Setting the Stage: Terms, Concepts, and Virtual Organizations

A growing component of scholarly activity entails groups of faculty, students, or researchers collaborating online.These clusters of colleagues, called virtual organizations (VOs), can be characterized by working together across multiple independent, physical institutions; sharing distributed computer, information, and instrumentation resources; and needing multiple methods of collaboration. Higher-education and related institutions provide locales for work, often own the expensive shared resources, and typically provide infrastructure and tools for intrainstitutional collaboration.For VOs to be effective, they must be able to rely on institutional services. Reliance presents challenges to both VO organizers and institutional IT architects, raising difficult issues at both technical and policy levels. This session offers an introduction to concepts and issues in the integration of virtual organizations and relevant campus infrastructures.