Computer-Supported Cooperative Work – Revisited

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 lockdowns and the related mandated work for home, we have seen a massive increase of the use of collaboration tools in various work settings in the last 18 months. Whereas this might have been a new terrain for some, IT-supported work and the related research domain Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) have been around for decades. In this article we briefly review what CSCW has to offer for the currently increasing demand in setting up remote collaboration – and share our own observations about what happened when collaboration tools have been introduced in the pandemic. As a summary, we present some learnings from the experience – both for the current state of CSCW research and for future work.