Technology and common ground assignment

2-4 page paper due September 7, 2006
Assignment type: Individual or group (maximum of two people)

The goal of this paper is to better understand how people use a shared visual space to coordinate a performance. You will get an opportunity to examine the mechanisms for conversational cooperation and grounding in more detail. You will be comparing clips taken from Kraut, Gergle and Fussell's (2002) paper on "The use of visual information in shared visual spaces." In this experiment, pairs completing a puzzle were more efficient when they shared a common view of the work area than when they had no view or a view that was delayed. The shared view helped more when the task was more complex.

Your paper should have two parts. First, describe one way people use the shared visual space (SVS). What function is it serving for either the task or the conversation? Use Clark and Brennan's "Grounding in communication" article as a guide, to identify one important way that the shared visual environment allows the pair working in the shared space condition to perform the task more efficiently from pairs working in the audio-only condition. Think of this as your hypothesis. Document through examples from one or more pairs working in the SVS condition to see whether they are using the shared visual space in a way consistent with your hypothesis. In documenting your examples, you will need to transcribe the snippets of the dialog and and annotate the transcript with descriptions of task and behavior. It is helpful to put organize the part of the transcript in your paper as a two-column table, with quotes in the left size side and annotations in the right.

Second, consider what pairs in the audio-only or the delay condition are doing to accomplish the same goal without a SVS. Why is this less efficient?Again, document your hypothesis about how this function is accomplished without a shared visual space.

You will be viewing clips in mpeg format. The slips are available here. The file names associated with each clip tell you what condition the file representes.

Filename starts with Experimental condition
Immed Shared visual space with no delay between workers' actions and when the helpers see it.
Delay Shared visual space with 3-second delay between workers' actions and when the helpers see them.
None Audio only condition. The helper does not see the workers' actions.

Grades will be based on three components:

  1. A demonstration that you have understood and can apply the Clark and Brennan framework in interpreting behavior in this referential communications task.
  2. Non-obvious observations about the link between the theory and the data.
  3. Good writing. The structure of your essay is most important, but syntax, word choice and spelling also count.

Due date: 2-4 page paper, 9/7/2006.

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