Sharing solutions: persistence and grounding in multi-modal collaborative problem solving

Pierre Dillenbourg (1) , David Traum (2)

1 CRAFT - Centre de Recherche et d'Appui pour la Formation et ses Technologies
2 ICT - Institute for Creative Technologies

This article reports on an exploratory study of the relationship between grounding and problem solving in multimodal computer-mediated collaboration. This article examines two different media, a shared whiteboard and a MOO environment that includes a text chat facility. A study was done on how the acknowledgment rate (how often partners give feedback of having perceived, understood, and accepted partner's contributions) varies according to the media and the content of interactions. It was expected that the whiteboard would serve to draw schemata that disambiguate chat utterances. Instead, results show that the whiteboard is primarily used to represent the state of problem solving and the chat is used for grounding information created on the whiteboard. These results are interpreted in terms of persistence: More persistent information is exchanged through the more persistent medium. The whiteboard was used as a shared memory rather than a grounding tool.

Keywords: grounding; multimodal interactions; collaborative problem solving; virtual space

Domains: Computer Science [cs]; Technology for Human Learning

Pierre Dillenbourg, David Traum. Sharing solutions: persistence and grounding in multi-modal collaborative problem solving. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2006, 15 (1), pp.121-151. ⟨10.1207/s15327809jls1501_9⟩. ⟨hal-00190698⟩