Monthly Archive for November, 2004

[Koschmann and LeBaron, 2003] Koschmann, T. and LeBaron, C. D. (2003). Reconsidering common ground. In Kuutti, K., Karsten, E., Fitzpatrick, G., Durish, P., and Schmidt, K., editors, ECSCW2003: Proceedings of the Eight European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work, Amsterdam. Kluwer Academic Publishing.
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This paper contains a critics to Clark’s Contribution Model, providing applied situations, like communication in an operating room, where the relationship between the presentation and the acceptance phase, as described by Clark, are muddled. Their data contrast with Clark’s model, because the component parts of the sender-receiver model (e.g., environment) may be brought into being through human interaction whithin and upon it. In other words, the boundaries of a contribution may be ambiguous when conversation is tied to an ongoing activity, and/or embodied phenomena. The authors also add that in Clark’s model are also neglected the features of the material and social environment that participants draw upon in making sense of their own and other’s utterances. This paper is in accord with my idea that common ground is something difficult to grasp. However, the author extremise this idea saying that c.g. is not a thing that can be measured, either directly or indirectly.

[van der Pol et al., 2004] van der Pol, J., Admiraal, W., and Simons, P. R. J. (2004). Context enhancement for co-intentionality and co-reference in asynchronous cmc.
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The author defines two different process that contribute to the collaborative annotations of text and that reflect in the learning process: co-intentionality and co-reference. The former refer to the attempt to maintain a shared set of intentions while communcating (e.g., stay in the same thread providing answers on the same subject). The latter refer to the attempt to maintain a shared frame of reference (e.g., the ability to take reciprocal perspectives). An interesting idea I found is therefore that a shared context then does not always and automatically provide participants in communication the means to reach sufficient levels of co-reference and co-intentionality.

Subsequently, the author provides list some of the mechanism that may affect grounding, in relation to co-reference and co-intentionality, to provide the least collaborative effort. He introduce a critic to Clark’s model developed by Koschmann, who views communication essentially as an active and continuos process of grounding. In Koschman view, using common ground is not a logical or mathematical process of deduction and the success of the operation cannot be taken for granted. I personally refer to this effect as ‘false grounding’.

Another effect listed by the author is then the non-verbal communication that may influence the grounding process itself. For instance, when communicating about a certain topic, the availability of the object of the discussion in some sort of mediatic representation is reflecting on the communication itself and in particular, for the author, to the co-reference mechanism.

The author incorporate his findings into an Annotation System developed at the University of Utrecht.

Two interesting references, the first on Multimodal analysis, listen Nico :

- Kress, G and Van Leeuwen, T. multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

- Batonio, A., Kahn, J. and Decortis, F. Travelling narratives as a multi-sensorial experience: A user-centered approach to smart objects. Proceeding of Smart Objects Conference, Grenoble, 2003.