Frohberg, Dirk

Schwabe, Gerhard

ZORA

Zurich Open Repository andArchiveUniversity of ZurichMain LibraryStrickhofstrasse 39CH-8057 Zurichwww.zora.uzh.chYear: 2006Facilitating mobile groups - experiences and requirementsSchwabe, Gerhard; Frohberg, DirkAbstract: UnspecifiedPosted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of ZurichZORA URL: http://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-61374Published VersionOriginally published at:Schwabe, Gerhard; Frohberg, Dirk (2006). Facilitating mobile groups - experiences and requirements. In:Conference Proceedings Group Decision and Negotiation 2006, Karlsruhe, 25 June 2006 - 28 June 2006,256-261.Facilitating Mobile Groups: Experiences andRequirementsGerhard Schwabe and Dirk FrohbergDepartment for Informatics, University of Zurichschwabe ifi.unizh.chfrohberg ifi.unizh.ch1 IntroductionWhile small groups an informal communities can structure their collaboration on thefly larger teams need facilitation to achieve a tangible outcome. In the last decade,there have been numerous papers establishing this understanding (see Schwabe, 1995)and proposed approaches and frameworks for planning and facilitating collaboration(de Vreede et al., 2002; Beranek et al., 1993; Bostrom et al., 1991, 1993). A smallernumber of authors have reported their experiences with facilitating distributed collab-oration (Dubs and Hayne, 1992; Niederman et al., 1993; McQuaid et al., 2000; Zhaoet al., 2002). They stress both the necessity and difficulties of guiding over distance.Our paper will go one step beyond and report on our concept to facilitate mobilegroups. We will first discuss the specialities of collaboration of mobile groups com-pared with distributed groups. Then we will introduce the case study mExplorer formobile collaboration. Drawn from the case study we will formulate key challenges offacilitation for mobile groups. The paper will close with the proposition of a frameworkfor mobile facilitation.2 Distributed GroupsIn a common distributed setting of collaboration, the group members are sitting fixin front of a desktop PC at different places, not moving away from it. Collaborativesessions are scheduled and agreed, so all group members participate reliably in thesession as demanded. All concentration is focused on the collaborative session. In awell prepared session, all members are well orientated and there is consensus aboutwhat to do and how to do it. Roles as moderator, time manager, content managerand so on are fix distributed among participants. Thus all members are acting withina common and shared context. Technology is basically supposed to bridge the gap ofdistance and to provide an environment, which orientates as much as possible as muchas possible.Facilitating Mobile Groups: Experiences and Requirements 833 Mobile GroupsMobile collaboration is further apart from co-located meetings than pure physical dis-tribution. It is not set in one or more meeting rooms but rather situated in a physicalenvironment that may be beyond the control of the facilitator. Mobile collaborationis not purely a cognitive process of data, but integrates physical action and experi-ences. Mobile groups are for example moderated groups of fresh students exploringthe university campus. Mobile groups should not be misunderstood as simply beingdistributed groups with mobile devices replacing desktop computers. In contrary con-text, purpose, and dynamics do change for mobile groups. The environment of mobilegroups does not provide the rich set of devices and tools meeting participants havebecome used to from meeting rooms. Instead the environment itself becomes interface.Mobile collaboration is not necessarily scheduled, but could be started spontaneouslyas all members are reachable anytime and anywhere. Mobile collaborators can not ex-clusively focus the ongoing collaboration, but need to share their attention with theircurrent environment. They may be distracted by their current environment, but theymay also use it as a resource. For instance a person collaborating from the universitylibrary might simultaneously be busy searching for a book. And any book in a shelfmight give inspiration for the collaboration task. The reliability for permanent partici-pation of mobile members is reduced. People could be cut off the collaboration sessionsfor technical reasons (e.g. entering a campus building without network coverage). Dis-continuity in participation might also result from the nature of multi-focusing, if anyother issue gets a higher priority (e.g. a closing office where a student needs to registerin order to keep a deadline ). If the risk of discontinuous participation is high, therecan not be a fixed distribution of roles. That means if the moderator of the ongoingcollaboration is cut off, another member needs to take over and replace him. In anextreme case of mobile collaboration, members are frequently leaving and joining thesession and thus a lot of effort is needed to provide continuously a shared context.4 Case Study mExplorerAs part of the Mobilearn project 1 we studied mobile collaboration through the locationbased game mExplorer. mExplorer familiarizes newcomers with a new environmentallowing them