Online collaboration tools for community development: CoalitionsOnline

Two substantial challenges facing community-based health coalitions and programs are the needs to manage significant amounts of information within the organization and to maintain effective communication among members. The goal of this project was to develop and evaluate a set of digital tools, called CoalitionsOnline to support communication and collaboration among community based organizations. The CoalitionsOnline provides low cost, easy to use Web 2.0 tools for conducting threaded discussions, archiving and retrieving messages, managing online work groups, conducting surveys, voting, distributing documents, and conducting training amongst a stakeholder community. As a web based system CoalitionsOnline members can access information and collaborate from any computer connected to the Internet. Computer-mediated-collaboration can foster new forms of interaction by providing the opportunity for people with common interests to connect, overcoming limitations in distance and time. The core of CoalitionsOnline is collaboration software which provides a central, web-based “meeting place” where information can be exchanged, stored and retrieved. It allows information to be communicated easily in a secure extranet environment. CoalitionsOnline is a scalable system that can be used by small and large groups across wide geographic areas. Currently CoalitionsOnlne is being used by community-based research projects, parent support groups, county wide health coalitions, statewide public health organizations, and multi-state health networks. Surveys of organizational performance and social network analysis strategies are being used to provide a detailed analysis of the relationships between the coalition members and among the coalitions and other local and state agencies.