Specific design requirements

The findings about the features and functions required come fi-om: specific suggestions and requests made by students and teachers in focus groups and/or questionnaire responses; observation of difficulties and inability to perform certain tasks; reports fi'om expert evaluators; study of saved screen shots; talk fi'om teachers, students and expert evaluators, in focus groups. Table 7.2 summarises the main findings and the degree of support for each one, using the headings introduced in Chapto' Three (Table 3.1, section 3.3). The same headings are used in the text, below, to explain findings. The reader may also wish to refer to Table 6.2, which compares the features of wb and nte.

7.2.3.1 Space and Navigation

Pages and canvas are both acceptable. The tools need to support shifts between individual, simultaneous working and whole group working. As Gutwin et al. (1995) showed, individual working may be with a shared view or with different views. When the students in these trials completed tables, or annotated a single paragraph, they shared the same view. When they worked on different parts of a long text, or carried out writing activities on separate pages, their views were different.

Whatever kind of space is provided, it is essential to provide a way to locate fellow group members working in different parts of a longer document. These teachers and students, as other users have done, found it worrying and confusing if they could not find one another's location. This involves not only support for finding other people but support for knowing one's own location. Wb, with its numbered pages, gave individuals information about where they were, which could be passed verbally to others. This proved more difficult with nte, and its document activity map, whoi used, appeared not to help than with navigation.

As well as allowing students to have their own working spaces, an efficient re-uniting mechanism is needed. This would reduce time-wasting and also facilitate teacher monitoring of individual student working (see sections V.2.4.2 and 7.6.3.1); when students work in different areas the teacher needs to move easily between them. In this particular conferaicing system, which incorporates video images of participants, one possible mechanism might be to attach a FIND button to the image window. When pressed, it would take the user to Wierever that person was working.

Although it was not requested by the teachers or studoits, observation suggested that support for managing student use of the space would be useful. In particular, support for dividing up a page into columns, or creating a table framework is needed; the sample screen shots (Figures 7.1, 7.3, 7.6) illustrate this. In addition, the teacher in Trial 2 requested an additional shared space, perhaps for shared reference material. Expert evaluators suggest a larga screen area might sometimes be usefiil.

7.2.3 2 Objects and Operations

Text: Both file and keyboard text entry are required. The shared workspace should not only be able to

display plain text but also preserve layout, w hae this carries meaning, in poems or advertisements, for instance. The formats for input files should be compatible with those used by other tools, including web

browsers. Another aspect of display is the font. International character sets are needed. A wide range of font sizes is probably not required but font size is important: comfortable on-screen reading is the priority; size should also be sufficiently flexible to allow both the seaming of longer texts and close focus on a few lines.

Graphics: It should be possible to sketch with the mouse. Ideally a pen and graphics tablet would also be available as input devices. Freehand drawing plus some graphics primitives (line, ellipse, rectangle) arrow) are needed and the shared workspace tool should support the importing of image files in common graphics file formats.

According to the teachers and expert observers, the graphical features of the whiteboard supported the use of a wide range of learning materials, including photographs, drawings and cartoons. The expert evaluators state that drawing contributed to textual study, feedback on orors, and the teaching of linguistic or grammatical points. Drawing was an aid to reference and emphasis, helped to convey information and added to participants' enjoyment of lessons. Expert evaluators state:

"The value o f the drawing tool to underline linguistic or grammatical relationships, to point to a specific word, enabling others to locate it quickly, to indicate an error prior to removing it, helped give the classes interest, dynamism and a sense o f concentrated and efficient learning and teaching. This tool was also used to teach, discuss and practice use o f accents and other linguistic signs. " "Drawing was frequently a very valuable additional asset in the teaching/learning process: a simple sketch was often informative and amusing, bringing not only an answer but also a moment o f relaxation. " Appendix 7

The screen shots in Table 6.6 provide evidence of drawing actions being used to illuminate the text. For instance:

• Position is used to define student working areas (Figures 7.3, 7.6), to organise ideas (Figure 7.6) and as a means of reference (Figure 7.1).