to study its geographical setup and the social, organizational and infor-mational rules. mExplorer has been extensively tested in the University environment(Go¨th et al., 2004; Schwabe et al., 2005; Schwabe and Go¨th, 2005), but also in thetourism sector (Go¨th and Lueg, 2006). mExplorer included location based navigationtasks (finding a specific location), knowledge tasks (e.g. how to find a book in the li-brary), and creative tasks (e.g. make campus art more interesting) which groups with10–20 members have to solve in a mixture of collaboration and competition. The pa-per reflects on our experiences in facilitating four trials of the mExplorer. These trials1 http://www.mobilearn.org84 Gerhard Schwabe and Dirk Frohbergwere run from 2004–2006. Two trials are documented in prior publications (Go¨th et al.,2004; Schwabe et al., 2005; Schwabe and Go¨th, 2005). Specific data will be providedfor our most recent trial (January 2006). The trial consisted of a series of small self-contained tasks (lasting between 10 minutes and 30 minutes). The purpose of the taskswas twofold: 1) The participants should learn about the University campus and enrichit electronically 2) the participants should get acquainted systematically with twelvemobile collaborative tools (such as chatting, navigation history (red line showing thepast movements), zoom, even chasing one another and evaluate each functionality’simpact on motivation, orientation, learning, group-building, and confidence. Therewas an individual phase for each of the twelve functionalities containing a short intro-duction to the functionality, some time to try out the functionality fulfilling a specificassignment (e.g. “solve all tasks as fast as possible”, “catch as many other teams asyou can”, “annotate each point of interest” and so on), and a phase of reflection to fillin a questionnaire.5 Challenges in Facilitating Mobile GroupsFacilitating is a key success factor of collaboration. Facilitation of mobile groups canbuild on established frameworks, but the steps have to be augmented for the specificrequirements of mobility. The specific nature and dynamics of mobile groups lead toa number of specific challenges for mobile facilitation. Those are:• Providing monitoring means: Having transparency about what is going on inthe collaboration activities is key for good facilitation. Thus a facilitator needspowerful monitoring means to be oriented about the groups’ activities. MExplorerdisplays all teams’ current locations and their digital activities. Those can be in-terpreted by the facilitator and lead to aimed supportive action.• Facilitating participation: Participation of group members is discontinuous,which causes irritation, disorientation, complicated coordination and efficiencylosses when refreshing the context of joining members. Some facilitation of par-ticipation can be provided by awareness functionalities. A system needs to provideawareness about passed, current and future presence and availability of group mem-bers. MExplorer provides location information and online status of group members.• Facilitating multitasking members: Multitasking is a typical phenomenon formobile groups as their current context is manifold. Thus the cognitive load of groupmembers is generally high. With mExplorer, there are always two players sharingone device and thus sharing cognitive load. Performance and confidence of theplayers is much higher, when they are running in pairs (Schwabe and Go¨th, 2005).• Facilitating permanently alternating roles: Because of discontinuous partici-pation, roles among group members must be switched, if the process must not beinterrupted by absence of a key group member as the moderator. A system needsto be able to handle spontaneous role switches and provide group members withawareness about each other’s role. For reduced complexity players in mExplorerFacilitating Mobile Groups: Experiences and Requirements 85are not supposed to be discontinuous yet, so it is an open issue. But mExplorersupports different roles as player (prey and hunter), facilitator, and audience. Thecomputer system takes participatory over some tasks of a moderator, as it coordi-nates people with tasks and supports self-moderation providing location awarenessabout who is where. Thus players can decide explicitly to cooperate and meet othergroups or compete and explicitly not meet other groups or compete and hunt othergroups for getting points.• Facilitating shared and distributed focus: Collaboration always contains di-vergent and convergent episodes of activity. Thus the focus of group membersneeds sometimes to be shared and sometimes to be distributed. Under mobile cir-cumstances it is extremely difficult or ineffective to schedule strictly the begin andend of convergent phases. Furthermore there are no natural means for the facilitatorto regain focus of the group, once it got lost. To support the facilitation of mo-bile collaboration a system can provide means to regain focus and thus synchroniseactivities. MExplorer allows the facilitator centrally to start and stop sessions onclients. The stop of a session makes players coming back to a designated location.This function is a very radical one. Other available means are sending SMS to allgroup members or using a notification functionality. It is important to separatestrictly media channel of moderation from other communication channels.