Integration of Sna in a Mixed Evaluation Approach for the Study of Participatory Aspects of Collaboration

The study of collaborative action under a situated perspective demands the adoption of an interpretative framework in which social network analysis (SNA) is combined with other methods of analysis, in order to gain insight into the processes being studied. Additionally, the complexity of CSCW situations demands the use of distinct sources of data as the input of the analysis. We introduce our proposal of a mixed method for the formative evaluation of participatory aspects of collaboration, which defines how to integrate SNA with other analysis perspectives. This method is supported by a set of tools. We will briefly introduce one of them, called SAMSA, that has been developed in order to adapt the SNA-related procedures to the demands of evaluators, who are not expected to be SNA experts. We also discuss about future work plans related to the application of SNA modules for introducing on-line collaboration support functions in CSCW or CSCL systems.