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Investigating face‐to‐face peer interaction patterns in a collaborative W eb discovery task: the benefits of a shared display
Author(s) -
Chung CW.,
Lee CC.,
Liu CC.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of computer assisted learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.583
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1365-2729
pISSN - 0266-4909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2012.00493.x
Subject(s) - face to face , task (project management) , computer science , computer mediated communication , human–computer interaction , face to face interaction , mobile device , collaborative learning , face (sociological concept) , computer supported cooperative work , collaborative software , argument (complex analysis) , multimedia , psychology , world wide web , work (physics) , communication , knowledge management , linguistics , the internet , philosophy , biochemistry , epistemology , chemistry , economics , mechanical engineering , engineering , management
Mobile computers are now increasingly applied to facilitate face‐to‐face collaborative learning. However, the factors affecting face‐to‐face peer interactions are complex as they involve rich communication media. In particular, non‐verbal interactions are necessary to convey critical communication messages in face‐to‐face communication. Through gathering discourse and non‐verbal interaction records, this study explores the peer interactions supported by two collaborative applications: one with mobile computers and the other with shared‐display groupware ( SDG ). The results show that the students tended to interact with each other according to a distributed and an unsocial interaction pattern when using the application with mobile computers. In contrast, the students who learned with the SDG demonstrated a shared interaction pattern, whereby they often jointly focused on and referred to the shared work. The analysis of the students' work further found that a higher level of discussion was generally associated with the shared interaction pattern. The results seem to support SDG as being useful in augmenting face‐to‐face peer interaction supported by mobile computers. The implications derived from the findings also support the argument that non‐verbal interaction records are useful for quantitatively and qualitatively analysing face‐to‐face peer interactions.