The integration of asynchronous and synchronous communication support in cooperative systems

This paper presents the design and a first evaluation of the cooperative system KOLUMBUS 2 that integrates synchronous and asynchronous communication support and the joint work on material. The design is theory driven and bases on context-oriented communication theory and media synchronicity theory. The evaluation revealed mixed acceptance. While the design of KOLUMBUS chat with references, clipboard and list of topics was widely accepted problems occurred with the integration. Based on these results ideas for further improvements arc shown.