THE ROLE OF GROUP SUPPORT TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING THE HEALNET RESEARCH AGENDA

HEALNet, a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence Program, has unde rgone a building exercise to focus and consolidate its research progra m for the 1998 to 2002 funding period. A number of challenges were ide ntified while trying to develop this research agenda within a short ti me frame. These included how to bring together a diverse group of rese archers, ensuring that everyone's voice was heard, and ensuring that t he collective interests were placed ahead of individual interests. Fur thermore, as three separate workshops were being held, a method for qu ickly capturing the workshop output and preparing reports was required . A Group Support System (GSS) was used to facilitate this work and to help meet these challenges. This report describes how the GSS was use d. While the GSS supported brainstorming activities, it was less usefu l in assisting the group in developing the details of research program s. It did facilitate the timely production of reports from the worksho ps. Such systems have a role to play in supporting group work at the i dea generation stage, but further work is required in order for them t o be useful in the development of detailed research programs. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.