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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteComputer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is an interdisciplinary research field that studies how computing technologies support, mediate, and affect the ways people work together. It examines both the technology and the social activity around it—not just collaboration software.
What does CSCW cover?
CSCW looks at cooperative activity alongside the systems people use, asking how those systems fit into, shape, or change collaboration. Its scope includes groups, organizations, communities, and networks, across settings such as workplaces, homes, schools, healthcare, the arts, and entertainment. The ACM’s 2026 call for papers describes the field in terms of human-centered research into the design, use, and evaluation of technologies that support or affect collaborative practices.
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Researchers may study communication, coordination, awareness of others’ activity, information sharing, crowdsourcing, or social computing. The defining concern is the relationship between people’s cooperative practices and technology—not whether a particular tool is marketed as a collaboration product.
How can collaboration happen?
CSCW includes people working together in the same place or remotely, at the same time or at different times. These are useful dimensions for describing a setting, not boundaries that exclude it from the field. Researchers can also examine how a group moves between arrangements—for example, from a face-to-face meeting to remote, asynchronous follow-up. A reference definition explicitly includes co-located and remote work as well as synchronous and asynchronous activity.
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- Place: co-located or remote.
- Timing: synchronous or asynchronous.
- Social unit: a small group, organization, community, or wider network.
- Technology’s role: supporting, mediating, or changing the activity.
What is the difference between CSCW and groupware?
CSCW is the research field; groupware is the technology used to support cooperative work. Groupware can be a subject of CSCW research, but the field also investigates how people actually use technology and how it affects their collaboration. Defining CSCW as a type of app misses that wider focus.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.When did the term CSCW originate?
In a 1994 historical account, Jonathan Grudin traced the term to a workshop organized about ten years earlier by Irene Greif of MIT and Paul Cashman of Digital Equipment Corporation. Participants from different fields shared an interest in technology’s role in work environments and coined “computer-supported cooperative work” to describe that common concern. The history helps explain the name; contemporary descriptions, such as the ACM’s 2026 call, show the field’s broader present-day scope.
The field’s interdisciplinary character was evident early on: an invited paper in the 1988 ACM CSCW proceedings examined computer support for design as cooperative work and connected design with communication.
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