******************************************************************** WANTED: research assistant Topic: human-computer collaboration TECFA University of Geneva (Switzerland) ******************************************************************** We wish to appoint a research assistant for a new project entitled 'social grounding in computer-supported collaborative problem solving'. The project is described below. It is funded by the Swiss National Scientific Research Foundation. The candidate would be a cognitive psychologist with some programming experience or a computer scientist with a good level in psychology. The following area of expertise would be considered as a plus: groupware & computer-mediated communication, artificial intelligence, models of dialogue (negotiation, argumentation, ...). The research starts on 1.1.94 and lasts for 18 months minimum. The salary is Swiss Francs 51000 per year. It is not necessary to speak french. TECFA is a team of 10 people working in various domains of educational technology: distance education, multimedia, applications of AI,... It belongs to the School of Education and Psychology. A description of the project and the team is on our WWW page (http://tecfa.unige.ch/). Despite its worldwide reputation, Geneva has kept a human scale. Its is a cosmoplitan and pleasant city with many possibilities for leisure (sports on the lake & mountains) and culture. === > Send inquiries to Pierre Dillenbourg: pdillen@divsun.unige.ch ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SOCIAL GROUNDING IN COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING ----------------------------------------------------------------------- When we solve a problem with a colleague or a friend, we often use a piece of paper to draw a diagram or sketch. Such diagrams help us to build a shared representation of the problem and to repair communication breakdowns. Can we design equivalent artefacts to enrich human-computer collaboration? To answer this question, we propose to study the role of social grounding in human-human collaborative problem solving and to integrate functionally equivalent mechanisms into an interactive inference engine for human-computer collaboration. We will proceed in three stages. 1 Develop or adapt a computer-supported collaborative system. The system will be designed for creating the experimental settings necessary for stage 2 and stage 3. The reasons for mediating human-human collaboration are (1) to use the communication channel as an independent variable controlled by the computer system, (2) to coerce (to some extent) human partners to use interaction techniques that can be used in human- computer collaboration. 2. Study the social grounding in human-human collaborative problem solving. Efficient collaboration requires that each partner understands what the other meant to a criterion sufficient for the current task. Social grounding is the process by which two partners try to reach the mutual belief that the other has reached this understanding criterion (Clark & Brennan, 1991). This goal can be achieved by various linguistic mechanisms, depending on the media used for communication. This project focuses on two issues: (1) how people use external references (drawing a diagram, pointing to an object) during social grounding and (2) the role of grounding mechanisms in problem solving. Three experimental settings are proposed in the research plan. 3. Develop a human-computer collaborative system The goal is to develop human-computer interaction techniques that are functionally equivalent to the gestures observed in human-human social grounding. The difficulty is not to support gestures such as drawing or pointing. The challenge is to integrate these gestures within the reasoning process performed by a knowledge-based system. These gestures can be used for changing the problem state representation, guiding the rule selection, determining how to instantiate a variable, ... Funding has been obtained for stages 1 and 2 (6 + 12 months).This project is articulated with the research programme "Learning in Human and Machines" funded by the European Science Foundation. A better description of this project can be found in our WWW pages (http://tecfa.unige.ch/). ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr. Pierre Dillenbourg TECFA (Educational Technology Unit) Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education (FPSE) Universite de Geneve, Route de Drize,9, CH1227 CAROUGE SWITZERLAND Phone: (+ 41.22.) 705.96.93 Fax: (+41.22.) 342.89.24 E-mail: pdillen@divsun.unige.ch ------------------------------------------------------------------