Thinklets for E-Collaboration

Abstract

A ThinkLet is a named, scripted collaborative activity that gives rise to a known pattern of collaboration among people working together toward a goal. ThinkLets are design patterns for collaborative work practices (Briggs, Kolfschoten, Vreede, & Dean, in press; Briggs & Vreede, 2001). A thinkLet is the smallest unit of intellectual capital necessary to recreate a known pattern of collaboration. ThinkLets are used by facilitators and collaboration engineers as (1) predictable building blocks for collaboration process design, (2) as transferable knowledge elements to shorten the learning curve of facilitation techniques, and (3) by researchers as parsimonious, consistent templates to compare the effects of various technology-supported collaboration practices. ThinkLets have a rigorous documentation scheme that specifies the information elements needed to adapt the solution it embodies to the problem at hand. This scheme is derived from the design pattern concept of Alexander (1979; Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson, Fiksdahl-King, & Angel, 1977). The collection of thinkLets forms a pattern language for creating, documenting, communicating, and learning group process designs. The term thinkLet was coined by David H. Tobey in 2001 when he said “They are like applets…except they are thinkLets.”