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Fabian Hermann

[Person] [Project]

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Fabian Hermann, Dr.

Short Vita

1971:

Born in Lahr (Germany).

1992-1998:

Study of Psychology at the University of Freiburg (Germany).

1998:

Graduation in Psychology at the University of Freiburg (Germany). Thesis: "Eigene und fremde Irrtümer: Ein kognitives Modell der Verarbeitung falscher Überzeugungen bei Kindern" [A cognitive model of children's processing of own and other person's false beliefs].

April 1998 - March 1999: 

PhD student of the Graduate Program "Human and Machine Intelligence" at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (with scholarship).

April 1999 - March 2001:

PhD student of the VGK (with scholarship).

Contact

Phone: ++49 (0) 711/970-2326
FAX: ++49 (0) 711/970-2300
email: Fabian.Hermann@iao.fhg.de
WWW: My homepage

Fraunhofer Institut Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation
Marktstrategie-Team Usability Engineering
Nobelstr. 12
D-70569 Stuttgart (Germany)

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Ph.D. Project

Topic: Coordination of computer-supported work by persons with different background knowledge solving a case study 

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hans Spada (Freiburg) , Prof. Dr. Michael Diehl (Tübingen)

Start of the Ph.D. project: April 1998 

Summary

If persons with different background-knowledge work together their activities have to be coordinated. Coordination comprises the identification of goals, managing inderdependencies of activities, and ordering and the temporal synchorization of activities (Malone & Crowston, 1990). Another coordination goal is to ensure the consistency of the work product which means to integrate partial solutions of the individual work.
           If the cooperation takes place in a distance setting the used computer-system should allow the required activities to solve the task and to coordinate collaboration. Beside the usability of the system, the affordance to communicate (Clark & Brennan, 1991) and the affordance to execute task-related activities using available tools are crucial.

My PhD-thesis investigates how coordination of collaborative work of persons with different background knowledge is influenced by features of computer-systems for distance collaboration. It is questioned wether different patterns of task division, individual and collaborative work arise spontaniously and if the quality of the solution of a complex task is affected. 
           In an empirical study two persons with different background-knowledge (a medical student and  a student of psychology) collaborated to propose a therapy plan for complex psychiatric case. The goal was to write a joint text about the therapy plan. Two factors were varied: the used environment for distance collaboration and the application of a collaboration script. The compared collaboration environments were a desktop-videoconferencing system in the first condition, which offered an audio- and a videochannel, private texteditors and a shared texteditor. In the second condition a system was used which simulated the common exchange of emails to produce texts jointly complemented by the occasional use of telephone to discuss. It comprised private texteditors, email and telephones to communicate verbaly. The collaboration script introduced phases of individual and joint work, and a reasonalbe division of labor for the two partners.
           On the one hand side it was expected that the efficiency of the collaboration is increased by using a shared application and the videoconferencing system, because these tools support joint activities like discussion and writing. However, the facilitation of synchroneous activities could also affect the coordination of the collaboration negatively: less task division and individual work could result. Furthermore it was expected, that the application of a collaboration script could neutralize these negative effects.

To evaluate the process of collaboration, log-files and videotapes were analysed. In the scripted conditions very similar patterns of joint and individual activities were found. However, the two unscripted conditions differed significantly: In the condition with telephone and email, all patterns showed long-lasting phases of individual work and also phases of dialog. In the condition with videoconferencing, only half of the dyads worked partly individually, whereas the rest showed dialog activity over the entire collaboration, but no parallel, individual work at all. There were also significant differences of the qualitiy of the final solutions: In the conditions with telephone and email better solutions were produced, and the introduction of a collaboration script  increased the quality of final solutions. However, no interaction between the two factors was found concerning the quality of final solutions.
         The comparison between dyads who worked jointly the whole time and dyads who also worked individually corroborates the interpretation, that the lack of individual work in the condition with videoconference is responsible for the lower quality of final solutions. So it may be concluded that there was the necessity for certain coordinating arrangements: the division of labor and the synchronization of individual and joint work. These coordination tasks were enforced by certain features of the system, especially the lack of support for joint activities. Supporting joint activities misled some dyads: On the one hand side they profited by the faciliation of necessary joint activities. But on the other side they failed to manage important coordination goals. 

References 

Clark, H. H. & Brennan, S. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 283-307). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Malone, T. W. & Crowston, K. (1990). What is coordination theory and how can it help design cooperative work systems. In F. Halasz (Ed.), CSCW'90: Proceedings of the conference on computer supported cooperative work (pp. 357-370). Los Angeles, LA: Association for Computing Machinery.

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