Social Grounding in Computer Supported Collaborative Problem Solving
This project has been submitted to the Swiss National Science Foundation
on February 27 1994. A postscript version of research outline is
HERE (1MB non-structured PS file).
Summary
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. Our research will contribute to the theory of
collaborative problem solving and lay the psychological foundations
for new generations of interactive computer systems. We will proceed in three stages.
- 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.
- Study the role of 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 our research plan.
-
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,
...
This project, like our research team, is multidisciplinary. It is
articulated with the research programme "Learning in Human and
Machines" funded by the European Science Foundation (see section
2.2.1.5). This international and multidisciplinary program includes
five task forces. The main contractor of this project, P. Dillenbourg,
is responsible for the task force "collaborative learning". The first
co-contractor, Prof. Mendelsohn, is also member of the program
steering committee. The research plan explains how the experiments
that we propose will serve as a basis for this international program.
Keywords: Collaborative problem solving, human-computer interaction,
distributed cognition, social grounding, artificial intelligence,
knowledge-based systems, groupware.
For more information, call or write for
Pierre Dillenbourg