Small Group Collaboration and Presence in a Virtual Environment J Casanueva E Blake Collaborative Visual Computing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa. jcasanue,edwin @cs.uct.ac.za Abstract Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) can be classified into personal presence and co-presence. Personal presence is having a feeling of “being there” in the CVE oneself. Co-presence is having a feeling that one is in the same place as the other participants, and that one is collaborating with real people. In this paper we describe an experiment to investigate the effects that small group collaboration and interaction has on personal presence and specially co-presence in a CVE. We hypothesise that collaborationand interaction enhances co-presence in a CVE. We found that there was a large difference in co-presence between two CVEs which produced different levels of collaborationand interaction. This supports our hypotheses that just having virtual representations of others is not sufficient to create a high sense of co- presence, and that one needs collaborationand interaction in order to enhance co-presence in a CVE. We also found that ... We measured personal presence subjectively, using a questionnaire developed by Slater et al. We have developed a co-presence questionnaire which assesses the levels of co-presence subjectively. We have also developed a collaboration questionnaire which measures group collaboration subjectively, as well as the degree of enjoyment and comfort with others in the group. Keywords: Presence, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality Computing Review Categories: I.3.7, J.4 1 Introduction Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) involve the use of a distributed architecture and advanced interactive user interfaces to create a ‘shared’ space where multiple users, located in different geographical locations can inter- act and collaborate. CVEs are seen by many as the future in telecommunications [2, 24], where a multitude of peo- ple will be able to meet and interact with each other in the same 3D space as if they were in the same real space, with a full range of sociological interaction provided. In order for CVEs to be usable and successful, they need to provide the participants with a compelling experience and a high sense of presence. This will convince the participants that they are present in the virtual environment, and that they are collaborating with real people. Presence (or personal presence) refers to the psycho- logical sensation of “being there”, having a sense of be- ing in the place specified by the virtual environment rather than just seeing images depicting that place. According to Steuer [20] presence means “The feeling of ‘being in an environment’.” Co-presence is the feeling that the other participants in the virtual environment actually exist and are really present in the environment, and the feeling that one in interacting with real people. In this paper, we present an experiment which investi- gates the effects that small group collaboration has on per- sonal presence and specially co-presence in a Collabora- tive Virtual Environment. A high sense of co-presence in a CVE is crucial to enable a group of people to collaborate and interact effectively. However, it is equally important to investigate if collaboration and interaction between a group of people effect co-presence in a CVE. Our main hypoth- esis is that collaboration and interaction will enhance the sense of co-presence in a CVE. In order to address this issue, we have developed two collaborative virtual environments, which we name ‘high- collaboration VE’ and ‘low-collaboration VE’. Both VEs are basically identical and only the task differs. In the high- collaboration VE, participants have to collaborate to solve the given task. In the low-collaboration VE, participants don’t need to collaborate to solve the problem. We measure presence, co-presence, and collaboration subjectively with post experiment questionnaires. We use a presence questionnaire developed by Slater et al [16, 13] to measure the sense of personal presence felt by the par- ticipants during the experiment. We have developed a co- presence questionnaire which measures the degree of co- presence felt by the participants during the experiment. We have also developed a collaboration questionnaire which measures group collaboration subjectively, as well as the degree of enjoyment and comfort with others in the group. In this experiment, we show that interaction and col- laboration does enhance the sense of personal presence and co-presence in a CVE. It is also important to see if the sense of personal presence and co-presence are asso- SART / SACJ, No 26, 2000 163