of their progress.

Teamwork is golden.

In the end, the team doesn’t need a phone, a fax, FedEx, a printer, and multiple computers within the same office, or even the same time zone, to get an eLearning project completed.

Whew!

Logging into the application as a project developer for the first time is immediately overwhelming. Like most applications these days there are a lot of bells and whistles, and like most applications, Composica has its own sort of language that, once you get into it, is intuitive.

There are a lot of choices to make when beginning the process of designing a project. Choosing backgrounds, templates, color, text styles and then there are photos, videos, blogs, or chat. I was relieved to find out that I can change all that even after starting my project.

As I poked around some more I found that one of the exciting things about this application, and one that the developers also think is exciting, is the element that makes it different from others in this field – its social applications.

Social Media Elements

The social media elements that are found throughout the Composica system are pretty special. You can bring in RSS feeds, incorporate your YouTube videos and external content like your blogs or photographs from another web site. You can use these elements as course content without having to develop it a second time.

Collaboration

Collaboration is another one of these social elements. People, like co-workers or a group of trainers, anywhere in the world, can work together on the project, use real-time chat and blogs to discuss and share any of the elements that were uploaded for the project. This includes source code like Flash files.

Gaming

Gaming is also incorporated with the Sharable Content Object Reference Model or SCORM. There are a few e-learning tools that incorporate games, but none of the others can send that gaming data to the Learning Management System, or LMS, through SCORM. With the ability to create SCORM compliant gaming, Composica allows for a deeper user learning experience and a more fun learning environment.

Interaction

Then, once the project is finished, the students can interact not only with that content, but with the course designers/teachers and with each other to create a very rich experience and allow the course designers to make it even better.

I’m still trying to figure a lot out as Composica is a rich system. I’ll keep you informed on my progress.

But, may I make a suggestion and say that taking some time and going through the tutorial, and getting at least a test idea with some peripherals (text, photos, etc.) together before starting is an excellent way to move forward.