In a collaborative undertaking, it is common for the individuals involved to have different roles. In addition, there may be different ways of categorizing and understanding such roles. This case study will look at roles from two perspectives:

Team Roles

In a successful collaboration, there is usually planning process that translates high-level shared goals into a set of specific and concrete subgoals. To achieve these subgoals, individuals take on sets of responsibilities. These responsibilities can remain essentially the same throughout the collaboration, or they can change frequently. In most cases, they will fall somewhere between the two poles of static and dynamic. In addition, there is a continuum along which responsibilities can vary from being precisely defined to more fluid in nature. When responsibilities are reasonably well-defined and static within some time frame, the sets of responsibilities individuals take on can be considered to define their role within the team. How this worked specifically for the FVHS Mock Trial Team is discussed in Team Roles.

User Roles

Within the collaborative space created by using an application such as Google Apps, individuals may have differing access and control for areas and objects within that space. In addition, within a given sphere of access and control, individuals may differentiate themselves by their manner and degree of use. This application-centric way of looking at the FVHS Mock Trial Team is discussed in User Roles.