Non-invasive Collaboration Aids: Supporting Group Learning with Pervasive and Ambient Technologies

Studying in groups can have advantages as compared to doing so alone. Collaboration scripts are one means to handle the learning process systematically, by defining different phases and the tasks that individual team members should carry out. This paper presents a new concept to support the use of scripts during group learning: Non-invasive collaboration aids use pervasive and ambient technologies (room lighting, tabletop displays etc.) to help users recognize script phases, work on the individual task(s) of a phase, and become aware of other relevant factors during the learning process. Compared to previous efforts, which relied on desktop PC technology, this prevents interruptions and distractions, allowing users to focus on one another rather than on a computer. We demonstrate our ideas with an example user interface for a particular collaboration script.