Collective Intelligence and Immersive Visualisation - New Techniques to Facilitate Collaborative Research

With the increased specialisation of academic research, establishing wider connections and collaborations is increasingly difficult. This is compounded by the volume of published research which makes it hard for researchers to keep up with work even within a specialist area, let alone more broadly. Yet, the key importance of interdisciplinary activity is widely recognised. For example, a study carried out by the Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme concluded that “Interdisciplinarity is key to the successful future of TEL research” (Conole et al. 2010). How this issue can be tackled is therefore of considerable importance. Two projects supported by the JISC, the Brain project (2009 to 2011), and the Inspires project (2012), have undertaken a range of work in this area. This paper outlines these activities and describes some of the key outputs produced to facilitate collaboration and collective thinking.