It is easy to observe how natural this arrangement is as one person share information with other with a little effort, and how user can augment another’s idea and share it back without disrupting the flow of the meeting. However when a small group is trying to collaborate around a single format of input for example on a single pad of paper, several problems arise the cost of group dynamic to be awkward and frustrating. This single entry point to the collective contribution causes two members to always be queuing ideas and manage to get it turn with the outfacing questions. If one has too dominance in his own ideas that can be very difficult for the others to contribute.
Another common meeting arrangement occurs at the whiteboard. Ordinarily there’s one person on the board who is drawing out of the problem, all the others are trying to contribute.
Again this person can be becoming gross to his own ideas making it difficult for the others to participate. In which case the other participants may break away and began working among them, whether it is an inner active or traditional whiteboard that can be very awkward to see the control from the person operating on the board and it rarely happens. Another problem with this arrangement is collusion with the person at the whiteboard gets in the way and the other observing, this is even more of a problem with several people working at the board together.
Becoming more and more familiar is the orientation of the small group working around a single screen such as a laptop or tablet; again we have a single entry point, in this arrangement the mouse. As you can see it’s easy for them to observe what’s on screen but it’s difficult to take turns in interacting with what’s on screen because of the awkwardness of the exchanging of the controls and handing the mouse from one user to another.
Typically the user in control of the mouse becomes in gross into the task leading the other users without any way to contribute.
SOLUTION
So how do we do with these problems, particularly how do we overcome the frustrations only having one mouse when interacting with digital information on the screen or as I discuss with the whiteboard having a one pen. This research designs new technologies that can support groups working in together and particular to trying facilitating more equal participation.
We developed a framework of the multiple entry points that’s intended to help us in the form design of these new work spaces. But what is the meaning of multiple entry point well an entry point is invitation in the physical, digital space for anyone to part. And when we think about the design is how we can create multiple entry points that different people can enter the workspace and take part. This contrast is in previous cases is only one single entry point via the mouse or the pen.
In order to implement the multiple entry point framework we examine several technologies and autumnally chosen Tabletop using the diamond spin software package.
We use the tabletop with the diamond spin software to implement a prototype for this task, in which the images that can select are small icons of the sides of the tabletop. What to do in that just simply using the finger tips can slide these images into the middle of the tabletop and allow each other to look it these, to compare them and to select them. So what we found that is much more participation from all over the group members taking place particularly there are a lot of turn taking and what we called it turn inviting and this is where one member will invite another to take part; for example to comment an image, or to select an image, or to scroll and image or to place an image.
This type of setup where you have different entry points encourages that type behavior which is quite different as that of other previous setups. So in this case the users have no problem in sharing, passing or trading in order to refine there selections through different icons on the tabletop. So everyone in the group is being very active in finding there own way to participate. This change makes the transitions between various jobs fluid and easy, so if one user decided to change roles, it has no negative effect on the others.
So in concluding, this physical digital arrangement provides more entry points for users to make contribution and therefore allows a various types of the users to contribute in the way that they are most comfortable. The results shown that there’s a strong possibility that providing a space that has multiple entry points for contribution can faster more accurate able decision making in small groups. We planned to further this research and determine if a multi entry points framework can be implemented in such a way as generalize some of our findings. One of the first steps in doing this will be to continue to extend the work space and offer more channels for people to participate in ways which make them more comfortable.
Tabletop groupware systems combine the real efforts of collaboration of the people around the multi-touch, multi-user system in which the people can do work collaboratively to achieve a certain task. In order to manipulate user’s hands and fingers are recognized and tracked using the gesture recognition component of the Tabletop, by means of computer vision algorithms applied to the video camera stream of the table area.
As Cooperative learning is one of the best researched of all teaching strategies. The results show that students who have opportunities to work collaboratively, learn faster and more efficiently, have greater retention, and feel more positive about the learning experience.
Conceptual maps are visual representation of graph like structure that represents the knowledge consists of concepts and the relationship between them. In the Concept Mapping process, the first step is the identification of the problem, after identification the focus question are identifying and listing the most important or “general” concepts that are associated with the topic, ordering the concepts from top to bottom in the mapping field, means that the general concepts are on the top in the hierarchy and less general are at the bottom of tree. Then adding and labeling linking phrases. Once the preliminary Concept has been built, cross-links are identified and added, and a review of the map for completeness and correctness is performed.
In the work of my project I have tried to present a tool for developing the Concept maps which can be used by the group of students on a multi-touch, multi-user system. The tool can provide all the necessary functions through which the students can make the Concept Map collaboratively on the tabletop.
The tool that I am going to develop can help the students to build the Concept maps in a real system of multi-user, multi-touch technology. The interface is real time interface through which students can collaboratively place there ideas in the form of maps.
