Interactive Tables
Supporting Casual Collaborative Learning

Abstract

The goal is to design, build and experiment furniture with embedded technology. The main hypothesis is that IT-augmented artefacts such as tables, chairs, mobile walls, screens, carpets or any objects could enhance learning. We are targeting not only working situations but also the more casual students interactions. The social involvement, the verbalization about pedagogical content and the development of a common ground have indeed known effect on the depth of learning.

The domain of disappearing computers and tangible artefacts was explored by expensive prototypes. Low cost technologies (RFID tools, beamers, LED ...) are now available and allow creating "not so expensive" collaborative tools for real uses. Our objective is to create tables that would enhance casual collaborative learning and could equip the learning centre, which will be opened in 2008-2009.

The project aims to:

Explore casual collaborative learning
Transform EPFL students' practices to go toward the Learning Centre reality
Design and evaluate computer supported collaborative learning patterns

Current projects

Our current projects follow a 'mid-tech' approach. Our goal is not to develop hight tech protoypes embedding a large tactile display. We want to explore how interactive furniture could support casual collaborative learning situations. We hypothesize that highly detailed information display maybe less productive in such setting than simpler, more robust, less "technological" prototypes.

Docking table

Arriving to the table with, or without, your laptop and directly accessing to your account, a shared space, the project portal, ...

The relevant themes are:

Influence of material, social and digital spaces,
Individual or group personalized content,
Interaction history and restitution,
Tagged objects, linking paper and digital documents.

First prototype, developped by Michael Ruflin:

Noise sensitive table

Using light patterns reacting from the noise level to provide a feed-back of the conversation dynamic.

Relevant themes:

Creating a social experience,
Reinforcing social norms (speech volume),
Group mirror providing with a reflection of the interaction.

First prototype, developped by Guillaume Raymondon:

explanation

Social maps

Using the information collected by the tables to show, on the wall or on the web, some maps of: activity; work areas (social places or silent work area) ; communities (1st year, 2nd year).

Relevant themes:

Collecting and aggregating information
Display pattern
Respect of privacy

Casual Collaborative Learning

Learning does not only occur in well-structured educational settings but also in a variety of less formal situations. Many of these situations will be afforded by the new Learning centre of EPFL. This projects aims to investigate different social contexts students experience and their influence on learning. For the sake of clarity, we segment the formal-informal continuum into four prototypical situations with different social constraints:

Level 1. Class Teamwork. Collaborative learning is proposed in highly structured environments where teamwork in regulated teachers and tutors. Typically, a team of students conducts experiments in a science lab, with specific tasks and deliverables assigned by the teacher, a close regulation by assistants and clear time structure.
Level 2. Group Projects. Collaborative learning is proposed in semi-structured contexts where students have to conduct a project together. Their activity is structured by tasks and deliverables, but they organize freely their collaborative process. Typically, a team of students has to carry a project over a few weeks but they are free to work together when and where they want.
Level 3. Group Study. Collaborative learning in informal contexts refers to situations where collaboration is not part of the course requirements. Typically, students decide to study side-by-side the course readings or to do course exercises together. Students define theirs own social organization according to their experience as well as the available resources and social norms of the place (speech volume in the library).
Level 4. Social interactions. Learning does also occur when students socialize during their free time: lunch, sport … many activities that are not pedagogically oriented. The common ground developed in such occasions is necessary for later collaboration.

Most studies in the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) have focused on the first and second levels. This project aims to explore the main question: Can we augment casual collaborative learning within interactive furniture?

We expect to:

Support the existing collaborative processes.
Support the construction of common grounds among group members
Explore if an artefact that reacts to a collective stimulation, thereby creating a shared experience, would increase a social engagement.

CRAFT previous work on table

It is only recently that we investigate the impact of tables on collaborative processes. The goal was to analyze the influence of both physical (shape of the table) and of the low-tech whiteboard (the white circle in the centre of figure below) on the collaborative processes. The tables were evaluated by video analysis.

Interesting observations have been made about how private and public spaces where structured. The private space included student’s papers and personal laptop. The public space included a whiteboard area in the centre of the table and, sometimes, a laptop screen shown to team mates. On some tables, the whiteboard area was mobile and large enough to allow organisation in sub areas and change of orientation toward the addressees.

Roomware

The fields of roomware and disappearing computer showed the limit of the traditional desktop metaphor (1 user/1 computer): Traditional computers keep attention focused on human computer interaction at the expense of human-human interaction. On the contrary, cooperation around a traditional table is fluid and dynamic. From this statement, the goal of roomware naturally became creating a hybrid world that combines affordances of real objects and the potentials of computer based support in the virtual world. In order not to obstruct physical affordances it is then necessary to make the computer physically and mentally disappear.

Many researches have been done to develop tabletops supporting collaborative work. Some of the most advances are:

Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs have developed several tabletop, like Personal Digital Historian (PDH), UbiTable, and have evaluated different dimensions of collaboration : table shape, orientation of digital object, synchronous interaction ...
Fraunhofer Institute has developed many roomware components ( DynaWall® , CommChair® , ConnecTable® , InteracTable® ) now integrated in the second generation of collaborative environment. An ambient display, Hello.Wall® has also been developed.
Etc.

Other researches from different fields have more focused on the social use of interactive furniture, with a less technological orientation:

SHAPE, a project to design an exhibit for kids using interactive furniture.
TeamSpace environment, developed at Stanford, which allows to easily sharing a public space with procedures relying on social protocols.
Laboratory of Design for Cognition, at EDF, which evaluate augmented environment facilities for professional activites.
Etc.

We have recently organized a workshop on "collaborative artifacts and interactive furniture" (June 20-22 nd , 2005) gathering some of the best specialists worldwide. The contacts established with designer, academic and industrial researchers give us the resources to be able to develop our own prototypes of interactive furniture for casual collaborative learning.

Contacts

Visit and Mail:

Jean-Baptiste Haué, Pierre Dillenbourg
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
CRAFT - School of Computer and Communication Sciences
CH-1015 Lausanne, Switerzland

E-mail

jean-baptiste dot haue(at) epfl dot ch
pierre dot dillenbourg (at) epfl dot ch

Acknowledgement

This project benefits from the kind help of:

Hervé Lissek, Laboratoire d'Electromagnétisme et d'Acoustique (LEMA) , EPFL
(c.f. noise sensitive table project below)
Atelier Electro-Mécanique, dont Jean-Paul Brugger
Christof Faller, Audiovisual Communications Laboratory
IDIAP

Interactive Tables Supporting Casual Collaborative Learning