One-to-one with shared-display groupware for supporting face-to-face web co-discovery

Web co-discovery, which means a certain group members collaboratively discover web resources for learning, has become imperative in authentic, open-ended learning environment. Group members may select, organize and further construct their own knowledge via web co-discovery activities. Current groupwares support web co-search, providing bookmark sharing, social tagging of bookmarks, and labor management functions. These groupwares efficiently facilitate distance Web co-discovery, however, face-to-face Web co-discovery is not supported. A framework to assist group members to integrate materials and ideas is not emphasized as well. In addition, a lack of a shared-focus may lead to barriers to social communications. Concept map, featuring linking related contributions, enables students to link, coordinate, organize and further integrate different ideas and discussion that reflect their reasoning. CELL (Contribution of Exchanging for Linking & Learning) is a groupware used concept map as the framework to facilitate group members to construct their collective knowledge (Liu and Kao, 2007). Therefore, this study implements CELL in a Web co-discovery activity and further explores whether 1:1 (1 mobile device for 1 person) better benefit members' communication and interaction. Nine graduate students participated in this study and were divided into three groups. Every group was asked use CELL to achieve Web co-discovery tasks in two settings both equipped with one shared-display, 1:1 and 1:3 (1 mobile device for 3 persons). The whole process was videotaped and transcribed in terms of interaction, conversation and users' operation behaviors. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to evaluate time ration of operate screen, classification of conversation and knowledge management. The result shows different environment may change group exploration strategy. 1:1 environment better supports the members' coordination and interaction and enrich the artifact of group exploration. However, participants in 1:1 environment may focus on personal device and thus show less oral communication than 1:3 environment. Future studies should be alerted to the limitation of 1:1 environment.