In the context of the Kaleidoscope Conference about CSCL in Lausanne in October 2004, we are organizing a workshop about spatial positioning in mobile collaboration (description hereafter). It aims to study the relationships between space, collaborative problem solving and cognition in group. It will address basic research issues at the crossroads of human cognition and information technology. If you are interested in participating, please send us an abstract (10-15 lines) of your research project by April 23rd. Workshop Proposal: Spatial Awareness in Collaboration and Group Interaction
The recent technical evolution in the field of mobile technologies allow mobile devices users to have location based services such as optimal route generation with GPS or nearest point of interest by SMS. Positioning technologies are more and more precise and taking the context into account is one of the new trend in computer software. Collective uses of those 'locative media' are also on track. Mobile computing should also be seen as an answer to the needs that emerged from geographically distributed organizations. People still need to work together from different places at the same time and collaboration must be fluid. The use of location based services enable to bridge the distance between teammates thanks to different features. The most commonly used context of mobile systems is the location of the user since it is easy to determine and it could be meaningful to use it in order to adapt the behavior of a mobile application. However, spatial awareness should not be restricted to location since information about presence, direction, relative location, physical proximity with resources could also be drawn from context cues. This led designers and researchers to support collaborative work and learning with mobile technology, namely handheld computers, mobile phones, GPS-enhanced tools and wearables. One of the postulates is that space and spatial features such as location could be considered as a resource for collaborative problem solving. We hence aim to understand the impacts of mobile tools on social and cognitive processes.
Location-Based systems (LBS) often propose various services such as: - annotation of space: it is now possible to leave "virtual post-its" attached to specific location. - synchronous positioning: participants among a group can localize their partners. - location based storytelling/narratives - matchmaking between participants of a conference - video games that takes advantage of location-awareness to propose augmented reality scenarios.
All those systems offer both innovative ways to create new affordance for supporting collaborative activities like mobile work or mobile learning as well as smart testbed to address research questions. What are these research questions ? What are the methods ? The workshop will bring together researchers and academics from or out of the KALEIDOSCOPE NoE coming from several disciplines, including learning sciences, psychology, computer science. It aims to study the relationships between space, collaborative problem solving and cognition in group. It will address basic research issues at the crossroads of human cognition and information technology.
The objective is to: 1. Study the role of spatial awareness as a link between mobile technology and collaborative activities. 2. Discuss emprical results concerning the role of space or spatial features in group cognition and collaborative activities (mobile work, mobile learning) 3. Discuss methods of how to study the impact of those Location Based Services with regard to their efficiency as well their impacts on group interactions.
Position Paper Topics Relevant paper topics include, but are not limited to: - Evaluation of location based services in learning or work context - Location based services design - Users and usage of location based services - Mobile learning scenarios - Location-aware interaction - User modelling - Applications that use real world context - Modelling of available physical and social resources
Workshop Organization The workshop will last 1/2 day or 1 day depending on the number of contributions. It will gather researchers among the Kaleidoscope Network of Excellence plus some external participants. External participants will have to apy an extra fee. If you would like to participate in this workshop, please submit first an abstract by April 23rd and then your position paper (max 8 pages) to nicolas.nova@epfl.ch by July 15th. Work in-progress will be accepted, but describe your research questions!
Workshop Comitee
Organization: Nicolas Nova and Mauro Cherubini Chair: Pierre Dillenbourg and Mike Sharples