Building Virtual Research Environments and User Engagement
Annamaria Carusi & Marina Jirotka
Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Oxford UK
Email address of corresponding author: Annamaria.carusi@comlab.ox.ac.uk
Virtual Research Environments (VRE) have the potential to re-shape the research landscape at academic institutions. The Virtual Research Environment (VRE) programme is currently underway with the development of 15 VREs that are investigating the development of an infrastructure to support research activities over a wide variety of disciplines ranging from the Arts and Humanities to the Sciences. User engagement in the in these extremely complex domains, as in many other development enterprises is seen as central to project success. In this paper we report on preliminary findings from an ongoing case study into user engagement experiences of the various VRE projects. In particular, findings relate to contextual issues and, most specifically, researchers' understandings and practices of collaboration.
