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Article Excerpt
The experimental results of a collaborative problem solving and program development model that takes into consideration the cognitive and social activities that occur during software development is presented in this paper. This collaborative model is based on the Dual Common Model that focuses on individual cognitive aspects of problem solving and programming. The Dual Common Model, shown to improve the problem solving and programming skills of individual programmers (Deek, 1997), was extended to integrate groupware needs. The model was tested using a groupware tool called Groove. The study includes four conditions: Groove and the collaborative model, Groove alone, the collaborative model alone, and neither groove nor the collaborative model. The subjects were students of a graduate course in object oriented programming at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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INTRODUCTION
Problem solving is fundamental to software development. An extensive literature review was performed (DeFranco, 2002; DeFranco & Deek, 2002) and the results showed that a comprehensive model that took into consideration cognitive issues involved in a group collaborating during problem solving and program development was missing. A collaborative model was developed (DeFranco, Deek, McHugh, & Van de Walle, 2002; DeFranco, 2002) and an experiment to measure the effectiveness of the collaborative problem solving model coupled with groupware tools was conducted. The results are presented in this paper.
THEORY
The collaborative problem-solving model (DeFranco, et al., 2002; DeFranco 2002) takes into consideration the cognitive and collaborative processes of a collaborative software development group while addressing the psychological and sociological factors of teamwork. The model explicitly addresses the communication, collaboration, and coordination requirements of a group. A six-stage model accomplishes this with each stage having three phases. Each phase is made up of a collaborative structure that contains modality, collaborative processes, side effects, and administration.
Collaborative modality (CM) is a tool that can accomplish the collaborative processes of a phase. For example, the collaborative modality, when developing a preliminary mental model, incorporates tools that can continue the brainstorming activities that occurred during the development of the preliminary problem description. A message board or activity log could be of use where team members would post their understanding of the problem and each member of the team would be required to vote on the correct model descriptions of the problem. The main purpose of an activity log is to keep a summary of digital records during team member interactions (Dennis, Nunamaker, & Vogel, 1991).
An example of collaborative processes in a stage is communication. In order for the communication process to be a success, each team member's solution must be verbalized and understood by the other team members in order for it to have a fair evaluation. This can either occur as face-to-face communication or publication style communication where the group members do not necessarily know each other and communicate by broadcasting information to the entire group. Team members initiating an elaboration activity can assist the communication process. Elaboration activities should occur when any group member proposes a new solution to the problem under study. All of the proposed solutions and evaluations also need to be coordinated in order for the next collaborative process of negotiation and voting to occur. Using both process templates and process structure can facilitate coordination. Process templates can simplify the use of a group tool during activities such as brainstorming and voting etc. (Nunamaker, Briggs, & Mittleman 1996).
Cohesive groups tend to exhibit higher levels of communication overall, as well as higher task-related and non-task related communication (Dennis, Easton, Easton, George, & Nunamaker, 1990). Many of these side effects may be a result of organizational behavior norms. These norms are preexisting behavioral characteristics of a group (Dennis, Nunamaker, & Vogel, 1991).
An example of collaborative administration during a phase is when the team leader facilitates the problem understanding process. The team leader should lead the group by explicitly representing the goal of the group (Whitworth, Gallupe, & McQueen, 2000). This would include initiating the group discussion; whether it is on-line or face-to-face, every team member would be required to participate and vote on the correct verbalizations of the problem.
METHODOLOGY/DATA COLLECTION
The experiment lasted 3 weeks including a 3-day training session. The subjects were randomly placed into groups of four; then each group was placed in one of the four conditions.
Data were collected from two main sources: group-written documents rated by expert judges and a post-task questionnaire presented at the end of the experiment. An inter-rater reliability check was performed with a bivariate Pearson 2-tailed test. It was found that there was a significant correlation at the .01 level between the two judges (r = .932, p < .01). The results of a Paired Samples t test, which was also performed, showed no significant difference between the judges (.503).
The experiment took place in the spring 2002 semester. The subject groups were placed into one of the four conditions:
1. Access to Groove AND to the model
2. Access to Groove AND no model access
3. E-mail AND access to the model
4. E-mail AND no model access
There were 174 subjects who completed the experiment, equating to 12 groups in condition 1, 10 groups in condition 2, 11 groups in condition 3, and 11 groups in condition 4. All subjects were students of graduate C++ and JAVA courses.
EXPERIMENT HYPOTHESES ANALYSIS/RESULTS
Twelve 2X2 ANOVAs were performed on the data collected as well as a Factor Analysis on post-task questionnaire data. The...
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