Research Projects at TECFA : Collaborative Interaction and CSCW

Bootnap

Short description

This project is concerned with grounding in multi-modal computer-supported collaboration. In particular, we concentrate on two issues: how constructed visual/spatial references (drawing a diagram) are used during grounding and the role of grounding mechanisms in problem solving. The project will progress in three phases:

1. Design or adapt a multi-modal computer-supported collaborative system.
2. Use the system to study grounding behavior in computer-mediated human-human collaboration.
3. Develop a human-computer collaborative system, in which a computer program can collaborate with a human, using mechanisms for grounding which are functionally equivalent to those of human-human behavior, as observed in the previous phase.

Publications

• Project proposal. Available as a 1MB non-structured PS file.
• P. Dillenbourg, L. Montandon and D. Traum. Does text-based virtual space influence collaboration ? (postscript) Workshop paper presented at Kobe.
• P. Dillenbourg, P. Jermann, D. Schneider, D. Traum, C. Buiu (1997) - The design of MOO agents: Implications from an empirical CSCW study. (postscript) Paper presented at the AI-ED 97 Conference in Kobe.
• P. Dillenbourg and D. Traum - The role of a whiteboard in a distributed cognitive system. (HTML).

Additional links

• What does BOOTNAP mean ?
• Data collected (Restricted Access Links : To get a valid password enabling you to view the data, contact David Traum email:David.Traum@tecfa.unige.ch or Pierre Dillenbourg email:pdillen@divsun.unige.ch (David or Pierre on TECFAMOO).

Additional links

Contact

For more information, call or write to Pierre Dillenbourg or David Traum

Implicit Coordination in Distributed Systems

Short description

This project concerns the design of artificial agents able to collaborate with a human agent which is a key issue in the area of educational science and will advance the knowledge about learning from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together Swiss and Romanian researchers from the areas of psychology, educational science and computer science.

A lot of research in distributed artificial intelligence has focused on explicit coordination between artificial agents. These processes cannot be applied as such to human-computer collaboration, because the cost of coordination becomes too high. Hence, the goal of this project is to model the mechanisms of implicit coordination when the task is distributed over a human and an artificial agent. This project integrates into other TECFA research projects aiming to develop flexible and opportunistic artificial agents, namely to integrate them in interactive learning environments.

The experiments and development stages will be conducted around Internet-based collaboration tools (the MOOs). One argument is to reduce the communication bandwidth to something that can be processed in knowledge-based systems. The second argument is that a long term goal of this project is the design of intelligent agents used in distance education or on-line assistance. Such agents could be made available on the net from centers with moderate computing power as it may be the case in many places in Romania.

Contact

For more information, call or write to Pierre Dillenbourg or mail to Catalin Buiu

MOObservers

Short description

Certain characteristics of the collaborative interaction between two persons are 'more fertile' with regard to the learning outcome. Moobservers are non-intentional agents which consist of a recognising module which information is more or less displayed in a raw graphical manner to the collaborating subjects. A major question is whether the socio-cognitive behaviour of the peer changes when it gets information about its own interaction.

Publications

• Patrick Jermann & Daniel Schneider - Semi-structured interface in collaborative problem-solving. (HTML - postcript)

Contact

For more information, call or write to Patrick Jermann .

Related student's projects

• Etude des mécanismes de coordination spatiale dans un environnement virtuel de collaboration. (Description in french) by Lydia Montandon
• Conception et analyse d'une interface semi-structurée dédiée à la co-résolution de problème. (HTML version in french) by Patrick Jermann.

Patrick.Jermann@tecfa.unige.ch 22.8.97