Analysis of Integration paper
From VMT
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Contents |
[edit] Instructions
- Provide a review of this paper.
- Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
[edit] Comments on Team Statements
This paper was written before the connection to the wiki or the tabbed interface with multiple whiteboards. The new interface adds considerable complexity to an environment that already required a considerable amount of learning and attention. Think about the new issues that are introduced into group interaction by the wiki, multiple tabs, VoIP or other features you propose adding. How would these change and complicate the group dynamics and the social awareness of what everyone is doing? What are the new issues? What functionality might be designed to respond to these issues in the way that Martin designed his features?
Gerry 13:48, 6 May 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Team A Statement
- Members: Brian, Seth, Olivia
- Date and Time of posting: Olivia 20:57, 24 April 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Review of 'The integration of synchronous communication across dual interaction spaces' by Martin Mühlpfordt and Gerry Stahl
Essentially, the paper discusses the applicability of a shared virtual workspace- and how integrated software can improve the performance and convenience of CSCL. By discussing the myriad problems involved with synchronous groupwork, the paper details how these problems might be overcome by the intuitive combination of whiteboard and chat features. This paper is offers real-life examples and suggestions for how to implement resolutions to the numerous problems discussed within the article. This information would be particularly useful for those looking to implement some type of computer-supported collaborative learning environment because it details the obstacles one may occur, but also details how to overcome them.
By discussing 'integrated activity awareness' and how it relates to overall group expression, the authors explicated an important aspect of CSCL. This paper describes their development of the integration measures as a linear process starting with problem analysis that leads to certain functionalities. They maintain that their system was developed and integrated during the last 5 years. The analysis of real collaborations between users gave them insights into the complex nature of "mediated collaborative meaning making in dual interaction spaces". As the process germinated, their focus gradually shifted from an individual point of view to a group cognition.
[edit] Comment on what you found relevant to the course in this paper.
This article basically describes many of the features implemented in the VMT chat such as:
- the ability to communicate synchronously as well as asynchronously.
- resolution of three major problems (diectic references, decontextualization of actions and messages, and the coordination of communcation and interaction) with three mechanisms:
- Mechanism 1:
The paper takes into consideration the difficulty in organizing the multiple threads resulting in a chat between several people, and how the referencing tool can assist with establishing an explicit reference to a previous comment. There was the option of using threaded posts (such as Blackboard); however, that would have been much more difficult to follow in real-time. Explicit references are implemented in the VMT chat in order to link responses to specific chat entries and to "point" to whiteboard entries and objects.
- Mechanism 2: The scroll bar to the left of the whiteboard allows the history of whiteboard changes to be preserved. This prevents changes from being deleted accidentally and irrecoverable.
- Mechanism 3: Integrated activity awareness is implemented in the VMT chat by displaying information about when a user is in the process of communicating or working in the text box (for example: "bku22 is typing" shows up at the bottom of the Chat window if this user is entering information and "Is edited by: Olivia" shows up when a textbox is being modified by that user).
The authors also discuss several problems concerning chatting and multi-topic collaboration with in a group, this problem is really evident in our previous groups. It seems that the larger the group the more evident the problem. However, I wonder what would happen if a group had to use this venue for communication and collaboration eight hours a day. I am going to gamble and say our HCI would be much better, then when this type of tool is only used a hour or two for a ten week period or so (Mühlpfordt and Stahl 2)
[edit] Team B Statement
- Members Dave, Fernando, Kate, elizabeth
- Date and Time of posting April 30, 2007 20:43
Group statement on reading.
The Integration of synchronous communication across dual interaction spaces:
The article discusses the problems with dual interactive spaces in software and three possible solutions to these problems.A dual space consists of a shared work area with a chat type interface for the users to communcicate in. These dual spaces are considered separate spaces and trying to organize the communication and reference it to the work area can be tricky. Other problems include a delay in typing a message and when the other users can see it. If several people are typing at the same time how can you reference that you are referring to a previous message? These are called Deictic references. This can be helped with a referencing tool that can link the chat messages to their meanings on the workspace.
In the dual space there is sometimes confusion between what is being said in the chat and what is being done in the work area. This is decontextualization of actions and messages. An improvement would be a tool that keeps the history of chat as it coincides with work on the workspace so it can be referenced at a later time.
There are even more problems with interation and communication and how they come together. With many people trying to communicate all at once some messages can easily be overlooked especially if you are in along session and you have to step away from your computer there is no indicator that you have stepped away. This can be alleviated through a better display of these social situation that can occur.
