Study and analysis of workspace awareness in CDebate: a groupware application for collaborative debates
In this paper, we study the workspace awareness in a groupware application allowing the development of an information task through collaborative debates. The application, called CDebate, is based on the APRI (Action-Perception-Reflection-Intention) model, which establishes a cognitive and motor states organization that occurs when humans are interacting with one another in a constructivist and collaborative learning situation. In CDebate, the interactions among students occur through a graphical language that reflects the mental operations appropriate for a debate. As an evaluation method, a conceptual framework, which provides a set of elements that give information about the up-to-the-moment knowledge about participants' location and actions, is used. The results of this study allow us to confirm that group awareness information, supported through a graphical language and a window showing the participants' presence (informal awareness), were sufficient for success in the collaborative learning situation. This experience could be useful for interface designers of groupware applications, in particular for collaborative debate interfaces. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
workspace awareness collaborative debate apri group awareness cscl groupware interface