September 3, 2008

Speaker to discuss Internet-based support network for volunteers

Lori Foster Thompson, a visiting professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision, will give a presentation from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Young Hall, Room 447, on the project titled SmartAid: Consultants Without Costs. There will be a one-hour reception after the presentation where Thompson will be available to talk with audience members. The talk is free and open to the public.

Thompson, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, will give the talk with Steve Atkins of the Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, who will be presenting by video from New Zealand.

Thompson said the objective of SmartAid is to improve the quality of decisions made by both online and on-site aid workers, including field engineers. The project involves professors and specialists from about a dozen universities from around the world, including Purdue.

"What we hope to accomplish with this project is to create Internet-based networks of teams that can be utilized after disasters, such as earthquakes or floods," Thompson said. "Sometimes it's not the best use of resources to have every member of the aid team at the site of the disaster. Through e-teams, members could still contribute valuable information without having to travel."

She said e-teams could add significant value to a disaster aid effort by offering technical information, social support and cultural information to those workers on the ground in a foreign country.

"There is so much potential for groups such as retirees, unemployed engineers, stay-at-home parents or those with cultural expertise about a certain country to contribute," Thompson said. "It's all about using what's already there, not reinventing the wheel."

In the future, Thompson, Atkins and their team hope to see a variety of online teamwork-enhancing services, such as training, offered for free to aid and relief agencies already using online volunteers. 

Otago Polytechnic and Dunedin Central Rotary Club, both in New Zealand; North Carolina State University's Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and Purdue's Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision in the College of Technology are providing most of the support for this project.

Thompson will spend September at Purdue, where she will present at the Conference for Collaboration and Innovation, which will be Sept. 14-17. The title of Thompson's presentation will be "Using Virtual Immersive Environments to Promote Distributed Collaborative Learning."

Writer: Kim Medaris, (765) 494-6998, kmedaris@purdue.edu

Sources: Lori Foster Thompson, lfthompson@ncsu.edu

Michael Beyerlein, department head and professor of organizational leadership and supervision, (765) 494-0448, mbeyerle@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page