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Article Excerpt
In this article an analysis is made about how awareness in digital learning environments relates to communication, coordination, and cooperation and, consequently, collaboration. A collaboration model, where awareness occupies a central position, is presented. The awareness elements of the AulaNet environment are also analyzed, seeking to identify what awareness information is relevant, how it is generated, how the awareness elements were defined and how individuals control them. This analysis seeks to provide information regarding a project about awareness elements in collaborative digital learning environments.
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To be aware, in this context, is to acquire information about what is happening and what other people are doing (Brinck & McDaniel, 1997). Awareness, which is inherent in human beings, thus becomes a central part of communication, coordination, and cooperation in a work group, where to communicate is to negotiate, to coordinate is to be in tune with the other participants and to cooperate is to operate together in a shared space (Fuks, Gerosa & Lucena, 2002).
Through awareness, individuals realize the changes caused in the environment by the action of participants enabling them to direct their actions and predict possible needs (Neisser, 1976). To be aware of the activities of other individuals is also essential for the flow and naturalness of work and to avoid being impersonal.
Awareness involves various cognitive aspects related to human skills. Obtaining information is rich and natural in a face-to-face situation, given that the senses are fully present in the interaction between people and environment. The participants may stay on top of things just by paying attention to what is happening around them. In virtual environments, awareness support is less clear since the means for making information available to the sensory organs of human beings are limited. Typical workstations provide information through a two-dimensional screen and, in some cases, through loudspeakers. On the other hand, in a digital environment, irrelevant information can be filtered in a way that reduces dispersion that normally permeates a face-to-face situation.
Awareness elements are elements of the shared space where information designed to provide awareness is made available. Digital environments for collaborative learning must provide awareness elements that supply the information necessary for collaboration and for individual work. Guided by their awareness, participants can create a shared understanding and coordinate themselves so that individual efforts add value to the work.
In this article, a collaboration model in which awareness occupies a central position is proposed. The connections of awareness with communication, coordination, and cooperation are detailed first. After defining these connections, some awareness elements of the AulaNet learning environment are shown. Final considerations conclude the article.
Awareness and Collaboration
At least potentially, collaborating for complex problem solving can produce better results than individual work. Individual efforts, skills, and knowledge complement each other in a group. Within a group there can be interaction between people with different understanding, alternative points of view, and complementary skills (Hiltz, 1994). By collaborating, the members of the group receive early feedback that permits them to identify inconsistencies and breakdowns in thinking processes so they can together seek ideas, information, and references to solve their problems. The group also has greater capacity to generate alternatives in a creative fashion, surveying the advantages and disadvantages of each one to select those that are feasible to make their decisions (Turoff and Hiltz, 1982).
Working in a group also motivates members, since their work is being observed, commented upon, and evaluated by the members of a community they belong to (Benbunan-Fich & Hiltz, 1999). Furthermore, the act of debating their ideas with the other members makes participants actively develop concepts, allowing them to reason and refine them.
Despite its advantages, collaborative work necessarily demands additional effort to coordinate the group members. Without this coordination, a major part of the communication effort will not be used for cooperation. For the group to operate together in a satisfactory way, it is necessary that the commitments, which have been assumed in the conversations between the participants, be realized during the cooperation. Furthermore, the coordination must deal with conflicts that harm the group.
To make group coordination possible, it is necessary to realize others' presence and know what is happening to make the proper decisions about the procedures to be adopted. The participants use this kind of information, known as group awareness information (Liu, Shi & Xu, 2001), to build a shared understanding about the cooperation objects and the objectives of the tasks and of the work. Being aware of the activities of one's companions, individuals will have information that helps in the synchronization of their work, coordinating themselves around individual context. In Figure 1, the collaboration model is presented.
In the next paragraphs the main elements of the model and their relation to awareness are detailed. It should be pointed out that despite the separation of these concepts for the purpose of analysis, it is not always possible to consider them isolated, since they are intimately dependent and inter-related.
Awareness and Communication
Communicating is sharing (Schrage, 1995). Throughout communication, people desire to build common understanding, exchange ideas, discuss, negotiate the meaning of concepts or make decisions. The participants of a work group must communicate to accomplish tasks that are interdependent, not completely described, or that require negotiation (Fussel et al, 1998).
The members of a group communicate in many different ways. Asynchronous communication tools normally are used when one wants to encourage participant reflection, since the participants will have more time before they have to act. In a synchronous communication tool interaction is valued in view of the fact that the response time between the action of a participant and the reaction of their colleagues is short. Some communication tools are geared toward free conversation while others favor structuring through a list, a tree, or a graph form (Gerosa et al., 2001). Some communication tools currently...
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