This is fun! we're all best friends and we're all playing

Abstract

As computers become integrated in our everyday lives, it is important that we do not limit computer-based collaboration to distributed settings. As the demand for collaborative applications grows, it is imperative that we investigate how to effectively support co-located collaboration and fully understand the consequences of this style of interaction. This paper presents preliminary results from a research study which examined pairs of elementary school children playing a puzzle solving game in various collaborative setups. Children's activity and engagement levels when playing on a computer with multiple input devices was compared to other traditional collaborative settings (paper-based, common desktop configuration). Preliminary qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed three main benefits of providing each child with access to a mouse and a cursor: (a) children exhibited a significantly higher level of engagement; (b) children tended to be more active; and (c) children significantly preferred playing on a computer equipped with multiple input devices and cursors.

Read-It

“…Children rather enjoy technology that supports concurrent activities. These findings are coherent with the results of Inkpen et al [8]. They found earlier that children exhibit a significantly higher level of engagement and activity when working alongside each other.…”

“…Inkpen [8] describes how children (age 9-11) show more involvement and participation in a (desktop) computer application that allows for parallel interaction. However, the classic rules of memory prescribe strict turn taking and encourage competition.…”

Interactive tabletops in education

“…By their shape and size, tabletops are intrinsically designed for multiple users: they are "interpersonal computers" (Kaplan et al 2008), as opposite, to the concept of "personal computers". However, while most CSCL tools identify every user by an individual login or an individual input device (Inkpen et al 1999), this is rarely the case in tabletops. The Tinker environment, for instance, knows where the shelves are placed but ignores how many hands are moving these shelves.…”

“…Even if the CSCL field was initiated by Roschelle's work on two students facing a single computer (1992), most CSCL environments since have focused on online interactions. Environments for co-present collaboration have continued to exist through single-display groupware (Stewart et al 1998), multiple-display groupware (Koschmann 1999), multi-input devices (Inkpen et al 1999), the "one mouse per child" approaches (Nussbaum et al 2009) as well as integrated macro-scripts (Dillenbourg and Hong 2008). Tabletops are aligned to this evolution.…”

Read-It: A Multi-modal Tangible Interface for Children Who Learn to Read

“…Social interactions in a learning environment have also shown to lead to significant learning benefits [4,7]. Research by Inkpen et al [5] demonstrates that children exhibit a significantly higher level of engagement and tend to be more active when working in parallel. Unfortunately, the face-to-face setup that is most often preferred for effective group interaction is prohibited by a desktop setting.…”