• Colour was used to distinguish individuals (illustrated in all the sample screen shots).

• Drawing actions are also used to convey relationships between elements of a text (Figure 7.2), to emphasise or identify elements within a text (Figure 7.2, 7.5), to explain the meaning of words (Figure 7.1).

Operations on objects: There are two aspects to editing objects. Firstly, to provide a fully interactive learning experience, ownership of objects must be shared; all participants need to be able to edit all objects. This supports both students’ learning from one anotha- and teacha intervention in studait writing. This is the priority but, ideally, a facility to make catain objects un-editable would also be available (see also 7.2.3.4) and this should be at object level.

The second aspect of editing is that the teaching and learning activities used in these language courses need more sophisticated text re-structuring than eitha of these tools offered. Being able to delete only single characters or the whole object is not sufficiently flexible to support gap-filling and re-ordering exercises; although these w ae done in the trials, this was with some effort by the teachas and support staff. The EFL teacher explains to the students:

Student 1: The colours were good Everybody had different colours. So when we moved the words I think you [to tutor] knew who was doing what - and we can know every student's reaction.

Tutor: When you can move things around like that it saves a lot o f time. The only trouble is I have to come in early to prepare the lessons - physically type things in but not only that, you know things are separated into blocks ..[ yes] .. well, you have to type each block in separately. So all the different sentences I have to type in individually. Not only that. I'd fin d myself typing many lessons twice, once at home when I was preparing it, then coming in again and typing in individual words so you could move them around So that was quite time-consuming but I think that was ]ust a technical thing that they can sort out - if anyone is listening! Extract from EFL focus group. Appendix 6.

7.2 3.3 Floor Control

In these small groups, no problems were observed to result from the lack of system-imposed floor control. These trials did not address the question of whether this would be the case with a larger group. However, the teachers did direct student use of the space to a consid^able degree. This was done either by defining an area of screen for each student or by asking them to work on separate pages. A question was therefore raised about how important the managemrait of the shared space was, to teacha-s. Trial 3 later showed that this was very important (see section 7.6.2.1).

7 2.3.4 Other Controls

Flexibility is required. The defeult should be that all participants can modify all objects. It should be possible for a lock mechanism to override this and the lock should apply, ideally, at object level. The default would enable the full benefit, to students, of interacting with each other's writing. A lock mechanism would prevent accidental erasing, as happened occasionally using nte.

There was no evidence that it was necessary for the system to control the working process or the roles of participants. In feet, quite the reverse; both students and teachers valued a sense of equality (see 7.2.4.2).

7.2 3.5 Shared view: WYSIWIS

More misunderstandings were observed when nte was used than with wb. This was partly because documents were longer and the screen looked more uniform (being only text and not having any graphical landmarks). It was harder for participants to be sure they were all looking at the same paragraph, for instance. The defeult behaviour of wb, to enforce a page change on all participants when one person chenges page, reduced confusion; the defeult should be to preserve a shared view of the shared object for all participants. However, there were frequent occasions when participants worked in different areas, particularly with the more advanced classes. G reats freedom allows this but increases the need for navigation aids (see 7.2.3.1).

The integrated interface prevented the studies from addressing the question of whether the shared view should extend to the rest of the windows on the desktop.

7.2 3.6 Reference

As previous research has shown, a shared pointer is useful for clarity of reference. Students who used nte (Spanish for Lawyers, Russian, Advanced French) liked this feature. However, wb had no shared pointer

and users found their own ways to make reference to objects, using either small free-hand marks (dots or short lines) or the arrow tool (e.g. Figure 7.1).

7.2 3.7 Activity Feedback

Individuals' actions should be distinguishable, both as they happen and in a more persistent way. The groups studied here found colours adequate for this and such a mechanism would support groups of up to about 8 people. Most participants liked the named icons offered by n t e but the Russian student felt they were too large and found them distracting.

People also need to know Wiere they, themselves, are in relation to everyone else and in relation to the objects they are studying. Very visible page or place indicators are needed. The document map offered by

n te was not found helpful as implemented, although the idea was consida^ed potentially useful by

participants in the focus groups.