Evaluating cooperation in group work

Several researchers in the area of cooperative work take as a success criterion the quality of the group outcome. Nevertheless, recent findings are giving more importance to the quality of the “cooperation process” itself. This paper presents the design of a software tool that allow us to capture information concerned with the group work. Besides revealing the final quality of the group outcome, this information permits us to verify the presence of a cooperation indicator, which in turn allows us to determine the quality of the work process. An experiment is described, and the obtained data is discussed, comparing the quality of the collaboration process with the quality of the results obtained by the groups