The VMt has been using ConcertChat very successfully to help alleviate the problems of dual space but the research that has been done has led to more research being needed in the area. Some suggestions include providing two workspaces an indexing system within the history of sessions.K8 20:43, 30 April 2007 (EDT)
[edit] Team C Statement
- Members Lisa, Ben, Kevin
- Date and Time of posting Kevin 12:04, 1 May 2007 (EDT)
The integration of synchronous communication across dual interaction spaces. The article discussed the implementation and use of the shared whiteboard space in VMT. The focus on VMT makes the article pertinent to the course since we are using VMT for our communication during the class. Early in the article it made clear that while students use VMT either the chat dominates with the whiteboard used as a supplement to the chat discussion or the whiteboard takes precedence and the chat is used to clarify ideas on the whiteboard (p2). The article then discussed how the ability to reference chat or the whiteboard was critical to enhancing the online learning process of students. Since chat text is does not follow the same rules as a conversation, this referencing allows users to connect thoughts together even though there is a time delay caused by reading and typing. It also allows users to overcome the problems caused when chat text scrolls off the screen and is no longer seen as can happen when multiple conversations occur at the same time.
Since the entire paper was about the usage of VMT it was all relevant to the course. It was interesting to learn the logic to why the whiteboard acts like it does to create the artifact history and a record of who edits what. It provided a greater understanding as to why more then one person can not edit an object at the same time without causing problems with the edits overriding each other. The groups personal experience with the whiteboard however has found this function to be more destructive then constructive to our learning. While the ability to look back at the artifact history has been helpful at times, only allowing one person to edit an object at any time has caused some assignments to take longer then they would otherwise. The central theme to the paper revolved around the ability to reference chat and whiteboard objects. This ability allows users to incorporate conversation tactics in an online environment which improves the learning experience for users. The reference tools allows for "pointing" at objects similar to what you do naturally during a conversation. The tool also allows for linking related thoughts to create more complex ideas. This is important in a text environment because there is a lag where people have to type responses to the other participants. It allows users to reference ideas with a visual cue instead of retyping out an idea. This decreases the communication delay naturally caused by typing.
[edit] Team D Statement
- Members : Eric, Bertha, Jeeves
- Date and Time of posting :Eric 21:30, 25 April 2007 (EDT)
Group statement on reading. Article 2: The integration of synchronous communication across dual interaction spaces
This article discussed the issues with having multiple interaction spaces, and presented the solutions that VMT has implemented to overcome these issues. Hence the article is directly related to our course, as it highlights the planning behind the tools we are using to facilitate our conversations. The article also revealed some components of the VMT environment that were not previously obvious. Does this mean that these components are not intuitive, or perhaps addition of a quick introductory component that presents the features of VMT to a new user would allow the user to use the tool more effectively.
One of the noticable problems within the VMT enviroment is lack of direct connection between the chat log and the whiteboard.(Pg 1 ln 41) The use the mouse to cut and paste between these dual interaction spaces would greatly improve the ease and usability of both spaces. Particularly in collarborative use of the whiteboard would enhance the initial experience and reduce initial frustration. As these abilities are taken for granted on most work spaces we feel the experience would be enhanced with this type of integration across these spaces.
The whiteboard portion of the dual workspace as a shared collaborative space would support mathematical collaboration if there was a function tab that would have a drop down to various standard mathematical nomenclature to facilitate more complex connotations by students. Time to create and input manual formulas would detract from the give and take needed to discuss and collaborate on these problems. Please note (Pg8 Figure 4) the screen shot and recognize the time needed to create this image with a drawing tool. The tools for collaboration should not become a frustration for the users within the interaction spaces.
The VMT environment is not necesarily conducive to experimentation. Features and toolbars do not immediately display tool tips, and are ineffective at producing contextual help options. The integration of chat and whiteboard works as a tool to display information, but the simulatneous edits of a single text box are discouraged. This reduces the possibility of simul-creation of a single document. If in the unfortunate event that details from a simultaneous edit are lost, the information must be accesible by the WHiteboard, i.e can be copied and pasted from the edit history log.
The conclusion to this work (Pg 8 ln 25) the authors mention the posibility of audio as a supplementary mode of coomunication. Adding an additional non-persistent medium would expand the collaborative scope. Instead of using chat for discussion the audio medium would allow for complex ideas, editing and a truer collaborative experience for the user. Chat by itself is a poor format for the needed interaction within a collaborative space such as VMT. The bandwidth needed to enable audio today with the advent of VoIP and compression would allow for this to be a viable medium along with chat and whiteboard. However the major research that would follow from adding audio is to maintain the visual cues, that add complexity to a conversation.
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