Last week, myself and my two group members for this class met up to work on our progress report. Because we wanted to do it quickly, we decided to work on it gathered around one laptop so that we could openly discuss it as we wrote it. Though this worked fairly well for a short assignment, I can see it getting complicated and less effective for longer assignments.
In their article, "System Guidelines for Co-located, Collaborative Work on a Tabletop Display", Scott et al states that typical desktop displays do not support collaboration due to "their underlying one-user/one-computer design paradigm" (160). This was true with the single laptop set-up, as only one person could type to the document at a time. This ties into the the claim that collaboration displays should support transitions between personal and group work. Scott et all found that "users often maintain distinct areas on a tabletop workspace in order to mediate their interactions with the task objects and with each other" (165). However, the single-laptop set up does not support this natural territoriality that users need to work efficiently. Because boundaries were unclear, we wasted some time deciding whose turn it was to type and when it was appropriate to suggest a change to someone's writing. If our personal workspaces were clear, work could have progressed smoother. The laptop also enables smooth transitions between tabletop collaboration and external work, because we can simply access previously written components and reference documents via Blackboard or e-mail.
The most prominent advantage of using a single display is its support for interpersonal communication. Because it allows us to talk openly, the work becomes more collaborative and we produce a document that we feel is coherent and representative of the group. It helped us pool our talents together, so that when one member had trouble formulating a sentence or an idea, another could easily help. Even though only one person could type at a time, another user could still easily take control by dictating to the typist. Though this worked well for this assignment, I think it would be detrimental for longer assignments that require the development of ideas because that requires concentration without so much interpersonal interaction.
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I like the way you talk about the implications that each issue has on what kinds of tasks the single laptop display system is best for. There is no one display that works for all collaborative tasks, but as users we can identify the issues with each display system so that we can use appropriate displays for the certain type of task we are trying to accomplish. It sounds like the single display worked well for simple group writing.
ReplyDeleteI found the same results in my experience. That while we were able to communicate with each other more easily to pool ideas, users very often took control of specific tasks, as you mentioned at the end. You said single laptop displays to don't support natural territoriality that produces things efficiently. I don't completely agree. Natural territories are easy. The person who brought the laptop is the typist.
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