Social factors play an important role in determining whether instructional communication in computer-supported settings will be successful. Social presence is a social factor, specifically addressing the feeling of being present with another person in a virtual environment. This article describes possibilities to influence the feeling of social presence in synchronous learning scenarios using desktop collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Desktop CVEs are technically simple compared with immersive CVEs and can be adapted according to the needs of the users. In this article, possible adaptations are described using the example of the desktop CVE virtual team room. In CVEs, users are represented as avatars. Avatars may or may not convey nonverbal signals. The focus of the article is on whether the actual use of nonverbal signals can affect the sense of social presence and thus help to establish and maintain the learner's motivation and provide support for structuring social interaction in learning situations. The paper provides a review of exploratory studies and experiments as well as a report on the author's own studies. Future research questions concerning learning in CVEs are discussed.Keywords Nonverbal signal . Avatar . Social presence . Collaborative virtual environments . Synchronous online learning Over the last decade, the concept of learning as an interactive and collaborative process has gained attention (Gulz and Haake, 2006). The perspective that learning is a fundamentally social phenomenon is reflected in the steadily growing research area of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL;Stahl, 2006). This article focuses on synchronous CSCL scenarios, also known as real-time or online learning scenarios. CSCL scenarios give rise to new challenges in terms of mutually constructing "meaning", establishing and maintaining the user's motivation, as well as structuring social interaction in learning situations

Negotiations between three or more parties are more complex than dyadic negotiations concerning the integration of various interests. In this study, we investigated negotiation in a collaborative virtual environment. We focused specifically on communication channels and their impact on negotiation in three-person groups. Three conditions of media richness were varied in the collaborative virtual environment: text chat, audio channel, and a combination of both. Furthermore, various nonverbal signals and a function for taking notes were available to the participants in every condition. The results show that participants in the conditions with audio channel and with audio channel and text chat are more satisfied with the communication process and need less time to find a solution. The quality of the negotiated result does not differ between the conditions. Adding text chat to the audio channel does not enhance the potential of solving negotiation problems. Audio-based communication seems to meet the requirements of negotiating better than text chat in terms of a more satisfying and faster communication process.

No abstract

Social activities such as collaborative work and group negotiation can be an essential part of information seeking processes. However, they are not sufficiently supported by today's information systems as they focus on individual users working with PCs. Reality-based UIs with their increased emphasis on social, tangible, and surface computing have the potential to tackle this problem. By blending characteristics of real-world interaction and social qualities with the advantages of virtual computer systems, they inherently change the possibilities for collaboration, but until now this phenomenon has not been explored sufficiently. Therefore, this paper presents an experimental user study that aims at clarifying the impact such reality-based UIs and its characteristics have on collaborative information seeking processes. Two different UIs have been developed for the purpose of this study. One is based on an interactive multi-touch tabletop in combination with on-screen tangibles, therefore qualifying as a reality-based UI, while the other interface uses three synchronized PCs each controlled by keyboard and mouse. A comparative user study with 75 participants in groups of three was carried out to observe fundamental information seeking tasks for co-located collaboration. The study shows essential differences of emerging group behavior, especially in terms of role perception and seeking strategies depending on the two different UIs.

Soziale Aktivitäten sind während eines Rechercheprozesses von essentieller Bedeutung, werden jedoch bisher in aktuellen digitalen Recherchesystemen nur unzureichend berücksichtigt. Social, Tangible und Surface Computing bieten erste Ansätze zur Lösung des Problems. Darauf aufbauend stellt dieser Beitrag drei verschiedene Benutzerschnittstellen für die Aktivität des gemeinsamen Filterns und Explorierens vor. Dabei wurden die Benutzerschnittstellen bewusst mit unterschiedlichen Interaktionstechniken umgesetzt, von sehr realitätsbasiert über rein virtuell bis hin zu einem eher klassischen Ansatz. Weiterhin werden Ergebnisse einer Evaluationsstudie vorgestellt, in der insbesondere die Auswirkungen der verschiedenen Ansätze auf das kollaborative Arbeiten untersucht wurden.