• Facilitating process and evolutionary planning: An agenda is typically adocument to give orientation and steer a process. For mobile groups an agendamust be much richer, more powerful, and much more flexible. It becomes the mostsufficient center of focus and attention. A common agenda contains the sequenceof activities, associated times and owners. A mobile agenda should additionallycontain associated links to tools and documents. It needs furthermore a space forawareness about the current status of work and group members. As a mobile processcan hardly be fully planned and determined in advance, a mobile agenda must bevery flexible. Discontinuous participation requires low restrictions for edition byvarious group members. As the process is an issue of consent, there must be room forannotations in order to discuss, rate and vote for single entries. MExplorer does notcontain any agenda functionality yet. For this reason the design of mExplorer trustsstill very much on physical control within a limited area in a synchronous settingwith collocated phases. But mExplorer provides process support in sequencingalgorithm for locations, activities and tasks.• Facilitating shared and mixed representations: Due to the limitation of screensize and computational power of mobile devices, representation of communicationand material becomes a challenge of structuring them. MExplorer concentrates allrelevant activities on one window with only little need to switch to other windows.We found it meaningful to make use of different devices for different purposes, likePDA for orientation and mobile phone for communication. Furthermore the wholephysical context must be seen as interface.• Mapping of digital and physical world: Collaboration of mobile groups isnot supposed to be barely digital, but takes place in their real environment. The86 Gerhard Schwabe and Dirk Frohbergphysical context can be enriched by digital means, if there is a mapping functionality.MExplorer’s main screen is based on a map of the physical area.ReferencesBeranek, P. M., C. M. Beise, and F. Niederman (1993): “Facilitation and group supportsystems”, in: Proceeding of the Twenty-Sixth Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences (HICSS), vol. 4, pp. 199–207.Bostrom, R., R. Anson, and V. Clawson (1993): “Group Facilitation and Group Sup-port Systems”, in: Macmillan (ed.), Group Support Systems: New Perspectives,Jessup, L M and Valacich J S, New York, pp. 146–148.Bostrom, R., V. Clawson, and R. Anson (1991): “Training People to Facilitate Elec-tronic Environments”, Working paper, Department of Management, University ofGeorgia, Athens, Hershey, PA, USA.de Vreede, G.-J., J. Boonstra, and F. Niederman (2002): “What Is Effective GSSFacilitation? A Qualitative Inquiry Into Participants’ Perceptions”, in: Proceed-ings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’02),vol. 1, p. 43b, http://csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2002/1435/01/14350043b.pdf.Dubs, S. and S. C. Hayne (1992): “Distributed facilitation: a concept whose time hascome?”, in: CSCW ’92: Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, pp. 314–321.Go¨th, C., U.-P. Ha¨ss, and G. Schwabe (2004): “Requirements for mobile learning gamesshown on a mobile game prototype”, in: Proceedings MLearn 2004 conference.Go¨th, C. and C. Lueg (2006): “First Experiences With a Mobile Information Sys-tem Supporting Reflective Exploration of Unknown Terrain”, in: Proceedings of theMKWI 2006, Passau Germany.McQuaid, M. J., D. Gillman, R. Hauck, C. Lin, J. F. Nunamaker, M. Ramsey, R. O.Briggs, D. D. Mittleman, and N. Romano (2000): “Tools for Distributed Facilita-tion”, in: HICSS ’00: Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference onSystem Sciences-Volume 1, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, p. 1041.Niederman, F., C. M. Beise, and P. M. Beranek (1993): “Facilitation issues in dis-tributed group support systems”, in: SIGCPR ’93: Proceedings of the 1993 con-ference on Computer personnel research, ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, pp.299–312.Schwabe, G. (1995): Objekte der Gruppenarbeit - Ein Konzept fu¨r das Computer AidedTeam, Gabler, Wiesbaden, Deutschland.Schwabe, G. and C. Go¨th (2005): “Mobile Learning with a Mobile Game: Design andMotivational Effects”, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21, pp. 204–216.Schwabe, G., C. Go¨th, and D. Frohberg (2005): “Does Team Size Matter in MobileLearning?”, in: International Conference on Mobile Business2005, IEEE ComputerSociety Press, Washington, USA.Zhao, J. L., J. F. Nunamaker, and R. O. Briggs (2002): “Intelligent Workflow Tech-niques for Distributed Group Facilitation”, in: 35th Annual Hawaii InternationalConference on System Sciences (HICSS’02), vol. 1.

Facilitating mobile groups - experiences and requirements

http://www.zora.uzh.ch/61374/1/20120321134557_merlin-id_2562.pdf

Facilitating mobile groups - experiences and requirements

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ZORA