249 Metaphor or Diagram? Comparing Different Representations for Group Mirrors Sara Streng 1 , Karsten Stegmann 2 , Heinrich Hußmann 1 , and Frank Fischer 2 1 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Department of Computer Science Amalienstr. 17, 80333 München {sara.streng, heinrich.hussmann}@ifi.lmu.de 2 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Department of Psychology and Education Leopoldstr. 13, 80802 München {karsten.stegmann, frank.fischer}@psy.lmu.de ABSTRACT This paper aims at answering the question how ambient displays can be used as group mirrors to support collaborative (learning) activities. Our research question is to what extent the type of feedback representation affects collaborative processes. Two different representations have been created and compared in a user study: a diagram and a metaphor. In the diagram version the quality rating for each person is explicitly shown in charts and numbers. In the metaphorical representation feedback is implicitly visualized by changing certain characteristics of a pictorial scene. The results show that the metaphoric group mirror was not only more popular than the diagram, it also had a greater impact on the group behavior. When receiving negative feedback from the metaphoric group mirror, a correction of behavior was made significantly faster than with the diagram. Furthermore, both group mirrors had a positive effect on the self-regulation of the group compared to the baseline condition without feedback. Author Keywords Group Mirror, ambient display, metaphor, collaborative learning. ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. INTRODUCTION Group mirrors (or “mirroring systems”) provide feedback to groups by reflecting certain aspects of collaborative activities (Jermann et al., 2001, p. 3), e.g. the amount of participation of individuals to a group discussion. They differ from awareness tools in that the collaborating group members are physically co-located and actively interacting at that time. On the contrary, awareness tools typically show information about co-workers who are not present, such as whether they are available or which activities they are currently engaged in. Examples for such awareness tools are Portholes (Dourish and Bly, 1992), NYNEX Portholes (Lee et al., 1997) or ActiveMap (McCarthy and Meidel, 1999). Feedback plays an important role in collaborative processes. Usually collaborators self-regulate their behavior according to feedback they get during collaboration. In an argument, for example, a participant will add additional backing for a claim if another participant shakes her or his head. Furthermore, several empirical studies showed a positive effect of feedback on knowledge acquisition in learning scenarios (for a review see Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Group mirrors can be used to provide feedback in both, collaborative work settings (e.g. DiMicco et al., 2004) and collaborative learning scenarios (Jermann et al., 2001). One reason why they have been applied by educationalists is that they believe the learning outcome can be maximized by balancing participation levels (Bachour et al., 2008). Although a moderator or teacher can also regulate things like participation shares, interruptions by a third party are often too obtrusive. Group mirrors on the other hand may provide feedback in a subtler and less interruptive way. Thereby, feedback by group mirrors may offer the chance to self-regulate activities with a minimum of disturbance of the collaboration itself. However, if the feedback provided by the group mirror requires too much attention, collaborators may be distracted from the task as well as require more time to react to the feedback. Figure 1. Metaphoric Group Mirror in Use. Previous work has shown that group mirrors can affect group behavior (see Related Work). However, group mirrors have many different characteristics, of which not all have been equally examined so far. In this work, the effect of different feedback representations is examined. An ambient display is used to mirror the quality of argumentation in small groups. Two different OZCHI 2009, November 23-27, 2009, Melbourne, Australia. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG Additional copies are available at the ACM Digital Library (http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm) or ordered from the CHISIG secretary (secretary@chisig.org) OZCHI 2009 Proceedings ISBN: 978-1-60558-854-4 Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work or personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.     © $&0  ,6%1:   ...