School boards turn to 'groupware' for brainstorming

By Kevin Bushweller

Imagine a school board meeting that is nearly silent, except for the rapid tapping of fingers on computer keyboards. In this meeting, nonverbal cues are virtually meaningless because everyone remains anonymous. So, there are no visible emotions and no fiery debates for the public to watch, but the audience is free to request printouts of the discussion.

Such a scene might appear futuristic. But groupware--a type of software designed to improve the efficiency of meetings and the flow of information in organizations--is making such meetings possible right now.

At first glance, the software, which is designed for such tasks as group editing of reports and holding meetings long distance, appears to be somewhat dehumanizing. And educators who have tried it say it can have such an effect if it's overused. Yet paradoxically, the technology--which hit the corporate sector before recently catching on in schools--can also have just the opposite impact: It can create an environment in which people feel more comfortable expressing themselves.

That was the case in Jefferson County, Colo., where board president Nancy McNally turned to groupware in desperation. Personality conflicts and differences of opinion on the board had grown so heated, McNally says, that shouting matches were not uncommon; bad feelings had grown so intense that board members would feel physically sick during meetings.

"I had board members who just as well could have killed one another as work with one another," McNally says. "It got so bad that we were told publicly that we were not good role models for showing kids how to deal with conflict."

Safety in anonymity

After sitting up several nights thinking of ways to create peace on the board, McNally decided to take the board into a school building that has a computer lab with 15 computer stations and a groupware program called Team Focus, developed by IBM and the University of Arizona for use in schools and businesses.

Using the computers, the board's five members sat down one evening and began discussing--via anonymous typed messages--how they should learn to deal with one another. In other words, they were developing norms of behavior. Groupware's anonymity was ideal for her board, McNally says, because the divisiveness was so severe that some board members were likely to discount ideas not on their merits but because of their source.

Even though all the board members were present for the groupware session, McNally says she was not worried about violating open-meeting laws because the board was not voting on policy issues or discussing personnel decisions. The board, she says, was simply searching for ways to improve relations among its members.

But to be on the safe side, McNally invited local newspaper reporters, who monitored the board session. Printouts of the discussion, she says, were also available to the reporters or members of the public at any point in the discussion.

When the two-hour session was completed, the Jefferson County board had developed norms of professional behavior that everyone could live with, McNally says. Copies of those norms are now printed on school board agendas and placed under the microphones of each member at the board table.

"The atmosphere on the board has changed immensely in eight months, and we're actually having fun," says McNally. "I honestly don't know how else we would have done this."

In addition to using groupware to ease divisiveness on the board, McNally says the board has used it to discuss issues with the local teacher's association and to set budget priorities for the schools.

Jefferson County Superintendent Wayne Carle says the school district has used groupware in several other ways as well. For instance, school counselors have used it as a tool for bringing together small groups of kids to discuss sensitive topics such as drug and alcohol abuse. School officials, he says, also use the software to do group editing of reports and documents. Recently, for instance, teams of school people have used groupware to develop content standards for the schools.

A growing market

Industry analysts say the groupware market is exploding, and that means you've got plenty of options should you decide to look into groupware for your district.

The biggest name in groupware is Lotus Development Corp., which produces Lotus Notes and Domino, groupware products with a large market niche in both public schools and the corporate sector. But analysts say Microsoft Exchange and Groupwise by Novell Inc., are challenging Lotus Notes for big chunks of the market. And scores of products from smaller firms are also scrambling for a piece of the action.

Equally important, analysts say, is the growth of organizational intranets, which form networks of data and collaborative capabilities for individual organizations. In a Communications Week story, writer Rivka Tadjer said intranets may prove to be "the real attackers" of standard groupware products such as Lotus Notes and Groupwise.

But Debora Cole, academic marketing manager for Lotus, discounts the claim that the explosion of intranets will hurt Lotus. Rather, she says, organizations will turn to groupware products to dice, slice, analyze, and revise information that is flowing back and forth between people. Without groupware, she says, organizations will be unable to route and analyze group discussions or information as efficiently or intelligently. For instance, she says the North Carolina state education department is using Domino to align state education standards more effectively with classroom lesson plans.

Still, some educators--even those currently using groupware--say they would not be surprised if better and cheaper ways than groupware were found for collaborating electronically.

"An intranet to some degree could replace some of what groupware does,
. . . and we're looking into exploiting that," says Tom Enny, network manager for the Marlboro, N.J., schools, a central New Jersey district with 4,500 students and six school buildings. "The thing to do is ignore the hype and use groupware for what it's good for."

In the Marlboro schools, where Novell's Groupwise is used primarily by administrators, not students, Enny says the program has helped cut the district's paper flow significantly because it eliminates the need for paper memos and documents. Nearly everything can be produced and revised and sent back and forth electronically.

But for practical reasons, Enny's district is switching from Groupwise to Microsoft Exchange, mainly because the district is moving from Novell servers to Windows servers. Still, Enny says he'll keep a critical eye on groupware developments to determine if other changes are necessary.

"You see some of these [groupware] packages, and they're just huge," he says. "They take up so much space, and the licensing is very expensive. I'll just have to keep reading and seeing where things are going."

Screen to screen, or face to face?

Meanwhile, at the New Technology High School in Napa, Calif.--where 3,000 e-mail messages are transmitted around the building each day--school director Mark Morrison is trying to balance the value of using groupware against the need for people to have regular, face-to-face interactions.

"Solving issues digitally is OK for some things," Morrison says. "But for other things, you've got to meet people face-to-face. Otherwise, you run the risk of dehumanizing the building."

New Technology High School--which is part of a partnership with area businesses--uses Lotus Notes and Domino as its groupware products. Morrison says groupware has improved the efficiency of communication in the building because it has helped eliminate unproductive meetings, allowed school administrators to make shared decisions more quickly, and given students immediate and direct access to school administrators and counselors. For instance, students can send messages with important forms or documents appended electronically and can discuss issues such as course requirements via e-mail rather than having to schedule face-to-face meetings to take care of that business.

The Notes program takes attendance for the day as each student logs on to his or her computer. It then immediately takes kids into the lessons they will be responsible for that day.

Furthermore, using Lotus features, parents can access their child's files at school from a computer at home. Parents can see homework assigned for their child that day, or they can view a project their child is working on.

"I'm coming from a traditional high school experience where we didn't have this," says Morrison. "It's been such a significant help to me."

One feature popular among teachers, he says, is "Staff Brainstorming," a bulletin board of ideas that are submitted by teachers and can be read by any teacher from his or her computer. (Ironically, one message posted on the bulletin board recently read, "Debra wants books. She says there's more to history than the Internet.")

As a consequence of these features, Morrison says he spends much less time these days dealing with "staff wish lists" at faculty meetings. "Our faculty meetings now deal with big issues."

-- Kevin Bushweller is a senior editor of Electronic School and The American School Board Journal.